Submission + - The Grown-Up Video Game
Phaethon360 writes: More now than ever we're seeing more Mature (M+, 17+, 18) ratings being distributed by various national media regulators, but that isn't the only indicator for a game's intended audience. It doesn't take a thousand swear words, scantily clad women or gratuitous violence to differentiate a ten year old's game from a twenty year old's. The spectrum of human emotions encompass a wider palette than revenge, fear, and loss, but the ones that tend to shy away from this are often mistook for a younger audience.
Nick: "The idea of “The Grown-Up Video Game” can mean many different things to many different people. It could mean excessive violence, nudity, or difficulty. I like to believe that while examples such as those in the previous sentence make a game adult oriented it takes something a bit more to make a game “grown-up”. The human experience is one that is made up of great hardship, pain, loss, death, and a multitude of experiences seemingly designed to destroy a person. However, that same experience is also filled with joy, love, laughter, family and friends. It is from these experiences that we begin to question, “Why?”. What is the motivation behind a person’s actions? How did their life culminate in the experience that we bear witness to now? Is there a good reason to be waging war on this particular nation? Why did he just blow that guy’s head off with a shotgun? It is this sort of thinking that is beginning to make its way into our beloved interactive games, and I believe that it is a very good thing."
Nick: "The idea of “The Grown-Up Video Game” can mean many different things to many different people. It could mean excessive violence, nudity, or difficulty. I like to believe that while examples such as those in the previous sentence make a game adult oriented it takes something a bit more to make a game “grown-up”. The human experience is one that is made up of great hardship, pain, loss, death, and a multitude of experiences seemingly designed to destroy a person. However, that same experience is also filled with joy, love, laughter, family and friends. It is from these experiences that we begin to question, “Why?”. What is the motivation behind a person’s actions? How did their life culminate in the experience that we bear witness to now? Is there a good reason to be waging war on this particular nation? Why did he just blow that guy’s head off with a shotgun? It is this sort of thinking that is beginning to make its way into our beloved interactive games, and I believe that it is a very good thing."
