What's up with the extremism in indie games?

Okay, so the "indie scene" in any industry tends to be out on the edge of what's "acceptable" in the mainstream. But I'm finding something weird about the indie gaming scene… they're not just exploring alternative game mechanics, they're exploring the depravity of humankind.

Sure, this was obvious with one of the earliest indie games, My Life With Master. I knew a lot of the indie games explored themes that just weren't the kind of thing I was interested in. But listening to a few people talking about their games, I'm literally shocked to hear the kinds of things that are going on in games which, on paper, don't even hint at adult themes.

Brutal torture, rape and murder. Sure, we've all killed our share of orcs… it's an integral part of the swords-and-sorcery genre. But we didn't anal-rape the orcs with a baseball bat first. Some of these groups torture, brutal murder and violent sex, are an integral part of every game session.

I really do not get where these people are coming from. Even if these were themes I wanted to explore, I can't imagine exploring them through roleplaying.

It's funny. I've spent a large part of my life explaining to people how roleplaying games are just entertainment. And here are these "new-style" roleplayers getting their entertainment by describing their characters doing horrible, inhuman things to each other.

Why do these "rawk your game screaming over the cliff!" gamers find such enjoyment in the extremes of human cruelty? Why does it have to be ultra-extreme to be enjoyable?

(No, not all, or even a majority, of them, games or players, are like that. But some of the games are written specifically toward it, and players who enjoy these specific games seem to take that same behavior into other games.)