Let's Get Indie Games Away From the Idea of a Small Child in a Scary World

[90sgamer]

I think the rash of kid-centric games is the result of the age of the game developers making those games. As a thirty-something year old myself, it wasn't until recently I transitioned from 'kids are disgusting, expensive little shit bags' to 'some of them are cute, I might want one.' In fact, my unpublished literature has explored this transition in my life, and I've found myself attracted to media exploring parental relationships with children, such as The Last of Us and The Walking Dead. I found myself even forcing this relationship into Dragon's Dogma, a game not originally intended to be played that way, by making a father/daughter character and main pawn combination.

I'd like to point out that there's also a problem with that trope too. To my knowledge, the parent/child relationships in games are always father/daughter relationships. Outside of perhaps Amy, and maybe the upcoming GoW (If the kid lives past the first act), I cannot think of a parent/child relationship in a game that breaks that formula.

Why is that? What does a father/daughter relationship do to a story as opposed to having the parental figure be a woman, and/or the child figure be a boy?

It might just be the preference of men in general to have daughters. I'm not asserting that's the case, just putting it out there. Speaking for myself, I have almost no interest in siring a boy, but plenty of interest in a daughter or two.


The God of War dynamic being set up is very interesting, however it's clear to me the game is being set up for Kratos to die or go missing very early in the game, and the player takes control of the kid (watch the video and see how and when and for what exp is awarded).

 

[Smithnikov_v1legacy]

This Too Shall Pass.

I don't fret too much about it. It's just a hot trend of the current time. It'll pass, no worries, just in time for another trope to get driven into the ground.

 

[Smithnikov_v1legacy]

Would the opposite of that be a game about a big and scary monster in a small nice and cosy world where everything wants to cheer him up?

Actually, I could probably write a really disturbing horror game about such a concept. Not a bad idea!

 

[Smithnikov_v1legacy]

Here's a question for you then, does Super Metroid quality as one of these games? It pioneered the bleak world exploration genre.

Not really. Samus Aran wasn't some scared kid, she was an armored, combat capable character with means to destroy the horrors within.

 

[weirdee]

I think the rash of kid-centric games is the result of the age of the game developers making those games. As a thirty-something year old myself, it wasn't until recently I transitioned from 'kids are disgusting, expensive little shit bags' to 'some of them are cute, I might want one.' In fact, my unpublished literature has explored this transition in my life, and I've found myself attracted to media exploring parental relationships with children, such as The Last of Us and The Walking Dead. I found myself even forcing this relationship into Dragon's Dogma, a game not originally intended to be played that way, by making a father/daughter character and main pawn combination.

I'd like to point out that there's also a problem with that trope too. To my knowledge, the parent/child relationships in games are always father/daughter relationships. Outside of perhaps Amy, and maybe the upcoming GoW (If the kid lives past the first act), I cannot think of a parent/child relationship in a game that breaks that formula.

Why is that? What does a father/daughter relationship do to a story as opposed to having the parental figure be a woman, and/or the child figure be a boy?

Well outside of the binding of Isaac which is mother son. Part of the reason and I think somebody did a column about it was that it may be in part for writers being told that they have to have a male protagonist but want at least one fleshed out female character and don't want to do the whole love interest thing so the father daughter relationship seems to be an easy way to do it.

the other part might be that many mainstream game developers (and longtime gamers) are becoming dads themselves and are reconciling their past self insert character power fantasies with their present day experiences, which is why Kratos is a dad now for some reason

 

[infohippie]

I think the rash of kid-centric games is the result of the age of the game developers making those games. As a thirty-something year old myself, it wasn't until recently I transitioned from 'kids are disgusting, expensive little shit bags' to 'some of them are cute, I might want one.' In fact, my unpublished literature has explored this transition in my life, and I've found myself attracted to media exploring parental relationships with children, such as The Last of Us and The Walking Dead. I found myself even forcing this relationship into Dragon's Dogma, a game not originally intended to be played that way, by making a father/daughter character and main pawn combination.

I'd like to point out that there's also a problem with that trope too. To my knowledge, the parent/child relationships in games are always father/daughter relationships. Outside of perhaps Amy, and maybe the upcoming GoW (If the kid lives past the first act), I cannot think of a parent/child relationship in a game that breaks that formula.

Why is that? What does a father/daughter relationship do to a story as opposed to having the parental figure be a woman, and/or the child figure be a boy?

Well there is The Binding of Isaac.

 

[The White Hunter]

I was pondering this just the other day. I'm rather burned out and bored of lost lonely children in dark scary worlds.

I'd love to see more indie games doing genres that aren't as often explored these days. Yooka Laylee and Bloodstained and Shantae are about all that's on my radar now.

 

[SiskoBlue]

Personally I feel these games represent a lack of imagination and risk. Clone the trope. Probably more risk than imagination. Game development costs money and is an investment. People investing their money don't want too much risk. Point to a successful formula that resembles you're idea and they might invest. If you don't have a precedent to comfort your investors then you better hope you can raise that money on your own.

The buying public isn't much better either. I'll only buy things which are familiar until the weight of critical and public opinion that something new is worth seeing reaches critical mass. Take Breaking Bad for example, barely anyone watched, it's only because it was on a 'cable' channel and relatively cheap to make that they managed to survive long enough for word of mouth to catch on. Now just watch as we see 50 new shows in the next few years trying to mimic the formula.

Which is why we have brilliant cult classics that forge a new genre, usually made on a shoe-string budget. Then about a thousand clones of that.

Examples of things that broke the mould (in the public's mind, most had predecessors that were "before their time"), then think about all the things that have 'cloned' the trope since;


Star Wars - Sci Fi had been largely psychological thriller, action adventure. Sci Fi fantasy exploded after this.
Ico - Although it had been done before this clever original game became the template of the rash of SCSW games Yahtzee is talking about
Lord of the Rings (both books and films) - Medieval fantasy wasn't much of thing in books until Tolkein first succeeded. The fantasy film genre has been hit and miss (mostly cult favourites by fans of books) until Peter Jackson's films.
Harry Potter - Try to think of a successful a triple-AAA blockbust movie based "magic" prior to Harry Potter that doesn't involve Xmas
Twilight - Teen drama with fantasy twist. See True Blood
Hunger Games - teenager survival genre

3 issues that bug me about all of this;
A - Stop with the "end of innocence"/"Coming of age" shit. I feel that 90% of "arsty" foreign films that get awards are basically SCSW. In my experience that all have 3 elements 1. An animal must die. To show that the world is "real" and mortality touches all 2. A naked person, but not glamourous - sexual awakening arty people basically using "sex" as some kind of artistic statement. 3. Old person giving advice.
B - Stop with the fucking Orcs and Elves already? - It's called fantasy, FANTASY!? So what do we get? The exact same archetypes, tropes, universes. I loved Abe's Odyssey mostly because it was actually different!? 50 years on we still have dwarves, elves and orcs (or slight variations). Mass Effect branched out but if you look closely you realise they still leaned heavily on those types still.
C - The reason films like Star Wars, The Godfather, Pulp Fiction, even Rocky... have done well, is because they were DIFFERENT! Youngsters may watch these films and think they're a bit shit and wonder why people thought they were great. That's because you've seen clones, clones that changed, and possibly improved the genre, and usually had 10 times the budget of the original. But people have fond memories of those originals because they were NEW. Hollywood still really seems to misunderstand the concept of Novelty and New.

TLR- If I can make a drinking game out of your game/movie/book, then you've made a clone. Take some risks

 

[Thanatos2k]

Here's a question for you then, does Super Metroid quality as one of these games? It pioneered the bleak world exploration genre.

Not really. Samus Aran wasn't some scared kid, she was an armored, combat capable character with means to destroy the horrors within.

People keep saying this, but Ori and the Blind Forest has your character with magic powers fully capable of smashing everything in your way too, but that qualifies for some reason.

 

[Transdude1996]

Star Wars - Sci Fi had been largely psychological thriller, action adventure. Sci Fi fantasy exploded after this.
Ico - Although it had been done before this clever original game became the template of the rash of SCSW games Yahtzee is talking about
Lord of the Rings (both books and films) - Medieval fantasy wasn't much of thing in books until Tolkein first succeeded. The fantasy film genre has been hit and miss (mostly cult favourites by fans of books) until Peter Jackson's films.
Harry Potter - Try to think of a successful a triple-AAA blockbust movie based "magic" prior to Harry Potter that doesn't involve Xmas
Twilight - Teen drama with fantasy twist. See True Blood The Vampire Chronicles
Hunger Games - teenager survival genre

Even though I've only seen Queen of the Damned, that series seems to be so much better than Twilight. And, it does have quite the dedicated fanbase.

 

[Igor-Rowan]

Snip

The problem is with more money and attention being shifted to big releases, they have to play it "safe". Millions are being invested into movies/games that are going to have mass media coverage, if they fail, people are going to know in the first seconds. They are almost forced to play the usual cards and try not to aim much higher. I am going to talk about movies and games separately:

What's hot right now is Cinematic Universes and reboots of old franchises, anything slightly popular in the past is being done or re-done (still scratching my head about Stargate of all things being in it). 2 of the most famous movies of last year were The Force Awakens and Mad Max: Fury Road, we didn't give Fury Road awards because we were being generous, we awarded it because it was superior and did improve on everything of its predecessors, unlike the Force Awakens, who did almost everything the first Star Wars did, the fans rejoiced that Star Wars was good again, but it wasn't until the sequel got announced that they realized it was back at square zero. And considering the MCU is really starting to show signs of stagnating, with only the Captain America branch showing signs of improving and everything else falling short, the safe zone can't be the only option.

Now games are more tricky, thanks to the indie market, those can take more risks, but the AAA market has to put its most famous names in the spotlight and when they do decide to innovate, they have to go with it, right now The Last Guardian is the thing that is on the minds of everyone, the success or failure its going to decide how AAA studios approach anything new. And the biggest problem is games like Mighty No. 9 or Bloodstained were overcrowdfunded because people think they know what they want, recapture a familiar experience, instead of diving into new things they might like, putting things like "passion of the developers" in front of the nostalgia goggles.

 

[008Zulu_v1legacy]

I would totally play a game where you were a kid shaking leeches off his bollocks. Oh man, I'm on a watchlist now, aren't I?

Seriously now, I wonder if it has to do with the fatigue (for lack of a better term) we see in games, where if it's a child or a dog (or animal) you immediately think "That thing's dead." There's no emotional connection anymore because we are too burned out. Perhaps it's this burnout that has rendered Small Child in a Horror Game boring.

 

[fix-the-spade]

Here's a question for you then, does Super Metroid quality as one of these games? It pioneered the bleak world exploration genre.

Well, no. Samus Aran even by the point of Metroid 1 is a famed and feared galaxy trotting bounty hunter. She's the one the Marines turn to when they're out of their depth.

Even losing all your powers (as is traditional) Samus is never played as innocent or lost, it's just a matter of time before she reaches the bottom of the pit and kills the beast residing in it. The tone of the games lacks the vulnerability required for lost innocent child.

On a different note, Heart of Darkness is a game that I both never finished and was utterly terrified by. Surely one of the first million ways to die type of games and very, very hard.

 

[kris40k]

I should mention that I haven't finished playing Bastion, so it's possible it goes in directions I have yet to experience.

Ok, you get a pass, but everyone else that was saying "Bastion isn't bleak," have you mothers actually beaten Bastion? If you have, you can click the following, but if not, don't:

Spoiler: Bastion Spoilers Within

People's loved ones are literally turned to ash and blown away in the wind in front of them.
The world was destroyed by weapons of mass destruction due to nationalism/racism.
The Kid is stuck in a Groundhog Day endless loop reliving attempting to prevent the Calamity, only to fail again and again;
(hint: New Game+ is your next run through, you didn't prevent the Calamity, again)
OR you can tell the corpses of the rest of the world, "Sorry bitches, I got mine" and head off with the handful of survivors to parts unknown. Maybe you live, maybe you don't, but what is certain is everyone else doesn't.

The game is very dark once you realize what is going on, and why. It is the literal End-of-the-World scenario.

 

[kris40k]

I'd like to point out that there's also a problem with that trope too. To my knowledge, the parent/child relationships in games are always father/daughter relationships. Outside of perhaps Amy, and maybe the upcoming GoW (If the kid lives past the first act), I cannot think of a parent/child relationship in a game that breaks that formula.

Why is that? What does a father/daughter relationship do to a story as opposed to having the parental figure be a woman, and/or the child figure be a boy?

The Park [http://www.theparkgame.com/#welcome] uses the mother/son dynamic, but you are right, it is used less often than the father/daughter angle.

 

[Stemer]

A - Stop with the "end of innocence"/"Coming of age" shit. I feel that 90% of "arsty" foreign films that get awards are basically SCSW. In my experience that all have 3 elements 1. An animal must die. To show that the world is "real" and mortality touches all 2. A naked person, but not glamourous - sexual awakening arty people basically using "sex" as some kind of artistic statement. 3. Old person giving advice.

Can you give me some examples of this, I can't think of any foreign language movies that followed this formula and picked up any major awards (except for maybe Dogtooth but only sort of).

 

[Fox12]

Here's a question for you then, does Super Metroid quality as one of these games? It pioneered the bleak world exploration genre.

No, because you're bounty hunter with an armor and arm cannon; and scary world exploration had been already done long before with games like the original Shadow of the Beast games.

Yeah, no kidding. The scariest thing in Metroid is Samus. They finally realized this in Fusion.

 

[Thanatos2k]

Here's a question for you then, does Super Metroid quality as one of these games? It pioneered the bleak world exploration genre.

Well, no. Samus Aran even by the point of Metroid 1 is a famed and feared galaxy trotting bounty hunter. She's the one the Marines turn to when they're out of their depth.

Even losing all your powers (as is traditional) Samus is never played as innocent or lost, it's just a matter of time before she reaches the bottom of the pit and kills the beast residing in it. The tone of the games lacks the vulnerability required for lost innocent child.

On a different note, Heart of Darkness is a game that I both never finished and was utterly terrified by. Surely one of the first million ways to die type of games and very, very hard.

Don't focus on the "innocent child" aspect so much. You start out relatively powerless, in a bleak world that really has no one to talk to and everything is trying to kill you. When I run into a heat room without the Varia suit and start getting roasted I'm not feeling like some capable bounty hunter, I'm freaking out and running for the exits. When I fight an enemy I can't kill without a super missile or power bomb or ice beam or whatever and I don't have them yet, I don't feel powerful.

Samus was the original "powerless child" just wrapped in a character (read: wrapped in a power suit) that made you think you were more powerful than you were even though mechanically you were not. I mean, we're only TOLD Samus is a bounty hunter, in none of the games do we really have her catching bounties...so does the flavor text really make that much of a difference? By the end of the game you're a walking artillery, but you worked hard to get there, just like in most of these Metroidvania games. Hell, Super Metroid plays this trait completely straight by making you fight an unkillable Ridley with your pea shooter and losing and having to escape in the beginning.

 

[JoJo]

I think the rash of kid-centric games is the result of the age of the game developers making those games. As a thirty-something year old myself, it wasn't until recently I transitioned from 'kids are disgusting, expensive little shit bags' to 'some of them are cute, I might want one.' In fact, my unpublished literature has explored this transition in my life, and I've found myself attracted to media exploring parental relationships with children, such as The Last of Us and The Walking Dead. I found myself even forcing this relationship into Dragon's Dogma, a game not originally intended to be played that way, by making a father/daughter character and main pawn combination.

I'd like to point out that there's also a problem with that trope too. To my knowledge, the parent/child relationships in games are always father/daughter relationships. Outside of perhaps Amy, and maybe the upcoming GoW (If the kid lives past the first act), I cannot think of a parent/child relationship in a game that breaks that formula.

Why is that? What does a father/daughter relationship do to a story as opposed to having the parental figure be a woman, and/or the child figure be a boy?

It might just be the preference of men in general to have daughters. I'm not asserting that's the case, just putting it out there. Speaking for myself, I have almost no interest in siring a boy, but plenty of interest in a daughter or two.

The God of War dynamic being set up is very interesting, however it's clear to me the game is being set up for Kratos to die or go missing very early in the game, and the player takes control of the kid (watch the video and see how and when and for what exp is awarded).

I could believe that, I've heard that couples looking to adopt are more likely to request girls than boys. Personally I don't mind at-all about gender, but I guess little girls are traditionally seen as being more vulnerable and needing protection, which is why developers tend to default to them when designing a parental protector style game.

 

[Metalix Knightmare]

Gotta question your use of Bastion there Yahtzee. Despite the name and his looks, The Kid ain't no child. Man's old enough to drink at the VERY least.

Not to mention it's not so much about the loss of innocence, most of the characters lost that LONG ago, but rather about moving forward after a mistake or trying to right it even though you probably can't.

I should mention that I haven't finished playing Bastion, so it's possible it goes in directions I have yet to experience.

Ok, you get a pass, but everyone else that was saying "Bastion isn't bleak," have you mothers actually beaten Bastion? If you have, you can click the following, but if not, don't:

Spoiler: Bastion Spoilers Within

People's loved ones are literally turned to ash and blown away in the wind in front of them.
The world was destroyed by weapons of mass destruction due to nationalism/racism.
The Kid is stuck in a Groundhog Day endless loop reliving attempting to prevent the Calamity, only to fail again and again;
(hint: New Game+ is your next run through, you didn't prevent the Calamity, again)
OR you can tell the corpses of the rest of the world, "Sorry bitches, I got mine" and head off with the handful of survivors to parts unknown. Maybe you live, maybe you don't, but what is certain is everyone else doesn't.

The game is very dark once you realize what is going on, and why. It is the literal End-of-the-World scenario.

It's got one thing going for it that keeps it from being TOO dark though. Hope. No matter how you end it, you do so with the hope that it'll be better. Yeah, there's the fear of uncertainty, but that's just another part of hope.