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The Grown-Up Video Game
Phaethon360 writes "Now, more than ever, we're seeing many Mature ratings (M+, 17+, 18) being distributed by various national media regulators. But that isn't the only indicator for a game's intended audience. It doesn't take a thousand swear words, scantily clad women or gratuitous violence to differentiate a ten-year-old's game from a twenty-year-old's. The spectrum of human emotions encompasses a wider palette than just revenge, fear, and loss, but the games that shy away from these are frequently mistaken as being for a younger audience. From the article: 'The human experience is one that is made up of great hardship, pain, loss, death, and a multitude of experiences seemingly designed to destroy a person. However, that same experience is also filled with joy, love, laughter, family and friends. ... These so-called “grown-up” games need not be relegated to the category of niche gaming. In fact, at times we find that these video games are capable of reaching mass popularity among the gaming community. It is here that we find one of our generation’s outlets for the expression of conflict.'"
You and I must be exact opposites. I play games specifically for their rich story lines. Sure, I play MW2 or Borderlands to blow some stuff up on occasion, but I enjoy rich stories like Lost Odyssey much more.
Games are 40-80 hour movies to me. With that length, each character can be explored, their background and motives explained, creating a richer involvement in the story. The reason those games are "grown-up" is because it takes a grown-up patience to play them. Most 10 year olds aren't going to have the patience to watch all the FMVs and read the dialog in a game like Final Fantasy.
I for one certainly hope that more games like Lost Odyssey are released. As the "original" video game generation gets older, I think we'll see more of these games.
Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes
The difference between adult gamers and younger gamers is partly a factor of time pressure, and partly a factor of content.
The time pressure element is obvious. Aside from a typical work schedule for an adult taking more hours then going to school, an adult has more demands on their time. A 14 year boy old does not have much beyond school and some minor chores. A 24 year man old has a work day, probably has a girlfriend, and possibly has children, in addition to some amount of chores and errands. As much as the 24 year old may want to pull a 6 hour world of warcraft marathon, he probably has to make sure he has groceries, that the bills are paid. While holding onto the girlfriend is optional, it probably takes precedence over the games. The same applies to children. On top of that, the adult potentially has the money to do other activities (ie, going out to a bar, going to a rock concert, hockey game, going skydiving) that may also take precedence over video games.
The content factor is trickier. The 14 year old and the 24 year old will have a great deal of overlap for what they like in general terms. The only difference is that as the 24 year old has less time to waste, the content must be of a generally higher quality. Having mature themes is probably going to be the difference here if it is done right. The 24 year old wont play a game just because it has "hot horny nympho sex and buckets of blood". While that is still pretty sweet, it lacks the novelty value it has for the 14 year old. Having moral shades of grey, believable characters, and solid writing will help.
But gameplay is still king. Nintendo has pretty much proven beyond all doubt that if you can deliver good gameplay (Mario kart, wii sports, Mario Galaxy), you can hit the mark pretty solidly.
END COMMUNICATION
"Life is half random, and half under our control."
and with planning you can attempt to minimize the random events that come your way.
I'm sure with proper planning anyone can avoid being born in a war-torn or impoverished nation.
"Games are 40-80 hour movies to me."
From what I've experienced so far, it looks like Heavy Rain will be way, way, way, way, way, WAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYYYY longer than that. with tens of thousands of different paths to take the story, and you can pretty much kill off every main character and keep going, is nuts.
Oh, and be warned, this is a VERY mature. Holy mother of god it can get dark.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.