Original Comment by: Ferrous Buller
http://ferrousbuller.1up.com
As one of the more...
argumentative peeps in that RPG thread, I've got a vested interest in this.
My seemingly paradoxical view: genre is simultaneously important and irrelevant.
By that I mean that having general guidelines as to what elements characterize different genres (adventure, action, RPG, etc.) is helpful when describing games, to provide a commonly accepted framework for certain basic gameplay principles. But trying to impose too rigid of a definition leads to meaningless arguments about whose definition to use, as happened in that RPG thread. In that case, Julianne and I seemed to agree on the basic elements of RPGs, but disagreed on the boundaries which defined those elements: I took something of an old-school "purist" view, while Julianne's was more flexible.
Furthermore, it's possible to get too hung up on dissecting and cataloging a game's various elements, slapping labels on every piece as you go, that you lose sight of the actual experience of playing the game. It's a bit like performing an autopsy: you can discern lots of facts about a game that way, but you won't understand what it's like to play, much less if it's any fun.
Thus, to my mind, not only is it possible for genres to be loosely defined, I think it's better that way - better to have a general consensus about major elements without getting hung up on nitty-gritty details. That way, I can describe, e.g., Deus Ex as a "FPS-RPG-adventure" hybrid, then explain what traits it inherited from each genre, without trying to lump it under any one banner. But most importantly, it helps me explain why I think the different pieces of game design coalesce into a darn fun game. If I call God of War "an action game with an RPG-ish character upgrade system" while someone else simply calls it "an action RPG," it doesn't really matter, as long as we're both able to describe the component elements of said game accurately.
To put it another way: genre categories are a good way to
begin describing what a game is like, but they are not the final word on the subject.
I also don't think "subject matter" is any less loaded of a method of categorization than "game genre" is. As Tim points out, the debate over fiction categories has raged for centuries; I doubt borrowing their scheme will help us any.
