Analysis of social media discussions over the past 12 months by UK electronics retailer Ebuyer has revealed who some of the most hated video game villains are. Ebuyer tracked the number of conversations that video game villains were generating as well as whether those discussions had a positive or negative sentiment towards the character in question. Hence, whether people “like” or “dislike” the character.
It’s no surprise that the Joker and Bowser were the two most talked about villains. It is surprising that GlaDOS from Portal came in seventh, considering that Portal 2 was released over a decade ago. What’s interesting, is looking at who the most hated villains are. Everyone on the list is a villain but some, like Handsome Jack, are overwhelmingly liked. The worst of the worst are hated by the players too.
The three most hated video game villains according to the research are Pyramid Head from Silent Hill, Alduin from Skyrim, and, weirdly, Blue Shell. Y’know, the intrusive spiked turtle shell from Mario Kart.
Pyramid Head had the highest ratio of negative sentiment with 23.9% of conversations about the character on social media being negative. Considering there hasn’t been a Silent Hill game in years, it’s pretty impressive that Pyramid Head has had so much negative sentiment over the past year. Perhaps it’s a testament to how horrifying he is.
Alduin from Skyrim had the second-highest ratio of negative sentiment with 20.8%. I can only assume this is because Skyrim is on virtually every single device imaginable.
Lastly, the Blue Shell from Mario Kart had 17.1% of conversations containing negative sentiment. I kind of wonder why it’s so low? Are people having conversations about the Blue Shell that don’t contain some sort of profanity-laced message against it? Blue Shell is definitely my favorite love-to-hate villain. Are there any villains that you hate more than the ones hated most on social media?
