2003: An Edgy Year For Videogames

Well, since I was in the mood for writing about both videogames and the early-mid 2000s again, I thought that I’d take a look at one of the edgier years in the history of gaming. I am, of course, talking about 2003. Although, like any other year, there was a wide variety of games released in 2003, it definitely seems to be very representative of the “edgier” elements of the early-mid 2000s.

Whilst videogames had become more of a popular medium by 2003, they were – in the popular imagination at least – still somewhat associated with teenagers and twenty-somethings. Videogame culture at the time, from the magazines I remember reading back then, was still squarely aimed at these age groups, albeit less than during the late 1990s.

Also, although “violent videogames” controversies were more intense during the 1990s, they were still very much a thing in 2003. And, unlike modern controversies, games companies often seemed to be a lot less afraid of controversy back then. Not only did these controversies make videogames seem “rebellious”, but the extensive traditional media coverage of the time also served as free publicity too. It really was a different time in a lot of ways.

And there are at least four games which perfectly sum up the “edgy” gaming culture of 2003. Whilst I have technically played all four of these, some are games I’ve that only played small portions of many years ago, so I apologise if I write about some in more detail than others.

This article may contain SPOILERS.

First of all, let’s start with the edgiest game of the four – “Postal 2” (2003). This first-person perspective game focuses on an angry trench coat-wearing dude who has to run a series of mundane errands in a small US desert town. And, yes, the game’s story is basically just there as a pretext for the player to cause all sorts of chaos and destruction.

You can complete the errands in a normal and peaceful way…. but the game gives you lots of weapons, includes characters who try to fight you, allows you to do all sorts of tasteless/cruel things and also makes a “pacifist” run of the game deliberately slow and boring (via the use of long queues etc…).

Combined with a very cruel, crude and nihilistic sense of humour and a more immediate first-person perspective, this was a game that was pretty much designed to cause as much controversy as possible.

This is a screenshot from “Postal 2” (2003), showing one of the game’s more sophisticated and intelligent moments of satire. Not only do these “violent videogames are bad” protestors use violent rhetoric, but they also actually start shooting at the main character slightly later in the level too.  Its a brilliant piece of ironic social satire and, again, surprisingly sophisticated for this game.

And, as a marketing strategy, it really worked. The game is more well-known for the notoriety surrounding it than anything else.

Objectively speaking, it isn’t the best first-person shooter game – especially by the high standards of its time. It looks a little low-budget and the gameplay is… functional, I guess. Plus, the game was released a little over one and a half years after 9/11, and it’s difficult to tell whether some parts of the game were satirising the paranoia and/or stereotyping that was common during this part of history or whether they were just reflecting it.

Yet, despite all of this, it is a game that you probably at least heard of if you grew up around computer games during the 2000s.

Secondly, let’s take a look at a milder – yet perhaps more symbolic – game from 2003. I am, of course, talking about “Jak II: Renegade”.

For context, the first game in the series – “Jak And Daxter: The Precursor Legacy” (2001) – was a fun cartoonish 3D platform game with pretty much universal appeal. Even though I only played it for the first time during my mid-teens in about 2004 – the gameplay, location design and humour were solid enough that I still really enjoyed it even though it looked like the sort of game that was designed for younger players.

This is a screenshot from “Jak And Daxter: The Precursor Legacy” (2001), a really fun and light-hearted cartoonish 3D platform game with solid gameplay and an almost universal appeal.

However, when the game’s sequel appeared in 2003, it was noticeably edgier in almost every way.

Although I really should re-play it sometime, since I got stuck on one part of it back in the day, the drastic increase in edginess is immediately noticeable even when you just look at the game’s box art:

This is the box art for “Jak II: Renegade” (2003). Everything from the main character’s “evil grin” facial expression (and goatee beard) to the fact that the main character is brandishing a gun, and the “12+” rating, show that this was a … much… edgier sequel. And, yes, I kept the price sticker on because I miss the days when second-hand PS2 games actually had sensible prices.

From what I recall of this one, it leans relatively heavily into its “edgier” style, featuring an angry/bitter version of the main character, a large gun that the main character can use, the ability to steal vehicles, some dystopian sci-fi elements, fantasy elements focusing on “dark eco” (an evil type of magical energy) and a few mild profanities during dialogue segments. Yes, it was aimed at younger players but it perfectly symbolises the edgier attitude towards game design during 2003.

The third game from 2003 is another “notorious” one. I am, of course, talking about “Manhunt”. Although I unfortunately only got to play a small amount of the PC port of it during the mid-late 2000s, this horror/crime game was something that was impossible not to have heard of if you grew up back then. It was that notorious.

Focusing on a death row prisoner who must kill other criminals for the sadistic amusement of an evil film director, this stealth-based game has a relentlessly grim and nihilistic atmosphere. And it caused one hell of a controversy when it was released, with the media blaming the game for a murder, political debate about the game in the US and bannings in a couple of countries. Not to mention that its 2007 sequel “Manhunt 2” had its own series of prominent censorship controversies too – even actually being banned in the UK for about a year or so at one point.

Finally, we’ll end with something a bit more subtle. I am, of course, talking about the 2003 survival horror game “Silent Hill 3“. Although this game is a lot more subtle than the other three games mentioned on the list, it was – like its predecessor “Silent Hill 2” (2001) – a complex and genuinely mature game which explored all sorts of themes that popular videogames of the time often avoided.

With a complex, well-written protagonist, this chilling horror game covers all sorts of serious subject matter – including bereavement, teenage pregnancy, religious extremism, romantic obsession etc… – yet, in the slightly fantastical context of the game, it is all handled in a surprisingly understated, intelligent and… mature… way. In a lot of ways, it is perhaps closer to the more “serious” type of “edginess” that is more common in modern games than in other games from 2003.

This is a screenshot from “Silent Hill 3” (2003) – a game which, along with its predecessor, was a genuinely mature game released during a time when “mature games” usually meant “appeals to immature teenagers“. It’s a more subtle game than the others on this list and was perhaps ahead of its time, in terms of its more “serious” attitude towards storytelling.

It didn’t cause controversy when it was released or shout from the rooftops about how “edgy” it was. Instead, in a surprising rarity for the time, it just told the kind of genuinely mature character-based story that – along with “Silent Hill 2” (2001) – is the perfect rebuttal to anyone who claims that videogames “aren’t art”. It was, in its own way, a rebellion against the popular idea of the time that videogames were just immature entertainment for teenagers.

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Anyway, I hope that this was interesting 🙂

The “Edgy Innocence” Of 2000s Popular Culture – A Ramble

Well, since I was still in the mood for writing about nostalgia, my half-awake insomnia-ridden mind thought that it would be a good idea to ramble about one quality that sets the 2000s (and maybe the late 1990s/early 2010s too) apart from any other time. This is a difficult quality to define, but I ended up coming up with the contradictory term “edgy innocence” to describe it. Again, insomnia.

This was something I ended up thinking about after watching a couple of modern Youtube videos – one was a dramatic montage of old videogame footage titled “Bro wake up it’s 2004” (warning – gruesome/violent images) and the other was a video about old website designs which showed an old Yahoo Messenger screenshot (I used MSN Messenger back in the day, but it’s basically the same thing) which mentioned a band called “Hoobastank”.

For some bizarre reason, all of this made me think of a character from “Saints Row 2” (2008) called Shaundi, who is both a chilled-out hippie-style character and a member of a vicious criminal gang. This mixture between innocence and edginess.

This is a screenshot of Shaundi from “Saints Row 2” (2008). Even though I missed out on this game back in the day and only played it in 2019, this character seems to perfectly encapsulate the quality I’m talking about in this article. She’s an “edgy” character – literally a member of a violent criminal gang – yet she’s also an incredibly fun and chilled-out “hippie” character in a way that you just don’t really see these days.

The 2000s was a truly bizarre decade in some ways, since the past innocence of the 1990s collided with the grim era that began on the 11th September 2001 in a really strange way. From my memories of being a teenager back then, the news was filled with a barrage of dystopian stuff (the more things change...) and the world seemed like utter crap, and yet there was… something… about the decade that I can only really see in retrospect. This paradoxical mixture of edginess and innocence.

It’s why pre-9/11 comedy movies from the very beginning of the decade, like “Dude, Where’s My Car?” (2000) and “Jay And Silent Bob Strike Back” (2001), evoke this completely contradictory feeling of both warm nostalgia and extreme cringe-worthiness at the same time. By modern standards, these films are utterly dreadful on pretty much every imaginable level. Yet, especially if you grew up back then, there’s something to them. A strange innocence and optimism. A chilled-out and rebellious pre-9/11 goofiness that you just don’t see in the comedy genre these days.

Yes, post-9/11 comedy from the 2000s was often a lot more cynical, edgy, bitter and satirical than these older films, but there was still some traces of the old goofiness in comedy films from the time – like “Jackass: The Movie” (2002), “Ali G Indahouse” (2002), “EuroTrip” (2004) etc… This weird mixture of edginess and innocence, which was already starting to seem like something from an earlier age.

Even though a fair amount of the music in the post-9/11 age was riddled with angst – whether angry pop-punk by bands like Sum 41, shouty metalcore music or gothic nu metal from bands like Evanescence – there was often something weirdly generalised and generic about all of this angst. It was often more about the emotion of angst itself, than angst about any one specific thing.

Although I’ve unfortunately only listened to a small amount of hip-hop from the time, the 2000s also appears to be when the genre was often – but not always – less about thoughtful social commentary (such as some of 2Pac’s songs from the 1990s) and more about affluence, designer goods etc…. It’s fun to listen to, but its probably less rebellious than some stuff from the 1980s/1990s was.

Popular music back then was filled with “rebellious” genres like pop-punk, nu metal, emo, metalcore, hip-hop, indie rock etc… and yet a fair amount of this “edgy” 2000s music wasn’t really about anything that edgy. There were obviously exceptions (eg: Quite a few songs by System Of A Down, “American Idiot” by Green Day etc...), but most of it still carried traces of the innocence of the 1990s. It was more about expressing “edgy” emotions (eg: angst, boasting, rebellion, anger, despair etc..) than actually saying anything genuinely edgy. The impression of edginess

Videogames at the time often had a bit of an “edge” to them too. Whether it was the theatrical criminality of the PS2-era “Grand Theft Auto” games, the “edgy for the sake of edgy” games like “Postal 2” (2003), the sarcastic dialogue in 3D platform games of the time, the numerous survival horror videogames, the many first-person shooter games that didn’t focus on realistic military characters etc… Games from this era are famed for their edginess. Whether you look back on this fondly as a “golden age of ‘real’ games” or cringe a bit about it or both, there’s no denying that games in the 2000s tried to be as edgy as possible.

Yet, objectively, they’re often less edgy than modern games. Yes, they might have more innuendos and/or cartoonish gruesomeness, but many of them seem pretty tame and weirdly… innocent… compared to the grimmer and more “serious” games that were released during the 2010s. Not to mention that game censorship, like actual old-school “It must pass a formal ratings board before sale” censorship, was also way stricter back in the 2000s too.

This weird mixture between edginess and innocence really does seem to define things made in the 2000s. The free-spirited rebellious hedonism of the 1990s trying to find its way in the fearful post-9/11 landscape of most of the 2000s. And it would be easy to say that all manner of things “killed” it – smartphones, modern social media, the 2008 financial crash etc… – and, to some extent, they probably did.

Still, the main underlying reason why this fascinating quality seems to have gone away is because the modern age is just more… earnest… than it used to be. Whether it is political polarisation on the internet, a culture of “This topic MUST be taken ultra-seriously at ALL times and in ALL contexts!“, the greater variety of grimly depressing things in the news etc… It can all be boiled down to just one thing. Earnestness.

Popular culture during the 2000s responded to the woes of the age with irreverence, cynicism, generalised angst, hedonism, escapism, rebellion and edginess. The modern world is, in the words of a great playwright, instead all about “The importance of being earnest”.

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Anyway, I hope that this was interesting 🙂

The “Edginess Paradox” In Horror Games

Well, for this article in the second season of my “Horror Videogames Series“, I thought that I’d talk about an interesting paradox which can sometimes happen with “edgier” horror games.

This article will contain SPOILERS for “Amnesia: The Dark Descent” (2010), “Deadlight: Director’s Cut” (2016), “Downfall Redux” (2016) and “Lorelai” (2019).

This was something I ended up thinking about after I started playing a horror platform game called “Deadlight: Director’s Cut” (2016) which takes place in an alternate history version of mid-1980s America that has fallen victim to a zombie apocalypse. It’s a reasonably solid “realistic”-style 2D platform game, with really compelling gameplay that fits really well into the sweet spot between being challenging and forgiving.

However, when it comes to the story, the game tries to be as “serious”, “moody” and “grim” as possible. Yet, from the opening cinematic onwards, I found myself laughing and grinning ridiculously often 🙂 And I think that this is probably because the game tries a little too hard.

Everything from the fact that you play as a grizzled bearded survivalist, to the way that the game earnestly insists on not calling the zombies “zombies”, to the cliched ultra-melodramatic “I had to shoot this character…. or they would have turned into a zombie!” introduction, to the obligatory post-apocalyptic gangs and nefarious military schemes early in the game etc… Just made me laugh warmly. This isn’t a criticism, by the way. I was in a bit of a bad mood before I started playing it, and it was just the game I needed to play to cheer me up.

And this is hardly the only horror game to evoke this sort of reaction in me. “Downfall Redux” (2016) is an edgy horror adventure game that literally had me grinning and laughing ridiculously often. Yes, it certainly includes some deliberately humourous moments, but even many of the more “shocking” moments evoked laughter rather than fright, because of the sheer ridiculous intensity, frequency and over-the-top “edginess” of them. Again, this certainly wasn’t a bad thing. I had a lot of fun with the game.

So, what is going on here?

A lot of this is to do with the pacing of a game. I mean, there are “edgy” horror games out there that are genuinely disturbing and terrifying – such as “Amnesia: The Dark Descent” (2010), “The Cat Lady” (2012) and “Outlast” (2013). Don’t expect to laugh or smile very often when playing these games!

Yet, the main reason why these games are so disturbing is because of their pacing and style. All of them take their time to gradually build in intensity, with “Amnesia: The Dark Descent” (2010) probably being the best example of this. The first hour or so of the game is only mildly-moderately frightening and will probably seem like an enjoyably corny “Dracula movie” type thing. But, by the mid-late parts of the game, it becomes a genuinely ultra-disturbing cosmic horror story about the depths of human evil. And this works so well because of all of the build-up, the drawn-out way that the story gradually becomes more and more horrifying.

On the other hand, “Deadlight: Director’s Cut” (2016) literally begins the game’s story in what would typically be the mid-late parts of a zombie movie. There’s little in the way of suspense and build-up, just sudden melodrama. And, well, I couldn’t help but be amused by it. All of the earnest drama and grim cynicism just appears from nowhere, without the chance to get to know the characters first or see the build-up to this. It almost seems more like the set-up for a dark comedy sketch or something like that. Because the player hasn’t had the chance to get invested in the story, everything just seems hilariously melodramatic.

And, yes, this build-up is really important. Another example of this sort of thing done well can be found in “Lorelai” (2019). The opening hour or so of this game is one of the bleakest, grimmest and most shocking things that I’ve seen in a videogame.

Yet, the game still takes a bit of time to build things up. A conversation spirals into a bitter argument. We get a chance to learn a little bit about the main character. The game’s villain shows up fairly early, but doesn’t do anything too bad until quite a few minutes later. There is a constant subtle mood of depressing misery, which gradually builds to a hopelessly bleak climax.

All of the ultra-edgy horror of the game’s first hour or so works as well as it does because the game takes a bit of time and doesn’t launch into everything at full intensity from the very first second. We get a bit of time to get invested in the characters and story before things take a seriously horrific turn.

In addition to this, the best edgy games will often try to avoid de-sensitising the player by carefully choosing what to show and/or when to “shock” the player. Going back to “Amnesia: The Dark Descent” (2010) again, not only are some of the most shocking elements of the game mostly left to the player’s imagination, but gruesome or disturbing imagery also only really appears at well-defined times – with enough “recovery time” between them for each moment to maintain a lot of its shock value.

On the other hand, remember how I mentioned “Downfall Redux” (2016) earlier? On paper, this is a ridiculously edgy and ultra-gruesome game, filled with numerous shocking moments. However, because so many of them happen within a relatively short space of time (the whole game is only about four of five hours long), they quickly lose their shock value and often become something closer to unintentional dark comedy than horror.

And this is perhaps the main paradox with “edgy” horror games. If a horror game tries to “turn it up to eleven” from the very first moment or bombard the player with too much “shocking” stuff too quickly, then it – paradoxically – becomes a lot less frightening. Ironically, the very best “edgy” horror games actually have to know when to hold back and when to take their time.

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Anyway, I hope that this was interesting 🙂

Why Are Modern Remakes “Edgier”? – A Ramble

Well, I thought that I’d talk about modern remakes today. I ended up thinking about this after re-watching the rather enjoyable 2010 film remake of the classic TV show “The A-Team”. One of the interesting things about this remake is that, whilst it keeps a lot of the goofy humour, character dynamics etc… the original TV series, it’s noticeably “edgier” in almost every way.

The fight scenes are a bit grittier – with the characters deliberately not missing whilst shooting at the bad guys, the humour is mildly more “edgy” etc… And this made me think about “edginess” and remakes, since it’s an absolutely fascinating subject.

A lot of this is down to censorship. For example, the cliched “shoot to miss” thing in the original A-Team TV show was probably there to give the impression of fast-paced gun-fights whilst also staying within the stricter censorship (and silly moral panics about media violence) of 1980s early evening television.

Ditto with the excellent 2000s TV remake of “Battlestar Galactica” – which is definitely a lot more “edgier” in mood and atmosphere than the more “feel good” style of the one episode of the original series that I’ve seen. Interestingly though, the modern remake of “Battlestar Galactic” actually re-uses a trick that the original TV series used to get around the censors (eg: using made-up words like “frak” instead of traditional expletives).

This sort of thing can also work in reverse too – mostly due to the popularity of the MPAA “PG-13” rating amongst Hollywood studios. Although this means that there can sometimes be watered-down remakes or sequels of things that work best when aimed at older audiences (eg: classic Paul Verhoeven sci-fi films, classic action movie series etc…), it can also mean that remakes of more “innocent” or “feel-good” classics can be made a bit more “edgy” in order to get this lucrative rating.

The 2010 “A-Team” film is a good example of this, with many elements of the film giving the illusion of grittiness whilst actually being relatively puritanical. Whether it is characters deliberately leaving various expletives unfinished, or the fact that the more “brutal” fight sequences are almost always eerily bloodless, or just the slightly more heavy focus on the militaristic elements of the series – this is a film that has been designed to look like a serious “mature” action movie, whilst still having a low enough rating for studios to sell tickets to younger teenagers (who may possibly… maybe… have seen repeats or DVDs of the original series).

So, yes, one of the main reasons why modern remakes can be “edgier” is to do with censorship.

Another major reason is simply context. In short, the world is a bit less of an “innocent” place in some ways than it was when older TV shows, movies etc… were made. A great example of this is the 2000s remake of “Battlestar Galactica”, which was released in the years after 9/11. The gritty visual style and tone of this series was part of a general trend of post-9/11 gloominess in US film and television at the time, but the real-world context also means that the series can include a number of topical elements such as Cylon-based scenes that evoke the fear of sudden terrorist attacks and a story arc that is an allegory for the invasion of Iraq. Since science fiction is about the present day, and the “present day” of the time was a bit more nervous and grim, the series is a bit more “edgy”.

Likewise, there are also artistic and creative reasons for this change too. These days, “feel good” media is less prestigious and popular than “serious drama”. And I can sort of understand some of the reasons behind this, mostly because “serious drama” – depressing as it can often be – usually requires things like more complex characterisation, more complex storytelling and other things that allow for a bit more creative freedom and substantial storytelling.

On the other hand, “feel good” storytelling used to be more popular in the past. The classic example of this is how, in 1982, the family-friendly film “ET” did much better at the box office than the atmospheric, complex, intelligent and melancholy sci-fi noir masterpiece “Blade Runner”. Thankfully the latter has been rightly recognised as a classic in the years since, but it’s initial sales and reception do hint at the greater popularity of “feel good” storytelling in the 1980s. And, yes, the *groan* modern superhero movie trend might also be a mildly “grittier” extension of this trend.

So, yes, context and/or censorship will usually explain why a modern remake of an older film or TV show may be a bit “edgier” than the original.

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Anyway, I hope that this was interesting 🙂

Why Are Novels “Edgier” Than Film Or TV?

Well, I thought that I’d talk about one of the things that I’ve noticed again after I got back into reading regularly a year or two ago – novels are often at least slightly “edgier” than equivalent pieces of film or television usually are. Of course, back when I was a teenager, this was quite literally the coolest thing in the world. And, although it was a little bit of a shock when I got back into reading regularly again, it is still one of the most interesting elements of the medium.

So, I thought that I’d look at some of the reasons why novels can be more shocking, more salacious, much grittier and just generally “edgier” than pretty much every other storytelling medium out there.

1) History: Although many countries have their own different version of this history, I’ll focus on the British one. I am, of course, talking about the Lady Chatterley Trial in 1960. This trial, revolving around the reprinting of D. H. Lawrence’s “Lady Chatterley’s Lover“, was a pivotal test of a newly-introduced artistic merit exemption in the literary censorship laws of the time. The after-effects of this trial were that novels are literally the only storytelling medium that is exempt from any kind of official censorship 🙂

About two and a half decades later, the “video nasties” moral panic of the mid-1980s led to much stricter home video censorship in the UK. This, combined with traditional film censorship in cinemas, gave writers a giant advantage over the competition when it came to giving audiences the “edgy” content that was popular at the time.

Plus, although there are still sporadic literary controversies these days, books often seem to be exempt from major moral panics thanks to the fact that they are no longer the popular entertainment medium they once were. People are more interested in streaming, smartphones, politics, social media and videogames than reading these days. One good side-effect of this is that it lends novels a refreshing degree of relative privacy, where writers have a little bit more creative freedom because they don’t have to worry so much about the reactions of a mass audience.

2) Non-visual storytelling: Books take a lot more effort to enjoy than many other storytelling mediums do. They require readers to quite literally translate words into pictures. Reading a book is an active activity that requires your full attention, unlike sitting in front of a screen and watching something. It is something where you, the reader, have to co-create the experience that the author has planned out for you. Unlike a film playing in an empty room, a book cannot “work” without a reader.

What all of this means is that the reader has more control over their experience of reading a novel than the viewer of a film (or even the player of a videogame) does. If you read something that shocks or repulses you, then you can just imagine it in less detail, skim those parts of the novel or stop reading. As such, novels have a built in psychological safety mechanism that visual mediums don’t really have. Likewise, because reading fiction is an introspective activity that requires both thought and empathy, the audience is more likely to know themselves and to be better prepared to deal with anything they encounter on the page.

For example, the “edgy” late 1990s horror novel I’m reading at the moment (“Warhol’s Prophecy” by Shaun Hutson) contains at least one especially horrifying “gross out” chapter that could probably never be faithfully adapted to film without major censorship or controversy. Yet, when I read the chapter and recoiled in horror, I was not only able to imagine some parts of it in less detail but – thanks to lots of reading and introspection over the years- also had the level of self-awareness to think: “It’s a horror novel. I’m supposed to be horrified by it. Being horrified is a good thing in this context. It would be a lot more disturbing if I wasn’t horrified.”

Plus, because novels are a non-visual medium, they are much more clearly in the realm of the imagination. They are very blantantly something that someone made up. Yes, all readers temporarily mistake printed symbols for reality whenever they pick up a novel, but there is still a very clear separation between the page and reality. Words are not pictures.

3) Individuality: Film, music, videogames and television are usually collaborative mediums. They require a team of creative people and, because this costs money, they often have to aim for the largest possible audience. Likewise, because they are a team effort, no one individual person’s view is paramount. These things are the product of meetings, discussions and stuff like that. And, whilst this can result in great things, it also means that these things don’t have the level of individuality that books do.

This individuality is important for fiction because it is what sets novels apart from other mediums. We quite literally get to look inside someone else’s imagination, to see their thoughts and their perspective on the world. And, although popular culture might be becoming increasingly standardised these days, anyone with the imagination to write a novel is probably still going to be someone who thinks for themselves.

And, in an increasingly standardised world, individuality is – by its very nature – “edgy” and “rebellious”. Including things like nuance, ambiguity, complex thoughts and other stuff that is often absent from popular media is a rebellious act in it’s own right. Thinking for yourself and trying to see things from different perspectives (inherent parts of both reading and writing fiction) are deeply subversive acts.

So, novels are inherently “edgy” because they are the work of one author, rather than a crowd of people.

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Anyway, I hope that this was interesting 🙂