Suggestions for New Genre 101 Series

[Flake]

What about a Developer 101? History of studios and companies?

I second this. Also, a section on games in prominent series that haven't come to America/PAL would be nice. For example, Front Mission. NA got 1, 3, and 4 but there's a lot more than that. It'd be helpful for collectors or importers.

[J T]

I guess I was thinking more of what type of informational sections within each genre piece to cover instead of what genres to cover

Genre definition

Critical game play elements

Evolution of the genre

Foundational early history games

Defining games of the genre (perhaps broken down by console)

Hidden gems of the genre (perhaps broken down by console)

Ideas for future directions?

[J T]

Also, one of the things I liked about the survival horror piece that Ack did is that he talked about the emotional aspect of the genre. Now, it is a genre obviously dedicated to fear, so perhaps it's not as appropriate to discuss the emotions of the other genres, but I do think that each genre has gifts for certain types of emotional tales, so perhaps it would be appropriate to work that in to each genre 101 as well.

[Mod_Man_Extreme]

Some 101's on arcade boards and stuff would be cool. There's tons of info on just about all of them, but most of it's scattered about the net in random locations so it would be cool to centralize it.

[racketboy]

I guess I was thinking more of what type of informational sections within each genre piece to cover instead of what genres to cover

Genre definition

Critical game play elements

Evolution of the genre

Foundational early history games

Defining games of the genre (perhaps broken down by console)

Hidden gems of the genre (perhaps broken down by console)

Ideas for future directions?

Good stuff!

One other I thought of is sub-genres and examples of them (this would apply to some genres more than others)

Someone on the article post just mentioned a timeline -- not a bad idea either.

[Lusit]

If I were you, I'd give Shattered Memories a passing mention, and maybe Syphon too.

[dsheinem]

I'd like to see a few more obscure systems covered by the existing 101 series (e.g. FM Towns, Pippin, ZX Spectrum, TI-99, etc.). Also, there are a number of not as obscure systems that haven't been tackled yet (7800, C64, 5200, 32X, Neo Geo, etc.).

As for new ideas specifically related to genre, I think JT's list is pretty solid. I'd only add a consideration of sub-genres, but you already thought of that.

[racketboy]

I'd like to see a few more obscure systems covered by the existing 101 series (e.g. FM Towns, Pippin, ZX Spectrum, TI-99, etc.). Also, there are a number of not as obscure systems that haven't been tackled yet (7800, C64, 5200, 32X, Neo Geo, etc.).

As for new ideas specifically related to genre, I think JT's list is pretty solid. I'd only add a consideration of sub-genres, but you already thought of that.

Yeah, we're not ditching the console-specific ones -- we're just looking to keep things interesting

[d123456]

Rack, you are doing everything right already!
please no point and click or rgb stuff here, let´s not turn this into what hg101 turned into.
arcade stuff only!

[Ack]

Genre definition

Critical game play elements

Evolution of the genre

Foundational early history games

Defining games of the genre (perhaps broken down by console)

Hidden gems of the genre (perhaps broken down by console)

Ideas for future directions?

Hmm...I like this, but I think at least two of these deserve to be written up as separate articles. The hidden gems of 2D fighting games we released a few weeks ago seemed to do quite well, and I'm currently working on a related piece(not the handhelds article yet guys, hence why I haven't contacted noiseredux yet). But a Defining Games and a Hidden Gems article for a genre has to cover roughly 30-40 years worth of games, so I figure they should get their due.

As for many of the others, I attempted to cover the history and give a background while including many pivotal titles, but JT's idea for foundational games could work well in tandem with a suggestion Mike made in the article's comments about constructing a timeline of key games.

I'm also hesitant about ideas for the future because those end up a bit too speculative, and I don't always like considering the future prospects of certain genres, especially survival horror(some news commentators have already labeled it as dead or disappearing).

I like the subgenres idea and had thought about it, though it may be a little difficult with certain articles: survival horror is technically a subgenre in its own right, hence why I didn't write in a section covering it, and it likely would have reverted into game genres within the survival horror subgenre like first person, third person shooter, point and click, etc.

Also, don't worry, we'll still be doing console 101s. Racket just needed something to give me so I could stop writing about consoles I've never played and so we don't end up with only 101s in the article queue for the next six months.