First of all, a game cannot be part of the "beat em up" genre unless you BEAT PEOPLE in it. Devil May Cry BARELY qualifies (Beowulf and Ifrit), but God of War is pretty much out unless you count quick-action button stuff, and that makes up such a tiny portion of the game that if one were to judge a game a "beat em up" based on that feeble justification it would be possible to classify any game as being part of any genre simply because it is theoretically possible (however how difficult or rare) to partake of an action which is done in that genre. (In other words, any game where you can theoretically jump from one platform to another can be termed a "platformer")
Geldon's explanation makes sense in the context in which he explained it, ESPECIALLY after all these further pointless explanations. I don't see what's so difficult about this. Now, you can disagree with his opinion all you like, but it seems fair to me to take a checklist of similarities from a bunch of different games and say that they are part of their own sub-genre in the world of hacking and slashing (Urban Reign is a true beat em up, whereas DMC and GoW are more hack and slashers. Because that is what you DO in them for the majority of the game).
It seems to me you're hung up on a trivial point, shadow skill. Even if he HAD been using the word wrong (he wasn't), it doesn't nullify/eradicate his entire argument. He could just rephrase it and say, "there are points of commonality in the following games that I find very boring and repetitive, and I wish developers would change them." Bam. So IF he were wrong (he is not, at least not in word use. Opinions are opinions), it's no big for him to just fix it. What does it hurt his argument whether the games are part of the "genre" or not? Your job as a debater is to refute what he said, not how he said it.
On the other hand, your obnoxious hounding of this one point that I suspect most people understand perfectly fine has pulled your debating down a path which has not helped you sell your opinion one bit. Even if you wanted to say originally that it's annoying how gamers today are in such a hurry to classify and pigeonhole games that folks don't take the time to note differences or have fun with them anymore (a fair point), why get hung up on little stuff that doesn't matter? And as I've demonstrated, it doesn't matter at all whether he used "genre" or not. There are a multitude of words that would express the same sentiment, and he would be as correct in using them (probably) as he was in using that one.
Geldon's explanation makes sense in the context in which he explained it, ESPECIALLY after all these further pointless explanations. I don't see what's so difficult about this. Now, you can disagree with his opinion all you like, but it seems fair to me to take a checklist of similarities from a bunch of different games and say that they are part of their own sub-genre in the world of hacking and slashing (Urban Reign is a true beat em up, whereas DMC and GoW are more hack and slashers. Because that is what you DO in them for the majority of the game).
It seems to me you're hung up on a trivial point, shadow skill. Even if he HAD been using the word wrong (he wasn't), it doesn't nullify/eradicate his entire argument. He could just rephrase it and say, "there are points of commonality in the following games that I find very boring and repetitive, and I wish developers would change them." Bam. So IF he were wrong (he is not, at least not in word use. Opinions are opinions), it's no big for him to just fix it. What does it hurt his argument whether the games are part of the "genre" or not? Your job as a debater is to refute what he said, not how he said it.
On the other hand, your obnoxious hounding of this one point that I suspect most people understand perfectly fine has pulled your debating down a path which has not helped you sell your opinion one bit. Even if you wanted to say originally that it's annoying how gamers today are in such a hurry to classify and pigeonhole games that folks don't take the time to note differences or have fun with them anymore (a fair point), why get hung up on little stuff that doesn't matter? And as I've demonstrated, it doesn't matter at all whether he used "genre" or not. There are a multitude of words that would express the same sentiment, and he would be as correct in using them (probably) as he was in using that one.