Stakes

After a stray piece of inspiration hit me, I decided to talk about stakes this time.

Steaks? Yay!

Nope, not these. I'm glad I can make random Asian...ish food without burning off my taste buds.Now, stakes can mean two things. There's A) the things you impale vampires with and B) the things that are at stake. I'm talking about B, unless it's in the context of vampires, where the presence of A can easily lead to B. The stakes are, in a nutshell, what matters in a story.

Why should I care?

You should care about stakes because they are what make you care about the story. And by story, in the context of this post, I mean anything that's a plot. I'm talking books, comics, games, movies... all that has a story, and that story has to have stakes.

Stake Facts

Stakes are, first and foremost, things that matter. They are where excrements go down or hit the fan. They are the reason why you stick to the story. But you can't just throw something at your audience, tell them that that's your stakes and expect them to actually be invested. There a few big things that make your stakes interesting.

It's personal.
That's, in my opinion, the most important thing. Your story's stakes should have a connection to the protagonist. Before you point me to any of these rescue the world/country/universe stories and tell me how they work despite the goal being unpersonal or how these stakes are personal because the protagonist lives in the world/country/universe... stop. That's not how it works. Now, think of any recent catastrophe. Sure, it sucks. You might find what happened to be abhorrent, sad and even terrifying. But still, it's something that happened somewhere. Now what if, say, your best friend/significant other was involved in said catastrophe. Suddenly, you care for it on a whole new level. Because it just got personal.
I have a great example here, and that's Batman. Gotham is a craphole. But if you asked little Bruce Wayne about it, he'd say that his parents are rich and can afford the security to live there. Then his parents were killed by a random goon. That's when Gotham's criminals became a personal issue to him and he became Batman. Even though his motivation, and ultimately the thing at stake, is safety in Gotham, he has a personal connection to it.

Who cares?
Now we have personal stakes, but why should I care about Bruce Wayne's problems if I don't care about Bruce Wayne? That's the second important thing. The audience needs to care about the character who's got things at stake. I know I might just be abusing this word horribly, but I'm going to call this character the stakeholder. If you want the audience to be invested in your stakes and, thus, your story, you need to make them be invested in your stakeholder. Writing compelling characters is, however, not the topic of this post.
Here's the part where I'll pull the second comic book character out of my hat. Tony Stark, also known as Iron Man. His backstory has definitely got the personal stakes down. The reason I'm listing it here instead of up there with Batman is that Tony Stark was designed to be a bit of a douchebag. Look at this fantastically awesome review by Linkara *cough* for more information. He may be a rich douchebag, but we still care for him, and we care for his story and what's at stake for him.

Stake Special: Interactive Stories

Interactive stories, aka game plots, act a bit differently in the game of stakes. The reason is just that: They're interactive. Let's assume you care about the stakeholder and their stakes. In a non-interactive story you now follow them as they fight for their stakes. In an interactive story, you are them as they fight for their stakes. That means that there's one more thing the audience needs to care for, and that's the stakeholder's environment. Why would you want to save the world if you, the player, don't care for it? Sure, Bruce Wayne cared about his parents, but why should you? They're not yours. Or, a better example, the often-used doomed hometown. You spend what, five minutes in that town, then go out to do stuff and when you return, everybody's dead. Sad music plays, rain falls, the stakeholder breaks down in the dirt and bawls their eyes out. You, the player, just sit there and wonder why the hell you should care about these people you didn't know. And that's the point. As soon as the story becomes interactive, the audience becomes a stakeholder. This, in turn, leads to the aforementioned most important thing: The stakes need to be personal to the stakeholder. Making these stakes personal to the audience is another topic, which I won't talk about here, because this post is going to be long enough as it is.

And now?

Stakes need to be important, yet personal. Designing them is easier than making them believable, and getting high stakes that aren't too detached from the characters takes work. On the other hand, low stakes might not be stakes at all. If your romance plot is happy and perfect, then maybe it shouldn't be the focus, but rather a background thing that runs along.

Inspirational credits go to the Query Shark. Chew away, Ms. Shark. Chew away.

In-Game Tutorials

After a while, just rambling about things I have an opinion got boring. I'll now also ramble about things with the intent to teach you something! ...hey, where did all of you go?

Why Tutorials?

There's so many things you can get wrong when you put tutorials into your game. Actually, this kind of segues into my last post. I covered the Kitchen Sink Design aspect of that game pretty well, but there were other things it did wrong. One of them was the tutorials. Oh god, the tutorials. They were everywhere, mandatory and didn't teach me anything I wouldn't have been able to figure out on my own.

Tutorial Fallacies

This is going to be another post where I list things. These things might sound incredibly matter-of-factually to you, but they're way too present in games.

Press WASD to walk
Exactly what it says on the tin. For some reason, games decide to explain to you how the most basic controls work. Okay, the worst offenders here are RPG Maker games. Come on. We all know that we use space to confirm, Esc to cancel and the arrow keys to walk. "But what about the people who're not familiar with the engine?" If you wanted to ask this now, I'm glaring at you through the internet. Hard. People aren't stupid. If you have a game with keyboard controls, what are you going to try first? Either WASD or the arrow keys. Even Esc/Space (or Enter) are kind of self-explaining, since all over the operating system itself, these are used to confirm or cancel things. So, again, these are the things that are going to come to mind first, and even if not, the player can try around and find the action key on their own. People aren't stupid!

It's dangerous to go alone. Take this tutorial!
This one is more of a placement fallacy than a content fallacy. Sure, you might have some ultra-awesome game mechanics to show to the player. So you hand them out at the beginning. All of them. And expect the player to get all that and remember it until it's actually brought up. Spoiler: Most won't, because at the moment of the tutorial, that information is completely irrelevant. The human brain is wired to ignore things that are irrelevant and not necessary for survival (of the player character). Bring the information up when it's necessary and when the element is actually first used.

Remember the time I pushed that crate? It was totally awesome!
So you have your gameplay element the player won't easily grasp without a tutorial, you introduce it at the time it's first used, and then this happens:

Bob and George stand in front of a bunch of crates.
Bob: "Hey, look! Crates!"
George: "I can push them, you know? Because I'm strong."
Bob: "Cool! But can you pull them?"
George: "No." *sad*
Bob: "But I can, because I'm... reverse strong. Yeah!"

So our characters, in the middle of the action, paused in front of a bunch of crates to discuss their crate-pulling abilities. While in-universe tutorials are awesome, you have to be careful. If this came up as part of a cutscene, it would be okay. But if it comes up during gameplay, a piece of dialogue like this stops the game dead in its tracks so that the characters can explain their abilities. Again: People aren't stupid! If you need to explain it because you're using a key that hasn't been used before, give the player a blurb that says tells them what key it is. Don't stop the gameplay for something like this.

But What Should I do Then?

The tutorial fallacies I brought up are most often removed by removing the tutorial itself. But sometimes, you may want a tutorial to explain a mechanic that might be unconventional. See the nonstandard key example. Sometimes you need to explain.

In-Universe vs. The Blurb
In general, there's two categories of tutorials. Those that are explained by the characters and those that aren't. Both have their advantages and disadvantages. One of the most important things about in-universe tutorials is that the characters know about things. So either you need to wrap the mechanics into a nice flavor or you break the fourth wall and risk having a guy with a purdy hat fall onto your head.
Fourth-Wall-Breakers I remember are, for example, the kid in Link's Awakening that told you how to save. It then proclaimed that it didn't know what saving was because it was only a kid. Also, an example that takes it further, is the toad in the beginning of Super Mario RPG that warns a goomba that Mario knows about timed hits. Even further goes Mario party, where, in one part, Bowser Jr., while explaining the rules for a game, clarifies that A is, in fact, the green button.
But for everyone of these, there's at least a ton where it's not as amusing/self-aware/generally well-done. I suggest to stay consistent with the way things are explained. You don't need an in-game explanation for every button you press. But if your character's health is literally measured in hit points,  you'd better tell me how that works, and you'd better have a good explanation.

MAKE IT STAHP!!1
Tutorials for outstanding features that really need to be explained are, for many players, only needed for the first time. Every time after that, especially if the controls and inner workings are memorable (very good thing), it's only annoying. For these kinds of tutorials, unless they're really woven into the game, as explained above, you should have an option to turn them off. A good example for that was the (sadly canceled) German RPG Maker game Velsarbor. While you started with an overpowered character that just plowed through the enemies like a warm knife through butter, the real gameplay started with two ordinary dudes. From then on, you had explanations for whenever a new gameplay element was introduced. These infoblurbs could be turned off, so those who, after the first two or so blurbs, noticed that they'd get it anyways, wouldn't be bothered by it any more. Those who needed the tutorials could keep them.

Now bring me an idiot
The best way to find out if your tutorials work well is to have them tested by different people. The important thing is that you get people of various skill levels. An experienced gamer will react differently to someone who doesn't regularly play games of the genre. I refer to tests with the latter kind of person as idiot tests. These tests are done to make sure that the most ignorant person would understand your tutorial and act on it. Also, just because it's called idiot test that doesn't mean that the tester shouldn't try playing the game. For random button-mashing, see Fuzzing.

The Bottom Line

Tutorials are not necessarily evil, but they need a lot of thought. They should be appropriate for both beginners and experienced players, and should not be annoying to either one. There's many ways to incorporate them in the game universe, but this isn't always necessary and often difficult to pull off. But the bottom line to said bottom line is:

People aren't stupid!

Encourage the players to try things out on their own and you'll find that you might not need as many tutorials as you thought you would. Now, click inside the textbox underneath this article, type in your opinion on this article and click the publish button. In case you're viewing this on the main page, click the article title first.

Kitchen Sink Design

No, I'm not talking about how to design kitchen sinks. If you're here because of that, you've got the wrong blog. I'm talking about game design and how more ideas don't make for a better game.
This is one of these posts where I'm going to use a specific example, but won't use its name. Mostly because you people out there in the world a) have never heard of it or b) recognize it from the things I say about it.

Why are you doing this again?

I'm a hobby game designer and have spent a fair amount of time thinking about what makes a game good, fun and playable. I don't want to bash the game I'll be talking about here, or its creator. I'll just use it as an example of why Kitchen Sink Design is bad.

What's Kitchen Sink Design anyways?

Ever heard of the phrase everything but the kitchen sink? Kitchen Sink Design is, surprise, when you apply this to game design.  What I'll do here is that I'll pick apart the countless features/gimmicks/details the example game has and point out if/why they could have been cut and what makes them clash with the rest.

The Game¹⁾

The Game itself is set in a dystopian future where the vast majority of the world is either dead or crawling with demons. A chosen few people get to live in the last safe havens, while the rest has to live on the outside world, fighting for their lives everyday. You get to play as one of these outside worlders, and things get really complicated and Final Fantasy like. But keep in mind, this is a dystopian future where everything is grim, gritty and crawling with demons.

Features, Features, Features

Combat

Combat is handled in a turn-based system, with up to three party members and, from what I saw so far, five enemies. Each character is limited to nine actions they can choose from, three of which are passive, such as item usage, fleeing or defending themselves. Additionally, there's a time limit for entering these commands, as shown by a bar at the bottom of the screen.
Another core part of combat is the elemental system. There's six elements (the classic four plus light and darkness), and each starts off at a certain percentage, depending on the terrain. This percentage value runs from 0 to 200 and defines how effective your skill is. Whenever you use a skill with an element, its element gets stronger, while the opposite element gets weaker. There's also items that influence these values.
Oh, and somewhere along the way each character gets a limit break (aka you get a bar that fills whenever the character's hit and lets them use the skill when it's full).
...and sometimes, when you use a very effective attack or make a critical hit, you'll get a bonus on the percentage to get loot, experience points and health/ability point regeneration.

What I don't like about it
Complexity: Read this and try to make sense of it. Sure, you will, but it isn't really intuitive.
Balancing: This runs hand in hand with complexity, because the more things you throw into a system, the harder it is to balance it properly.
Exploitability: Once you do figure it out, you realize that all you need to do is spam the current area's very effective attack and wait for the boni to stack up. That way you can easily level up in an area that's designed for a lower level. Oh, and did I mention that you can buy these bonuses at the churches?
Input: I didn't mention this before, but the input runs via the number keys. No, you can't use your numpad. The whole rest of the game is controlled via arrow keys and Esc/Space.

What were they thinking?
I kind of get what the developer was going for. Combat should be strategic and different from all that other stuff out there, hence the elemental influence and the number keys. I appreciate the idea, but this is not going to work.
I have nothing against elemental weaknesses, but the way they are implemented here is too easy to exploit. The same goes for the bonuses. I like the idea that the player is rewarded when they use a strong element, but as it is now, the player is essentially rewarded for grinding. I doubt this was intended.
Another thing that really rubs me the wrong way is the input. Sure, it's different, and it might have sounded like a good idea, but what this method of input does is rip me out of the flow because I need to reposition my hands on the keyboard. What's wrong with choosing attacks from a list, especially if that list is only nine elements long? And what's with that bar at the bottom? Stress + different method of input = mistype.
In general, this combat system gives up balancing and usability in favor of being innovative. And despite that, it feels like an ordinary turn-based combat system where I need to move my hand across the keyboard.

Quests

Throughout the game, the party takes up quests from the government, represented by guys in black cowls and red sunglasses (SYMBOLISM!!!1!1). These quests are listed in a quest log and can, upon completion, be handed in at every government post across the world. With each quest you complete, you get points that let you level up in rank and eventually buy better equipment.

What I don't like about it
These quests split up in "kill target demon" and "collect resources."
The first kind usually means that you have to go back to an area you already visited and kill something. Something that, before you took up that quest, wasn't even there, despite them saying that it was roaming the area for a while. The worst of these quests goes as far: A village has been attacked by spiders and you should go and find their nest. Said nest is a cave in the forest you had to cross in order to reach the village. I went into said cave. The only thing I found were a few webs and an item. As soon as I get the quest, there's two ginormous spiders in there. This is their nest. They should have been there before. GAH!
The resource quests aren't much better. Most of them require some kind of loot you get from the demons, which I get. But most of them also require you to get a certain weapon, or other items that can be bought at the shop a few houses away. What are they paying you for, cowl guys? Oh, and of course you barely get enough money for the quests.
Special mention goes to one of the most requested item in the whole quest system: Crystals. The base crystals can be bought at the shop, but for most quests you have to fuse them. Because you don't get recipes, you end up wasting half of them before you find out how to make the crystals they need.

What were they thinking?
Again, I see where the developer came from. Quests are nice. Still, the variety of quests isn't particularly great. That makes the fact that you actually have to do them worse. Because if you don't do the quests, you don't get your equipment. I see that this was supposed to be another reward system, but it comes off the other way round. While it's useful that you can buy weaker versions of these items (for quests, again), you can just as well go to an earlier city. You have a quick travel world map, so where's the problem? This feature, too, feels like it's there to make the game innovative.

Leveling up

Leveling up is a bit different in this game. Instead of reaching a new level at a set point of experience points, you get nine elements to level up (the six real elements, two kinds of physical attack and defense). With a certain amount of levels in certain elements, you can unlock new skills. Additionally, every element rises stats differently.

What I don't like about it
Actually, this isn't that bad. It's still trying too hard with what it does. While you do see what level you need for skills to unlock, you don't see what these skills actually do. I get that this system is supposed to give you the chance of diversifying your characters, but there's a few problems with this.
1. Your party changes: You have a maximum amount of six characters, and you'll never know who will leave or join after the next cutscene. Good luck without your healer, or without the guy who's got the death ray that will help you kill the next enemy. Unless you overlevel massively, you can't get all the elements to a feasible level.
2. Different enemies have different weaknesses: You'd think that, in order to get through, three of your characters (mind you, six is the maximum party size) should know an AoE attack of that type. Then comes the next area and your AoE of that type is useless. So you can't really level up until you see what your next enemy is like.

What were they thinking?
Actually, the idea for this is good. Yes, this is a feature that does not clog up the system, it's just not implemented that well.

Arena

Somewhere on the second continent, there's an arena where you can fight against enemies. You earn points, and depending on how far you get, you can buy equipment you don't get anywhere else.

What I don't like about it
It's a pure gameplay element, with next to no roots in the world itself. Thing is, an arena would make sense in this world. The world sucks, and people need to be entertained. But the way the game handles this is just... ugh. This feature is well-thought out, but doesn't fit into this game.
1. The characters are on an urgent mission. There's no time to go into an arena and beat shit up when the big bad is on his way to take over the world. (No, literally.)
2. The enemies make no sense. Sure, there are the basic ones you can scoop up somewhere, but can someone please explain me how a government-controlled one of a kind mecha spider gets into that arena? Also, if you're overleveled enough, these fights are ginormous spoilers, as there are countless boss fights among them.
3. The mechanics make no sense. I'll take the mecha spider as an example. In the story, when you get to fight against it, the strategy is to destroy its legs. With each leg, it crashes onto the ground and takes damage. But in the arena, you have to fight all parts of a boss in order to defeat it. This leads to hilarious fights like a bunch of legs that do nothing, or just the body that's lying there and deathlasering you or, one of the most failsome examples: A pair of tentacles without the kraken head to support them. Not to mention the fact that the arena is filled with sand, so it's tentacles sticking out of the ground.
I have nothing against arenas in general, or this particular one (except for the enemy choice), but it doesn't fit into this game. The fact that it's playable doesn't fit into this game.

What were they thinking?
"My game needs an arena! Arenas are cool!" I'll say it again. An arena makes sense in this setting, the fact that it's playable does not.

Mini Games

At several occasions, the game switches into mini game mode. You get to collect stars and balls, which give you points, which in turn give you items.

Why I don't like it (!)
I should remind you that this is a dystopian future where the vast majority of the world is dead and the rest is crawling with demons. This is not the right place for a mini game where you collect stars and balls. One moment I'm walking through the snow, followed by ice wolves, when, suddenly, there's this rumbling sound. That comes from an avalanche. That's right behind me. Cue the timer and point-giving objects everywhere! The only thing that could ruin the mood more is this.
But hey, this is not the most inappropriate mini-game you get. There's still the Torture Resistance Mini-Game. And I am completely serious. This exists.

What were they thinking?
This time, I don't get it. These mini-games make no sense. They completely ruin any mood/immersion because they're not even trying to be in-universe. And for the Torture Resistance Mini-Game: What the hell, developer?!

The Point

Most features in this list boiled down to the rule of cool. They didn't really add anything to the game, except for mass. Most of them might also have sounded better in theory. But fact is that, just because something might sound interesting, that doesn't meant hat it will add anything solid. Having many ideas is good, but you should be able to discard some of them. Otherwise you end up with everything but the kitchen sink in your game, and that's never good.


¹⁾You just lost it.

Demo Reel

Since this blog is me writing about things that wander into my head, here's my two cents on Demo Reel. If you don't know That Guy With The Glasses (TGWTG, for short), have a look, they have lots of awesome review shows. </ad>

If you do know TGWTG and Demo Reel, read on.

OMG TEH SUX!!1!1

Full stop here. I don't hate Demo Reel. That said, I don't like it either. And what I'm doing now is kind of an experiment. This post will consist of two parts. The first part is what I write now, having only watched the first episode some time ago. That doesn't mean that I'll disregard the second one, especially since Doug realized that things weren't working out (and made a rambly video about that fact). Kudos for that, by the way.

Part one: The Thing That was

First, I'll talk about what the hell I still remember about the first Demo Reel episode, aside from that feeling of general unpleasantness. But more on that one later.
The characters: There's three four characters. Actually, it's three cardboards and Carl, who is made of awesome. He didn't do much, and most of what he does is classified anyways.
The others are Donnie, the black dude and the squeaky chick. I'm sorry, but I literally can't remember the names of these two, and it took me some time to remember Donnie's. The fact that this happens says a lot already. These characters are not memorable, but I'll try to get my details together anyways.

• Donnie's a douchebag. He thinks he's a great filmmaker, but he just sucks. My main problem with him is that he has no redeeming qualities. And no, that supposed charisma everyone keeps mentioning does not count. To those who compare him to the Nostalgia Critic: The NC wasn't a character. He was a persona. Except for what happened in the specials, his actions didn't have consequences. We didn't need to sympathize with him. Donnie, on the other hand, is supposed to be a full-fledged and fleshed out character. He needs a good side.
• Black dude, aka writer, is, as the alternate nickname says, a frustrated writer/actor. The sheer fact that he's working for Donnie for more than one episode of this is baffling and hitting my suspension of disbelief with a sledgehammer. I'm sure that working in accounting and sending scripts to random directors would be more satisfying than working for that guy.
• Squeaky chick is... oh god. Memory, don't fail me now. I remember that she was squeaky and mainly did some acting. I don't remember any behind the scenes scene with her. Or, more exactly, I don't remember her doing anything. At least black writer dude had his conflict with Donnie.
• Carl is an awesome ex-Gestapo/Stasi dude who operates the camera. He hardly did anything, but I still felt like there was something to him.

The plot:
The Dark Knight Begins Rising... yeah. There isn't really much plot in that episode. I don't know, but for a pilot episode, there should have been more plot, maybe some backstory that's not just every cast member standing in front of the camera and talking about themselves. Most of the episode is really just them making their moive with tons of green screen.

The gags:
And most of that moive, in turn, consists of gags. And here's another major problem of that episode. Demo Reel tries to parody the movies, as well as bad parodies of them. Like the Seltzer and Friedberg (Seltzerberg) approach. The problem with that is that, instead of making fun of Seltzerberg, Demo Reel ends up falling into the same traps.One of the scenes I remember is the clothing change gag, where Bruce changes into various costumes, including a Mario one. Which he takes twice. And oh my god, this scene is so drawn-out it's not even unfunny any more. It's just tedious. I don't remember much else, but that scene is representative of what doesn't work about the approach Demo Reel takes here. You can't pull that many gags out of just one movie, or even a movie series. There's only so much you can say about this Batman trilogy. And most of the gags were just meh.

Part two: The Thing That is

So I just watched the second episode. And hey, I now know that black writer guy is Tacoma and squeaky chick is Quinn. And I took notes. Note that this episode has been remade after they noticed that the first one wasn't really what they expected.

The main difference is that it's way less focused on the movie. It's barely about Wreck-It-Ralph at all. And that's good, since the movie scenes are still not really funny. Instead, we get more backstory, mostly in the form of Quinn and Tacoma trying to talk to their relatives, who turn out to not like them very much. I have to say, the actors aren't that bad, and we finally got some chemistry. But the thing that, in my opinion, lifted this episode up was the presence of Carl. The only scenes that caused me to actually laugh had Carl in them.

The rest of the humor is still... eh. Theoretically amusing. I can see what's supposed to be funny, and I appreciate the effort, but it still doesn't work out like that. And the ending scene where Donnie gives his in movie ending speech with somewhat ironic cuts to what's happening is not funny either. It's just a practice that hasn't aged all too well.

The Bottom Line

Demo Reel got better, but that doesn't mean it's good now. I feel like shifting the focus to Carl is merely a temporary solution. The acting was better than the script that was acted out and the parody is still not funny. I'm not looking at the third episode now, since I feel like the biggest change was between the first and second one.

The Below the Bottom Line

The thing that made me write this post was a discussion I had with a friend lately. We were mostly talking about what Demo Reel did wrong and, actually, some of the things I already mentioned came up. The other thing we thought about was how Demo Reel could be better.

Clearly, the main thing to fix is the parody segments. They aren't funny and fall into the same traps as the things they want to parody. The reason why is that, as we figured, the parody focuses on the wrong aspect. As I wrote above, you can't really get many good gags out of one movie (series). Our solution was to shift the whole thing to a genre parody, to turn Demo Reel into a bunch of people who want to cash in on general popular fads instead of specific movies. Now that The Hobbit came out, they could go and try to make a fantasy movie. It wouldn't need to draw its jokes from The Hobbit itself, but from the genre and its tropes. It would try to subvert them and utterly fail because Donnie was being stupid about it. Or he didn't get the genre. So many things to do there.

The second thing, which has already been improved in the second episode, was the behind the scenes part. The characters feel a bit more like characters, even if they have a long way to go. But hey, at the end of that way, Carl is waiting with a cup of coffee.

Right now, Demo Reel is in no shape to take the NC's place as the site's flagship show, but I really hope that this changes, or that there's another format that will do so.

Dark and Edgy

Okay, this is going to be difficult. First of all, the reason I'm ranting about this is that I'm on Twitter. I follow comic fans on Twitter. I see these comic fans talk about how various companies turn their beloved heroes into grim and gritty versions of themselves. And that makes me want to punch a wall, presumably while stating that I am a man (which I'm not). Also, keep your rotten tomatoes ready, because I'm gonna talk about things as I see them and may spout some BS

Dark? Edgy? What?

First, what's dark and edgy? There's not a fine line between dark and edgy and... bright and round? Dunno, but it's more of a scale of idealism versus cynicism. And I get why not everything needs to be sugar and sunshine. A well-written anti-hero in a dystopian city can be fun to read too.
But on the other hand, dark and edgy is a dangerous tool of storytelling.

The Dangers of Dark and Edgy

There's a few many misconceptions and dangers with dark and edgy settings/versions of things. Most of the times, it's what good dark and edgy writing is or isn't.
Dark and edgy is...

• ...always relative. When you darken and edgify (?) a setting, be aware of the initial brightness. I think that, for example, it's perfectly possible to write a dark and edgy My Little Pony story. The thing is that, since it's f-ing My Little Pony, it will still be lighter than, for example, dark and edgy Power Rangers. Or really, pretty much any other dark and edgy thing. It's talking ponies, ffs!
• ...not guaranteeing that it's cool. Yeah, we all love these people in black longcoats shooting each other in a city that doesn't seem to pay its electricity bills. But just because something's dark and edgy, it doesn't mean that it has that cool feeling. Badly-done dark and edgy settings are often just drab and unpleasant. They make you cringe and throw the medium of choice onto the ground in disgust. Sure, there's a market for that, too. On the other hand, cool things can also be light-hearted and funny.
• ...not necessarily realistic. To hell with you, generic first person shooters! Reality is not brown. Or gray. It's green, blue, sometimes beige or maybe hot pink. Sure, brown and gray do exist, but damn, don't overdo it with the gray. And like that, while dark and edgy exist in our world, there's also idealism. Not everything sucks. So, if you're writing dark and edgy, you might end up being worse than the world as it is. That's okay, if it benefits the story. Just... please, be aware of it.
• ...not about gore. Urgh. Also, no Al Gore joke here, sorry. I just hate it how, very often, darker and edgier settings are also bloodier. No. No no no. You can be dark and edgy without throwing blood like it's going out of style. (Which I hope it does.) Blood is like f-bombs. You're not looking more mature or more edgy just because your characters' vocabulary consists of (m)f, a, s, c and similar things. The same goes for dismembering characters. Just because Tarantino could make it look cool, that doesn't mean you can.
• ...full of clichés. That's true for original settings as well as... well, non-original ones. There's tons of pits you can fall into when writing dark and edgy. For an original setting, there's enough stock characters to fill a city with. For dark and edgy versions of existing settings, people either follow common stereotypes for the characters and environment (how often have we seen mushroom-abusing Mario now?!), or, in an attempt to defy that path, derail the setting until it's barely recognizable any more. Do I even have to say why that's bad?
• ...difficult. Hell yes. Writing an independent dark and edgy setting is hard enough. Too less and it's not convincing, too much and it's ridiculous. But darkening and edgifying (!) an existent setting is hard. Even when sticking to the aforementioned things, you can end up messing it up because you started from the wrong end.

The Obligatory Paragraph Where I tell you that I don't hate Dark and Edgy

Because that's always there. And no, I don't hate good dark and edgy. If well done, it's an interesting take on existing settings. As for original ones, Cyberpunk is mostly dystopian, and I like it. Fun fact, even Cyberpunk has undergone a certain darkening and edgifying (!!!) process. I read William Gibson's Neuromancer trilogy (it's awesome), and it wasn't nearly as dark and edgy as I would have expected. Sure, it was, but damn, that shows that even things that are already dark and edgy can become even darker and edgier.

Last but not Least

What do I want to say with this? Simple: Don't think that dark and edgy is generally more awesome/mature because it's dark and edgy. You still need to write things well, and there are things that just don't work when they're darkened and edgified (:D) beyond a certain point. And I'm sure we all have someone to death glare at right now.