Watch Dogs is where the revolution’s at.
The Witcher 3’s writing was certainly interesting and heads and shoulders above most AAA games, but it’s not mature. It’s YA at best (and at its best).
I’m not sure the Bloody Baron is very YA, but whatever, people call literally every writer ever bad.
Dostoevsky could rise from the dead and write something and people would call it “average at best” or the like.
Well on Steam the second most applied tag to 2077 is ‘Masterpiece’. This is for a game that is 9+ months away and only journalists have seen a vertical slice. The community that surrounds CDPR can be quite insufferable sometimes.
I liked the Witcher’s 3 writing a lot. I thought it was excellent. But it is YA (as is the vast majority of AAA story heavy games, some better than others). There’s nothing in it that requires having had complex experiences to understand. Nothing wrong with that, I think. It’s just what it is.
We had a thread about this that I think @Brooski started, but I can’t find it now.
People just like to say works they like have qualities they have not just to bring “credibility” to the work. I see no need for that. TW3 is not intended exclusively for adults and the marketing is clear on that. At most it has “mature” content (with quotation marks).
CDPR have a good track record so far, so I don’t hold it against people as much.
But people will die for companies that haven’t made a good game in a decade where no one that made the games they loved even works at anymore. It drives me nuts.
There was some interesting discussion about YA writing here https://www.quartertothree.com/fp/2012/03/16/mass-effect-3-ends-your-story/
Jeff Gerstman hasn’t been impressed by a video game in over 15 years. He’s the most cynical man in gaming, it’s part of why I stopped listening to the Giant Bombcast. If it isn’t an old retro game, he ain’t got time for it.
Wait so just so we are clear, everything that can be read and enjoyed by adults as well as teenagers/young people is YA now. Gotcha. Asimov wrote a lot of YA!
pfrrrblblbtrrrt. definitions.
Compared to regular game writing, witcher 3 was art, Literature with a capital L. And that’s just like my opinion man, no need to argue it.
More than anything that can be enjoyed, I would say YA is stuff intended for 14-34 year olds, inclusive of both extremes.
Contrast Twilight with older Stephen King. Both can be enjoyed by a kid (I read Stephen King starting at 10 years old -Pet Samatary was the first one, I think- and loved it), but one is intended for that age range and the other is not.
And I agree with @schurem in that TW3 was amazing writing. But if you think TW3 is not intended mainly for teenagers, I have a bridge to sell you…
Edit: You are right, though. A lot of Golden Age sci-fi would certainly be classified as YA now.
I think I disagree with your definition.
14-34 is a range that basically encompasses everyone that can read.
Young Adult is usually considered stuff like Harry Potter, Divergent, and Hunger Games.
Your definition seems like it would also include Game of Thrones, The First Law and Dune along with nearly everything written in the last century.
The key is intended for. I would say Game of Thrones is probably not intended for, nor marketed for, 14 year olds, although they will enjoy it.
Dune could fit, except the language and narrative style is somewhat complicated and could be hard to read for main younger readers.
It’s not my definition, I’m going by the TVtropes defition that I linked above:
None of that definition seems to fit The Witcher 3.
It’s aimed at teenagers and up, it’s a coming of age story (Geralt learning to be a father to Ciri), strongly features a YA character (Ciri), includes moralistic conundrums (without easy answers, but moralistic nonetheless), and it discusses societal issues ad nauseam (poor monster, nobody understands him…).
Plus, again, it’s intended mainly for teenagers and young adults, and YA fiction is defined primarily through its target audience, not through its content.
Only the protagonist being “older” (but really behaving like a 25 year old at best) does not fully fit.
Not a useful qualification.
That’s not what a coming of age story is in the slightest. Geralt struggling with how to be a good father is a type of story that has been retold many times in many cultures, but it’s not coming of age.
She is critical to the plot but barely in the game. But her being a teen doesn’t really qualify anything as YA or not. She’s also the only teen that features significantly in the game in this respect.
This is every story in the history of human civilization that isn’t weird fanfic, a slice of “learning to read” material, or back story for a pornographic work. So like 90% of them.
I don’t know what you were doing in your Witcher 3 playthrough, but my Geralt did not run around acting like a “25 year old”, whatever that may mean.
I think this is really dumb argument to be having.
I always considered YA to be the stuff like Twilight, Divergent, stuff for teenagers about teenagers.
Asimov is not YA. Sapkowski is not YA. Witcher 3 is not YA. Nier Automata is not YA. At least according to my sacred nonhumble opinion!
It’s the main one, though. It’s a publishing term, not a genre. Please find any description of Young Adult literature that does not say this is the defining criteria.
No. That’s not how this works. There’s a difference between “YA” and “All ages”, by way of example. The difference is not because “all ages” doesn’t cap the top end age (forget about where the YA cap is or should be). The difference is not hard and fast either, because that’s the nature of a lot of art. You say a lot of early Sci fi would be YA but it’s more correct to say that a lot of it is all ages, although some of it is more properly YA (c.f. Heinlein Juveniles).
The following things are aimed at “Teens and up”: Raiders of the Lost Ark, Tron, Planescape: Torment, Star Trek, Avatar: The Last Airbender, Bioshock, Batman: The Animated Series, Commando, The Witch.
The only YA thing there is Airbender, and that’s really both YA and All Ages (which stuff can be! Art easily defies rigid definitions and rules). The Witch is actually a coming of age tale (shudders), but still isn’t YA. Go figure!
Things are aimed at teens because there’s lots of them and they get money from their parents to spend. It is one qualification of being YA, but it’s not really the main one. Or I think it’s better to say “it’s not more important than the others”; they work together to define YA. And even as a work can be multiple things - Airbender and Korra both are YA and All-ages - Witcher 3 only ticks some of the YA boxes but does so in a very shallow way. The shallowest connection is “it’s aimed at teens and up”. But none of the others are stand out either. Not the way they do for e.g. The Hunger Games.