Author Topic: Is it me, or are we in a "dark" age of gaming?  (Read 42590 times)

therain93

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Re: Is it me, or are we in a "dark" age of gaming?
« Reply #20 on: January 01, 2013, 04:51:23 PM »
"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 :)

Perhaps my perception of retro-gaming is different than the mainstream, but I see it more as preservation of classic games (although I have no qualms with the notion of giving them a facelift).  The kind of games I'm talking about preserving are stuff like Baldur's Gate (re-released in enhanced version!) and its sequels, Freedom Force, LucasArts Outlaws (which, although an old FPS, I think you would have enjoyed for its stellar storytelling of a marhsall trying to recover his kindapped daughter--also independently being revived), the Police Quest/Space Quest/King's Quest series, and then those console games that actually had stories involved (the super mario era).
 
When you consider stories,  the print medium hasn't radically changed in hundreds of years and now we're seeing the conversion to electronic format.  Motion pictures have largely been transferred as the mediums have shifted from reel to VHS to dvd to electronic format.  And yet, although computer gaming has shifted over many platforms, we haven't necessarily seen those games preserved (except with some independent emulators or through "sequels") and to me, that is a shocking and terrible loss. 
 
Retro-graming is ensuring those games are available, assuming the older graphics and sound are not so offputting that people are willing to play them for the story and/or gameplay. X-COM: UFO Defense is a game I constantly recommend to people.  I warn them about the EGA graphics and midi sound, but also explain how it still works so well creating atmosphere and for its storytelling.  It's swell that a true sequel has been made and I look forward to playing it although I wonder about the changes that have been made (likely not as radical as Lara); regardless, I still tell people about the original to this day. 
 
 
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therain93

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Re: Is it me, or are we in a "dark" age of gaming?
« Reply #21 on: January 01, 2013, 05:52:52 PM »

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.

There were actually two parts to that statement and I really didn't articulate it well. 
 
Part 1 - In 1980, I was 5 and playing on an Atari 2600.  In 1985, I was 10 and playing on a NES. In 2013, I am 37 and playing on a Wii and a PS3, but mostly on a PC.  In 2013, my parents and even my older siblings (5 and 8 years older) don't game.  Some of that can be chalked up to disposition, but the point is that "gamers have grown up" means that more adults are playing video/computer games now, which is a more mature audience that can be targetted now than when you and I first started out playing.  What's more disturbing to me is that the mature-themed games such as Halo, God of War, Warcraft and GTA are being played by children at such an early time in their gaming (and, naturally, age)
 
Part 2 - the gamers of the 80s (and since then) are those kids that were the first latch-key kids (kids who came home from school to an empty home because both parents worked), the generation that grew up with AIDS, the went through Frank Miller's Dark gritty dark age of comics, angry grunge music, 9/11, the realization that they are the first generation that will not be better off than their parents (in the US) and ones paying into a social security system on life support (in the US).  Sex and violence are pervasive in the media.  The grittiness that went through comics, music, movies, and tv is now tapping into gaming.  It's the world we've grown up into (and helped/help perpetuate).  So when you ask, what is the difference between generations, basically we're not talking about a few visionaries of a bygone era such as Steve Jobs and Roberta Williams making games any more (although Roberta Williams was pushing limits with Phantasmagoria in the 90s), but products of a generation that have already been fed this type of stuff much of their lives.
 
With that written, I think gaming has been largely pulled into the massive cultural feedback loop, echoing themes and feelings from other media and present day situations, but that isn't to say all is lost or cannot change.  There are many examples of sharp cultural shifts/innovations that created new trends, just because someone opted to do something a bit different.  Steven Spielberg opted to pay homage to the old adventure movies when he created Raiders of the Lost Ark which had numerous contemporary spin-offs, but then later on was echoed with Tomb Raider and eventually the Uncharted series.
 
One other thing I did want to point out though was in a number of your examples, you did mention sequels (I'd even classify SSA1 into that group).  I think when we start factoring in sequels, there has to be consideration for the author going "what can I do to top the last thing" and it also I think explains some of the ...vacuous darkness...for lack of a better phrase.  Your DarkSiders example actually would fit that perfectly.
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Mister Bison

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Re: Is it me, or are we in a "dark" age of gaming?
« Reply #22 on: January 01, 2013, 06:43:35 PM »
Let's take one of the oddest examples - Darksiders.
Whatever character development comes out, whatever positive the game unfolds, it's still Dark. War has been set up, one of his former closest friend is the Big Bad and killed, Uriel's heart will be broken. How can you call that not crapsack ?
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's the difference between Dark settings and, let's say, delightful settings. Let's get this straight: in my mind, in Dark settings, bad things are likely to happen. In delightful settings, what's told is either an unlikely ("Oh, I unexpectedly created a monster while trying to do this !"), or a wanted event ("I want to become the best Chef of all!"). In the Dark setting, everything was good or bearable before the story, everything gets really bad, and then end in another bearable state, but still not good. On the contrary, a delightful plot ends in bliss in any case, with a sort of a promise of no problem anymore.

The problem is, the "setting" is dependent on where the "story" "begins" and "ends". An that is the writer's decision.
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.
The problem is that, inherently, every episode or season ends "well" and then the next one begins anew with another problem. Actually, each and every story could be parallel, and entertains the idea that nothing gets sure anymore, because there will always be a new problem to face and overcome. I'm sorry, but that's not "delightful", it's near crapsack, even if it's the smurfs. True it's more implied that one day they'll become safe, that no angst is shown, no dirty things like that. But since we don't know what's the "end" of the story, it's the writers' freedom to end it badly. And it's not because you started reading believing all is beautiful that the writer can't make a U-turn, like Sonic.
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.
What you're demonstrating, is that you can totally make a game not talk about these things, but does it make these thing not happen ? What's the thickness of the storyline of FarCry ? of Tomb Raider 1 ? (of every Tomb Raider). If you want a complex story line, you can't have only good things happening, it's going to turn bad at one point (except in Simulation games, where you're becoming good, then better, then the best at something. And you can still have storylines !).
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.
Did I deny that ? No. What I intended to prove is that Darkness is inherent with how detailed you make your story. There is darkness everywhere, and is only hidden by omission. If you are not careful, details will bring out the darkness, there is the option to not do it,  as I agree with everyone, but as statistics prove, greater number of throws yield a greater number of 1 and 6. Also, I dare you put out a simple game like Sonic 1 or Mario 1 today, not be detailing the story, and be called an "uninteresting game plot-wise", or even getting a rating. I mean, "the evil Doctor kidnapped every little animals. A super-sonic hedgehog embarks on a journey to free all of them by defeating the doctor". Seriously, fits in a line ?? (I should just try to fetch the instruction manual from back then and see the length of the story told in it and the game). It could be about birds fighting evil pigs ! Oh my...

But what is also unlikely, is that the only gamers back then (I'm 25 so same boat I think) were little children, so developpers basically had to appeal to them. Most older and more mature players already played MUDs or text-mode adventures. True, other games existed which were utterly depressing for most endings (such as I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream, as soon as in 1995). Now, every game can have the complexity of MUDs, and the accessibility to kindergartens. And the oldest devs can grow tired of making dumb games, let them be. They want "twist", or a new one, and that inherently comes with twisted stories. But, that they focus on the grimmest details of the story, is a choice that I can't deny them making, but not all, it's just that most twisted stories get more spotlight. Look at the TV News.

And if you want funny and delightful games, don't look at the PC roster, look at the Wii or the DS. Non-dark often intersects with Casual.
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Turjan

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Re: Is it me, or are we in a "dark" age of gaming?
« Reply #23 on: January 01, 2013, 07:04:49 PM »
A misguided attempt to shock in the face of a fast-moving media-saturated world is the culprit I think.

FlyingCarcass mentioned earlier that reality isn't the horrible place some folks make it out to be, and that's absolutely true - but if you watch any tv news (especially the 24hr rolling stations) you'd never believe it. What people forget is that news, practically by definition, is aberrant. If it were normal it wouldn't be news.

Similar kind of thing is going on with games I think. Instead of accepting that a lot of people like tradition and happy endings, the game companies seem intent on pitching new and ever more shocking/outrageous/depressing storylines because they're afraid if they did something old school, buyers would say "Meh, seen that story before, I want a new one!". This single fact demonstrates clearly that the people behind the decision to go dark are not themselves storywriters, because as any storywriter will tell you, there isn't anything 'new'. All the best stories flow from just a surprisingly few simple recurring concepts.

I have no doubt that turning things 'dark' is a passing trend, thankfully, because eventually some publisher or other will have a brainwave and realise that the irony of using the tactic of saying "Do I shock you?" itself only works so many times before people get jaded, and then maybe they'll go back to the old school storylines.

It's funny in a way because it reminds me of a situation where you have a modern teenager trying to shock their parents with a tattoo or bizarre item of clothing, and the parent says "Yawn-yawn kiddo, it'll take more than that to shock me. I was a punk when I was your age - pink superglued hair, safety pin piercings...and don't even think about trying to shock your gran, cos that won't work either - she was at Woodstock!"

Eventually the game publishers will grow up and realise "the shock of the new" is, in fact, anything but :D

Samuel Tow

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Re: Is it me, or are we in a "dark" age of gaming?
« Reply #24 on: January 01, 2013, 07:36:35 PM »
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.

Oh, definitely. Horror, and especially survival horror, has never been better than it is now. The games are scarier and more depressing, the settings more oppressive and and darker, it's all going according to plan. Yes, I know, Resident Evil 6. I know. But there are more decent horror games now than ever before. It's why I've all but stopped playing them altogether - they're getting TOO good for me. I think Silent Hill was the last horror game I actually enjoyed, and even then mostly because it gave me a good ending. Not a "good" ending, but a literal good one. Sure, Silent Hill 3 kind of ruined it, but it kind of had to if it wanted to go the story route it did.

I think the most "horror" I'd play these days is Left 4 Dead 2, and that's not exactly "horror."

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.

Right you are. Just looking at my own Steam library, I can see a number of these like Crevures (HORRIBLE!!! game, do not buy it!), Audiosurf, Heavy Weapon: Nuclear Tank, Team Fortress 2 and so forth. The trouble is that these games either have no... Oh, and Blade Kitten! The trouble is that these games either have no plot, thus nothing to be "dark" or "light," or are otherwise parodies in terms of the story they tell. It seems to me like game design has become polarised, where you have McPixel and Portal on one side and, like, Modern Warfare and Tomb Raider on the other and nearly nothing in-between. I guess what I'm trying to say is games are so mired in expressing some kind of "tone" that adventure games in the literal sense of the word almost don't exist. Let me explain.

Think about the older Tomb Raider games. What were they about? Other than "breasts?" Adventure, at least in my book. You got to see the great wall of China, you got to dive to the wreck of the Maria Doria (the most beautiful game level for years), you got to fight a T-Rex and lions and tigers and bears, oh my! It was glorious. Sure, Lara got knocked out once and she did spend a lot of time getting set aflame by unexplainable burners coming out of the ground and I broke her neck oh so many times misjudging my jumps, but the whole atmosphere was more of... Well, Indiana Jones or, more recently, the Mummy. It was much less Les Miserable or Salo or something like that, because the game was intended to be fun BECAUSE of the danger.

I'm not a pirate fan (pirates and cowbows just don't do anything for me), but I still like to use it as an example of the kind of story which showed what was historically a horrible existence lived by pretty terrible men into something that looked exciting and thrilling and even alluring. Yes, we know the movies romanticised it, but we liked them anyway, because of how much fun everything seemed. And this carries over into Pirates of the Carribean... Or did, anyway, before the series went off the rails.

I guess my point should have been that it seems like the gaming market is being polarised between grim and gritty games, and goofy and zany ones with very little striking a good balance between both. To a large extent, I'd attribute that to a rise in "unpleasant" gaming experiences, which prompted a nostalgia trip back to when games weren't so complicated, butting middle-of-the-road titles into one extreme or the other. Does that make sense to anyone?
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The Fifth Horseman

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Re: Is it me, or are we in a "dark" age of gaming?
« Reply #25 on: January 01, 2013, 11:11:45 PM »
It makes more sense than you probably expect it to.
If you want a complex story line, you can't have only good things happening, it's going to turn bad at one point (except in Simulation games, where you're becoming good, then better, then the best at something. And you can still have storylines !).Did I deny that ? No. What I intended to prove is that Darkness is inherent with how detailed you make your story. There is darkness everywhere, and is only hidden by omission. If you are not careful, details will bring out the darkness, there is the option to not do it,  as I agree with everyone, but as statistics prove, greater number of throws yield a greater number of 1 and 6.
Quite. It's a fact that some "dark" aspects are often needed in a story,  the problem is that the writers intentionally exaggerate them too often.
Sometimes the protagonists need to lose a battle. Sometimes there has to be a price to their victory. Sometimes good people go too far. Sometimes a character has to be hurt to show they are human (or more human than they seemed).
It's always a question of how these parts are balanced in the story. Sometimes you need nigh-invincible heroes, sometimes you need fallible human beings.
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TimtheEnchanter

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Re: Is it me, or are we in a "dark" age of gaming?
« Reply #26 on: January 02, 2013, 12:09:31 AM »
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.

Ironically, take a look at what's become of sci-fi lately. Sci-fi used to be thought-provoking, and show important political issues to us all the time, without becoming ridiculously dark. The original Star Trek series was so light-hearted that it might as well have been a cartoon, but it was still very intellectual. Compare that with what we have now... it's mostly "Days of Our Lives" in space/future.

Samuel Tow

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Re: Is it me, or are we in a "dark" age of gaming?
« Reply #27 on: January 02, 2013, 12:22:40 AM »
Whatever character development comes out, whatever positive the game unfolds, it's still Dark. War has been set up, one of his former closest friend is the Big Bad and killed, Uriel's heart will be broken. How can you call that not crapsack?That's the difference between Dark settings and, let's say, delightful settings. Let's get this straight: in my mind, in Dark settings, bad things are likely to happen. In delightful settings, what's told is either an unlikely ("Oh, I unexpectedly created a monster while trying to do this !"), or a wanted event ("I want to become the best Chef of all!"). In the Dark setting, everything was good or bearable before the story, everything gets really bad, and then end in another bearable state, but still not good. On the contrary, a delightful plot ends in bliss in any case, with a sort of a promise of no problem anymore.

OK, you're just mixing your metaphors here and getting hung up on semantics when I'm pretty sure you know what I mean. It doesn't matter if you call it "dark," "black," "gritty" or what have you. The reason I write walls of text in response to you is specifically so I can get across the meaning of my words and make sure we don't get hung up on terminology.

The problem is, the "setting" is dependent on where the "story" "begins" and "ends". An that is the writer's decision.The problem is that, inherently, every episode or season ends "well" and then the next one begins anew with another problem. Actually, each and every story could be parallel, and entertains the idea that nothing gets sure anymore, because there will always be a new problem to face and overcome. I'm sorry, but that's not "delightful", it's near crapsack, even if it's the smurfs.

No, it's not crapsack, and you're really stretching your terms here. I'm going to die some day, and that's a set fact. You don't see me identifying my existence through that inevitability, however. I manage to live a happy, fulfilling life despite knowing I'm going to die, everyone I knew and love is going to die, everything I cared about will be destroyed and forgotten and the universe will likely eventually end. Who gives a toss? That's like saying "No matter how much crime you stop, you'll never stop it all." So? We don't stop fighting crime just because it'll never end. That's not the point. The whole point - and if you'd acknowledge that all stories that aren't MLP aren't necessarilt "dark" - is that we don't have to stop all crime and stop all evil and prevent disasters from ever happening and make sure that the world is perfect forevermore for a setting to be "feelgood."

You can never solve all problems. New ones will always show up. To expect otherwise is to construct a straw man, simple as that. This shouldn't even BE an argument. I'm not aware of any story ever written which ends in complete and perpetual happiness with not even the slightest possibility of anything wrong ever happening, and when such a concept is brought up in storytelling, it's the stuff of madness and delusion. That's what the Paladin from Serenity would dream of - a perfect world that has no place for monsters like himself. But he is insane, and the world he hopes to achieve cannot exist, hence why he is the bad guy despite his ideology suggesting that he should be the good guy. That's the whole point.

If you want a complex story line, you can't have only good things happening, it's going to turn bad at one point (except in Simulation games, where you're becoming good, then better, then the best at something. And you can still have storylines !).

Yes, you can, and many stories have done this. Like I said - Darksides is a perfect example of this. Yes, bad things happen if you want to be pedantic, but the way the story is arranged, they aren't TREATED as a big deal, as that much of a big thing. War is bummed that Earth was destroyed, but not because all the humans died. He's war. His entire purpose in existence is to kill people. He's bummed because balance is upset and he was framed. And by the end, balance is restored by unleashing the "End of Times" properly and he finds inner peace realising it wasn't his fault after all, growing as a person. Abbadon - the Destroyer - was never War's friend, at least none that I could determine. He was simply someone he knew. Uriel's heart may have been broken, but she will heal. "Reap what you have sown, betrayer!" are her final words to Abbadon. Every action she has taken up to that point proves that she will survive and thrive. And with the Four Horsemen finally summoned at full strength and free of the binds of the council, whatever manipulators may be plotting will fall, because nobody stands up against the Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

There's a reason Darksiders was as popular, and why War's final line in response to "You would fight this battle alone?!?" saying "No. Not alone" with a pan shot to reveal the other three descending from the sky... There's a reason this ending was as popular as it was, and this isn't because it's "dark." There's nothing dark about it, not in the slightest. The reason this ending has become such a trademark of the franchise that the sequel could not help but parrot it verbatim is because it's AWESOME. Not dark, not depressing, not reminding me of the futility of existence. It was awesome, and it made me want to get up off my chair and cheer along with the credits. Everything is resolved at the end, everyone has found peace and stability and all remaining problems will surely been solve because the story itself sets up the Four Horsemen as an unstoppable force that both Heaven and Hell fear. That is not "dark."

What I intended to prove is that Darkness is inherent with how detailed you make your story. There is darkness everywhere, and is only hidden by omission. If you are not careful, details will bring out the darkness, there is the option to not do it, as I agree with everyone, but as statistics prove, greater number of throws yield a greater number of 1 and 6.

This is not even remotely true, to the point that I can't imagine where you're even getting it from. Unless you specifically set out to write a story full of darkness, you don't have to put any into it. Any writer who claims to be unable to do otherwise is doing it wrong. Yes, I feel strongly enough about it to make such a broad statement, because I can't remember disagreeing with anything more strongly in years and years. There is never any need to be "dark." You are the writer, you set the tone, you make the rules, you decide how a story should be told. If you find yourself unable to proceed but to introduce darkness in a story, then YOU have failed, not storytelling as a concept. If you, as a writer, cannot conceive of a world written to a theme which does not turn into darkness when you detail it, then you need more imagination, and very likely a wider pool of references. And undoubtedly a more objective interpretation of other people's stories.

In anything you write, you decide how the "world" treats action. Are good people punished for trying to do the good thing, or are they rewarded for being good? If you pick the latter, then the more detail you go into, the more uplifting a story will become. Nothing can ever stop you from doing this.

Also, I dare you put out a simple game like Sonic 1 or Mario 1 today, not be detailing the story, and be called an "uninteresting game plot-wise", or even getting a rating. I mean, "the evil Doctor kidnapped every little animals. A super-sonic hedgehog embarks on a journey to free all of them by defeating the doctor". Seriously, fits in a line??

Um... Portal. Quantum Continuum. McPixel. Orcs Must Die. Serious Sam. Aquaria. Limbo. Vessel. Holdover. Gish. Blade Kitten. Alien Swarm. Sonic Adventure (Robotnik has used the Chaos Emeralds to transport Sonic and his friends to our world, get them back!). All of that's off the top of my head. So... Yeah, challenge accepted. Would you like to know more?

You can have a game with a simple story that's still incredibly good if it's done right, told right and drawn up with the right theme and tone. As a point of fact, the more complicated you make a story... Oh, 2008's Prince of Persia! The more complicated you make a story, the worse it usually ends up being. Take something like Naruto, for instance. The show was by far at its strongest when the premise was at its simplest - a boy cursed to house the spirit of the evil 9-tailed fox is hated by his peers, but fights to earn the respect and friendship of his peers. That's all it ever needed, and it's when it turned political, philosophical and soap-opera-ish that it turned bad.

Now, every game can have the complexity of MUDs, and the accessibility to kindergartens. And the oldest devs can grow tired of making dumb games, let them be. They want "twist", or a new one, and that inherently comes with twisted stories. But, that they focus on the grimmest details of the story, is a choice that I can't deny them making, but not all, it's just that most twisted stories get more spotlight. Look at the TV News.

So, wait... Are you saying that games which don't have "the complexity of MUDs" are "dumb games?" Are you seriously operating under the idea that children are stupid and games made for them need to be stupid to accommodate this? Because I've seen games made "for kids" and they're insulting to my intelligence, and theirs, as well. When I was a child, I didn't play Sonic or Mario. I played Blackthorne, Dune II: Battle for Arakis, Mortal Kombat. I played Sin and Half-Life and, yes, even the original Serious Sam. I played Star Control, I played WarCraft. I've played games that were grim and bloody and nasty. Hell, forget that, I played stuff like the Bible Black bishujo game. I've seen nasty stuff for as far as I can remember, but it's never been this prominent and it's never been this nasty. Yes, even Bible Black.

Because, honestly, I'm sick of games that remind me of the Angel Corps comic book. And no, please don't Google that. And it ISN'T just the "most twisted" stories that I'm concerned with. The stories of today aren't any worse than what's come before. Some are even much tamer. It's just that the stories of today are overwhelmingly much more often unpleasant, grim and cynical. It's like I'm living in the world of John Constantine or Dylan Dog. The real world is NOT that grim and dark, and the idea that the only way to have "complex" games is to make them grim and gritty is just... About as bad as what's been getting Oscars of late. At one point, video games used to be an exciting medium full of promise and potential. Now they're just like the news. And there's a reason I don't watch the news and have never watch the news - they don't try to inform me, they're looking for shock value to inflate their audiance numbers.

And if you want funny and delightful games, don't look at the PC roster, look at the Wii or the DS. Non-dark often intersects with Casual.

All you're doing is perpetuating the myth of the "PC Master Race" of stuck-up self-righteous players who see themselves as superior to the riff-raff of console players with their "more intelligent" and "more complicated" games that "challenge" you on more "fundamental" levels. Oh, you want games that are actually fun to play and don't leave you an emotional wreck? Go play the Wii with the other kiddies. The PC is for grown-ups. I'm a PC-only gamer and even I find that attitude detestable. There's nothing about the PC which precludes games made for it from actually being fun and pleasant. And there's nothing inherent in unpleasant games that makes them morally and intellectually superior. The primary reason I now live a happy, relaxed life is expressly because I chose to stop exposing myself to angsty drama with no real reason.

A one-dimensional, one-note game library does not make the PC more "mature." It just makes it less varied. It's easy to gloat about the PC's superiority, but the next generation of consoles will come out soon enough, and we'll continue to NOT get many decent games released for the PC, or at best given to us in shitty ports like Fall of Cybertron, and we'll keep patting each other on the back about how much the scant few games we do get are so morally superior to the "casual" console games.

That attitude is not healthy for the industry and it's not healthy for PC gaming. Variety ensures support and popularity, and until we accept that all genres are equally valid and no player should be shamed away from playing "casual" games lest he be seen as less of a gamer, we're never going to grow up as a community. And for as much as you say "gamers grew up," I get the feeling that many are still doing everything they can to PROVE they've grown up by making and playing games intentionally the reverse of "casual games for kids." It's like that episode of Cow and Chicken where Chicken, Flem and Earl were turned into rugged, burly men... Yet their final test was to play with Pencilneck Sissy dolls, because a real man isn't afraid of playing with Sissy dolls.

It's this whole retention of what's "mature" and "complex" and "adult" that gets my panties in a bunch. "Mature" games are not better. If anything, they're worse because they're made for a limited market. There's nothing intellectually superior about them, ESPECIALLY if they're actually completely juvenile like Saints Row The Third, but hiding behind a Mature Content label. It's why many people tended to avoid "Mature RP" in City of Heroes - because it ended up being the most immature, perpetuated by people who took "maturity" as a perk.

"Dark" is not "better." It's not worse, but it's not better. And we can just about do with some more variety.
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Samuel Tow

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Re: Is it me, or are we in a "dark" age of gaming?
« Reply #28 on: January 02, 2013, 12:58:25 AM »
Perhaps my perception of retro-gaming is different than the mainstream, but I see it more as preservation of classic games (although I have no qualms with the notion of giving them a facelift).  The kind of games I'm talking about preserving are stuff like Baldur's Gate (re-released in enhanced version!) and its sequels, Freedom Force, LucasArts Outlaws (which, although an old FPS, I think you would have enjoyed for its stellar storytelling of a marhsall trying to recover his kindapped daughter--also independently being revived), the Police Quest/Space Quest/King's Quest series, and then those console games that actually had stories involved (the super mario era).

Well, that's what it SHOULD mean, but the term has taken on another face, which is the production of new, contemporary games intentionally done in 8-bit graphics, scored with MIDI chip tunes and using very simplified controls, stories and game mechanics. For instance, go and play Stealth Bastard, and you'll note that aside from the dynamic lighting engine, the game may as well have come out of 1989. As with "dark" games, where I take issue with this is it seems like literally half the games on Steam Greenlight are brand new replica retro titles. I get why it's done, of course - 320x240 graphics, midi music and very spastic animations are cheaper and easier to produce, typically for development teams comprised of between a single person and up to four people. If you make the game short and simple enough, it becomes something you can knock out on your own in relatively reasonable time.

The thing, though, is that the banner of "retro" gaming has permitted some truly horrendous, crappy games to exist, excused solely because... Hey, they're retro. Games in the 80s looked like crap and played like shit. It wouldn't be "retro" if it were actually good. It smacks of people buying games for the 8bit graphics, not the quality of the games. And I can tell you for a fact that neither MegaMan nor Mario nor Metrid were popular at the time because they were ugly and dated. Back then, these were the latest and greatest that gaming could produce. They were popular because they were good games, but have since become popular because they are BAD games compared to modern gaming, and their worst qualities are being perpetuated in a new generation of replica retro games.

I mean, if it sells, it sells. It just blows my mind that there's SO MUCH of it.

In 1980, I was 5 and playing on an Atari 2600.  In 1985, I was 10 and playing on a NES. In 2013, I am 37 and playing on a Wii and a PS3, but mostly on a PC.  In 2013, my parents and even my older siblings (5 and 8 years older) don't game.  Some of that can be chalked up to disposition, but the point is that "gamers have grown up" means that more adults are playing video/computer games now, which is a more mature audience that can be targetted now than when you and I first started out playing.  What's more disturbing to me is that the mature-themed games such as Halo, God of War, Warcraft and GTA are being played by children at such an early time in their gaming (and, naturally, age)

OK, I can grant you this much. However, I do believe that adults who grew up on video games often have a rather different mentality when it comes to entertainment than those who don't. I live in a fairly poor country where few people can afford to play games, so we're essentially 50 years behind the US in terms of gaming. I can definitely see that my old gamer friends grew up to have very different lives than my old non-gamer friends. I'm not judging this in terms of success or happiness - it all varies. But those we used to game with still enjoy doing it even pushing 30, some even 40, while those who never did much have moved on to other media. What I'm saying is... Yes, there are more mature gamers these days, but can this really account for such a steep change in tastes? Because I have a hard time seeing that. The same thing happened to comic books, and those have been around since the 1940s. There has to be something else at play here than people just "growing up" and no longer liking happy stories. I mean, happy movies still sell. Look at anything Disney ever made.
 
One other thing I did want to point out though was in a number of your examples, you did mention sequels (I'd even classify SSA1 into that group).  I think when we start factoring in sequels, there has to be consideration for the author going "what can I do to top the last thing" and it also I think explains some of the ...vacuous darkness...for lack of a better phrase.  Your DarkSiders example actually would fit that perfectly.

Here, I don't think I can argue, as you do have a point. It usually seems like sequels to games, rather than the games themselves, end up going "dark." Sands of Time, for instance, was quite dramatic, but ultimately cute and huggable. Warrior Within was Ubi's attempt to top themslves, and they went WAAAY overboard. Same with Tomb Raider, I think. There seems to be this really uncomfortable belief that things which are darker are "better," thus everything is made darker the longer a series go on. "Shit just got real." The trouble with this is that "dark" isn't better. It's simply different, and - not to mention - far, FAR easier to get right. Get a happy-go-lucky story wrong and at worst it's boring, but people who like that sort of thing will still roll with it. Get a "dark" story wrong, though, and you'll either turn it into an unintentional self-parody as Warrior Within was, or into a disgusting experience like the Legend of Korra. In either case, you stand to lose a whole lot more.

I'm actually awed by how Saints Row The Third chose to "up the ante." It didn't get darker, it grew even more insane. And I don't mean just the famous purple dildo or even Professor Genki's Super Ethical Reality Climax. I mean basic, simple things like having your very first real mission be an assault on a military base, introducing cloned super-soldiers and a virtual world and running you through a fetish club so grotesque it circles right around and becomes funny again. I remember playing that with a friend of mine and he spent 15 minutes going to all the rooms and bursting out laughing when he saw a mannequin fist mounted to an oscillating saw or an "iron maiden" crate lined with floppy dildos on the inside. Sure, it's gross, but it's so over the top it's just funny, and in a very juvenile way. And because of this, Saints Row has been far more memorable than, say, Silent Hill 2, because I could never figure out what the giant purple dildo was going on half the time.

My point is that I think gamers still, in some ways, need to get over the fear of cooties coming from non-serious games. We're adults now. We all have ID cards. We don't need to keep proving how mature we are, and we don't need to be ashamed of cracking a smile at a final boss fight that's an honest-to-god professional wrestling match. What's fun is fun, low-brow or high-brow.

Similar kind of thing is going on with games I think. Instead of accepting that a lot of people like tradition and happy endings, the game companies seem intent on pitching new and ever more shocking/outrageous/depressing storylines because they're afraid if they did something old school, buyers would say "Meh, seen that story before, I want a new one!". This single fact demonstrates clearly that the people behind the decision to go dark are not themselves storywriters, because as any storywriter will tell you, there isn't anything 'new'. All the best stories flow from just a surprisingly few simple recurring concepts.

I really like the way you phrased it, because... Yeah, I don't believe genuine writers are making these decisions a lot of the time. I know for a fact that this was the case for Warrior Within - the developers were outright told to make it dark and gritty. And it shows. I'm not going to pretend to be a great writer, myself, but I know a thing or two on the subject, and I know a thing or two about how people perceive writing from both sides. If I've learned anything, I've learned this - ideas are cheap. It's execution that counts. If you execute a story well, people will buy it. Light or dark, happy or sad, if you execute it well, it will resonate. But that's not what Marketing believes. They believe that if you make a story "dark," it'll sell better because "dark" is the new black. They foist this on their writers, and their writers completely drop the ball. I've seen this happen so, so many times, and I know what to look because I've been there. Boy have I been there.

It's often very easy to spot a writer trying to be "dark," because you'll see him focus on why things are bad and the gruesome details of how they're bad, to the point where you want to grab him by the collar and yell "We get it! It's dark! Can we move on, please!" in his face. It's the sign of a writer who has no inspiration and is simply focusing on the details of the work he's been given to work on. He's not going anywhere with it, he's simply describing what he sees in his mind's eye and filling pages to meet a quota.

I'm not a fan of South Park, but the South Park writers are clever people. Probably the best advise that they've given is that you should NEVER tie your story bits with "and then." This happens, and then that happens, and then this other thing happens. Always tie them together. This happens because that happened, however when this other thing happened, that other thing happened, which is why we are where we are. Any detail in a story that has any kind of thematic weight to it needs to be going somewhere, and you never get the idea that this is the case with most "dark" games these days. They aren't going anywhere. They aren't being dark to build up to some kind of statement or climax. They're being dark because being dark is cool. They're torturing Lara Croft because sexualising her has been done, and it's more shocking to see her almost raped. "Breaking the pretty," as the cynics among us would call it. It's a trope, and it's lazy writing when THAT is the whole point of your game, or at the very least the fulcrum of your advertising. They were proud of all the torture and pain because "it's a different depiction." It's not building up to anything other than the most predictable "she rises above it," but you don't need to dig a hole a mile deep to have a character climbing out of it be meaningful.

"Dark" stories pass for better storytelling when they all too often come with WORSE writing attached.

Ironically, take a look at what's become of sci-fi lately. Sci-fi used to be thought-provoking, and show important political issues to us all the time, without becoming ridiculously dark. The original Star Trek series was so light-hearted that it might as well have been a cartoon, but it was still very intellectual. Compare that with what we have now... it's mostly "Days of Our Lives" in space/future.

I've never watched the Original Star Trek series. It was before my time. I have, however, seen some of the Picard series on TV (we never really got much Star Trek here) and I remember being smitten with the imagination and depth these had. They were all made up of good ideas and strong narrative, and when they did turn dark - which I don't remember being all that often - I can remember feeling like the show earned it.
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FlyingCarcass

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Re: Is it me, or are we in a "dark" age of gaming?
« Reply #29 on: January 02, 2013, 01:12:20 AM »
Quote
I've never watched the Original Star Trek series. It was before my time. I have, however, seen some of the Picard series on TV (we never really got much Star Trek here) and I remember being smitten with the imagination and depth these had. They were all made up of good ideas and strong narrative, and when they did turn dark - which I don't remember being all that often - I can remember feeling like the show earned it.

This is slightly off topic, but if you want to check out the original Star Trek series hulu.com has the it available.

Samuel Tow

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Re: Is it me, or are we in a "dark" age of gaming?
« Reply #30 on: January 02, 2013, 01:27:16 AM »
This is slightly off topic, but if you want to check out the original Star Trek series hulu.com has the it available.

"Sorry, currently our video library can only be watched from within the United States"

Ah, well, thank you for trying anyway :)
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TimtheEnchanter

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Re: Is it me, or are we in a "dark" age of gaming?
« Reply #31 on: January 02, 2013, 02:15:10 AM »
Netflix has Star Trek too I'm pretty sure.

Victoria Victrix

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Re: Is it me, or are we in a "dark" age of gaming?
« Reply #32 on: January 02, 2013, 02:22:18 AM »
Just as an FYI, "I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream" was scripted by Harlan Ellison, the granddaddy of Dark SF, who wrote the short story it is based on (which won a Hugo Award) in 1967.   The story by itself is the source from which all darkness, depression, and hatred flows.  I am not making that up, go read it if you dare.  It's brilliantly written and appalling. 

Harlan hates computer games.  When Cyberdreams approached him to make the story into a game, I suspect he decided to make it even worse than his story, perhaps in the hopes that anyone who played it would be so traumatized they would never play another game again.  Harlan is like that.  Basically, in the original concept, he wanted to create a game that could not be won, only be lost, ethically.
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TimtheEnchanter

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Re: Is it me, or are we in a "dark" age of gaming?
« Reply #33 on: January 02, 2013, 02:35:32 AM »
Harlan hates computer games.  When Cyberdreams approached him to make the story into a game, I suspect he decided to make it even worse than his story, perhaps in the hopes that anyone who played it would be so traumatized they would never play another game again.  Harlan is like that.  Basically, in the original concept, he wanted to create a game that could not be won, only be lost, ethically.

So this is something that was going to happen? Or no?

... sadly, I want to play this game. The concept isn't entirely unfamiliar to me either. The kind of coding that would be required to make the game work probably won't be possible until we all have quantum computers on our desks. Maybe I'm way off-base, but it makes me think of "The Butterfly Effect", which probably reminded me of real life a lot more than most. The idea that every time you fix something you end up breaking something else in the process. A puzzle with no solution and you just have to sort of choose which flaw you want to leave in when you're finished.

Games that can't be won though has been done before though. Just about every arcade game in the early days was "unwinnable", and on a fundamental level, that reflected life in a more realistic way. No matter what you do, you're going to die. The only thing you can change is how many of those darned Centipedes you can take down before it happens.

Victoria Victrix

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Re: Is it me, or are we in a "dark" age of gaming?
« Reply #34 on: January 02, 2013, 02:55:34 AM »
So this is something that was going to happen? Or no?

... sadly, I want to play this game.

Oh it was created.  1995, Even got a lot of good reviews, since it was in the tradition of Cyberdreams' signature darkity darky dark games taken up about 20 notches.

http://www.giantbomb.com/i-have-no-mouth-and-i-must-scream/61-2695/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Have_No_Mouth,_and_I_Must_Scream

You might even be able to find an old/used copy out there.

« Last Edit: January 02, 2013, 05:50:59 AM by Victoria Victrix »
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corvus1970

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Re: Is it me, or are we in a "dark" age of gaming?
« Reply #35 on: January 02, 2013, 05:46:19 AM »
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.

Yeah, there's some truth in that, but if humanity does not alter its current path and do so very, very soon, compassion will become another statistic.

In regards to gaming and popular culture, I have long since railed against the trend in comics towards "grim and gritty" because it ceased to become unique and instead became the status quo. DC was beginning to crawl out of a Grim and Gritty phase that lasted far, far too long...and then they went and foisted the New 52 on us and I gave up. Marvel was beginning to crawl out of the Grim and Gritty morass of horrible stories that it had become mired in back in the 1990's, and then they had to go and blow that sky high starting with Civil War, and IMHO it has yet to recover.

I think sometimes writers give into this because they are depressed, sometimes they do it because they simply like to push the envelope, and still others do it because its easy. Back in the 1970s and early 80s a lot of talented comic-writers managed to write stories that were thought-provoking and accessible to a wide range of age-groups. Now its almost a lost art.

I agree with Tim: I deal with enough crap in my life, and see enough real-life-horror via the media. I don't always NEED that when I want to escape. Sometimes I want love and friendship and compassion to win out and prevail in a non-ambiguous happy ending that makes you squee despite yourself.

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Victoria Victrix

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Re: Is it me, or are we in a "dark" age of gaming?
« Reply #36 on: January 02, 2013, 05:52:20 AM »
You might even be able to find an old/used copy out there.

I won't vouch for this site, but evidently it's abandonware and you can find it.

http://www.myabandonware.com/game/i-have-no-mouth-and-i-must-scream-2sv
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dwturducken

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Re: Is it me, or are we in a "dark" age of gaming?
« Reply #37 on: January 02, 2013, 07:24:47 AM »
I used to have that, once upon a time. I actually was less disappointed by it than I was the Infocom HHGTTG game. The basic story was there, but these ridiculous puzzles were added. No thanks.

Adapting existing fiction to "interactive fiction" didn't really work for me, but I could get lost in something like Zork or Myst. The SSI Gold Box adaptation of AD&D was acceptable (and addictive) because AD&D was flexible enough to accommodate the adaptation. I actually prefer those and the first Baldur's Gate to just about any other electronic iteration of the game.

I'm one of those "retrogamers," and it's not because I think that the old games have something that the new games lack. In a sense, they do, though. I still have my Star Wars action figures and toys. I still have most of my Transformers, though my 11 year old has them, now. And, I still have or have reacquired most of my favorite games from the various stages of gaming in my life. I'm even working on rebuilding a power supply for my old Commodore 64 and will start sourcing an old 1541 floppy drive, once that's back up. It's not for any particular quality or merit other than nostalgia.
I wouldn't use the word "replace," but there's no word for "take over for you and make everything better almost immediately," so we just say "replace."

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Re: Is it me, or are we in a "dark" age of gaming?
« Reply #38 on: January 02, 2013, 08:32:12 AM »
OK, you're just mixing your metaphors here and getting hung up on semantics when I'm pretty sure you know what I mean. It doesn't matter if you call it "dark," "black," "gritty" or what have you. The reason I write walls of text in response to you is specifically so I can get across the meaning of my words and make sure we don't get hung up on terminology.
I'm a bit mixed up, but I'm mainly focusing on different things. It's not a Crapsack world. But the story can be spun into dark, depending on how you stress it, so it has dark "elements" (unless those don't exist): (I'm skipping most of the details you can take directly from the storyline, such as what is War, who set him up...)
"War has been set up, the leader of the Angels is now ruling over earth as a reincarnated Demon, who won the Apocalypse. The current leader of Angels, the former's love interest, holds War responsible. Despite this, War manages to uncover the truth, properly launch the Apocalypse by killing the fallen Angel, and make friends of the Angel leader."
"War has been set up. A Demon now rules the Earth. The leader of the Angels believe War is responsible for dooming earth and the Angels, who lost the Apocalypse. War even discovers that the ruling Demon is the former Angel leader, reincarnated, and former love interest of the current Angel leader. War nonetheless manages to properly launch the Apocalypse, earning the respect of the Angels, but killed the fallen Angel."
But, per my own definition of dark and your own elements I don't quote for brevity, I realized Darksiders' ending is not dark at all. Quite the contrary.
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No, it's not crapsack, and you're really stretching your terms here. I'm going to die some day, and that's a set fact. You don't see me identifying my existence through that inevitability, however. I manage to live a happy, fulfilling life despite knowing I'm going to die, everyone I knew and love is going to die, everything I cared about will be destroyed and forgotten and the universe will likely eventually end. Who gives a toss? That's like saying "No matter how much crime you stop, you'll never stop it all." So? We don't stop fighting crime just because it'll never end. That's not the point. The whole point - and if you'd acknowledge that all stories that aren't MLP aren't necessarilt "dark" - is that we don't have to stop all crime and stop all evil and prevent disasters from ever happening and make sure that the world is perfect forevermore for a setting to be "feelgood."
There are a lot of technically identical stories to MLP ;) but yeah, I acknowledge. But, "feelgood" should be improvement, which, however little, is going to end into perfect, whatever you say. What of "back to normal" ? Depends on the setting, which is either perfect, improveable, or needing improvement.

Quote
I'm not aware of any story ever written which ends in complete and perpetual happiness with not even the slightest possibility of anything wrong ever happening, and when such a concept is brought up in storytelling, it's the stuff of madness and delusion. That's what the Paladin from Serenity would dream of - a perfect world that has no place for monsters like himself. But he is insane, and the world he hopes to achieve cannot exist, hence why he is the bad guy despite his ideology suggesting that he should be the good guy. That's the whole point.
So you don't buy "they lived happily ever after", even if it's written black on white by the story writer ? You're saying that this epitome of happiness is folly ? What have you been read as a child ?

Unless you specifically set out to write a story full of darkness, you don't have to put any into it.
That's what I said, didn't I?

Sonic Adventure (Robotnik has used the Chaos Emeralds to transport Sonic and his friends to our world, get them back!).
That's not the whole story of the game (You don't even talk of half the characters. what's the origin of Chaos ? Tikal ?). Whereas in Sonic 1... well, you don't learn anything during the game and that was all the story we were told in the manual I think (still haven't fetched the booklet). Except the badniks and bosses, but all games have those so it doesn't count.
Um... Portal. Quantum Continuum. McPixel. Orcs Must Die. Serious Sam. Aquaria. Limbo. Vessel. Holdover. Gish. Blade Kitten. Alien Swarm. All of that's off the top of my head. So... Yeah, challenge accepted. Would you like to know more?
What are those ? Dark but short games with no or short storylines ? Can you put the entire storyline (setting and story told by the game) in a single line ?

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You can have a game with a simple story that's still incredibly good if it's done right, told right and drawn up with the right theme and tone. As a point of fact, the more complicated you make a story... Oh, 2008's Prince of Persia! The more complicated you make a story, the worse it usually ends up being. Take something like Naruto, for instance. The show was by far at its strongest when the premise was at its simplest - a boy cursed to house the spirit of the evil 9-tailed fox is hated by his peers, but fights to earn the respect and friendship of his peers. That's all it ever needed, and it's when it turned political, philosophical and soap-opera-ish that it turned bad.
Those are my points. Simple games that have no storylines (most early games in history) are provably neither bad or good, you assume it's good, that's all. That's why I took Sonic as a counterpoint of your point that they did the most horrible thing by turning him in dark stories. In fact they did nothing contrary to what they did before because what they did before had no intent.

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So, wait... Are you saying that games which don't have "the complexity of MUDs" are "dumb games?" Are you seriously operating under the idea that children are stupid and games made for them need to be stupid to accommodate this? Because I've seen games made "for kids" and they're insulting to my intelligence, and theirs, as well. When I was a child, I didn't play Sonic or Mario. I played Blackthorne, Dune II: Battle for Arakis, Mortal Kombat. I played Sin and Half-Life and, yes, even the original Serious Sam. I played Star Control, I played WarCraft. I've played games that were grim and bloody and nasty. Hell, forget that, I played stuff like the Bible Black bishujo game. I've seen nasty stuff for as far as I can remember, but it's never been this prominent and it's never been this nasty. Yes, even Bible Black.
If all you played while a child was Blackthorne, Dune II and Mortal Kombat and the likes, I don't see why you're complaining we are in a dark age of gaming nowadays.

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Because, honestly, I'm sick of games that remind me of the Angel Corps comic book. And no, please don't Google that. And it ISN'T just the "most twisted" stories that I'm concerned with. The stories of today aren't any worse than what's come before. Some are even much tamer. It's just that the stories of today are overwhelmingly much more often unpleasant, grim and cynical. It's like I'm living in the world of John Constantine or Dylan Dog. The real world is NOT that grim and dark, and the idea that the only way to have "complex" games is to make them grim and gritty is just... About as bad as what's been getting Oscars of late. At one point, video games used to be an exciting medium full of promise and potential. Now they're just like the news. And there's a reason I don't watch the news and have never watch the news - they don't try to inform me, they're looking for shock value to inflate their audiance numbers.
Maybe you need to put this into perspective too. Having such dark, grim and gritty stories told does make real life not this dark, grim and gritty. And allows you to enjoy it to its fullest.

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All you're doing is perpetuating the myth of the "PC Master Race" of stuck-up self-righteous players who see themselves as superior to the riff-raff of console players with their "more intelligent" and "more complicated" games that "challenge" you on more "fundamental" levels. Oh, you want games that are actually fun to play and don't leave you an emotional wreck? Go play the Wii with the other kiddies. The PC is for grown-ups. I'm a PC-only gamer and even I find that attitude detestable. There's nothing about the PC which precludes games made for it from actually being fun and pleasant. And there's nothing inherent in unpleasant games that makes them morally and intellectually superior. The primary reason I now live a happy, relaxed life is expressly because I chose to stop exposing myself to angsty drama with no real reason.
You're right, but PC is such a versatile platform, that it's not even primarily intended for gaming, much less "casual" gaming. I don't even recall a party game on PC that's not an adaptation of a board game (Monopoly) or on other consoles (Worms). In fact, most games on PC also go out on Sony and the other Microsoft entertainment systems, and also Wii. The most versatile gaming platform must be the Wii, actually, in terms of varied gameplay. So back to the original topic, you can't say "we are in a "dark" age of gaming" without looking at all the consoles, which I did direct you to one specifically. If your idea was specifically for PC, you should have said so.

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[...] ESPECIALLY if they're actually completely juvenile like Saints Row The Third, but hiding behind a Mature Content label.
That's both for adult and not for adult, those are not contradictory. I don't think you can see "drugs", "swearing" and "violence", which is all Saints Row is about, for children, and not for normal adults either. So yeah, it's Mature. Duke Nukem shoul be rated M for Manly ;)

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"Dark" is not "better." It's not worse, but it's not better. And we can just about do with some more variety.
Agreed, but we didn't have much choice in the matter before either, as it was much more goody. And consumers did "change" the Mass Effect ending. And like all games with multiple endings, you have to work a lot to have a "good ending", so it is rewarding to play.
Yeeessss....

Mister Bison

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Re: Is it me, or are we in a "dark" age of gaming?
« Reply #39 on: January 02, 2013, 08:32:56 AM »
I won't vouch for this site, but evidently it's abandonware and you can find it.

http://www.myabandonware.com/game/i-have-no-mouth-and-i-must-scream-2sv
If you only mind about the stories an don't careabout personnal xperience of gameplay, you can also watch a long play
Yeeessss....