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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."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_and_video_ga me_genres
It's a good place to start. If you can think of more, you can always add them.
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I don't understand this;
"or include redundancies like 'action', '3D adventure' and 'platformer."
how are these redundant and under what deffinition of redundant? The don't seem to contain useless words, nor are they no longer needed - because they refer to something specific and can be useful to know. Mario 64 was 3d adventure, New SMB was platformer. Action can be a little harder to define but I think people understand it when they hear it
*''I can't believe it's not a hyperlink.''
1) Games I play
.. that wasn't too hard.
2) Games I don't play
And if you really want you can expand section 1) into:
1.1) Games I enjoy playing
1.2) Games I don't enjoy playing
Although 1.2) should really be grouped in section 2) as:
2.1) Games I didn't enjoy playing
There
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Using multiple descriptive tags for each game might make the problem easier.
For example, a game can be a "platformer" and an "adventure" game. It might even be in "3D". So perhaps "3D platformer adventure" works as a set of tags for a game rather than an atomic category.
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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All three????
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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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In philosophy this is called "reification." It's taking something complex and living, and turning it into a dead thing on a shelf. This usually involves chopping off inconvenient bits until you can stuff it into a box and label the box.
Morals are the reification of a particular society's living system of values, codified and placed on a pedestal marked "unquestionable and unchanging." Unions are a reification of the working man's desire for a better life, transformed into a bureacratic comittee that defines what 'better' is for him.
Instead of defining genres of video games, try breaking them up. Take them out of the box of dead things and try to find the oddball nuances that make a given game unique, and apart from any others.
- mantar
Actually, Incredible Machine is probably the prototypical example of a 'construction game'. This is basically the genre of game where the player is given a kit of parts and they're free to build stuff with it - often with some goal in mind. Lego might fit this category if it were a video game. I wish there were more examples of this genre, there are only a handful.
-- SIGFPE
But what goes into RPG? I'd suggest three types:
American-style RPG (defined by the ability to create your own character):
Morrowind, Oblivion, old Might and Magic, Wizardry and Ultima games. Fallout. Perhaps KOTOR, but that's kind of a hybrid.
Japanese-style RPG (having to choose a character created for you by the developer):
Final Fantasy, Sudeki, etc. Despite being American, "Quest for Glory" is a Japanese-style RPG by this definition.
Dungeon Digger (Choose a character created for you; no, or few puzzle elements):
Diablo series, Dungeon Siege.
Those are all very different games.
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1: Games I have
0: Games I don't have
...I wouldn't rely too much on this list. Not to descredit the entire article--most of it is pretty reliable--but there are questionable entries on that list. Even the article itself notes, "Due to a general lack of commonly agreed-upon genres or criteria for the definition of genres, classification of games are not always consistent or systematic and sometimes outright arbitrary between sources." That certainly seems the case for "Maze game", a genre noted in Chris Crawford's The Art of Computer Games but really isn't applicable these days. Looking at the article entry for "Artillery games", you can see the link it refers to doesn't talk about "Artillery games" as a genre, but rather a generic type of game called Artillery. Under that classification "Snake game" should be a genre.
Depending on how you want to describe "genre", there can also be some other inaccurates. There's some entries that sound like descriptions. Is "Arcade game" genre? An arcade can be a fighting game or a first person shooter. If it is a genre, shouldn't "Console game" be a genre too? There are other entries that describe more game mechanics than "genres." For example "Stealth games," there are FPSs (see Goldeneye 007), as well a 3D person action games (see MGS), and Action Adventure games (see Beyond Good and Evil) that use a stealth mechanic as gameplay. So does that make it more a game mechanic or a genre itself?
-Shawn "If the Name Don't Rhyme It Ain't Mine" Conn
There is no such thing as a definitive list. Genre is fluid, and incorporates feedback; as soon as you think of a genre someone else has thought of how to combine and/or distort that genre to create a new genre.
I offer you the following theorem:
Any genre-based categorization of computer games will either be too generic or too specific to be useful.
Same thing applies to movies, books, etc.
...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:
We had to do this as part of a module on my degree course. It was fairly futile then, its still futile now.
Unlike what a lot of people have been saying I do think genres are important, they immediately allow you to narrow down what game you really want to play. However, arbitrary naming is fine. As long as you understand the terms being used people can divide the games up how they wish. Its simply not possible to have a definitive list.
The reason for this is that games are defined by too many things. E.g. FPS is a name that describes a viewpoint and an action. RTS is a name that describes the games timing and an entirely different action.
Whats more they can be crossed back and forth. There is no reason why an FPS can not be strategic and real time making it an RTS as well. (Not the most obvious example. For that youd have to look at role play which has permeated every genre out there.)
I.e. you have viewpoint, game timing, actions, setting and the constant mixing of all of them. (Most FPS can be TPS, Dungeon Keeper was top down RTS and FPS, etc, etc)
Add to this the dozens of odd ball games and the thousands of retro games that require a genre set all for themselves and you have an impossible task on your hands.
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.