What makes a mature game mature? According to an Amnesia: The Dark Descent developer, it’s not necessarily what makes a game mature, but rather, what doesn’t – and that’s all the obvious stuff like blood, bad words, and one of those “gritty” colour schemes that prominently feature fifty shades of bland.
“This goal to be ‘mature’ is a problem in many games where you add gore, curse words and a palette of grey, thinking that makes the experience more adult,” Frictional Games’ studio boss Thomas Grip told Beefjack.
“But they just end up making it even more childish.”
According to Grip, there’s a trend in game development to make games that appeal to everybody’s inner child, and that’s part of the problem.
“Take just about any big game release and the core concepts of that game is something that a ten-year old can enjoy,” he explained.
“This means that just about any games that I can enjoy today would also have been enjoyed by my ten-year-old self. But when you look at film, movies, music, etc there are tons of stuff which I like today that my ten-year-old self would not. Sure, there might be some stuff in games that I can enjoy more now that I am older, but this is almost always a minor part of the experience, like a Pixar movie.
“There is nothing wrong with having games that are ageless. But when just about every game released is like this, I think it is a sign that something is wrong.”
None of Grip’s games have been marketed for anybody’s inner child, including Penumbra, Amnesia: The Dark Descent, and the as yet unreleased sequel, Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs. But does “scary” necessarily invest them with this ambiguous maturity he’s going on about? What constitutes maturity anyway? How did I forget to buy more coffee when I went to the shop this morning? Questions without answers.
Source: Beefjack
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