Hey duders,
I was thinking this earlier today: Why do we call significant enemies "Bosses"? Like what's the etymology on calling a harder enemy a "boss". Isn't your boss the person you work for?
Boss (video games) - Wikipedia
There is no direct source for the first instance of the term being used here, but supposed it comes from Crime Boss being a term for the leader of criminal gang.
Wikipedia also mentions a game simply called “DND” that came out in 1975. It was, pretty much, a dungeon crawler RPG featuring what we would now call bosses.
Why do we call them “bosses”? I kinda like the above interpretation that they’re the leader of whatever group of bad guys you’ve been fighting and it just spiraled out into a name for a fight against a particularly tough enemy.
They were the folks willing to rat out co-workers, take overtime without pay and brown nose the final boss in order to get a 5% pay bump and be in a position of power over their contemporaries (which was what their desperate internal insecurities really wanted instead of just talking out how they feel with a professional due to pride.) They constantly hold above the regular minions in a display of the classic Kafkaesque template of 'Petty Tyrant.' So long as they control others, they fool themselves into thinking they control their own lives. This is why we need a video game enemies union to protect the evil little guys from the harmful inclinations of those that don't have the ethics of evil communities at heart.
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