I'm not gonna say a game like Paper's Please is a game that's only there to serve as representation, but as you say, you can call it an "Empathy simulator" and personally -- this is just my sensibility, not claiming anything is actually wrong -- I don't quite care for it. If it gave someone an effective experience either emotionally, intellectually or just as entertainment who am I to say that isn't valid, but yeah, basically indie games. I find in general, even whether it's social issues or gameplay the market these days is crowded with indies where there's just a sole gimmick or hook that has to sustain the entire experience, and that singular focus in a game just doesn't do it to me, and I think my point is, i don't think it being indie and the scale of an indie production is the limitation here, it's the concept and idea where I desperately crave more games to think more on the whole instead of nitpicky subjects.
For example, Dragon Age Inquisition (whoo boy here's a bad example but let's go!) is not a game about being accepted as transgender... yet this is a theme that pops up in the game as a (IMO) believable facet to the story. It didn't even feel like a main thread of the plot but it's not just throwaway either. It does explore this as a theme at some point, but that is inside a much larger experience that's about saving the world; that is about dragons fighting even wickeder dragons; is about being a ho-hum strong military/diplomatic organization; that is about love etc.
I'm definitely asking for a focus, I don't wanna give the impression that bigger equals better or that stuffing a game with disparate themes makes it better, but I'm really craving games to be somewhere more in the middle of games such as Papers Please and your average Open World game when it comes to their take on themes such as social issues and when it comes to showing gaming as a mature art form. The maturity is in the game, that's both gameplay, story and the general experience you get from a multifaceted interactive product. I'm just sayin' in my book games have found pretense, not maturity when it comes to nitpickingly addressing social issues as singular experiences or selling games based on what they offer as representation.
I understand how we got here, because games grew to be a man's world due to who started making them and how they catered inwards to that audience for the longest time, but I really feel now that we're so aware of this that and the other issue of representation and we have addressed such things as experimental indie games, I'm ready for games to seek away from all the "grounded, mature, emotional, representation" phase it's gotten through and just start thinking about imaginative experiences as an artform; as a medium again. Do what a movie, book or song CAN'T do instead of attempting to recreate life and groundedness or simulate empathy as a sole focus.
