GTA is not a "casual" game!

[Picko]

ookaze said:
I strongly believe that GTA series is not casual at all, and I strongly believe people that say it is do that so that they can downplay the real reasons they play these games (insecure behaviour).

Is there another supposedly "casual" game that is Adult Only, 18+ (or even 16+) ?
Seriously, people!

I read someone made his daughter play GTAIII: so he made his daughter (implying she's < 18 years old) play an Adult Only rated game? This is one of the most irresponsible behaviour to me.
But I'm not surprised. Then again, I just came back from visiting two videogame stores, and I saw a boy that sure enough isn't 18 (and lied about his age to the sales clerk) with his mother, that came to buy GTAIV. His mother didn't bat an eyelid at this. It's not new, it was like that with GTAIII. These people clearly are the ones that played GTA III, and weren't mature enough to play it. One of my cousin which isn't even 10 years old was playing one of the GTAIII, killing innocent people and running them over, endlessly. So these people became fans, are hardcore player in the 15-30 young male demographic and of course love GTAIV, typically they are the hardcore crowd.

Sorry, but this is not a casual game. No doubt some casuals will buy it, but they don't buy it this soon after it's released. Mostly hardcore people buy games so soon after release. That's why the true casual titles start with few units sales compared to hardcore games, but they stay steady throughout the game's life. That's why Halo is not casual either. Casual titles don't see 85+% drop off after their first week of release. Several even go up in sales compared to their first week of sales.


Finally, what I find interesting, is not if GTA is casual or not, I couldn't care less. It's why hardcore players are so eager to call it casual, when they use that term to qualify poor games.
I have my guess as to why that is the case, and better understand now that the gaming industry was indeed headed to a serious crash (I'm convinced it will happen now), now that we have such a game that we can now attest will have a 10 average score. The spiral down has started now.

 GTA IV like Halo 3 is a game with immense casual appeal, hence why they sell so much. It's fundamentally impossible to be a purely hardcore game and be so successful. Completely and utterly impossible. Every highly successful game has done so because of their appeal to the casual demographic, including GTA, Halo, Mario, Zelda and CoD. Quite frankly the notion that under half the people that buy GTA IV would be casual gamers (which would surely be the most reasonable way to distinguish between a hardcore and casual game) is quite frankly absurd.