I think we’re moving into a conflation of Dark Subject Matter and a particular type of game/work that has emerged, that aren’t necessarily the same thing.
I guess I’d still point to my review of I’m Fine, and my talking about it, as me articulating the issue about as best I could (see topic Extremely Sad And Personal Games - Extremely personal and sad games - #11 by severedhand ).
These are all IF. How gamey are they? Some are, some aren’t. In calling them games (which we’ve all been doing throughout this topic) it’s hard to unload yourself from certain gamey expectations. If I find that, like in the case of I’m Fine, I’d find it pointless to review it as a game, then I’m unlikely to want to play it. I expect this is the kind of experience posters are referring to when they talk about a lot of dour games. There are more games with this particular nature appearing in IFComp. IF the question is, what can I do with unmediated nihilism, or someone else’s largely unmediated pain, I can’t review it. I’ve tried enough times. I’m not saying all such games are out at that position, because they’re not, but it is a spectrum.
One of those obvious disclaimers - I don’t think anybody should be writing anything or in any way they don’t want to write. It sounds too stupid to say it! But we all have to accept that whatever we do won’t be for everyone, whatever our turf. Overtly or unleaveningly depressing material is inherently a stronger bounce-off than most other kinds, probably for the positive reasons of looking after one’s own mental wellbeing. That’s human nature.
Au contraire, if you write ‘that kind of game’, and want to call it a game, you can probably view it as progress that nobody in this topic ever referred to it as anything else than a game. That would not have been the case a few years back.
-Wade