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A Definitive List of Gaming Genres?
An anonymous reader puts forth this challenge for the Slashdot readership: "Construct a definitive list of game genres for PC and/or console that doesn't dribble off into silly categories like 'licensed movie franchise,' or include redundancies like 'action', '3D adventure' and 'platformer.' My friend and I have been messing around with this for awhile, trying to do a better job than the game news sites, but we're finding it's harder than we thought."
it's said in literature there are really only a few stories and that they are retold over and over, take for instance Shakespeares Hamlet which actually wasn't his Hamlet but based on an earlier story ur-hamlet which itself was based on legends etc etc. It's also said that they are actually only a few types of identifiable characters in fiction, e.g. The Fool or The Knight &so on, I can't remember more. The idea is that when you get down to it all characters can be boiled down into this set.
If you can disambiguate literature into its components there is no reason this cannot be applied to games. Games are another kind of story telling and so the same rule apply.
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To try to answer your question though, here is how I generally break down games. It is by no means efficient nor without redudency, but it is how I mentally categorize games.
Anway, that is a much bigger list than most gaming publications use, but the top categories are largely the same. I think that this sort of system works because it basically tells you what the core sort of game play is. In your example, you lumped action adventure, adventure, FPS, etc. together, but I don't think that's fair at all. For example, I love action adventure games (i.e. zelda, metroid, etc.) but I hate first person shooters. The two styles of games play differently. I find the categories useful because I have been playing games for a long time, and I know what sorts of games I do and do not enjoy. I know that if a game sounds interesting, but I find out it's a FPS, then I can completely disregard reading anything else about it. Likewise, if a game is a western style RPG, I know that I should scrutinize it a bit more before making a decision, because while I haven't disliked every western style RPG that I've played, in general I don't find them as fun to play (I would rather have a very well done and highly linnear game, ala Final Fantasy, than a poorly done limited sandbox game that pretends like you can do anything. If I'm going to play D&D I'll play the real thing thank you very much.)
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As suggested by my parent poster, the genre list is easiest taken from the menu on the wiki article. However as requested by the OP to remove the redundant items, you can almost narrow the list down to 2.
Role Playing; and
Simulations
Look through the list, think of a game that fits the category, and I guarantee you can fit it into one of the two genres above.
Action FPS: Ghost Recon = War Simulation, Quake = Role Playing
Adult/Action-Adventure: Leisure Suit Larry = Role Playing
RTS: Any RTS you are practically GOD = Role Playing
etc. etc. etc.
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...so I looked up their entry for The Sentinel, which I find uncategorizable. They called it "Puzzle". Hm. I don't think it fits.
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
So I scratched the surface on this question last week on my blog:
PipForPresident.Org/blog
the gist of which is:
"I dream of helping to enable everyone in the world to create and play their own video games together."
so... I want to eventually write (or contribute to) tools that enable people to reconstruct or derive any possible game... assisting with:
Hostile tone? Not on purpose.
And I stand by my categories. Japanese games tend to focus on the plot, and American games tend to focus on the action. Of course they both contain both, but I disagree that they are equal measures.
You 'Chrono trigger got monotonous in the middle' example is even a point for me. An American game has plot so that there's a reason for the action. The plot tends to be on the boring, shallow side while the action tends to be constant and exciting. A Japanese game tends to have action to advance the plot. The plot tends to be involved and the action is there mainly to complete the game and keep it from being a movie.
As for Final Fantasy, someone mentioned the later ones, but the first ones are what I was mainly talking about. In the first few FF games, you got to pick the characters' names, classes, etc. You had 4 characters, and a choice of like 6-8 classes. And you could have all 4 of the same class, if you wanted. Some, you could even choose not to have 4 characters. Heck, some would even let you pick a monster as a character. That's pretty much the epitome of 'no background'.
I -love- both kinds of RPG. I tend to like the plot-oriented style a little better, but if I had to pick RPG or anything else, RPG would be my choice. American or Japanese.
Anyhow, back to the point... That's the closest distinction between Japanese and American RPGs. With anything else, the line has been crossed too many times to split them properly.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
Games incorporate so many different elements that it is difficult to come up with hard categories that can encompass all the known games without significant exceptions, overlaps, or omissions. I think what gives games so much power and potential is their natural resistance to such pigeonholing and ability to fluidly and organically incorporate so many different elements.
So I think using a series of tags that can be freely applied where necessary can help describe and generalize games without trying to nail the outliers and hybrids and unique games into categories they don't necessarily belong. I would say it is best to apply the series of tags in a standardized order, where a game can incorporate multiple tags from their different categories if applicable: e.g. it isn't necessary to add "real time" to a game with the "1st person" and "shooter" categories since that is generally implied. However you would have to add "turn based" to such a game if necessary since that is generally not typical of 1st person shooters. The tags should be (and generally are) applied in roughly the following order:
Narrative style (if applicable):
Linear
Branching
Sandbox (open ended?)
Setting:
Sci Fi
Fantasy
Historical
Modern
Sports
Dimensions/Perspective:
3D
2D (sidescroller, static, etc.)
1st person
3rd person (implying camera anchored to player's avatar)
"god" (or "bird's eye," implying camera free roaming over a map)
Text based
Gameplay Progression (can be implied by gameplay type):
Real Time
Turn Based
Avatar(s):
Solo
Team (a.k.a. squad, or party-based)
Army
Gameplay Element(s):
Shooter
Brawler
Racer
Tournament fighter
Puzzle
Strategy
Tactics
RPG (or some other form of character ability progression)
Sim
Exploration
Beat-matching
Obviously the Gameplay Elements category has the most descriptors and is still the least complete of all the categories, but you get the idea. By taking and applying all the necessary elements above to any game you can think of you can generally paint a fairly clear picture of what type of game it is relative to other games that may be similar or different. Not all the tags are necessary, and in most cases are left off because they're either obvious or implied, but for the sake of completeness in archival purposes they can help distinguish subtle differences between very similar but fundamentally different games. The "Avatars" category is one I've never actually seen applied to any games, but I think it's useful in describing some fundamental differences between games that have the player using a single character or pawn, as opposed to commanding multiple characters or entire squads/armies in various types of games.
For example, Baldurs Gate would fall under Fantasy, Branching, 3rd person, real time, party-based, RPG. Whereas NeverWinter Nights I would generally categorize as Fantasy, Branching, 3rd person, real-time, solo, RPG when describing the single-player campaigns at least (although you could take on a henchman at times, this was not necessary to play through or complete the game, so I would count that as an optional tag). Final Fantasy, or other Japanese RPG's would generally fall under Fantasy, Linear, 3rd person, turn based, party-based, RPG. Oblivion would be Fantasy, Branching, 1st person, real time, solo, RPG. So here we have 4 very different games that would previously all be described simply as RPG's are now much more clearly fleshed out with this system.
Multiplayer games are a whole other beast and in many cases should probably deserve their own list of categories to describe adequately. Splinter Cell's multiplayer consists of both 3rd person and 1st person perspectives, depending on which team you're playing on. A game which is designed as a solo campaign that can become a party-based campaign wh
Action | Adventure | Driving | Puzzle | Role-Playing | Simulation | Sports | Strategy
And if you want Driving is a sport.
Basically any game can fit into one of these genres, many will fit in two (an action role playing game. An driving Simulation)
You can expand your genre list more and more but the fact is every time you have them all next year there's a new one that people are trying to make up. However it's not a "GTA" genre, at best it's a free roaming genre, but in reality it's an Action Adventure game.
There's many sub genres that can tacked on underneath it all. The only problem with games with this simplistic approach is Niche games and stuff that defies convention, you will never be able to label those because the whole point of them is that they defy conventions like genres, that's why many places have Miscellaneous, as well as "compilation" which spans all genres (aka Activision Anthology)
This is the best answer though because it's specific and precise. Most games will be one genre with a second as a sub genre (the Adventure game that has a lot of action and so on) but that's fine.