Where are the young adult games?

destructoid.com:

Aside from games, reading is my other favorite pastime. I’ve gotten through quite a few books this year, with most of them falling into the young adult or children’s literature genres, and this got me thinking — why don’t we have more games like this?

For as long as I’ve played games, there seems to be a clear divide between games that are made for kids and games that are made for adults. Kids’ games are often simple, and pretty pristine in terms of subject matter, but developers do a good job of making them equally fun for adults. Good examples of this are Minecraft, Animal Crossing, and the Super Mario franchise.

Then we have, well, the majority of the gaming market, which are games made for adults and adults only. They’re usually very violent, have lots of swearing, sexually explicit content, et cetera. If you’ve been around this industry for more than like two days, you know the drill. Older kids and young adults can technically play titles like Uncharted, Horizon Zero Dawn, and God of War, but those are still about adults doing adult things that a younger audience can’t really relate to. Games like Fortnite, Grand Theft Auto, and Call of Duty are among the most popular AAA games that children are also playing — and those titles are chalked full of enough adult themes to leave any kid traumatized.

Of all the books I’ve ever read, some of my absolute favorites are series like Harry Potter, His Dark Materials, The City of Ember, and Gregor the Overlander. I have a real affinity for these sort of coming-of-age adventure stories, and unless I’m missing something big, I don’t see much of that at all in the games industry. I like stories about revenge, murder, or other intense adult things as much as the next person, but