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With the medium's special limitations, making an effective villain is hard to do in videogames. Richard Dansky is a master at the craft and he imparts his villainous wisdom on how to create the perfect adversary for the player.
The final boss of a platformer may be easily defeated while the combined pits, spikes and wall-traps leading to his chamber are stained with the blood of a hundred reloads. Kevin Hoole explains how the environment can be the harshest villain in videogames.
Almost every modern videogame with a story or plot has a major villain or boss to be defeated at the conclusion. Rowan Kaiser pines for a time when this was not always so, such as the RPG masterpieces Ultima IV and VI.
Professional wrestling has portrayed clear-cut villains for over a hundred years. Colin Rowsell examines the history of faces and heels in pro wrestling and how its simple storytelling techniques inform videogames.