Is there any kind of standard for screen gamma settings? I find that almost any kind of game is WAY too dark on my screen, even when I've adjusted it with the Adobe Gamma tool which comes with Photoshop (the manual brightness and contrast controls on the screen are set to max).
Often I solve the problem by cranking up the gamma or brightness within those games that allow it, but it makes me wonder how other people see the graphics I make on my computer. I remember that Under a Killing Moon had a nice little feature where it asked you to adjust your screen so a grey silhouette of Tex Murphy was just visible against a black background. That way you knew that you played it exactly like the designers intended. But unless you create something like that in your game, asking the player to adjust his screen after yours, you're pretty much screwed if the images look too dark or too bright.
I worry about this too, I'm sure my monitor is dark and it's annoying when I do some art on this pc and take it somewhere else and it looks a lot worse.. Those monitor calibration screens are good, I'll probably put one in my game. There's no other way around it that I know of.
My monitor has the same problem.
However, I got an updated Geforce driver from NVIDIA and it had driver dependant adjustments.
Now my screen is bright enough for all games.
Check you manufacturer for updated drivers and see if they have gamma adjustments within them.
One of my monitors is perfectly bright at about half settings, the other is way too dark at full settings. The moral of the story: make everything a bit brighter than you want it to look; it's better than some people not being able to see it at all.