In this day and age, when we try to redefine everything, it should still be known what part of him that was good and evil. If you can’t see which is which, I got bad news for you…
I’m going to release a new podcast episode of Flashback, tracks from the past in a few weeks from now. It will dig deeper in the concept of evil in videogames. I already have made such an episode in the past, but wish to focus more on organizations that grow corrupted even when they had the best of intentions. But I have not yet started, so I don’t know how to navigate those waters yet. However I have already decided on the last story of it: a fictitious organization that may could have existed in real life. One that started out with the best of intentions, but then became truly evil.
Here is a concept of it from my private notes (translated to English)
As I understand it, the idea was good from the start. Benevolent, even. And it actually still is today. Built on a strong sense of security and doing what is right to protect and to rectify and to form an opinion against society’s greatest injustices. The whole thing was started by a person who himself was exposed to the injustices that he has now come to want to protect others from. There is nothing but goodness in this, as I see it. With little information and nothing to go on, the obvious conclusion is that this is the right thing to do, even if it is controversial. But right from the start it was criticized and the responses from the organizers of the of organization were unprofessional and appealed to emotions and went to direct attacks on those who spoke against it. Angry words from those who set themselves up as a guarantor of a safer society. And those who complained did not get a substantive answer but the answers more implied “how can you think like this” or “are you on the enemy’s side?”. The criticism came because all ideas that are new are controversial. This type of activity takes time to become habitus (accepted by the public). But the answers from the organization are, in my eyes, a number of red flags. They feel more like demagogy than rational responses to the criticism that all new paradigms must always undergo. It was based on making the followers angry and despairing at those who dared to criticize, rather than actually explaining why the criticism is unjustified. An “us against them” mentality in general.
But we have to go back a few years when there were indications of the people the founder had strong bonds with. The reports cited links and direct references to local authoritarian organizations of the type that want everyone to see them as dangerous and very committed to drastic solutions. “Strong men who solve their problems”, one might say. And these men had logos with very strong and simple messages. These people are no longer visible in the organization. But the question is, have they disappeared, or are they still in the background? This is unclear to me. If I hadn’t known about this, I would have probably actually supported them. Which feels hard now, when I know that they may actually have other intentions than those they state. But this may be a misjudgment on my part. It may turn out that this will work out well. They have managed to change parts of society’s rules as they stand now and it actually looks good. Despite this, the given question is what happens next. The questions are whether those who may be in the background have a different idea of where “the ship should sail” than the one stated as the purpose of the whole thing. And if so, are these purposes as legitimate as those we were promised at the start?
So many thoughts and so many times it has started well but ended in disaster. The Italian mafia was started by citizens who wanted to protect other citizens. However, that was not the outcome of this. Where did it go wrong? Were they started by them with dishonest intentions, or was the organization taken over by opportunists who were there at the beginning and who stood on the sidelines without seeming to want a position in it? Maybe they bided their time… Maybe it wasn’t even intended that way. At a later point, the lust for power took over. This is an interesting thought and I think of the saying “Those who don’t learn from history are condemned to repeat it”. This is unclear and maybe I’m worrying unnecessarily. But the fact is that it doesn’t concern me and it doesn’t concern most others either. So why is it even a problem? Maybe it isn’t. But I find it hard to see that this type of situation doesn’t have a big risk of going off the rails and doing things that the founders perhaps didn’t understand could happen.
Everything is up in the air and its activities are about to become totally accepted and then maybe it will stay there and continue to do good for society. But this is a risky path to take and the outcome of an unstable business that is very vulnerable to control and influence from those who see opportunities. It is clear to me that the correct approach is to wait and see, but not make any assumptions until more information is available. And there I stop my thoughts and move on to more relevant tasks this Friday at the end of May 2026.
Where is the podcast connection, then?
Let me show you where I started this discussion in 2021:
The episode is called “It’s good to be bad” and talks about villains that have a reason to be what they are and may not even see themselves as evil at all.
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“So Tina Turner may not need another hero, but we need more villains! Interesting villains, and the retro games sometimes deliver the goods. Who wants another mustache twirling bozo who just wants to tie your wife to the railroad tracks? A proper villain has to have a reason to be who he or she is or we don’t want them. And here we celebrate some of the … ok… sorry for the misuse of the term.. “good” ones.”
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So meet the villains of this episode:
Andrew “I’m right – damn the consequences” Ryan – Bioshock 1.
Donkey “But Mario is the evil one” Kong – The Donkey Kong series.
Sarah “I will bathe in your blood, but I’m the victim here” Kerrigan – Starcraft 1 and 2.
Robo “He’s just like Hitler” Hitler – Castle Wolfestein.
Wallace “Long, intellectual rant on why all is perfect and you suck” Breen – Halflife 1 and 2.
Shodan “I’m god, now you curl up and die” – System Shock 1 and 2.
(Ghost/Zombie/Whatever) Pirate “The incel of piracy” LeChuck – The Monkey Island series.
A few of my notes from the podcast:
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“Look, I don't care much for evil for evil's sake. It's a boring and useless trope. And it fits for lesser bosses and the occasional end boss when the focus is not the evil and the villain. But a good villain needs a rationale, a drive, a motivation. Some are into greed, some are corrupted and unleash hidden flaws when life goes bad for them. Some have ulterior motives and no idea as to why everyone hates them. And some would have been good if only insert plot element here would not have happened. So today we go under the sea, into the jungle and among the stars and into the blood drenched walls of a certain castle. And we wade through the corpses and destroy the landscape to find the nature of evil wherever it may be."
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“Would you kindly consider a bit of wisdom from yours truly? A man choose, but the slave of an idea has to obey. In Bioshock, you come to an underwater city built on the idea of total freedom. A dream of independence where the artist may create, the businessman will earn and the scientist is unfeathered by pesky rules and limitations to his experiments. The city of Rapture was created by Andrew Ryan who had the biggest of dreams, but as the city fell apart he could not accept it was a mistake. Thus he keeps the now insane population locked up in the city that is a complete battle zone. And Orion is an anagram of Ayn Rand, the objectivist, ideologist and author. The evil within Ryan you might ask? Well, mainly sacrificing everything and everyone for a pipe dream."
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“And that concludes the whole list. We have the boring and uninteresting villains that could've been something with a proper backstory or at least some reason for them to be put into the game. But there are too many to mention here, so all I can say is we're looking at you, Professor Elvin Atom Bender from Impossible Mission. Inky, Pinky, Blinky and Clyde, know the ghosts from Pac-Man. Sinister from Sinister. And Spider Mastermind, the end boss from Doom."
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