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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
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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
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:
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