John Callaham over at Gamecloud has an extensive interview/feature entitled Playing As The Bad Guy: Game Developers Sound Off. He first discusses some notable examples of games with evil or criminal protagonists, and brings up some notable examples of the issue crossing over into the real world. The bulk of the article, however, is reactions from professional game designers responding to the question of whether "playing as the bad guy" is a good thing. Respondents included 3D Realms' Scott Miller, Gearbox's Randy Pitchford, Epic's outspoken Cliff Bleszinski, and Tilted Mill's Chris Beatrice with a particularly thought-out reaction.

While everyone who responded to our inquiry said freedom of self-expression was more important than anything else when it came to designing games, there was definitely some personal differences on whether they themselves would play as bad guys and rule breakers. With increasing pressure from politicians on games that allow such actions, it will be interesting to see if this trend will continue or perhaps be curtailed by outside pressures.