Is it me, or are we in a "dark" age of gaming?

[Samuel Tow]

I don't mean this in the sense that there are no good games or there's something wrong being done with games, and I definitely don't mean to bring up the closure of City of Heroes. That's just not what I mean. Actually, looking at releases, this year saw a ton of very, very good games, fun games, too. No, I mean that more in reference to the content of the games themselves.

What inspired me to ask this question is actually Angry Joe's top ten best games of 2012. I don't discount the man's opinion, but it really served to highlight just how "dark" 2012 was for video game plot. You have Dishonoured which is basically a dark story, Far Cry 3 which is about slavery and brutality, Max Payne 3 which is just about the most depressing Max Payne game to date, you have Mass Effect 3 which took a MUCH darker tone than either of its prequels (and had a stupid and depressing ending), the Walking Dead which is about the harsh drama and reality of a zombie apocalypse... Wow, man.

Then you have other games like Diablo 3, which builds up the character of Leah only to basically ruin her towards the end. Then you have the new Tomb Raider game and, sure, that's not out yet, but it's already being sold in stores, and the creators of that were SO proud that they were torturing Lara Croft, as thought that's the reason I'd buy the game for. And if that weren't bad enough, City of Heroes itself - a game which had always been positive and uplifting, got some of its darkest, most depressing, most unpleasant content in the frikkin' mess that was SSA1. What's going on, guys?

I think back to the past, go back to the games which were considered "dark" once upon a time, say... Prince of Persia: The Warrior Within. Its developers made it with express orders to make it darker and edgier, and it shows in the final game. I thought it was needlessly dark and absurdly gritty at the time, but playing through it now, it's one of the most light-hearted, emotional games I can think of right now. Just think about that for a second. Warrior Within, the game which has THIS as a cover, is one of the most light-hearted games I can think up off the top of my head. I mean, sure, there have been comedy games like Orcs Must Die 2 and such, but I mean within the "serious" genre of games. When frikkin' Warhammer 40 000: Space Marine is among the most cheerful games I've played recently, what the hell is going on with gaming?

I'm not a comic book fan. I never have been. But I've heard so much about the 90s "dork age" of Rob Leifeld's perpetually scowling, violent anti-heroes that I might as well have been one. I can't help but feel the same is happening for games, and I don't get it. What happened to make this change? When did we start hating happy endings and fun gameplay? Because this isn't just from this year. I played through the new Tomb Raider series and I saw it clear as day. Legend is sexy, funny and awesome. Anniversary is tired, morally ambiguous and kind of dark. Underworld is just depressing, unpleasant and downright creepy. Same with Mass Effect, same with a lot of series. And I don't get why this is. It can't be that "gamers are growing up" because gamers have been growing up since the 80s and that didn't turn Sonic the Hedgehog into a dark and gri... OK, now that's just not fair! You know what I mean!

So... Why is this? What happened to make us unsatisfied with happy games with good endings that we started to buy into games that intentionally torture their protagonists and proudly advertise themselves for it? "Come see Lara Croft almost get raped!" What did I miss playing mostly just City of Heroes?

[Xieveral]

Q_Q spoilerbombed! I didn't know about D3 and Leah (I really liked her from what I played in the trial version)

Anyway... I blame the "2012 endtime" hype for the choice in theme the past couple years. Now that its blown over, maybe there will be a change.

[TimtheEnchanter]

We're pretty much in a dark age of everything entertainment. Take a look at the 'make it grittier' approach to everything superhero.

Seems the industry has found the sex and violence lines they can't cross without getting a rating that cuts them off from the target audience. Maybe "Dark" is just the new envelope that hasn't yet been pushed to the max.

[Mister Bison]

We grew up ?

No, seriously, take another look at Sonic for instance. Do you realize he has been hopping on machines an kicking the good old Doctor's adipose tissues for 30 or more games now. He who has been kidnapping plants, birds and other things to turn them into machines (or use them as power source) and make them capture more to turn them again. Except the colorful depiction, it may as well be the God-Emperor fighting against Horus' Heresy.

Basically, we have been The Pyro.

And, also, we are really tired of the "happy ending". Done too much. Although with the latest (free) DLC for Mass Effect 3, you can have a happy ending, you just have to work your sweat a bit to have it, but you can have "Shepard vanquished and survived the reapers, yay !" Just like ME 1.

But I hear you, I think real life is grim enough already, why can't we have serious (not comical) but happy games ? Like... well, did we ever have one ? Watch out for double entendre. Generally, all the "happy" games are just those you didn't think enough of how crapsack the hero always have to fight, every time, what the innocent have to suffer each and every time. It's not because it's not spoken of that it doesn't happen. It's just swept under the carpet of colors and let you go in a blissful ignorance.

[TimtheEnchanter]

And, also, we are really tired of the "happy ending". Done too much. Although with the latest (free) DLC for Mass Effect 3, you can have a happy ending, you just have to work your sweat a bit to have it, but you can have "Shepard vanquished and survived the reapers, yay !" Just like ME 1.

But I hear you, I think real life is grim enough already, why can't we have serious (not comical) but happy games ?

That kind of brings up an interesting shift in how entertainment views its audience. A lot of time it seems like escapism is now viewed as some kind of a taboo. Unless you're 5-years old, you're not supposed to indulge in any kind of fantasy. You're supposed to gobble up CNN 24/7 and eat, sleep, breathe, and worship this living Hell we call reality.

I expected entertainment to lighten up somewhat in the past few years. We're in a situation very similar to the great depression. At the time, Hollywood responded by giving us a much-needed dose of naivety and hope. This time around, nothing has changed.

Maybe it's just that innocence has somehow become a thing to be hunted down and destroyed, compared to what it used to be, which was something to hold onto as long as possible.

You're right though, that the darkside of the story is always there. It kinda hit me funny when I realized that the villain in Ghostbusters 2, converting NYC's apathy and hatred into an energy source he could draw from, was pretty much the exact same plot that was presented in one of the Care Bears movies.

[Samuel Tow]

And, also, we are really tired of the "happy ending". Done too much.

Wait, who's we? I've never been tired of it. I LOVED the happy ending in Mass Effect 2. I managed to get every damn bastard on that ship back alive, and I felt wonderful about it. Yeah, even Dr. Chakwas. Even the unnamed deck hands that nobody cares about - the entire crew. Mass Effect 3 didn't give me that option until we made a huge stink about it and you know what? By this point it's all too little too late. I'm done with the franchise, done with the series, because it rammed the "dark" ending down my throat all the while promising "choice."

But I hear you, I think real life is grim enough already, why can't we have serious (not comical) but happy games ? Like... well, did we ever have one ? Watch out for double entendre. Generally, all the "happy" games are just those you didn't think enough of how crapsack the hero always have to fight, every time, what the innocent have to suffer each and every time. It's not because it's not spoken of that it doesn't happen. It's just swept under the carpet of colors and let you go in a blissful ignorance.

Yeah, if you go out of your way to interpret every single game ending as a "bad" ending, then sure. I've heard that Squall Lionheart died when he got speared through the heart with an ice shard and everything until the end of the game was a dying hallucination. It wasn't, but people will look for depressing endings all they want. Just look at how rabidly they reinterpret the ending to Limbo. You didn't find the girl you were chasing. It's probably that both of you fell in a hole and starved to death and the whole journey was... A dying hallucination. Yeah, it's not possible that the game had a happy ending.

But games with happy endings exist. I mentioned Mass Effect, but what about Final Fantasy 7? Yes, Tifa died along the way (spoilers), but everyone else survived, both Genova and Sephiroth were defeated, "Meteor" was dispelled and the Mako reactors sapping the life from the planet brought down. Sure, Advent Children went out of its way to invent new disasters, but that's all they were - NEW disasters. When Tomb Raider 2 finished, Lara shot a red dragon with a shotgun and escaped a crumbling cave. OK, she didn't have the Dagger, but she'd saved the world. And the only people who had to die were all bad guys anyway, Marco Bartoli most of all. And, hell, Tomb Raider: Legend ends the game on as positive a note as is possible within the confines of the story, with Lara inspired and fired up to find her mother. The rat's ass angst didn't come in until Underworld.

Or look Ubi's Prince of Persia. Sands of Time has a tragic ending, but then time is reversed and the ending is both funny and cute. Sure, Warrior Within may be "darker and edgier," but it also has by far the series' best storyline of a mighty mystical empress trapped in her own fate, looking for salvation and finding hope against all desperation. Then you have the Two Thrones the entire theme of which is hope, love and integrity. It's not a particularly well told story, but it's still a very happy story that ends in a smile and a joke. Hell, even the 2008 Prince of Persia managed to pull a touching finale out of what was looking to be a bad ending, and didn't get depressing until the DLC, which I never ran because Ubi can kiss my ass with their "business reasons" for not releasing it on the PC. It wasn't until the Forgotten Sands in 2010 or 2011 that the story became dark and disappointing, and that's far more recent.

Or how about Left 4 Dead 2? The original was sort of dark and gritty, but the sequel is FUN! Yes, it has to do with zombies and death and disgusting bodily fluids, but you know what? The survivors are taking it in stride and making the entire trip entertaining. OK, they keep failing their rescue attempts, but so what? They'll complain, they'll grumble and they'll simply move on to the nest rescue attempt. And if anyone dies? Well, they weren't really dead. They just got dragged off and locked in a closet. Scooby Doo lives! It's fun, it's funny and it makes me feel good just thinking about it.

Hell, Space Marine itself, despite going out of its way to keep with WH40K's depressing "everybody sucks" mentality still manages to be uplifting and inspirational. You have a Captain Titus who not only always has a cool head and a methodical approach to problems... If not a Shatnerian line delivery... But is also somehow resistant to the Warp's dark influence. OK, yeah, he gets carted off by the Inquisition at the end, presumably to be tortured and killed, but he saved an entire world and set and example for all to come after him. And, if the cancelled sequel were ever made, I'm sure they'd have come up with a way to get him out of there.

Or how about Darksiders? The game tells the story about how the world was destroyed, so yes - too bad for humans. But the story isn't ABOUT humans, it's about heaven and hell, intrigue and power plays and this is where War steps up. He defies those who seek to control him, charts his own path and does this while being entirely awesome. Or how about Star Wars: The Force Unleashed. Starkiller starts off as the champion of the dark side and spends the majority of both games using evil Sith powers, yet for most of the first game he questions the dark side, then being the good guy, then the entirety of the second game being the good guy. AND he pulls down a Star Destroyer with the Force AND he blows up another star destroyer with Sith Lightning through a capital ship cannon. He wins AND he does the right thing, despite the game pretending to be "dark" ala Warrior Within.

Lemme' check my Steam library...

Oh, yeah, what about Saints Row: The Third? Yes, in that game, you play the de-facto bad guys, but all you ever do is kill even WORSE guys. The Syndicate, the Luchadores, the Deckers. And at the end, you're given the option of either the "bad" ending where you let your friends die but kill your greatest enemy, or you go save your friends, all the while "I Need a Hero" blares in the background. And at the end of it all, the whole of Steelport praises the Saints as heroes and saviours. OK, sure, I ran over eleventy billion people along the way and took part in many violent crimes, but the game intentionally downplays this. It's not trying to be dark. It's trying to be fun and uplifting.

Or, hell, why not take City of Heroes prior to 2010? Sure, the content's execution was kind of sub par, but the stories were all good. In fact, much of Division: Line is incredibly inspirational, demonstrating that peace can be found even between bitter enemies where there is a will. And while later Hro does all he can to stop the peace, I get the feeling that nothing he does will last, eventually. Or World Wide Red - we get to stop a horrible plot from coming to fruition, and no morality, dignity or ethics have to be sacrificed. Hell, even a lot of villain storylines end up being more cool than unpleasant. Dean McArthur's entire plotline is based solely around having fun, being awesome and having a memorable story to tell. You can be despicable if you want to, but I didn't want to and it worked just fine.

And that's just the stuff I can think up off the top of my head. If you gave me a few weeks to think about it, I could come up with more. Let's see... Advent Rising, Soul Reaver, Holdover, Dead Space 2 (yes, really), Kingdom of Amalur, Oni, both Trine games... Hell, Sexy Beach Zero, why not? The list goes on. You can probably argue that all of them are somehow depressing and darker and edgier, I'm sure, but the games themselves didn't rub it in my face and try to depress me as a means of selling themselves to me. And I can't say that about nearly any game these days that isn't out-and-out comedic.

*edit*
I realise that this comes off as mean, and I didn't intend for it to be. My point here isn't to browbeat you, Bison. Far from it - you point out an aspect of gaming that I've always found very concerning. I just meant to relate why I feel games don't have to be depressing, based on what I've played.

[Little Green Frog]

Yes, Tifa died along the way (spoilers)

A minor nitpick: it was Aeris who died, not Tifa.

[Samuel Tow]

A minor nitpick: it was Aeris who died, not Tifa.

That's not a minor nitpick, that's a major plot point, and thank you for correcting me. I got the character names mixed up, and it was actually very silly of me, since I should know better. Aerith/Aeris is the one whom Sephiroth killed (who was also quite useless in a fight, I found), and Tifa Lockheart is the female fighter who served as my inspiration for female characters for some time, at least when it came to combat abilities. I replayed Final Fantasy 7 recently, with a whole bunch of HD improvements and it's still a very powerful, positive story, it's just... Not very well told, shall we say.

[JaguarX]

yeah 2012 didnt seem to be a good year for games. Nor 2011 for that matter. Hope 2013 will be better.

[Victoria Victrix]

I think gaming is suffering from the same problem as comic were about 10 years ago.

No, children, Dark does NOT equal Deep.

This is a common fault in writers of all sort, especially those that want to win awards.  They want to make their work deeper, and mistakenly decide that making it darker does that. 

Uh, no.  It just makes it depressing.

Comic writers eventually figured that out, after a loss in sales.  I assume game writers will too, after a loss in sales.  After all, we play these things for fun and an escape from the real world.

[Kaiser Tarantula]

Comic writers eventually figured that out, after a loss in sales.  I assume game writers will too, after a loss in sales.  After all, we play these things for fun and an escape from the real world.

One of the reasons why I play older games almost exclusively these days.  I want to leave my game happy and satisfied, not frustrated, upset, paranoid, depressed, or otherwise emotionally crushed.

[JaguarX]

One of the reasons why I play older games almost exclusively these days.  I want to leave my game happy and satisfied, not frustrated, upset, paranoid, depressed, or otherwise emotionally crushed.

exactly.

I'm already paranoid so I have that covered without a game, and there is enough frustration, and upsetting things in real life that no game can ever compare to. And depression, recently finally conquered it about 9 months ago after battling it since 5 years old, by myself.  In a nutshell, I can get the real thing of those so why would I settle for a virtual imitation?

[Mister Bison]

Wait, who's we? I've never been tired of it. I LOVED the happy ending in Mass Effect 2. I managed to get every damn bastard on that ship back alive, and I felt wonderful about it. Yeah, even Dr. Chakwas. Even the unnamed deck hands that nobody cares about - the entire crew. Mass Effect 3 didn't give me that option until we made a huge stink about it and you know what? By this point it's all too little too late. I'm done with the franchise, done with the series, because it rammed the "dark" ending down my throat all the while promising "choice."

You're right, it wasn't even "we", but we are the closest to what I meant: "the entertainment industry perceived customers". Another way to look at it is that since all kinds of person love all the kinds of things, and since happy ending were done very well in the past, then "dark" was an open market, so it became the new target. So "we" the targeted audience became tired of happy ending the way everybody gets tired of the same meal, when you eat it only.

[...all the example...]
*edit*
I realise that this comes off as mean, and I didn't intend for it to be. My point here isn't to browbeat you, Bison. Far from it - you point out an aspect of gaming that I've always found very concerning. I just meant to relate why I feel games don't have to be depressing, based on what I've played.

No no, that is your personnal experience, and you're providing excellent examples along the way.

But that doesn't unwind my theory. Let me rephrase it:
since the hero is always overcoming odds, too many odds (ie. Dark) is just a logical exaggeration, and for people seeing all glasses half empty, it's always here.

These games/movies are happy only if you think "they lived long and had many children ever after". And that, you always assumed it when you were a child. You always thought "This is the end, so, the hero righted the wrong, the world is saved !". But what happens next really ? All you've been told was the turmoil of the hero in his/her drama. Coming to realize it, we love to see others suffer in front of odds. Or do we love to imagine improbable or impossible odds to overcome ? "The good will always win, no matter how many times the bad comes at us" implies that the bad is never ending. I'm going to become pseudo-philosophist here, but something shines because everything else is dark. And that's not inventing sorts of "this was all a dream", just by itself it's a little dark inside, when you think of the consequences.

It may also be that we became in demand of more info, and did we get what we wanted ! Ignorance is bliss. "The story was not just an episode ? It's like that every day !?" Is what improved storytelling and curiosity learned us, nothing more.

All in all, the only, truly happy game I can think of is the one the kinds of The Sims and Sim City, when you don't introduce catastrophies. And those are one hell of boring, generally.

I think it's just a matter of seeing the glass half empty or half full, and your suspension of disbelief, that was automatically high back in your tender days. I also personnally noted, but your mileage may vary, that it holds true when you're viewing something you had seen in the past. You don't reanalyze it. And it's a very good thing, because if you loose the tiny bit of innocence...

But... I also feel it's possible it's dark because you are, or letting thought that you are forcing it on a poor hero. If bad exists in his world, but it's not a danger, and that he wants to go after it "for the lulz", it's not Dark. Dark is in the fatality. This is plain old adventure. And that is also a function of how much you know or want to accept about the world. And as a child, how much of the lore in the instruction books did you read ? How much information did it actually contain ? Ho much story could you, or did you fit in a Genesis Cartridge for storytelling ?

As VV, I think it's just a passing by trend, and it may be linked to the current situation in the real world, but thankfully I can still accept it.

[Samuel Tow]

I think it's just a matter of seeing the glass half empty or half full, and your suspension of disbelief, that was automatically high back in your tender days. I also personnally noted, but your mileage may vary, that it holds true when you're viewing something you had seen in the past. You don't reanalyze it. And it's a very good thing, because if you loose the tiny bit of innocence...

No. What you describe is a story approach known as the crapsack world, where no good deed goes unpunished and no bad deed goes unrewarded, where the cynics are always right and the optimists always wrong, where heroes ultimately lose and die in horrible, disgusting fashions while bad guys get to piss on their graves, all because the writer is depressed and wants you to be as depressed as he is. I mean, with all due respect to Doc Aeon, his SSA1 is complete garbage and a strong contender as one of the worst stories I've ever seen short of Avatar: The Legend of Korra. Nothing goes right for any hero, every hero is a belligerent, incompetent dickhead and multiple people die horrible, undeserving deaths because dark, daddy-o!

That's not just me hiding behind the rose-coloured glasses of my youthful memories. I don't rely on nostalgia. All the games I mentioned up above I've played within the last few years, either on old system emulators or through Steam. I played Warrior Within not two weeks ago, for instance. I've played these games and analysed them with the same level of meticulous nit-picking as you've seen me analyse stories about City of Heroes and the same level of critical deconstruction as I applied to Roy Cooling's horrifying arc and all the internal plot inconsistencies in it. I'm not just bringing up the games of my childhood. I've played these recently and I saw them with about as much objectivity as I've ever been capable of.

Let's take one of the oddest examples - Darksiders. On the surface, this is a game where all humans are dead. Period. The apocalypse happened and killed them all, turning them into zombies, and now everyone blames horseman of the apocalypse War, who's on a quest to clear his name and punish those responsible, whom he believes is the "Destroyer," aka the devil in Christianity-avoiding story. He spends the majority of the game angry and bitter, looking for revenge for his lost honour and slave to the concept of balance, reduced to the indignity of the Charred Council's dog. It's humiliating and destructive, but War soldiers on in single-minded determination for vengeance. Yet along the way, he learns that he has been played, that his sense of honour and duty have been used against him, and that he is destined to be pawn in a much larger game, to bring ruin to yet more good people. In the course of his journey, War changes, especially once he has seen the wisdom of the Tree of Knowledge. He grows to respect those who fight for a cause like he once did, and to gain a sense of justice not simply limited to the will of the Charred Council, whose sense of "justice" has long since been replaced with a sense of political awareness.

On the surface, Darksiders is nothing but a game about a demigod with a big sword killing big things in a post-apocalyptic horrible world, that I will not deny. But the story this game tells manages to justify this setting and still end up feeling positive, with proper character development and character growth. It does to me, at least. I care about the characters, and indeed still do. It's why Darksiders 2 was such a huge disappointment - because it HAD no real characters, and the ones that make a return appearance, like Uriel and Samael, are flat and one-note. It barely even has a plot. And if Simon Templeton can't save your presentation and force personality into a flat character, you've done exceptionally badly. Darksiders 2 isn't even "dark," it's just hollow, but that's besides the point.

If you were determined to do it, you can take any happy story and make up "hidden truths" or "future developments" to make it rotten. Of course you can. Take any happy ending story you want. Let's say Ratatouille. By the end of that, the good cook has a girlfriend and a restaurant and the rat has a restaurant, too, everyone's happy and even the ruthless critic has had his life turned around and remembered why he started critiquing food to begin with. It's as feel-good as a feel-good movie can be. But what if the girl turns out to have been having an affair and the guy develops incurable cancer, and the critic gets fired because the "association" doesn't appreciate him giving them a bad name and the rat gets eaten by an alley cat? It's bound to happen, right? I mean, no good ending stays good for long, right? That brings us back to where we started:

No. No it's not bound to happen. No, it's not even likely to happen. If you WANT a good story to be depressing, you can always MAKE it depressing in your own mind, but that doesn't not change what the story is - pleasant, uplifting and feel-good. You can choose to reinterpret a good story into a bad one, but a good story it will remain. That's not the case for gaming these days. That's not the case for contemporary plots. At no point is the notion of happiness or a good ending even hinted at. These are not happy stories, and trying to spin them as happy is about as going against their grain as trying to spin something like Ratatouille or Monsters Inc. or Astro Boy or, hell, the Smurfs as "dark." The game plots of today are distinctly different from the game plots of even a few years ago, and that's not just my impression and they aren't easily interchangeable.

This isn't youthful innocence talking. I'm 28 years old. I haven't been "youthful" or, really, "innocent" for probably 10-15 years now, and many of the games I'm talking about aren't nearly that old. This is an easily definable, quite obvious change in the tone of video game storytelling that you really can't write off as "well, any story can be dark if you want it to." Yes, but some stories ARE dark, and some can only be dark IF you waned them to be, and even then you'd have to work pretty hard to make them dark. You can't really say that about something like Far Cry 3 or Tomb Raider (the new one). Hell, compare Far Cry 3 to Far Cry 1. Sure, the original was dumb, but it followed the exploits of a guy in a loud Hawaiian shirt who had a sort of carefree attitude towards gunfights with armies of heavily-armed mercenaries and a woman who seemed more macho than the man himself. Yeah, it was a bit corny and a bit silly, and yes, the game was still violent and hard, but the entire atmosphere was still a lot more positive and a lot less to do with torture and misery.

That's really what games have become these days - miserable. Depressing, filthy, rotten - miserable. They no longer strike me as something fun to do. Sure, good games have always had dramatic moments, but good games have also earned those dramatic moments with decent setup and also had those dramatic moments amount to something. Yes, something bad just happened, but it happened for the purposes of delivering a better, ultimately more uplifting story in the long run. Like the destruction of the world in pretty grim detail at the start of Darksiders, for instance - it's gruesome, but it's what sets up the ultimately very good story and very creative world. That's not what the games of today do, because the games of today just stuff filth and rot in my face and that's about it. The best I ever get is maybe some kind of revenge story that's centred around everyone being so despicable makes it easy for us to want to see them all dead and let the world burn.

To deny that the games of today have gotten darker, especially sans examples to the contrary, is not a claim I can accept. Let's put it like that.

[Samuel Tow]

This is a common fault in writers of all sort, especially those that want to win awards.  They want to make their work deeper, and mistakenly decide that making it darker does that.

So you'd think, but even that has changed. What "darker and edgier" meant in the early 2000s really isn't the same as what it means today, because... Well, look at the "darker and edgier" games of that time. I bring up Prince of Persia: The Warrior Within for a reason. If you can get it running, I highly recommend playing it, both for the surprisingly good story and characters, and so that you can laugh your ass off at the "middle-aged fat man trying to be cool by going to clubs and chatting up kids a third his age with lingo that nobody has used in 20 years." It's trying that hard and failing just as hard

But that's kind of what I mean. In 2004, "dark" meant violence, swearing, tits, rock music and dual weapons, plus the colours of red and black. Sure, it did manage to go for more mature themes, but at their heart, most of those "hardcore" stories were still about something positive in the end, just sent through a "grit" filter. In 2004, "dark" seems to me nihilism, rape, torture, depression, opera music and slavery, plus the colours of brown and grey. In a sense, the "dark" of yesteryear was trying hard, but also failing hard in a way so goofy as to be adorable. The "dark" of today, however, is succeeding all too well, to the point where I have to ask who it's even targeted at. It's like they're selling Sandy and people are genuinely buying it and using and giving it Oscars for its ability to chafe skin and cause lasting injuries.

And really, isn't that "dark" in a nutshell? Once upon a time, people went "dark" because they wanted to be cool, and... Yeah, being hardcore is cool. These days, it feels like people are going "dark" because they want to hurt us, because we live in a culture where being emotionally and psychologically wounded as seen as desirable. What the hell did I miss?

[Tenzhi]

I think gaming is suffering from the same problem as comic were about 10 years ago.

No, children, Dark does NOT equal Deep.

And I, for one, don't *need* "deep" - all I need is "entertaining".  Entertainment value is what matters during the consumption...  "Deep" or "Dark" are just some of those frivolous secondary characteristics that fuel the after-dinner debates and internet shenanigans.

[therain93]

I think we've been building towards this and probably just passed through the beginning of the "Dark  Age" of gaming. i.e. the first 10 years.  If we throw out all of the hate-related games (sad that they even exist), I think dark probably started to settle around 2002.
 
First, games were just being built in a post 9/11 world, which, regardless if you're not an American, you're now living in a world where nations were/are being attacked (New York City, Madrid, London, Egypt). Thanks to the proliferation of the Internet, the world is smaller than ever and we know about the trials and tribulations of Africa and the Middle East.  The perception of black and white, and even "safe" in first world nations is largely gone.  Those bells can't be unrung and that awareness has settled into our collective unconsciousness and manifests in our art.
 
Second, if we throw out all of the hate games (sad that they exist), then we should go back to GTA3:VC (2002) for the simple fact that for the first time ever you could basically simulate just about anything "bad" - short of genocide.  Yes, it was superficial, but it was also an open world to commit to those acts.  Please note, I'm not trying to equate an M-rated game or random violent actions to "dark", but point out that now that the extreme boundaries of what can be done in a game have been pushed, it really opened the door to using some of those "instruments" when writing games.  And, like all new things, there's lot's of experimentation.  SSA1, for all of the criticism you levied at it, was experimental for both Sean McCann and for City of Heroes; CoH might be gone, but Sean will be a better writer for it.
 
Also, gamers are growing up...and still gaming, but also making these games.  There was an interesting documentary on Netflix called Indie Gamer: The Movie  and, although you cited many studio-built games, I think the documentary touched upon less than pleasant childhood experiences these developers have begun to incorporate into their games(/art).  So, there's stupid "dark" which is a vehicle and then dark "dark" which is an experience, the latter of which hasn't been tapped nearly as much in gaming as other mediums...yet.
 
I think some of these things contribute to what some of us are seeing as the dark age.  Is the age of gaming innocence gone?  I don't think so, but I also think retro-gaming is more important now than ever before and the need for creating "libraries" and "museums" has to be given more consideration. 
 
 

[The Fifth Horseman]

There's a difference between dark and grimdark. The distinction appears to be lost on some, though, and even grimdark does not have to be suffocatingly oppressive at all times (see: Warhammer 40000 and Commissar Ciaphas Cain).

There is a balance that needs to be observed between too bright and cheerful and too dark and depressing. Few favor any of the extremes.

[Samuel Tow]

SSA1, for all of the criticism you levied at it, was experimental for both Sean McCann and for City of Heroes; CoH might be gone, but Sean will be a better writer for it.

I'm sure he will be, but aside from being a damn depressing story, it also really came off like a series of rookie mistakes. I don't know how much experience the man has with writing, and heavens knows I've done worse, myself. You should see Sam's original story, ye gads! There's this tendency in inexperienced writers to go for the dark and the dramatic because those are some of the strongest stories that impacted us when we were still kids. Trouble is, those sorts of stories take A LOT of skill to pull off and make work, and they take a deep understanding of the underlying themes behind that drama. As without writing experience, we tend to focus on the emotions we felt as an audience and then just basically state that these emotions are happening in the bluntest, most direct way sans setup and payoff and the whole thing comes off as flat. And when you have a story which is both flat AND heavy, you're walking hip deep into disaster, and that's what SSA1 was - one man's attempt to make a deep story by claiming to be deep, but lacking the tools to build it as such, and instead simply stating it as such. That can never end well.

I was one of the greatest decriers of City of Heroes writing past... Wow, I8? Certainly past Going Rogue, because I got the impression that the writers were both completely abandoning established themes and canon, and also shooting for a "darker" tone for no reason other than because it was darker, and not because the story actually demanded such a tone. Yes, Praetorian Earth was supposed to be a distopian future where one man's vision of paradise had mutated into a totalitarian nightmare. That's fine, and it's been done before quite well. It's when you try to grab me by the back of the neck and slam my face in the filth and stink of how bad this place is that I start to take objection, because I question what, precisely, it is that you're trying to do. Are you trying to tell a good but heavy story, or are you trying to make me throw up? Because one's better than the other.

And I speak from experience on that note, as well. I, too, have written a lot of "dark" stories, and I got severely panned by the people who read them. Memorably, at least to me anyway, I've been told by people that they refuse to read on because it's too unpleasant. This was my wake-up call and I had to go out of my way to assure them that "No, honestly! I'm going somewhere with this!" So I know the highs and the lows of "dark" writing, and I just feel that better balance is needed to where you affect your audience, but you don't ultimately disgust them. You want people to care, to be invested, but you still want to entertain them in the end. At least I do.

Also, gamers are growing up...and still gaming, but also making these games.  There was an interesting documentary on Netflix called Indie Gamer: The Movie  and, although you cited many studio-built games, I think the documentary touched upon less than pleasant childhood experiences these developers have begun to incorporate into their games(/art).  So, there's stupid "dark" which is a vehicle and then dark "dark" which is an experience, the latter of which hasn't been tapped nearly as much in gaming as other mediums...yet.

Gamers growing up is an argument I don't get, because "gamers" aren't all one single social group. The gamers of the past who grew up on Super Mario and Sonic the Hedgehog and were playing the old consoles of the 80s grew up a long time ago. Hell, I'd personally like them to stop identifying themselves with "gamers in general" because I've never played a Super Mario game in my life, nor ever owned a console. My generation of gamers - the 90s kids - also grew up, but we did so more recently. We grew up on Tomb Raider, Half-Life and Resident evil. And there's a whole new generation of gamers who are still kids today, the children of the 2000s. They're growing up on Halo, on God of War, on World of Warcraft and GTA. And they're still kids too young to be making games of their own yet.

At any point in time past a decade after the beginning of video games, a generation of gamers has grown up and started producing games of their own. No other generation, however, has produced games this dark and depressing. We've seen more violent games, sure - Mortal Kombat comes to mind. We've seen grittier games, too - Baldur's Gate was outright cruel. We've even seen dramatic games in the past. Though I praised Oni, it still ends up with the world covered in deadly pollution and people forced to "evolve" by use of the Daodan Crysallis. But all of these games still had an ultimately creative message. They told us that life may be bad and hard and cruel and unfair, but that if we really tried hard enough, everything would still be OK in the end. Even Oni's seemingly "dark" ending is severely tempered by the fact that Konoko herself has been evolved by means of Crysallis, and she turned out just fine. Hell, I want to be like her, so bring on the evolution!

If we are to argue that "gamers grew up," we'd need to look for what sets this generation of grown-up gamers apart from the previous ones that they would make these depressing games. What, specifically, when I am part of this generation of gamers.

As to the point of personal trauma, this is actually something I can understand, as I've gone through it, myself. My parents went through a yelling divorce when I was 15, and I want to spare you all the specific details. It did define my life for nearly a decade, and much of the "darker" stuff I wrote was a capitalisation on the unpleasant emotions I was going for. But even at my darkest hour, even when I was feeling my lowest, even when my writing got the most depressing... The entire point why I was writing in the first place was to create a BETTER fictional world. A world where all the problems I was facing also existed, but where the characters had the strength and opportunity to make things right in ways I never could. As my life seemed bad, I wrote to write something better, and it makes no sense to me why I would write about a life which is WORSE. If I wanted this kind of darkness and pain, I got that when I got up from the PC. In fact, gaming was my only sanctuary from it. It's completely irrational to me that I would infect it with the very same negativity which I was using it to escape from.

That's part of why it's difficult for me to understand how "gamers grew up" and "gamers had crappy lives" could come together to produce depressing games. I would have thought that, as gamers grew up, they would become better at comprehending how much they can fix their own lives and heal their own pain precisely by NOT dragging their entertainment down into a black pit. Maybe that's just me being biassed, but I don't thing writing stories like these and making games like these helps with problems like are being cited as causing it. If I'm depressed, I need to be told that everything will be OK, not that life sucks and I should just go die for all the world cares, which is the vibe I'm getting from a lot of today's stories. It's certainly what I got out of SSA1, to the point where I worried someone on the writing team might actually literally be suicidal. No joke, no exaggeration.

I think some of these things contribute to what some of us are seeing as the dark age.  Is the age of gaming innocence gone?  I don't think so, but I also think retro-gaming is more important now than ever before and the need for creating "libraries" and "museums" has to be given more consideration.

"Retro-gaming" is actually one of my pet peeves, and not because I dislike old games, but rather because I highly disagree with most people on why retro games were good. I look at the Steam Greenlight and veins start popping up on my forehead. McPixel? Really? Why does everything have to be 8bit? Why does everything have to be ugly and ridiculous? Plenty of old games - even games of the 80s - were serious and dramatic and had a point. It creates this false dichotomy that games can either only be depressing or only be completely ridiculous, with no room in-between. I mean, I'm sure games like Retro City Rampage have their place in the world, but I honestly do prefer contemporary graphics and serious storytelling, yet I have to contend with the notion that anything "serious" has to push my comfort zone and dash my childhood innocence of a fair world.

Of course, I'm not getting that idea from this thread. I like the overall discussion has been rather fair and analytical. But it's the impression I get from how the gaming industry is behaving. People remade Tomb Raider as what's being advertised as pure torture, and that's seen as "better" than Legends. Because it no longer sexualises Lara? Um... Yeah it does, it just sexualises her in a much more unpleasant way. That's my core problem with this "generation" of games and game designers - it seems like they're all trying to design Oscar bait. "I'd like to thank the director who cast me as a mentally-challenged, handi-cap orphan, making this award almost inevitable."

Of course, that's not to say I hate retro games. MAME is my hero and I still love me some Metal Slug, Marvel vs. Capcom, Knights of the Round and Golden Axe. What can I say - I grew up on arcades

[FlyingCarcass]

First off, reality isn't the horrible place some folks make it out to be. Sure, the human condition involves challenges and sometimes tragedies occur, but humans are creatures capable of great kindness. For every horror on the news, there's a plethora of acts of compassion that go unreported.

In regards to games, it really depends on the genre and who the target audience is. The survival-horror genre, for instance, is dark by its very definition and happens to be quite popular at the moment because a number of folks want to imagine having to survive a horrifying situation (such as the collapse of civilization due to brain munchers). Not my cup of tea, personally, but as long as folks keep buying titles in the genre, game makers will continue pumping 'em out.

On the other hand, there's still a good number of lighthearted games being produced. Nintendo games, Minecraft, racing/sports games, and fighting games (which has seen a resurgence in popularity recently) come to mind.

On a side note, I rather enjoyed SSA1. Heck, I'd even say it was my favorite storyline of the game.