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I think there are lots of ways for a character to be nasty and only one of them is violence.

Sure, you could have someone like Jigsaw as a villain, but are they worse than Cruella De Vil?

It'll definitely reflect on the developer- but there's an audience for everything- and the only really *bad* thing I think you can do is give people something they really didn't expect or want to see. In other words: people enjoy films by Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino, but if people went to the cinema expecting to see a PG Disney film and got that instead, you'd upset a lot of people.

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Thank you so much for your input. I really find this interesting in terms of game development, especially on independently developed games. Its like you said only one is violence. A developer could also add a vile character who might portray sexism or other types of hatred, even in a comedic intentionally insulting fashion like South Park, and how that reflects on the outlook of a development team or developer is really the question. I guess its like you said... its subjective to the way it was released and the audience its going to. 

Yeah, South Park's a good example because Cartman often is a villain- he's anti-semitic, narcissitic, sexist and very violent at times.

For me, Cartman doesn't reflect badly on the creators because he's not the sort of character that the audience is expected to identify with, plus (in terms of the anti-semitism) there's the counterbalance of Kyle to give a different viewpoint, and there's a lot of complexity with the characters, so you see racism as fitting in the context of his spoilt and aggressive personality.

On the other hand, I do find Family Guy to be often quite racist, as there are a lot of 2 dimensional characters (like Mort the Jew), who seem to exist purely to make stereotypical jokes about, without the complexity or counterbalance of South Park, and the occasional nod of knowingness doesn't quite do enough to persuade me otherwise.

But, yeah, everyone has a different opinion. I think, whenever you produce anything creative- you'll rise in some people's estimation and go down in others'.