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But if you look past that apparently casual bias a lot of gamers have, there's a more hardcore mentality behind that. That DS game I bought was Dragon Quest IX - one of many many JRPGs which I've tried to 100% since getting Final Fantasy VII all those years ago. The other game is Fallout New Vegas, a game that's apparently hardcore for reasons I'm not yet aware of.
And then there's FIFA 11. I'm in the process of playing 500 games with my Virtual Pro, which is worth 100 achievement points. That's hardcore enough, but I'm looking to get every single accomplishment, which means playing on the toughest difficulty. It gets even more hardcore with Football Manager. Y'see, I'm part of the LLM community, which is basically a group of people that play it in the most realistic manner possible. Start in the lowest league, with no prior knowledge, no tactics downloaded or guides read or anything, and if you get sacked, well, you get sacked. It's pretty "hardcore."
Gaming's no longer the clique that it used to be, but these terms show that those "veterans" are struggling to adapt. I am, myself, and I do struggle not to scoff at the fact my mum's 2 wii bowling games a year counts her as a gamer alongside my dozens of completed JRPGS, but she's gaming, and that is surely the definition of a gamer.
Besides, when did "fun" stop being the reason to play games, because last I checked, I was having a hell of a lot of fun playing those free iPod games, and it's those casual downloads that got me back into the more hardcore gaming I've been doing over the past few weeks."
That's odd, I picked up my copy of Soul Silver after sinking a few hours into DQIX, too!"
That's odd, I picked up my copy of Soul Silver after sinking a few hours into DQIX, too!"
I could write the very same article, except I'd be saying: "I'll be blunt, wastelands don't do much for me," and I could provide as many completely opposing points as you have, and it would simply be because I prefer high fantasy and you don't."
Also, to anyone that thinks you need to spend thousands to get a gaming rig, you're wrong. I built a fully future-proofed PC just before Christmas, that can run any game out at the moment on high settings... for £450. No excuses guys."
It does seem the video game developers are still catering for a shrinking piece of the pie (young male gamers) with the majority of their mature offerings, but it isn't a universal truth, and mature gameplay can be found in games rated at any level."
It's gotten so bad that I often deliberately lose because I still want that 100 games achievement, or (as was the case in my last win) I'm forced to keep the ball for the last 5 minutes so that they can't pause; even then, they can turn their console off or exit to dashboard, so it doesn't usually help.
It's easy enough to punish players that ruin the game for other people in this way, but these are usually a bigger audience than those that lose out. Game companies don't really want to punish them, because they lose their userbase through it. Great."