Recently a few friends and I were discussing what we called the "Teen Phase" for fiction. The idea that over time, either a piece of fiction's creative teams, the companies who own them or its fandom will go through a phase were in an attempt to show how their work is "mature", relevant or/and serious, they will strip away any lighter or more sillier elements from the work in favour of more "mature" story-lines, much more darker tones, "edgier" character designs etc. Also often, the work or fans will actively mock the older stuff or said sillier elements in attempt to look more mature and to further distance themselves from it.
Often these phases are looked back with embarrassment or fitting into the "dork age" trope, often because these attempts at looking more mature ended up stripping away many of the elements that made the work likeable in the first place and come across as even more immature. The Dark Age of comic, especially the 90s EXTREME!!!!!!!! era is considered this for comics overall and things like The Ultimates books for the Avengers and the New52 Wonder Woman can be considered more specific examples (Don't read Ultimates 3 and Ultimatum, just don't). The Bayformers could be considered this for Transformers (along with the G2 comics), that terrible Thundercats comics for them etc.
However, while we heavily discussed comics, TV and films going through this, we didn't really discuss video games and I feel that many video games have gone through a "Teen Phase" as well. For the game creator's, Sonic I feel is a good example of this, with the mid-00s with games like Shadow the Hedgehog filling a lot of the above points. Same with Bomberman Act Zero or even with Mario with the movie (remember that Nintendo themselves approved a lot of those changes in attempt to look more mature and darker to compete with Sega's marketing at the time).
With fandoms, I personally saw this with the Tekken fandom around 2015-2016 went through this, the western fandom especially in a vein attempt to make the game series to be considered a more "serious" competitive game and/or Esport just as demanding the getting rid of all the joke characters like Kuma or the rather embarrassing backlash toward Lucky Chloe (something even Katsuhiro Harada had to mock and even incorporated into her official canon), forgetting that those silly elements is what made Tekken stand out over games like Virtua Fighter in the first place and are beloved parts of the series (plus the fact that man of those over Esports and competitive titles also have if not more silly and lighter elements).
As such, have you ever seen, heard or even experienced one of these "Teen phases" for your favourite game series? Either from the fandoms, creative teams or the companies who own them?
Often these phases are looked back with embarrassment or fitting into the "dork age" trope, often because these attempts at looking more mature ended up stripping away many of the elements that made the work likeable in the first place and come across as even more immature. The Dark Age of comic, especially the 90s EXTREME!!!!!!!! era is considered this for comics overall and things like The Ultimates books for the Avengers and the New52 Wonder Woman can be considered more specific examples (Don't read Ultimates 3 and Ultimatum, just don't). The Bayformers could be considered this for Transformers (along with the G2 comics), that terrible Thundercats comics for them etc.
However, while we heavily discussed comics, TV and films going through this, we didn't really discuss video games and I feel that many video games have gone through a "Teen Phase" as well. For the game creator's, Sonic I feel is a good example of this, with the mid-00s with games like Shadow the Hedgehog filling a lot of the above points. Same with Bomberman Act Zero or even with Mario with the movie (remember that Nintendo themselves approved a lot of those changes in attempt to look more mature and darker to compete with Sega's marketing at the time).
With fandoms, I personally saw this with the Tekken fandom around 2015-2016 went through this, the western fandom especially in a vein attempt to make the game series to be considered a more "serious" competitive game and/or Esport just as demanding the getting rid of all the joke characters like Kuma or the rather embarrassing backlash toward Lucky Chloe (something even Katsuhiro Harada had to mock and even incorporated into her official canon), forgetting that those silly elements is what made Tekken stand out over games like Virtua Fighter in the first place and are beloved parts of the series (plus the fact that man of those over Esports and competitive titles also have if not more silly and lighter elements).
As such, have you ever seen, heard or even experienced one of these "Teen phases" for your favourite game series? Either from the fandoms, creative teams or the companies who own them?
