[RLacey]

I'm all in favour of dealing with "mature" subjects, but I don't think that every developer should start attempting to be "mature" just for the sake of it; deep thought is not the be-all and end-all of these things. It's like in other mediums: it's very easy to stray into being pretentious. There's always going to be a market for purely entertaining games, and I don't think that the presence of one must mean an absence of the other.

That and I suspect that it's very hard to sustain all the factors that go into such an attempt over the increased length of the game. I've yet to see a game in which this "maturity" is anything other than a passing nod.

Finally, I'm not convinced that the adventure game is necessarily the best placed genre to deal with some of these themes. Particularly if the aim is to design a risk-free game for the player; to me, investigating a series of grisly murders doesn't work as well when there's no risk to my character.