What are you playing?

[Otohiko]

lol

Well I'll just mention some of the more 'hardcore titles'.
On the more popular side of the gradient, surely everyone's heard of the Total War series. Then there's for example grand strategy games from Paradox (from Europa Universalis to Doomsday). On the tactical side, there's things like Close Combat or Combat Mission series.
I know most of my examples are historical games, but I know there's trickier fantasy and sci-fi strategies as well, just that I don't play them.

With simulations it's a bit easier. For instance if you haven't played any of the IL-2 series (the most popular and probably most accessible), you probably aren't into combat flight sims (by far the most common simulator games).

[Fall_Child42]

Update: This very instant I am playing FF III on my awesome new DS

Main character been renamed LngCat

With Arc Just being named : MudKip

[Arigatomina]

There is a HUGE market for RTS (real time strategy) in North America for example, but I'd class most of those as fairly light titles (doesn't mean easy - just less technical).

This forum isn't the best selection to use as a standard for American gamers. Most of them are teenagers, most of them went to a bad school and learned very little, most of them will be stupid compared to graduates in the past twenty years. I think the stupider our kids get each generation, the dumber their entertainment gets. That means no complicated games because they don't want to play that.

To make some more generalizations, maybe the gamer friends you know personally like more complicated games because with them it's the smart people who can afford to waste hours and hours (and money) on games. I know where I live it's any kid who whines loudly enough to his mummy for something dumbed down enough he can actually beat it. It's not intelligence or freetime (employment), it's credit cards.

I am surprised that people who engage in the more prolonged terms of escapism rarely lean to more complex and realistic titles.

You've actually solved the mystery yourself there. Escapism doesn't usually go well with realism. It defeats the purpose. Those who engage in long term escapism are probably even more dissatisfied with real life than the rest - if they're that eager/desperate to stop thinking about the real world. They need something complicated enough to keep their attention, creative enough to be entertaining, but not necessarily realistic. I find realism in games a turn off. I want dragons and zombies and monsters and pretty cg backgrounds with colors I'll never see outside my apartment. I don't want lawyers and men behind desks and Advent Children graphics so cg'ed the colors are bland and the faces almost look real (aka ugly). I'd probably fall more into the fantasy types playing rpgs online, than the hardcore gamer escapists, though. I still think the realism is part of the problem. That, and the intelligence/education of the players themselves. Seriously, your average teenager in Indiana can't play Minesweeper because it's too hard - he's not going to play complex (and expensive?) games unless a teacher forces him to.

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That said, I'm playing Chrono Cross. A few days ago I was playing FF7. I'll probably switch off to FF8 in a few more days, or maybe Monster Rancher3 now that I can play ps2 games again. I have five games I play repeatedly, bouncing from one to the other any time I get bored with one. I like simple games because they don't require me to think. I think too much in real life. I don't want to think when I'm trying to relax and enjoy myself. If I want something to stimulate my mind, I'll pick up a book instead. ^^;

[Otohiko]

Good point with the realism. I think I used 'escapism' in a slightly different sense, but I can see what you mean with the use of games as escape-entertainment. Seeing how I'm more world-addicted rather than world-weary, I guess that explains my own partiality to realistic games - but only to a point. Realism =/= reality. If people who liked realistic war games wanted reality, they'd rather go join the army or something. Meanwhile a lot of people who like these games, myself included, are self-professed pacifists who want nothing to do with the reality portrayed in games - like any gamers, really.

One other thing I guess is the technical detail, too. People want games, not textbooks. But I kinda like that aspect, especially if it relates to reality. One reason I'm disillusioned with the more casual side of gaming is what I see as relative lack of depth. To me, all my favorite games come down to puzzle-solving - managing loads of different information and coming up with the right solution, or being burned by coming up with the wrong one. Sure, I like seeing stuff blow up, but only to a point.

[SarahtheBoring]

All the non-AMV-ing and even non-anime nerds I know play FPS games, RTS games and JRPGs as well. (Though there's a trend away from JRPGs among the non-"animu" types, which is not surprising given the typical art style and storyline.) And they all grew up playing games. Mundies didn't grow up playing games, or gave it up for good when they got to high school.

I think it's a nerd issue. Nerds play embarrassing, cartoonish, escapist games about dragons and shit because they've lost their sense of shame (or never developed one in the first place) and revel in childish hedonism; mundies play simulation games and "realistic" FPSes, because you can still play them and consider yourself "not into that nerdy stuff." [/facetious oversimplification]

But then, hey, maybe we're all idiots and only idiots play nerd games.

[Orwell]

Part of the console success in America, and mayhaps Japan as well, is indeed the escapism of a fantasy world. On a computer, especially one connected to the internet, you've got a myriad of stuff to do on it. And the controls, especially those that rely on the keyboard, require more attention than FF7 on the PS1. The total ennui of just moving your fingers allows for a more sedentry feeling, and your better able to be absorbed in completing some task in the game, even if it is repetitive and boring because so little effort is involved. And you can't just decide, oh, I'm done and go off to browse something else on the machine. There is nothing else. Sure you could put a new game in, but in the end your still immobile. Of course, not ALL console games are quite so boring, I've seen games that give the TW a run for its money. Can't remember the title of it, all I remember is, ZOMGWTF how the hell am I supposed to play with 4 buttons and a directional pad while the camera is locked in useless angle. You can't adapt the complexity of TW to something so limited in control.

In soviet land, at least my impressioni from news and stories, is that they're too drunk to need games, or their life doesn't require a escapism outlet. They're well adjusted to life, and want to have a good time. Vast oversimplization I'm sure, but that's my impression anyhow.

As far as bringing in social groupings, whether elitist or nerd, they seem like unnecessary baggage to just enjoying and being yourself. Besides, everyone 'here' is a AMVer. As far as I see it, video editing is just a form of sadomasochism. To quote another forum I frequent,

Being a [amv editor] is never having to say "I'm sorry".

[Beowulf]

I always enjoy Baldurs Gate 2. Some of the best writting in any game is in that one. The attention to detail and care that went into that game is staggering. It really is a labor of love.

Recently I've been playing civilization 4. I'm such a pussy, I can never bring myself to crush my enemies with war, but rather I'll undermine their culture and slowly but surely cause their population to rebel to my cause due to my MASSIVELY superior quality of life.

[Nessephanie]

I'm such a pussy, I can never bring myself to crush my enemies with war, but rather I'll undermine their culture and slowly but surely cause their population to rebel to my cause due to my MASSIVELY superior quality of life.

I like your style!

I would be playing FF3 if I hadn't forgotten my DS charger in Chicago >_<
and I want to be playing Tales of the Abyss...so at the moment...and always...it's GB!

[Kalium]

I think it's a nerd issue. Nerds play embarrassing, cartoonish, escapist games about dragons and shit because they've lost their sense of shame (or never developed one in the first place) and revel in childish hedonism; mundies play simulation games and "realistic" FPSes, because you can still play them and consider yourself "not into that nerdy stuff." [/facetious oversimplification]

Shame is one of those social constructs that goes hand-in-hand with conformity. Since nerds and our kin tend to place a lesser emphasis on conformity, shame and such are correspondingly eschewed, occasionally to the extent that we just stop caring about being shamed.

[Otohiko]

I don't know about the nerdy/un-nerdy and conformity/non-conformity. If anything, I'm rather inclined to think that I'm the weird one. You should see the looks on people's faces when I try to explain them some of these 'hardcore realism' games I play And then they ask me if I play any 'normal' games