Hero or Villain? Preferable viewpoints

In a sense I wonder how many games out there that go using the viewpoint of the villain aka the villain as the main character. Sure villains get an origin story, but what are their real motives? Take a game such as megaman where Dr. Wily is the villain, but in an episode of Game Theory it goes deeper in what causes Wily's motivation of committing the crimes he enacts on which the show states that Megaman's creator is the main cause of everything.

I got the idea of this thread when I read a manga called " Tate No Yuusha No Nariagari". It begins with four people summoned as heroes and each represents a weapon, but the fourth hero is a shield. Later on in the story he is framed for a heinous crime and he becomes bitter along with unable to trust anyone. The shield hero is dubbed a villain, but along the way he becomes stronger than the other 3 heroes who were laughably weak in comparison. Which begs a big question in this: If villains became villains because of the hero then should the game make the villain the main character?

It would be interesting to experience a different viewpoint on the side instead of always focusing on the hero when it comes to the storyline of the game since both hero and villain are important to the main plot. 

You may want to read Soon I Will Be Invincible by Austin Grossman. A large part of it is told from the perspective of a supervillain.

Villains are usually more interesting characters than the heroes, but I think that's by necessity. The hero is typically the stand-in for the the player/reader/audience, and if they are too interesting, too quirky, too whatever, then there's a sort of disconnect, and the player isn't really able to stand in their shoes. This is why so many games have the Silent Hero, like Link.

Villains, though, have to be interesting by contrast, to make it seem worth the hero/player's time. Even those villains who are just mustache-twirlers doing bad things cuz they're bad guys usually get the best lines.

The classic (non-RPG) Dungeon Keeper game puts you in the role of a villain whose goal is to make each "good, nice" kingdom properly dark and evil.  It's got quite the sense of humor about it as well, and it's pretty cheap over on gog.com (they sell DRM-less versions of classic PC games).

The best hero/villain twist I've ever seen is where you don't really know WHO is the hero or villain, because BOTH sides have good reasons to do what they do.    After all, while some villains just do it "for the evulz," probably many more might even think THEY are the heroes, making the difficult decisions and sacrifices of conscience to bring a brighter future.

As for stories:  Neil Gainan's "Snow, Apples, Glass" story is a retelling of a classic fairy tale from the point of view of the "villain."  And the novel "Wicked" retells the Wizard of Oz from the Witch of the West's point of view.

Woah, this post caught my interest straight away, as I'm currently trying to make a game featuring a villain.

A cool example of hero/villain twists in in Star Wars: Knights of Old Republic,

Classic villains though, if they (IMO) have super personalities compared to the hero, either quirky or cool, they might easily become a favorite even when compared to the protagonist, even though their purpose or intentions may be generic. Examples are Joker from the batman series, is awesome (again, IMO). Although he just does stuff to spite batman, he is both funny yet creepy to watch. Another of my favorites is Sephiroth from FFVII, who just wants to destroy the world, but the way the game conveys his overwhelming strength and imposing character makes it more rewarding when the player beats him. (One winged angel still sends chills down my spine whenever I hear it)

Movies have also been making different point of view of other stories, take Maleficent for example, its the villain version of Sleeping Beauty, although the plot changed a bit.

Also, there's always a case of "The victor rewrites history", in which case means that the winner of any outcome will be declared the "good" side and the loser the "evil" one. Best examples of this can take place during games featuring civil wars or rebellions. If the rebels win, like in Star Wars, they form a new government and are the good guys. If the empire wins though, the rebels would be known as terrorists. It all depends on the propaganda used, and what the victor decides.

An interesting way to look at it is we are ALL implicitly the "heroes" of our own inner narrative. 

So, what makes someone a villain?  Is it because someone doesn't like them?  Is it because the villain performs a particular heinous act?  Are the heinous acts justified from the villain's perspective?

I think the original term "villain" merely meant "poor village person" and it has morphed into something else.

The novel "I Am Legend" does precisely this "What makes a villain?" plot.  It's about a scientist who is researching to find a cure for a virus that turns people into monsters.  To do the experiment, he captures several of the monsters and has to perform experiments on them.  Throughout the novel, there is clear foreshadowing that the monsters are NOT stupid brutes, they use tactics and so forth.

At the climax, when the scientist is holding a female monster he was experimenting on, and he is surrounded by a horde of monsters, a lone monster approaches him, takes the female, and they walk off peacefully.

The stunning twist is that, to the "monsters" the scientist WAS the monster, kidnapping them, torturing and sometimes killing them without remorse.  So HE became their legend/villain/monster, much to his grief.

That's one great way in a game to make the main character a villain without making it obvious.