I always struggle to play the bad guy in many RPGs and such. I can play the “bad good guy” (and I’ll happily be a good Necromancer), but not intentionally cruel or evil. Do you have issues with this, or is “being bad” not your issue?
In Tears of the Kingdom and Breath of the Wild, I always apologize to the ostriches and explain that the creator of the game makes me do it.
Then I laugh at how silly I’m being.
Yes, I sometimes feel bad when I choose for my character to do something deliberately cruel.
Fallout 3: blowing up Megaton
Knights of the Old Republic: ordering Zaalbar to kill Mission Vao (his only friend)
Red Dead Redemption (zombie DLC): committing sasquatch genocide
I’m sure I could think of other examples, but those ones stick out. I don’t think I’ve ever gone through a town killing all the residents either (in games that allow that).
Strangely enough, I don’t feel bad in Assassin’s Creed II when I’m killing city guards in Renaissance Italy, but I do feel bad in Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate when I’m killing policemen in Victorian London.
Yeah, very much so. My evil BG3 and Pathfinder WOTR runs have been abandoned several times.
Not if I’m committing to it. I’ve played Fallout New Vegas as a cannibal sociopath, throwing in with Caesar and had fun. I’ve played Baldur’s Gate 3 and decided I’ll be taking over the world rather than saving it and enjoyed the story. If I can create a narrative in my head that this is the story of Character’s rise to evil power then I don’t have much trouble playing through that story, any more than a scripted game about being a crime lord. I sort of need that power-driven motivation though; I’ve no interest in just playing a general asshole.
There’s specific evil acts I wouldn’t want to play out in a video game but they don’t really show up in modern mainstream gaming anyway.
In CIV 4, I like playing the Aztec Empire.
They have Sacrificial Alters.
Guess why?
My son has played first person shooters forever of every genre but the only time I remember him saying he was bothered by killing enemies was the flamethrower in Call of Duty WWII. He didn’t like listening to his victims screaming in pain.
If I’m committed to it, not normally an issue for me. Especially if it manifests itself visually on the character, like in the aforementioned Knights of the Old Republic. The dark side corruption affects the way your character looks. Given enough influence, it affects your companions, as well.
If I’m playing an MMORPG, then I tend to do one good guy and one evil run through
I’m not a big gamer but I really got into Fallout 4 during the pandemic and yeah, I much preferred playing a heroic character whenever possible (some situations force a moral gray area). I did not enjoy the Nuka World add-on where I had to systematically kill all the gang leaders to become the kingpin of the Nuka-world gang.
Yes, even in Minecraft I have a hard time imprisoning villagers and when I have to I try to make their existence not totally suck, while still making it easy enough to find and trade with them. I don’t feel the need to kill the wondering trader which is common as he is usually a jerk, and I try to let piglins be. Not real issues with undead mobs, however if there was a zombie villager baby I do feel like I should cure them and sometimes have gone through great length to do so (however sometimes I have a need to in certain modded versions).
Yeah, I could be evil, not an evil jerk. Like I’ll shoot people in the face, but I won’t hurt their feelings. Seriously.
And if I’m not human, it’s not cannibalism!
I just burned down the orphanage factory and stopped the UN from passing their “Food For Everyone” resolution! Now to relax. Hey, NPC, this coffee you made could use more cream…
NPC didn’t like that 
Oh, shit, lemme reload.
In City of Villains, the evil expansion to City of Heroes, the players complained that it didn’t feel villainous enough. Most of the missions were still against other villains, just to make sure you could reap the profits instead of them. So the developers added Weston Phipps as a contact. He has missions like destroying a shipment of schoolbooks that charities have sent to the Rogue Isles, or kidnapping for torture a teacher who wanted to show the low-lifes that they could actually make something productive of their lives. Just because he’s a dick who likes to see people suffer.
And the player base promptly responded “No, not like that!”.
Oddly, though, when folks make lists of the Most Evil Contacts, they usually leave off the corporate flunky who’s having trouble with the evil cultists interfering with their operations, and resolves it by making a deal with them where they only sacrifice and steal the souls of the troublemaking union organizers.
And there’s that guy in the beginning of COV who was kicked out of the heroic organization and hired you to”teach them a lesson.” The whole thing has kinda creepy stalker vibes, or as if he has a severe mental illness. Made me uncomfortable. And I’m a bad guy with an assault rifle!
I don’t have a problem with it but it doesn’t come naturally to me. I will play as a heel during my second playthrough but just to see the new dialogue options and missions.
I sliced a 2x2 Tetris block in half when I got a line and I weeped all night. That block had a family.
Well, some games are literally just murder simulators that give you every incentive as a player to kill. I will gleefully murder anyone and everyone in Hitman or Grand Theft Auto in as absurd and hilarious ways as the game makes possible.
Others emphasize the moral choice, and there’s a tendency to either encourage the “right” choice, or there is no “right” choice and the initially better-sounding one often ultimately ends up being the worse. I don’t have a problem making these decisions either, because at some point I’m probably going to come back and choose the other one just to see what happens.
In many RPGs there is often a intended game path, or at least a unique game ending, for finishing the game “evil,” and again, I’ll go through Wasteland 3 and kill everyone just to see that worst “bad” ending.
So no, I don’t have trouble being mean/evil in video games.
I think there’s at least three of those, though the first of them there’s the implication that it was a result of a romance gone sour or unrequited, which, yeah, has definite stalker vibes. When I’ve done that mission, it hasn’t been because I had any sympathy at all for the contact, but just because I, personally, wanted to see Longbow go down, for completely different reasons. IIRC, there’s an option at the end where you can blow up the base, but arrange for your contact to be in it at the time, so he goes up in flames, too.
I played the Star Wars: The Old Republic MMORPG (made by the same company as KotOR) for several years, and they had that same mechanic for showing Dark Side corruption (though you had the option to turn the visual manifestation off).
In that game, I played a lot of different characters, and I think there was only one on which I went full-out evil, always choosing the “Dark Side” option when faced with a decision. Part of that is that I really prefer playing heroic characters, and part is that, in SWTOR, a lot of the “evil” choices were in the vein of over-the-top puppy-kicking actions. 