"Safe Edgy" vs "Real Edgy" Games

[nero]

it's hard to recall a greater tragedy in the landscape of gaming (and media in general) than the loss of edge. when doom came out, it was seen as satanic and controversial, and, in a way, could have been considered a rebellion against pop culture. i think what happened over the past decade or so was a loss of counter culture that came as a consequence of the targeted erosion of culture itself, where words, phrases, styles, music, art, have all been censored or commercialized to the point of losing meaning. if nothing really means anything anymore, then what is there to counter and rebel against? "different" isn't really different since you've already seen and heard everything, and what passes as acceptable is dictated by what brands label as "friendly" (don't even get me started on the term "brand friendly" - fuck being a FRIEND to a FUCKING BRAND). "punk" has been watered down to only what these brands consider cool - piercings, mohawks and guitars. as long as it's only wacky illustrations and/or cosplay, since it was only cool in a historical context because it didn't influence current day shares. seriously, looking up punk art and being shown someones vision of spiderman larping as an anti establishment rebel is so ironic it hurts.

i was looking at some random top down rpg indie and started thinking about how i basically know with 10000000000000000000000000000% certainty that some things definitely WILL NOT happen in that game from the 5 seconds of footage i saw of it (AND i pretty much know what will happen, in terms of the vibe, not necessarily exact story beats). isn't that a bit strange when you think about it? how we approach modern day art with preconceived notions of what boundaries it will reside within. notions that are basically correct 100% of the time, since we've been brainwashed into developing laser accurate inner censors. when's the last time a game has genuinely surprised you by stepping outside of the realm of conformity? for most of human history until just a decade or two ago art was a term for something made to express every obscure and embarrassing bit of the human experience, no matter how controversial. it was made to provoke, document, and inspire. but now that we are so advanced as a species we've evolved past that and we make art to fit an unspecified list of guidelines we all somehow possess innate knowledge of, set by various faceless conglomerates, from hosting sites like steam, to marketing platforms like twitch, youtube and tiktok. and we all do our best to stay their "friends".

from this "great dillution" emerged perhaps the most retarded middle-ground solution that tries to both appease brands, but also point an epic middle finger to someone (behind their back), not for the sake of providing a different perspective but simply for emulating the aesthetic of rebellion. what is the most "out there" thing that a game is willing to say? FUCK grapists! if they all committed sewer slide i wouldnt even be mad!

safe edgy. i honestly think this is an overall worse solution than just being safe. it's present in damn near every game nowadays. i was trying to think of the last time i remembered seeing real edge in games and the most recent examples i could think of were the airport shooting from MW2, The Punisher game, and Hatred. neither of which is my kind of edgy, they're just the only examples that come to mind and they're all a decade+ old. i also remembered Fear & Hunger, which I think is a very good example of a recent game that did edge right (not like my vision of "right" even matters). where are all the dooms, duke nukems, quakes? plenty of games take on the aesthetic, but lack the bite due to a change in the cultural landscape. doom did something that was controversial back then, so obviously copying the homework 30 years later leaves you with just empty aesthetics. what are some games that pull off controversial now?

 

[sneaky dice]

The last really edgy game I recall is Hatred:

It's so comically edgy I don't even know if it counts.

Edit: I just saw that you mentioned hatred but I wanted to post the trailer anyway because it makes me laugh.

 

[Ross_Я]

when's the last time a game has genuinely surprised you by stepping outside of the realm of conformity?

I'm more concerned by the fact that this same question can be applied to all other qualities beyond "edgy". Like, screw the edge, but the games just fail to be creative anymore. As a matter of fact, most of the art nowadays just really fails to, like, be creative.
And I'm not saying that you gotta create something new. There was a point in the music when actual, real DJs were somewhat popular. You know what a real DJ does? He takes other people's tracks and use pieces of them to create his own tracks. In the hands of an artist, that works great. Just listen, for just one example, to DJ Shadow's Organ Donor and compare it to the original Tears by Giorgio Moroder.
No, you do not need to create something new to be creative. At least not from, like, ground zero. You just have to, well, be creative. If we will take "provoke, document, and inspire", I guess creative is the last part - inspire. And the most important part in my eyes. And there's nothing out there that will inspire. The ocassional inspirational, creative artworks in 2025 are as rare as water in the desert.
I also like to say that art today simply has no purpose. To actually quote a video game, "art without a purpose is as blind and meaningless as commericals". Luckily for me though, I tend to stick to old games and old art in general, so I still get plenty of the right vibes. Really, I think people should just perform an exodus. After all, there are decades of old art out there, more than enough to last a man through a lifetime. Watch it, play it, read it, save it, preserve it, spread it.

 

[Hobo8240]

Ethnic Cleansing (video game) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Is there any game that tops this?

 

[nakanaka]

You don't get dooms or quakes or duke nukems these days because people don't know how to be sincere anymore, are terrified of sincerity even as they lament its absence, and are actively trying to smother it to death just in case someone might get genuine thoughts from it (AKA wrongthink) OR some imaginary person they don't like might enjoy it. Think about it. DOOM exists because a bunch of nerdy Gen X guys wanted to put all their heavy metal DnD passions into something that hadn't been done before. Now it's 30 years later and everything has been done before. No one is making DOOM, but there's a million different creepy skinwalkers shambling around all claiming to be "like DOOM" and trve old school hardcore badass shooters, whatever that means. They vaguely gesture towards the once-meaningful ideas and concepts that DOOM pioneered, now so stricken with generation loss they might aswell be one of those inbred 2X BAPE pitbulls that look all fucked up and can't breathe. The official new DOOM games aren't much better. Eternal reduced the Doomguy to a >reddit manchild that has an epic man cave spaceship with toys and guns and a gamer PC with frag compilations. In the new one he's an epic knight guy with SWORDS and a CAPE and he has a DRAGON and ROBOTS! Eunuch gaming.

DOOM was very edgy. It came out during the "burn your kid's Pokemon cards for Jesus" days. It genuinely terrified old people while the youth just seemed to "get it". They knew inherently that this was something important and special. No one these days is skilled enough to generate this kind of cultural moment, if anything they seem to be actively avoiding it. Instead the goal seems to be to create something that "goes hard" by some middle-aged Youtuber's standards so you can get boosted by the algorithm for a week. Now we have these grotesque interchangeable "boomer shooters" where everything is filtered through ironic self-aware Norwoodian sensibilities. All edge sanded off and repackaged as TRUE BADASS action games for the cognition-challenged. You pull the cord on it's back and feel like a real patrician gamer or whatever the fuck.

Sorry for how rambly this is. I barely talk to anyone and I almost never write things. Anyway I hope at least some of this is making sense. The erosion of edge is the erosion of sincerity and raw humanity in a world where such things are actively detrimental to one's social standing and livelihood. Even if you evade all this bullshit and manage to make a truly personal and authentic work, your reward will be the vultures swooping down to tear it to shreds. If you're lucky they'll ignore you and just go for the game. If you aren't though, if your game has too many naughty parts or if you just have the wrong vibes or act like too much of a person, they'll tear you apart too. You're now getting in the way of them Consuming the Media and must pay dearly for it. We don't appreciate or understand art anymore so much as we strip mine it for useful parts. Oh man I can pretend this game's story validates my online politics brain AIDS! Oh man this character can fuel the internet's collective sexual psychosis for a week until everyone gets bored again! This japanese game is really cool except for all the GOONER stuff, thankfully this video essay I'm watching has taken 3 minutes to cry about how bad and evil it is! This old game is so liminal and dreamcore, I should make a level like this in my 80's retro anime cyberpunk goth girl psychological survival horror game, I bet Eyepatch Wolf will love it!

You asked which games pull off controversial "now". The biggest one that comes to mind at the moment is The Coffin of Andy and Leyley. A woman decided to make this edgy RPGMaker game about two serial killer emo siblings that go around summoning demons and eating people. There's some sexual tension between them. I like it a lot, I find the whole emo girl Livejournal aesthetic it has very charming, and the writing is quite fun aswell. None of this should come off as particularly shocking or novel to anyone who's spent more than 3 years on the internet and has seen the depths of nerd woman horniness. It's like a modern equivalent to Mogeko Castle or the Towelket series (also auteur woman games with edgy and crude stuff in them). Of course something like that couldn't be kept a secret for too long and so the vultures descended. People hated the game but also couldn't get enough of it. The sincerity it contained was incomprehensible to most people and so they felt threatened by it. Mentally raped Pronoun Americans cried about the evil white woman making her glorified incestuous smut without even the slightest shred of media literacy! How dare she! The idea of a woman making what she wanted without groveling before the Council of Twitter was quite upsetting indeed. She missed the memo that the primary mode of current "dark and disturbing" fiction has to be an endless struggle session over ESS AYY victims, and as a result she got doxxed by some weird imageboard zombie people. That's what happens when you're genuinely edgy. When you make something that can't be extricated from your desires and personality and then turned into Content.

 

[Ross_Я]

Sorry for how rambly this is. I barely talk to anyone and I almost never write things. Anyway I hope at least some of this is making sense.

That was pretty sick first post, actually. If only more newfags were like this.
Feeling myself kind of off-beat and sleepy, but I will try to address several points...

We don't appreciate or understand art anymore so much as we strip mine it for useful parts.

The paradox - and maybe one of the reasons why it feels off - is that you cannot really strip mine for parts either, because everything is copyrighted. Like, strip-mining is not that bad when it is actually done with the prime direction of creating a work of art in mind, not for secondary reasons of validating someone's online politics or whatever.
There was a fan-game named Spyro: Myths Awaken, but Activision came for it.
There was a non-commercial movie named Damnatus: The Enemy Within and Games Workshop came for it.
Et cetera.
Thing is, these fan works can have more genuine feelings and approaches than a lot of official works, but companies over the last decade and then some made massive steps to prevent parts of their works to be used in something genuine and meaningful. What's fun is that a lot of times these same companies usually just love getting mixed in online politics and whatnot. Just think how much games made it their point to be a part of online politics from the very start, instead of actually just trying to be a good game.
Not to mention that same companies like being vultures while hypocritically standing against anyone who tries as much as make an homage to their own work.
Anyway, I think, overall, the problem is not that useful parts are being strip mined - it's that they are used for all the wrong reasons and purposes. Like, you can take a car engine and make a cool bike around that - who would say now? But here people take car engines - and then use them as their kitchen tables or something. And all you can do is ask "Why?" again and again.

Even if you evade all this bullshit and manage to make a truly personal and authentic work, your reward will be the vultures swooping down to tear it to shreds.

That's the saddest part, actually. It's so hard to be a small dev and get past all the bullshit the world can throw at you.
There was a game named Rebel Galaxy: Outlaw. Wasn't even that edgy or anything, but serves as a nice example, I think.
So, to get some extra funding, devs made a deal for temporary Epic Store exclusives. Braindead Steam meatbots came down on the game hard.
And then the game had bad timing of the release at the time of some culture war or something - and a lot of "gamers" came whining about the fact that... the game protagonist is female. Like, really? Didn't we had those since Lara Croft?
Anyway, the main guy behind the game decided to just quit the game dev altogether and went into an area of voice acting, as far as I remember. And I think it serves as a grand example that it is darn hard out there nowadays.
Of course, there are also stories of great success like Hotline Miami and Papers, Please, but I feel like for every Hotline Miami there are about five games who didn't even made it to the stable build because of various dumb reasons. And then there's at least one Rebel Galaxy: Outlaw which made it, but was bashed down for literally nothing.

 

[abraKadabra]

The realest edgy game in all of history was undeniably Shadow the Hedgehog, because he was allowed to say D*MN and use a REAL G*N to K*LL people

 

[Digital Cheese]

Ethnic Cleansing (video game) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Is there any game that tops this?

Sex With Hitler 3D

 

[Knows He Knows Not]

In a culture where every strange thought or opinion is to be tolerated, how can there be "edge"? I'm surprised those in this thread haven't put it together, for they point out that examples like Doom were edgy "in the christian satanic panic days", but fail to put together that the edge only existed because the standards of behavior and art were first put there by Christians. Another example is the loss of swear words, in the past yes, it was shocking to say them, but once they were tolerated in normal conversation these words lost their power. No one is shocked by one's usage of "fuck", the only real thought given to that is perhaps one might think the speaker is a bit immature, or from a lower class.

This all related back to counter-culture, however as the name implies, there must be a strong culture to counter in the first place. While there may be many cultures today, they are all fractured and compartmentalized, there is no dominate mainstream culture to play contrarian to anymore.

I suppose the very last thing that still qualifies as edgy as some have noted would be National-Socialism, corporations and the rich need immigration to keep up their ponzi-schemes and infinite growth models, so they have forced racism to be the ultimate sin, as that would prevent their profit margins from growing.

Anyways, I disagree with the fundamental idea about provocation being a major part of art history, as I eluded to above: counter-culture, contrarianism, or edginess only exists because it opposes the real culture. The "modern" era of art is exactly what happens when your idea was taken seriously - the critique is exonerated above the critiqued, and so there is a deconstruction of the culture, with only squabbling vultures left and an empty theatre. You have laid a urinal out in the museum with your name written on it, congratulations.

 

[Some_porcupine]

been told since forever on agora (hence the Angry emote),
what can we do?

 

[Melmoth]

"If it's not fun, why bother?"

 

[punisheddead]

Besides obscure ragebait cases like this

Ethnic Cleansing (video game) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Is there any game that tops this?

or the moonman doom mod, I don't think there are many if any real edgy games anymore.

Most people are completely desensitized to violence and the culture edgy nerdy shut-ins that would make these types of games no longer exists. Even games that are made to be as edgy and offensive as possible like Postal 2 or Hatred have been weirdly "safe edgyfied", with their modern fans being safe uwu trans blm Emilie's you'd see on twitter (now bluesky). They find a way to "edge wash" all the edge from these games and make the Postal Dude be this wholesome uwu chungas. As for new games how are you going to make any now? Obtuse violence isn't edgy anymore you see worse on regular social media, same goes for offensive language and slurs. Same goes for sexual content. Controversial figures like Hitler now only bring out ridicule (as it should be), no one is offended by them anymore. Edgy games no longer exist and any attempt to make them automatically ends up with them being just cringe or safe edgy.

 

[Ross_Я]

As for new games how are you going to make any now? Obtuse violence isn't edgy anymore you see worse on regular social media, same goes for offensive language and slurs. Same goes for sexual content. Controversial figures like Hitler now only bring out ridicule (as it should be), no one is offended by them anymore. Edgy games no longer exist and any attempt to make them automatically ends up with them being just cringe or safe edgy.

Well, I feel like there's still a chance, but maybe because I live here, in a country where a lot of stuff still exists, like censorship of slurs in media, and so hearing something like "fuck" in a local dub of a movie is actually quite surprising.
Truth be told, it doesn't quite apply to video games, for they are still not counted as proper media by our glorious government... Either way, yeah, in my... environment it feels like it is possible yet.
It's really hard for me to say how bad it is though, without actually being in the US or at least Europe... which are the places we take as default spawn points in pretty much any conversation, right?

 

[punisheddead]

Well, I feel like there's still a chance, but maybe because I live here, in a country where a lot of stuff still exists, like censorship of slurs in media, and so hearing something like "fuck" in a local dub of a movie is actually quite surprising.
Truth be told, it doesn't quite apply to video games, for they are still not counted as proper media by our glorious government... Either way, yeah, in my... environment it feels like it is possible yet.

I'd argue that just because something is censored in mainstream media doesn't mean that it's all that edgy, I gauge it more as how regular people react to it. Sure if you go by a country by country basis you could find something offensive in every place that would offend that certain country, but I was thinking more globally. Stuff that I listed used to be edgy pretty much everywhere, games with said things used to be banned in many places, now I don't hear about many games being banned and even less about anyone caring about it. My bet is that even meme shovelware like "sex with hitler" would have a way different reaction from everyone if it was released in the early 2000s rather then today.

It's really hard for me to say how bad it is though, without actually being in the US or at least Europe... which are the places we take as default spawn points in pretty much any conversation, right?

If it makes you feel better I sparsely make my posts from the perspective of a European or westerner in general. I don't feel a particularly strong connection with that identity because ex-Yugoslav republics are seen as "European" as Russia is seen as "European", only when it's convenient.

 

[ElSpankio]

You don't get dooms or quakes or duke nukems these days because people don't know how to be sincere anymore, are terrified of sincerity even as they lament its absence, and are actively trying to smother it to death just in case someone might get genuine thoughts from it (AKA wrongthink) OR some imaginary person they don't like might enjoy it.

Instead the goal seems to be to create something that "goes hard" by some middle-aged Youtuber's standards so you can get boosted by the algorithm for a week. Now we have these grotesque interchangeable "boomer shooters" where everything is filtered through ironic self-aware Norwoodian sensibilities. All edge sanded off and repackaged as TRUE BADASS action games for the cognition-challenged. You pull the cord on it's back and feel like a real patrician gamer or whatever the fuck.

I notice this a lot whenever I play/watch something from 20+ years ago. I used to think I was just being too contrarian or judgemental, but it impossible to not notice. Older stuff has so much more confidence and straight-forward thinking than what I see today. Could something like The Mummy (1999) be made today? Probably, if someone really wanted to do it justice, but realistically? I think not. In many aspects, it's not even that unique, but it has so much machismo. It doesn't overthink anything, it doesn't wink to the audience, it just wants to do something simple and do it well.

As for videogames, I wish I could contribute and come up with some unmentioned example, "Oh, here's this awesome game with some real teeth, it'll rock your socks off!" but I can't think of anything that counts. There are some decently original/sincere ones I know, but none that are both 1. pearl-clutchingly anti-establishment and 2. not old enough to drive.

 

[Infravermelho]

I also like to say that art today simply has no purpose. To actually quote a video game, "art without a purpose is as blind and meaningless as commericals". Luckily for me though, I tend to stick to old games and old art in general, so I still get plenty of the right vibes. Really, I think people should just perform an exodus. After all, there are decades of old art out there, more than enough to last a man through a lifetime. Watch it, play it, read it, save it, preserve it, spread it.

I think that adopting an "exodus" mentality is a dangerous way of thinking. The reason most art looks the way it does today is because the algorithm™ forces artists to act as self-promoters and trend chasers, often gutting their ability to be genuine and hone their craft. Everything now has to hook the viewer in 30 seconds, be produced quickly and consistently, and appeal to a broad public to be profitable, there's not much space for nuance or innovation. If a creator takes the time and risk to create a purposeful piece, he starves.

If we choose to abandon "new" art, we let the algorithm take over, which will chew out genuine creators who don't have the same reach or resources. The real solution is to actively seek out and support new creators and allow them to get the funding they deserve.

 

[Ross_Я]

If we choose to abandon "new" art, we let the algorithm take over, which will chew out genuine creators who don't have the same reach or resources. The real solution is to actively seek out and support new creators and allow them to get the funding they deserve.

Well, I am a creator. And algorithm already pretty much took over. I also do not get any funding, so everything I say is without fear that I'll lose anything, and that probably affects my opinion. Either way, sure as hell few people out there actually search for new creators.
Though I kind of agree that you should seek out and support new creators, and that's why I wrote "I tend to" stick to old stuff, but I do not do it all the time. And yet, I'd like to underline my position in several points.
1)Sticking to old art is necessary either way, in my opinion. Do it right, and you will help to preserve and spread media of old, which should be preserved properly either way. People should watch old stuff every now and then, to remember the history and stuff.
2)Just how actively you should seek out new creators is a big question, given that the internet is full of junk. Just one source for all this junk comes from the fact that computers made an act of creation to be a very simple one, and that brought us to the fact that a lot of new creators can barely be called creators. Various people of various age with zero self-criticism just upload whatever garbage they made today, without even thinking twice about it. Personally I deleted dozens of my own creations before I came to any kind of quality I was feeling comfortable to share among even my friends, save to upload them online, and be I damned if most people don't lack this kind of... abstinence, I guess.

So, overall, I guess it is about fine lines and just how much you go between sticking to old art and discovering new things that are anyhow worthwhile. I prefer to put old art on the front lines of my preferences however, because searching for good new art in this dump is darn hard, tedious and takes too much time in my opinion. I also can't support new artists either way, since I do not have money and the world blocked me from paying either way, so searching and pirating old stuff doesn't make me feel feelings I don't want to feel. And, to top it all off, I feel like it will be more effective to let algortihm and people who support it to consume each other and rot, so let them be. It just looks like a more effective strategy in my opinion. Why? Well, because modern artist has all the chances to become just yet another fuel for the algo. Don't we all like when our favorite indy artist cheaps out?
So no. I think algorithm is a fire, and we should just let it burn for the time being.
That's my tactic, at least. I definitely do respect yours.

 

[nakanaka]

Anyway, I think, overall, the problem is not that useful parts are being strip mined - it's that they are used for all the wrong reasons and purposes. Like, you can take a car engine and make a cool bike around that - who would say now? But here people take car engines - and then use them as their kitchen tables or something. And all you can do is ask "Why?" again and again.

I understand. It's not as if old games were conceived out of thin air - there was always a lot of competition, trying to outdo or emulate other games, etc. The big difference is that back then a lot of game developers were like artist collectives, as Hideo Kojima said in a recent interview. They all had interesting lives, prior experience in other creative fields, and many passions to draw inspiration from. They were roughened smart people in a turbulent environment trying to make something real and worthwhile with brand new technology. Miyamoto would go cave exploring as a kid and wanted Zelda to reflect that feeling of mystery and adventure that's so universally felt among young boys. Merely entertaining this concept might give modern game devs a heart attack. The boos from Super Mario were based on some dev's two-faced wife who would always be nice to his face but then talk shit behind his back. Nowadays it would be very easy to catastrophize this as some kind of ominous sexist thing. Maybe this guy was actually an abusive wife beater! Where's HER side of story? Ken Sugimori created Pokemon because he liked playing with bugs as a kid. Using your passions as fuel to create something totally unique. You get it. My point is that iteration is not inherently bad, it's not some awful tragedy if some games are similar or take from each other. Nowadays it's basically impossible to describe the video game you're making without invoking another, most likely better game. People just make Zelda-likes now. Mario-inspired platformers with gay discordcore furry protagonists. Pokemon made by people who started jerking off to Pokemon at age 10. People barely have childhoods or families anymore, just endless digital purgatory. What else can you make when all you've ever known are these ancient hand-me-down stories from other people, now distorted beyond recognition by the internet and repackaged into vague "aesthetics" and video essays? This is such a large problem it could be applied to nearly everything. It's the reason remakes exist. Same with the skinwalker games I mentioned above. Something like Boku no Natsuyasumi could never be made today because the sensations and memories that gave rise to that game simply don't exist anymore, for almost anyone. If I tried making that game it would be a depressing slog where you sit in a tiny room looking at a computer all day. I imagine the same is true of most younger people. The Indie-Industrial Complex just jangles keys in front of me like I'm a retarded toddler. LOOK this game has devil may cry jump cancelling and the guilty gear roman cancel and you can PARRY and it's sapphic as FUCK check out my slowburn PSX retro unity filter analog horror game where the protagonist is a gay cartoon rabbit thing with depression and trauma. Yeah my game is kind of like if DOOM met Dark Souls and had a wicked orgy with Baroque and Silent Hill and Bloodborne. It's kind of out there. Junji Ito. Lovecraft. Other things that sound good on the youtube algorithm.

That's the saddest part, actually. It's so hard to be a small dev and get past all the bullshit the world can throw at you.
There was a game named Rebel Galaxy: Outlaw. Wasn't even that edgy or anything, but serves as a nice example, I think.
So, to get some extra funding, devs made a deal for temporary Epic Store exclusives. Braindead Steam meatbots came down on the game hard.
And then the game had bad timing of the release at the time of some culture war or something - and a lot of "gamers" came whining about the fact that... the game protagonist is female. Like, really? Didn't we had those since Lara Croft?
Anyway, the main guy behind the game decided to just quit the game dev altogether and went into an area of voice acting, as far as I remember.

Yes. I'm not familiar with the specific case you're describing but I don't think I need to be, it's all the same. Every internet thing since 2014 has been the same. The Great Retard War's casualties are mostly innocent bystanders caught in the crossfire. People get headshotted by social media and turn into high-strung anxious psychos looking to mark their territory and beat the other tribe with sticks. Waiting for any slip up to claim something as theirs and hating what they can't. Screeching at anyone who doesn't match their wavelength of mental illness. Watching 20 different beard guys on youtube who talk about how Star Wars is woke now. It's like living in an abusive household where every little thing can set your abusers off and make them hurt you.

I've found that genuinely transgressive, unique art can still come from places which are not held hostage by hall monitor Americabrain. Japan is an obvious example, nearly all games I've played this decade that push any sort of envelope or do interesting things have some from weirdo Japanese one-man devs. Black Souls 2 and The Citadel duology come to mind as games I think extremely highly of. Even games with specifically pornographic or fetishistic intentions I find carry more genuine artistic value than anything Western. The first Fear & Hunger was also like this before the vultures came. There are eroge out there that absolutely destroy 99% of western games in writing and story. A game I've been playing recently is Ultra Despair Girls, a game I feel was basically the last one to get on the lifeboat, so to speak. It is incredibly edgy, offensive, horny, but is also a full fledged AA game with a full voice cast, lots of animated cutscenes, a genuinely harrowing depiction of sexual trauma, etc. Look at the video I linked and then realize this game came out in September of 2014. This was right around the time everyone decided fun was illegal. Dead or Alive Xtreme 3 got banned from a western release, Senran Kagura got put down like a sick dog, characters were "localized" with Xer/Xem pronouns, and yet this fucking thing was approved for release with no censorship at all and even an English dub. This existed at the exact same time as the NASA shirt guy incident. I just find that extremely amusing. Can you imagine ANYTHING about this game surviving in 2025? It would be an international incident. This is what things were like 10 years ago. You could say gaming has just "grown up" but you'd be a lying bitch. Really puts into perspective how unnatural and shitty our times are. Please recall the Dragon Quest guys complaining about gender mandates. Old fat assholes on youtube and twitter like to pretend that "gaming is healing" because their new favorite chinese bitcoin miner gacha has skimpy costumes for their plastic Honey Select preset characters. I say that gaming will have truly healed only once we get more games like UDG again. The creature known as Grummz would not call UDG "based". The People of Gender would be driven to hysterics over it. I believe that's what we need. That's what I need, anyway. Uncomfortably sincere awkward pervert games made fearlessly by decently large groups of people, preferably Japanese, who are allowed to scare the hoes as much as they'd like.

 

[№56]

I think there's a big difference between stuff that's intentionally designed to be provocative and controversial, and stuff that only ends up becoming provocative and controversial because the creator's intentions and interests are at odds with the mainstream. In other words, the difference in attitude between "oh man, mom's going to FREAK" vs. "yeah I like skulls and blood, what of it?" The former gives you Hatred and the latter gives you Doom. I have a hard time seeing anything that falls into the first category as an expression of sincerity because the creator is clearly more concerned with the reaction their creation is going to get than they are in expressing themselves. If you are making something because you want to trigger the SJWs, or own the gamergators, or get banned by the FCC, or just shock or piss people off in general then you are not being sincere. You are more interested in getting a certain response out of your target of choice than you are in creating something beautiful, interesting, honest, or worthwhile. "Edginess," when done right, is just a side effect of aiming at one of those goals. There's nothing inherently desirable about it. An artist shouldn't go out of their way to place themselves on the edge of what society thinks is acceptable, they should focus on being true to themselves and their own perception of the world, and then try to make something that's good. If that happens to put them on or over "the edge," then so be it. Really, as with any other topic related to irony vs. sincerity, the less you think about it the better. Neurotic overthinking does not lead to sincere artistic expression.

 

[BlackControlBoxer]

There is so many jap only games that would be considered ultra edgy through western eyes.

For every vn that makes it through there is a 1000 that cannot make it out of some backalley video place.