| Why adults play PC games |
Taking my illustration, we can see books & shows cater to a wide group of subjects, interests, styles & age groups. They cater to different levels. Even the concept of construction goes from Lego block building to scale kit modelling to architecture. The same goes for games. They go different directions. They go different levels. They go different depths. Some (especially those of arcade & console origin) will appeal more to kids, some appeal more to adults (& I'm not talking about pornographic here). There so many games that require the functionality of an adult brain to fully appreciate - try explaining to a kid that too high an angle-of-attack (AoA) of an airplane will result in disrupted airflow to its wings, which the higher drag will lead to slower speed & thus less lift for the plane, and eventually a stall, and possibly a spin. Hey, the kid's already asleep even before I was done typing!
Case example - side scroller fighters. Remember those days where you took your hero and beat up the baddies to save the princess or city/planet from some evil boss? That sure bored you by the time you hit puberty didn't it? Well, during my time as a teenager, out came Street Fighter 2 & its series of sequels & clones. Wow! What a game. A game which required you to execute certain stick movements & button presses to achieve some special attack. Not as simple as pressing a number of buttons together, or simply tapping them continuously. While it was pretty to cool to learn how to do those special attacks, the heart of the game's strategy was learning how to combo your attacks to maximum damage every time you fist/foot managed to make contact with your opponent. It was much deeper than Golden Axe or Double Dragon, for sure.
Another good example - Virtual ON. I simply love this arcade game - 1 of the greatest there is. In fact, it's the only arcade game I can say I'm good at (I suck at Street Fighter games). This is 1 game that was truly more than meets the eye (No, they couldn't transform). Behind the seemingly simple interface of 2 joysticks & 4 buttons proved to be a vast & complex series of moves & strategies you could execute. No kid (except a brilliant 1 perhaps) could fully understand all these.....especially the physics behind the weapons delivery.
With the explosive growth of the Internet, multiplayer gaming has soared to new heights. Such connectivity was previously limited only to those fortunate enough to have access to a LAN, and could get away with it without invoking the boss' or network administrator's wrath. The level of connectivity is attracting more & more people to kill...er, I mean play with each other. People are never satisfied with just finishing off the AI. They want to be able to inflict inferiority on other humans, as in real life. Now only a matured mind can really appreciate such interactivity with others. Besides, in a world (literally) of strangers, meeting up requires some level maturity to communicate properly. I've seen kids who only know how to utter rubbish with they keyboards, or make nonsensical comments which suggest their stupidity. I don't know about you, but I get annoyed by kids who make noise while I have dinner at a restaurant or watch a movie. I am equally disturbed by 'textualised' noise.