Menegrothx wrote:I never got the idea behind this stereotype.
I think it is based to some extent on reality.
You made some good points but I think you left out some important parts. You mentioned shmups and fighters, but you should add the other arcade games. Stuff like puzzle games, including stuff like tetris, rhythm games or generally other score-attack games (including perhaps stuff like racing games? Not sure there), i.e. consider all those archetypal "game" genres that were there before
before RTS (still dominated by Korea anyway), FPSs and MMOs even existed.
I think in a good number of those the top scores do belong to Japanese gamers, to the point that I've seen some people here in the boards discuss separate "non-Asian" records instead of world records at times.
Also, while demanding, flight sims, WRPGs and stuff with complexity does not necessarily have a high difficulty (despite being hard to "get into" and having a high barrier of entry). Another point is that they don't have the same tradition of competition that the arcade games have, being designed around scoring in many cases.
Conversely JRPGs may not be hard but if they are "grindy" some people value that more than complexity I guess.
Ivo.