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."

Comments

wikipedia strikes again...

[BlahMatt]

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.

Try using multiple tags

[zhobson]

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.

different ways to categorize

[miyako]

It's impossible to come up with a single definitive set of categories, because there are different ways to divide up games.
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.

• Japanese and Eastern Style Console RPGs
• • That focus on exploration
  • that focus on story
  • that focus on skills/collecting
• Western Style RPGs
• • MMOs
  • Try try to emulate D&D
• Fighting Games
• • old school/buttonmashers
  • Strategic
  • Combo Based
• Platform Games
• • Where you use guns
  • Where you jump on enemiesheads
  • Where you push blocks around
• Sports Games
• • That are like Madden, *2K\d, etc.
  • Tony Hawk, etc.
• Strategy Games
• • That rely on quick micromanagement
  • That rely on a lot of planning
• First Person Shooters
• • that focus on teams
  • That focus on twitch movements
• Brawlers/Beat-em-up
• • that are RPG-ish
  • ThatarePlatformer-ish
• Casual Games
• • Card Games
  • Word Games
  • Board Games
  • Match/Line Up groups of things(tetris,bejeweled, etc.)
  • Reflext/Twich games
  • Misc.

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.)