mature stories dont have "heroes" and "villains", life isnt so simple

Well, in Mass Effect, the Renegade options are more anti-hero than anti-good, and the Paragon options are not always in keeping with lawful good type actions.

In most RPGs evil is usually presented with a tongue-in-cheek humor, in Strategy games, aside from the storylines, it comes down to traits and abilities of your forces, which is all in good fun to me.

Overall, the violence in games is set in competitive scenarios and the focus is on survival and achievements, not the violence itself, which is acceptable and not as bad an influence as some would like to make it out to be.

If a game takes a storyline to a place where I don’t want to go, or the focus is on senseless violence and inflicting suffering on people or creatures as the main objective, I’ll avoid it like the plague, though I can’t give any examples of these kinds of games at the moment. :/

Personally, I'd say pretty much everyone in Rockstar games is a villain, by our standards. Unless you think characters who are guilty of multiple counts of murder, theft and other assorted crimes are not at all evil, of course.

In fallout 3, I love playing the bad guy. Walking around, killing anybody who looks at me in a funny way, yeah you get the picture. Except I hate raiders and slavers. So at times I'm a crimelord, but at other times I'm like a vigilante.

As long as I remember, I never kill anybody in Bully :-)
OK, it's maybe the only one and I'm not 100% sure, but I try to show in that games, Rockstar want to show us a different thing. OK, they kill a lots of people, but it was, I don't know... war or something. Sometimes they regret their past. They are more than villains or heroes, they are human.

It's... on my "to buy" list. : )

That's okay, we all suck something.

Haven't played Witcher either.

No it's not.

Good point. Actually I don't like being treated as the token hero either, I just want to play a character, and I want NPCs to react to what that character says and does instead of just projecting their fantasies of salvation onto me.

And the word "villain" itself already promises a one-dimensional character, someone who's not (to be) taken seriously.

I have a hard time playing evil in any RPG game, except for being a thieving bastard, I usually play anywhere from Chaotic Good to True Neutral. However, in the Strategy games, such as Civilization series, I am always a warmongering asshole bent on global domination. I haven't played Postal or Grand Theft, so unsure how I would play one of those games where ultraviolence is encouraged.

So... um... what do you play? Farmville?

I'm happy to control a 'villain' in cinematic games but I'd have great difficulty role playing a convincing one. It's just too hard to get acts out of grey territory without crossing over into silly evil.

But a lot of plain fun stories do :)

It isn't ! Thank you very much ! In addition to being written into my will I'm going to name my firstborn after you.

Well, okay, my firstborn character.

: P

Sir, you have insulted my gaming honor. *smack* I hit you with a white glove. Pistols at dawn !

Actually, I've been out of gaming for many years due to being poor and working too much (60-90 hrs/week). Now I have a little time and I'm trying to catch up. Just finished Eshalon 1 and 2 and starting NWN2.

There's a different option?

To clarify, I usually prefer a Chaotic alignment, refusing to tie myself down to Good or Evil... But I'm told that some of my views DO count as evil in games.