Men in RL discuss pussy and football all the time, apply your own logic now.
They also discuss politics, politicians, bosses and economic situation. People discuss things they feel strongly about, regardless of whether they feel positive or negative about them.
SO, to discuss certain subjects you need to have a master degree on it and could post only long essays while writing of it on a forum?
This is definitely not what I said, so you should reread the passage you quoted. I haven't stipulated the need for the expert level of knowledge, but you have to know something about the subject to discuss it. Considering your example of Latin, I don't think that two years of learning Latin in high school and specific knowledge of Latin terminology in anatomy qualifies me to productively discuss the subject. As for long essays, one can be brief and say "I like it" or "I hate it" on certain topics, but that doesn't add much to discussion. There will always be someone who will want you to back your position or someone who will misread you and you will inevitably have to be forced to elaborate, which leads to walls of text.
In short, the Codex is more and more like any other forum, only with much more vulgarity.
I wouldn't know much about how other forums are like, aside from Codex I'm only active on one forum and semi-active on NMA. What I do know is that good discussion on game design, good gaming recommendations and even some humor can be found here.
The point is not that they like JRPGs, the point is that they pretend to hate them.
This would be irrational behaviour. For me, it is quite easy to believe that there are people on this forum who hate different kinds of games. There are even those who hate Fallout. Nothing can really be gained by pretending. Hating or liking JRPGs in general doesn't make anyone seem more or less smart or cool.
Are you seriously implying that people don't follow the SMT series because is busy playing it at the moment?
This is one, minority reason. If I see a LP of a game that I haven't played, and if it intrigues me enough to play the game myself, I will stop reading the LP until I'm ahead in the game (this may take a while and sometimes LPs get "Imageshacked" before I return to them). There are other possible reasons that encompass the majority, but let those who have them elaborate themselves.
The number of views, compared with other LPs with a similar number of views, imply a strong interest that goes beyond simple checking.
But you don't know what the motive for the interest is, and you don't know whether the views belong to RPG Codex members or guests. You do a lot of assuming.
In short, Codexers are only interested in mainstream games, even if only to hate them? I always thought that this was a fringe website.
No. Many Codexers are mainly interested in good games and in criticizing bad games which bring about the demise of the genre because of their influence on the genre, or because they represent rape of their beloved game. To be honest, the amount of attention shitty games like Fallout 3 and Skyrim get bothers me a little, but I've dealt with it.
Besides, wouldn't been more interesting an LP of a reviled game just to see what the fuss is all about, instead of an LP of an AAA+ title of which you can collect all the informations you want without even trying?
The thing is, you can't. Most of the "information" about AAA titles are shills and lies. Someone you trust and you share taste for games with has to play them and give you that information. Or you can view an LP. But, I agree with you that it is not necessary following the LP from start to finish to conclude that the game is indeed irredemably shitty.
By the fact that the first LPs by number of views are Andy's lulzy LP of FFVII and Rance, and that people liked those is out of question, and the others are the ones made by Root, The Barbarian and Grotsnick, that by their very nature require people's approval to go on, seems odd that only FO3 and DA:O are the only loathed ones of the bunch.
Sorting LP threads by views reveals a mixture of good games, bad games, lulz LPs and codexian adventures you mentioned. There is no pattern here, except that more obscure titles get less attention (if that wasn't true, they wouldn't be more obscure).
Are you saying that Codexers are more attracted by the horrid than anything else?
No.
Statistics disagrees with you,
Attention != affection.
and what this individual differences would be?
Reread previous posts.
The sheer number of views clearly shows that the same people continuously read them, do you really think that the number of occasional lurkers was that big?
What do you base your estimate that it wasn't that big on?
