Hey Lotus --

Here's the survey.

Thanks Becky, I'm off.

This is an interesting topic, gamegrrl, and I love everyone's thoughtful and insightful theories and see the merit of them. The survey was fun too and I spent quite a bit longer than indicated on it also but enjoyed it so no problem.

I think the correlation to enjoying reading is the most important factor mentioned in genre choices. People who enjoy reading, enjoy using their minds and do so to relax, taking their time and moving at their own pace to savor or speed through some parts of the book or the game. The adventure game genre is the one most like reading. In fact, a lot of adventure games also have a lot of reading in them. There are usually journals and background info, letters and a defined story. Puzzles, another quiet and mental type of relaxation, are plentiful. RPG's share a lot of these traits, though they also have physical elements, and I think that's why they are also part of the mix that a lot of adventure gamers play.

In my opinion, the politics of the country in the era in which we grew up and part of our experience as young adults doesn't come into play in this choice. Our present politics affect our game choices to a much larger extent. At least they do in my case.

I like the thought about the way modern children grow up with all the toys and constant violent input more. It seems like a more valid theory to me and I think it plays a large part in choices of genre.

There's another factor also though that hasn't been mentioned and plays an important part of the choice of genre for a lot of us. There's a factor that we do not share with younger gamers in general. We are at the point where we may have age related physical problems like arthritis, bad backs, old injuries, etc. This makes a major difference in the games we choose to play. As a matter of fact, it's THE most important factor in my choices. There are FPS's that I would like to play but just can't. Lots of fast action and competing with a computer in reflexes and quick movement, is harder if not impossible for a lot of us, whereas that usually is not the case with those who are younger.

Off on a tangent~
Here's a personal experience that lends itself to Wysewoman's and Haze's suggestions that education (in the realm of the Humanities) has become less stringent:


While reading James Thurber's "Here Lies Miss Groby" (a short anecdote in the collection titled, "The Thurber Carnival"), I came across a term (for a figure of speech) I don't remember ever hearing nor learning in the 1950s & 60s: Metonymy.

Thurber: "There are several kinds of metonymies.. but the one that will come to mind most easily .. is Container for the Thing Contained...In a great but probably misguided attempt to keep my mind on its hinges, I would stare at the ceiling and try to think of an example of the Thing Contained for the Container."

Fantastic topic. Feel as though I've been given an essay topic (2000+ words minimum, please).

Since I have no compunctions about stealing other people's ideas, I feel you may all have combined to produce a topic for my advanced Senior classes next year. This will bear some contemplation, but if you hear loud groans from Southeast Michigan next Spring, you will all be at least partly to blame.

Well, no one under my roof knows off-hand what Metonymy means. I suppose from this I can conclude that neither generation has been sufficiently educated.

The Haze -- will keep an ear open for the howls. It could be worse -- you could assign them The Brothers Karamazov.

I'm with you, Gremlin, (and several others who've said basically the same). I don't think there is a connection of WWII and our current gaming interests, nor current politics for that matter.

According to the survey, I'm pre-boomer age (1941)
but love adventure games and don't play the shoot em up games. I loved to shoot a cap pistol as a child, but now enjoy the quiet mental work out of problem solving an adventure game. I hate it when I have to resort to a walk through in order to proceed. And yes, I love to read, much more now than I did as a child.