Do game genres need to be redefined?

[TheCommanders]

I've been thinking about this for a while, and I've noticed that genre titles can be very misleading, and that many people, because of the ways that genres have changed, have forgotten the original meanings.

EDIT- Removed mini rant about RPGs. It's an opinion, and requires more space to discuss, which I'm informed has been done to death elsewhere, and was distracting from my actual point.

Action adventure is another strange category. Take a look at any of the many games dropped into this category by the "invisible pigeon holing council" (thank you Yahtzee) and you'll find that the label isn't particularly indicative of any type of gameplay. I thought the whole purpose behind labeling a game as part of a genre was to allow people with an interest in similar games to have the opportunity to find and play it. That being said, if a category gets overpopulated with titles that are widely different, what's the point of assigning them a label at all? I'm still in the process of figuring out what would be a better alternative, or if we need only to refine the current system, but I was curious as to what other people think.

 

[pilouuuu]

They need to be destroyed as most games nowadays mix different genres.

 

[Zhukov]

Oh God, please not the RPG argument again.

...

I don't see the need for genre tags at all. All I'm interested in is whether or not a game is good and whether or not I will enjoy it.

The only purpose that genres serve is providing a concise way to describe the bare basics of a game to someone else, but that can be done ten times better by just showing them a gameplay video.

 

[The_Blue_Rider]

The genres are great for referring strictly to game play. Like it or not RPG has become synonymous with Leveling up and Stats.

Theyre good ways for most people to figure out whether they will enjoy a game or not

 

[Smooth Operator]

Well it seems you haven't thought about it really, because the name of the genre is not it's description, it is in fact the name of the genre... mind blown, I know.

 

[Jitters Caffeine]

I think the use of "Sub-Genres" should become a staple when referring to a game. Nothing is just a "First Person Shooter" or just a "Role-Playing Game" anymore. There are genres within the genres these days.

 

[distortedreality]

If you don't trust the labels attributed to certain types of games, you could just, you know....ignore them?

 

[TehCookie]

Are people really deceived by the titles though? While I agree they're badly named you know a jellyfish isn't a fish. When someone says RPG you know what they are talking about and what to expect from it. Also games can belong to more than one genre as well, they shouldn't be shoved into only one.

 

[Dandark]

They serve their purpose most of the time. If I hear about a game but know nothing more than a name then the genre let's me know what to expect. For example, it's a shooter or it's a racing game or it's a fighting game.
They are not very good for anything deeper than that though unless you want to go into the realm of many different sub-genres in which case you may as well just show a gameplay video.

 

[dimensional]

Dosent matter genres are only for marketing purposes anyway they will just call their game part of a genre (subgenre) thats popular and that they can get away with i.e shooter, RPG with puzzle elements and platforming. When in actuality its more closely described as an action game (theoretical game here) but that dosent make it sound as exciting.

Plus they could get the words action and RPG into almost any game now really depending on how loose they term it Mario 3 er yeah its an action RPG platformer with puzzles and shooting elements.

Most players are pretty wise to this they do their research before buying and just ignore whatever the publisher says the genre is or if they are really not sure ask someone they trust who knows more about it or even try a demo.

In short we dont need to redefine genres because the publishers/developers constantly do this anyway.

I think the use of "Sub-Genres" should become a staple when referring to a game. Nothing is just a "First Person Shooter" or just a "Role-Playing Game" anymore. There are genres within the genres these days.

First person shooter is a sub genre of action games same as platformer or beat em up or fighting game etc and who cares? not many ill wager.

 

[Batou667]

When someone says RPG you know what they are talking about and what to expect from it.

Well, the problem is that RPG covers everything from Skyrim to Final Fantasy to World of Warcraft to Mass Effect and back again, (all games where you "play a role" - hell, if you wanted to take that definition to its logical conclusion then GTA and Zelda would be RPGs as well).

To an extent we already do have subcategories. There's MMORPGs, JRPGs, Western RPGs, FPSRPGs (like Borderlands), and so on. The problem is that RPG was a shitty and inadequate description in the first place. "Role Playing Game"? You play a role in EVERY sodding game.

 

[DoPo]

The problem with redefining the genres is...how do you go about it? Do you create new genres and try to stick relevant games in it (top-down approach) or do you pick each game as it's own genre and then combine similar ones (bottom up approach). Each has it's flaws.

The first one hits exactly what we have right now. Say, you come up with a genre called "Cinematic fighting action" (I've got no idea what that is). Let's say CFA works but in a couple of years time, the games from the CFA genre change and that is not applicable any more. Do you start calling them something else? Do you redefine the genres again?

The second one, aside from taking enormous amounts of time, but where do we draw the line? Let's say Quake and Unreal Tournament are similar. We lump them together. But Half-Life is also similar - we add that. Ditto for Half-Life 2. But what about Call of Duty - it's similar to HL2, in a way. Do we add that although it's not really the same as Quake? Or do we create a parallel genre which is almost the same but not completely?

In the end, though, we'll certainly end with too many sub-genres. Sure, we can have "shooters" with whatever we decided for Quake and CoD as a sub-genre. But so will almost everything out there and how do we classify games that look like two or more other genres? We can draw comparison between Morrowind and Arx Fatalis, for example. But also between Morrowind and Minecraft, for the free roaming sandbox nature.

And finally, the biggest problems we have yet - how do you make people use the new genre names? Do you really expect a bunch of people to start thinking whether something is or isn't a Cinematic fighting action? What the fuck does that even mean? And how would it be different from action games or fighting games we've had until now?

I agree, the genres aren't really descriptive now, but at least they work. Changing them would make them not work. When somebody tells you "It's a first person shooter" you know what they mean. If not, they can elaborate with a s sentence or two, and you'd know. "You shoot aliens with lasers" or "You shoot dudes with an AK-47". Generally, gamers have enough common knowledge to understand what other people are talking about. If somebody told me "Fable 3 is an action RPG" and I would guess what it is, as I've played Fable TLC, or at least I've seen videos, read news, that sort of thing.

 

[BENZOOKA]

I absolutely hate how genres are handled. All the problems regarding genres (excluding wrong categorization) are about genres being thought about the wrong way. Like boxes that everything can be neatly sorted into.

They're only loose tags for a thing to be roughly categorized, and to easily have some idea what it is like.

With games, the thing is: Most can be included to multiple genres. A comprehensive genre-system is simply not a possibility.

Loose. Tags.

 

[Eclipse Dragon]

I've always just figured eventually genres would disappear and every game would just be "action adventure" as they all seem to be heading that way.

Years ago, I absolutely refused to play a First Person Shooter, cause I didn't like the first person camera, I didn't like the shooter game play and I didn't like the story (which at that time was almost laughable) If they were called FPS, I didn't play it. I didn't care what it was about.

(I realize there are old shooters that don't follow these stereotypes, but I didn't think like that at the time)

But I loved RPGS, I loved going to towns and talking to the NPCS, exploring, buying new equipment, having a main character that matters and a story.


Now we have games like Borderlands which takes something I used to hate and mashes it with something that I love, and now what do I do? I play Borderlands of course, and I love every second of it, despite the first person camera.

 

[TehCookie]

When someone says RPG you know what they are talking about and what to expect from it.

Well, the problem is that RPG covers everything from Skyrim to Final Fantasy to World of Warcraft to Mass Effect and back again, (all games where you "play a role" - hell, if you wanted to take that definition to its logical conclusion then GTA and Zelda would be RPGs as well).

To an extent we already do have subcategories. There's MMORPGs, JRPGs, Western RPGs, FPSRPGs (like Borderlands), and so on. The problem is that RPG was a shitty and inadequate description in the first place. "Role Playing Game"? You play a role in EVERY sodding game.

Do you think a jellyfish is a fish? It's called a fish and swims in the ocean. RPGs usually mean a game with leveling, stats, and quests even though they're called role-playing. I do agree RPG is still a broad description, but it's like calling a dog a dog. You have a chihuahua and a st. bernard with everything in between but they're all still dogs. If you need to be more specific there are the breeds/subcategories.

 

[Squidbulb]

Genres are useful. It means that someone who doesn't like RTS games can easily avoid those games, as you don't have to see any footage to know what it is like. It also helps with fighting games. Without the label "fighting games" we'd have to start every review with something like "you have to hit your opponent until their health bar goes down".
To prove my point, every time you hear "rpg" mentally replace it with "games with role playing elements as well as stats and levelling up.
Replace "fps" with "game that involves shooting from a first person perspective".
Platformer would be "game in which you jump between platforms to get to the goal" or something similar.
You see where I'm going with this. There's nothing wrong with labels. They're used so we can understand what we are talking about. You can say Half-life isn't similar to Call of Duty, but they are. They are both played from a first person perspective and consist of shooting things. So they are first-person shooters. What the hell is wrong with labels? Of course they don't perfectly describe the game, they're not supposed to.

 

[Batou667]

Do you think a jellyfish is a fish? It's called a fish and swims in the ocean. RPGs usually mean a game with leveling, stats, and quests even though they're called role-playing. I do agree RPG is still a broad description, but it's like calling a dog a dog. You have a chihuahua and a st. bernard with everything in between but they're all still dogs. If you need to be more specific there are the breeds/subcategories.

To continue your analogy, enjoying Fallout 3 and then picking up Final Fantasy XIII because "hey, they're both RPGs" is like going into a restaurant, ordering the fish course, and then getting a live Hammerhead shark delivered to your table: the category might be correct, but it sure as hell wasn't what you were expecting.

But yeah, that's why subcategories are useful.

 

[TheCommanders]

Do you think a jellyfish is a fish? It's called a fish and swims in the ocean. RPGs usually mean a game with leveling, stats, and quests even though they're called role-playing. I do agree RPG is still a broad description, but it's like calling a dog a dog. You have a chihuahua and a st. bernard with everything in between but they're all still dogs. If you need to be more specific there are the breeds/subcategories.

To continue your analogy, enjoying Fallout 3 and then picking up Final Fantasy XIII because "hey, they're both RPGs" is like going into a restaurant, ordering the fish course, and then getting a live Hammerhead shark delivered to your table: the category might be correct, but it sure as hell wasn't what you were expecting.

But yeah, that's why subcategories are useful.

Ah, the old, live-hammerhead-shark-delivered-at-restaurant situation, been there buddy, still have the scars

Like I said, I'm not really sure if there's a better way to handle it, or if it's even worth changing, but lately genres have been annoying me so I thought I'd see what everybody else thinks.

 

[Hero in a half shell]

The problem is that every game is different. You can't classify games as you classify fruit. Every genre can easily leak into every other genre as often game developers deliberately include tropes of a different genre in their own game to change it up and make it better (Multiplayer FPS's are now pretty much expected to have RPG style leveling, unlockable classes, guns, upgrades etc.)

If we really wanted to properly classify every genre out there we would end up with the same problem the 90's music scene had as they tried to name all the new sounds of bands from the indie and alternative rock genre: There are just too many to properly keep track of.

To give an example I could say that Hitman, Splinter Cell, and Thief are all broadly described as in the "stealth" genre. That gives you a basic idea of the main game mechanics and focus of the games.
But they have some big differences in gameplay, so to get a proper genre fitting for them I would say that Splinter Cell is a "techno-centric spy stealth game" Hitman is a "deception based disguise stealth game" and thief is a "sneaking theft-oriented stealth game". The problem is that you end will up with a million genres each of which only refer to a single game, which ruins the whole point of 'genres' being able to indentify at a glance the main focus of the game.

 

[TheCommanders]

The problem is that every game is different. You can't classify games as you classify fruit. Every genre can easily leak into every other genre as often game developers deliberately include tropes of a different genre in their own game to change it up and make it better (Multiplayer FPS's are now pretty much expected to have RPG style leveling, unlockable classes, guns, upgrades etc.)

If we really wanted to properly classify every genre out there we would end up with the same problem the 90's music scene had as they tried to name all the new sounds of bands from the indie and alternative rock genre: There are just too many to properly keep track of.

To give an example I could say that Hitman, Splinter Cell, and Thief are all broadly described as in the "stealth" genre. That gives you a basic idea of the main game mechanics and focus of the games.
But they have some big differences in gameplay, so to get a proper genre fitting for them I would say that Splinter Cell is a "techno-centric spy stealth game" Hitman is a "deception based disguise stealth game" and thief is a "sneaking theft-oriented stealth game". The problem is that you end will up with a million genres each of which only refer to a single game, which ruins the whole point of 'genres' being able to indentify at a glance the main focus of the game.

This is why, when describing a game to someone now, I usually say like <insert game they've played here> but . Sadly, there's no way to integrate that sort of description into game marketing until advertisers invent mind reading ads that update for individual people, but by the time they do that, they'll probably have killed us all with their death rays, so it's not a great solution.

EDIT - Why does the first set come out as [ ]'s and the second as 's? Weird... I typed them both in as 's, must be something to do with the code governing these posts.