I developed a close relationship with a bully named Chad during elementary school. For several years, I dreaded school. We fought frequently and he won all but once. In our final physical confrontation, I stood over him and power was transferred. One successful battle was all it took to drastically alter our relationship. The gamer inside me sees this as my boss battle, the culmination of years of experience building, though thinking this was probably why I was bullied in the first place. Chad effectively used a variety of psychological and physical techniques to keep me intimidated and living in fear until I defeated him in battle.

The experience sounds no different than the path we follow in most games. All plots introduce an antagonist within the earliest stage and we’re shown that they are powerful and we are not. We then progress through a series of stages, building our skills, assembling allies and preparing for a final confrontation. Barring cliffhanger endings, the crisis is then resolved in a final expression of violence. While the formula is familiar, the experiences aren’t equal. Game antagonists never live up to the Chads that we all face in real-life. With rare exception, even the most recognizable foes never really achieve the level of terror that our real-life enemies do. The confrontations may be difficult and may push our skills to the brink, but we never fear and dread our enemy.

The issue stems from the basic presentation of our enemy. Outside of a few interactions, we rarely encounter our supposed mortal enemy. Invariably, we’re at odds because they’ve taken something from us or they are threatening to, and once the theft or threat has occurred, the enemy disappears. We then spend the bulk of the game slaughtering their minions without any contact with our primary foe. They exist, and maybe they’ll pop up again in the distant future, but they are never the persistent nemeses that our real-world antagonists are.

The real-world antagonist is defined by the persistence forced by co-existence. I lived in fear of Chad because our interactions were normal and common. I encountered my foe multiple times over the course of most days. Anxiety, dread and terror filled every moment after a negative encounter and those feelings never had time to dissipate because an encounter was only a few class periods away. Chad’s repeated tormenting and my inability to defeat him sooner made him even more terrifying.

Now, certainly, we expect a video game to be entertaining. No one would buy a game that replicates the experience of being overwhelmed by a bully. But perhaps it simply comes down to balancing the two extremes. Games are too often populated by shallow and underdeveloped foes. Most games show the antagonist and protagonist interacting only a few times, which isn’t nearly enough time to explore the power disparities between the two in a way that allows for a true appreciation of the conflict between them.

Video games are all about building your power to unleash onto your antagonist, but we don’t build our power through repeated encounters with our primary foe as we do in the real-world. We build it up by mingling with their associates and the allies we encounter. By forcing us to fight their cronies exclusively, we lose sight of our alleged “true” enemy. “The really bad guy” becomes just one in a sea of many, which perhaps has its purpose as a plot device, but it shouldn’t be the only one.

What we need to counterbalance this trend are more games featuring a single antagonist that really challenges the player throughout the game. There are some games that have tried to do this. RPGs often pit you in battle against your chief foe on more than one occasion. But even then, you spend the bulk of your time detached from your rival. You might bump into Sephiroth a handful of times on your way through Final Fantasy VII’s three discs, but most of the time you’re not worried about him. He isn’t going to pop up in that random battle you’re having or while you’re trying to get a gold Chocobo.

By not focusing on the relationship between the antagonist and protagonist, we never experience the dangerousness of our foes and they never become real. We watch the protagonist steadily grow during our adventures, but that growth comes through side characters instead of the antagonist. Our rival is never given a chance to develop as someone the player should really fear in the way that the plot suggests. Not only does this rob us of a chance to experience a great villain, but it pulls us farther from the hero. We as gamers aren’t given a chance to empathize with our character’s struggle against their foe. Though we may still find ways to be interested in the protagonist, we are being robbed of this deeper level of understanding.

We see this type of character development in film. Think of the Darth Vader character. We encounter him so many memorable times during the original trilogy. We see him kidnap Princess Leia. But Darth doesn’t disappear into his castle after kidnapping the Princess. We encounter him again when he murders Obi Wan Kenobi. Vader survives an attack by the Millennium Falcon, kidnaps all of Luke’s friends, chops off Luke’s hand and THEN tells him that he’s his father. And these examples are just a few of the things he did in the first two movies.

These moments help the audience see how bad Darth Vader is. That’s why we still get a thrill from watching Luke destroy the Death Star. Darth Vader is presented as someone the galaxy would be better off without in a way that no video game antagonist has been, certainly not in our own critically-acclaimed sci-fi trilogy Mass Effect. In order for storytelling in games to improve, developers need to find ways to develop the villain in concert with the protagonist. Until then, they’re only telling half the story.