Genrefication: Do we have it all wrong?

[J T]

Videogame genres are largely categorized by the basics of their gameplay mechanics. First person shooters involve moving around an aiming reticle and clicking. Fighters involve hitting complex button and joystick combinations to strategically attack and defend in a fight. Shmups involve shooting out a stream of bullets while avoiding other streams of bullets to blow things up. These genres and others are focused on how the game is played rather than on the content of the game's narrative.

Contrast this with movies where the genres are based on the content of the story. Horror movies are about scary situations. Action movies are about exciting events and explosions. Love stories are about people finding romance. Comedies are about funny stuff.

The benefit of understanding something about "genre" is that it gives you an easy short hand to understand things from. If I am going to a slasher movie, I already know a few things about what the movie will generally be about. There may even be a few movie tropes I am familiar with that the movie will either replicate or play around with to keep me on my toes.

The downside of genres though is that the genre labels themselves become these entities that can become something of a cage if they too tightly define films, music, or games that fall within the genre. In that sense, I think it pays to be careful about getting too caught up in identifying genres and expecting new games to fit into the neatly defined pre-existing categories.

Because what I most care about is the gameplay component of videogames, I find dividing games on this characteristic to be useful for talking about them. However, I also feel that it creates a problem when developers work towards creating something to fit into a genre. I want diversity in gameplay, not a bunch of games that can easily be classified as FPS, RPG, RTS, etc. So, sometimes I wonder if we have it all wrong. Would we be better off naming our games based on content similar to how movies do? This would mean that we would have categories like Horror, Romance, Science Fiction, etc. and the developers would be free to design the gameplay towards fitting whatever that category is, rather than trying to fit a pre-existing genre of gameplay design. Maybe we would be better off with a combination of both, kind of like Survival Horror already is. Or maybe genre labels aren't useful at all. What are your thoughts?

[Ack]

I think part of the issue here is that video games are able to have such diversity in their mechanics, while books and film are generally similar in appearance and handled the same way.

That said, books and film also have descriptors based upon their general "mechanics." For books, we separate fiction and nonfiction based on the reality of the work. We can also differentiate based on the trivial nature of the text, separating works into nonergodic and ergodic literature. Films are first divided into three categories based on the use of color and sound: silent, black and white, and color. Foreign films are also separated from genre films, and subtitles or dubbing can make or break a film for some individuals.

I'd also say that part of the reason we don't necessarily differentiate video games based upon the plot is because the plot is usually set upon the back burner in the medium. That's not to say that all video games have terrible plots, but many games do, and some don't have plots at all, as opposed to books and film, where plot is extremely important.

[J T]

Good points. I wouldn't want to try to categorize Tetris by its plot, so there is definitely some sense to categorizing by mechanics.

I hadn't really thought of how we categorize books by "mechanics" like autobiographies, biographies, poetry, instructional, and so on. Or movies like documentary, animation, short film, CGI, etc.

As I think about it, we have had some game genres that relate more to content than mechanics, such as adventure games, sports, or action games, though I've usually found those labels to be too general to be useful. Nintendo used to label their boxes with those kind of genre labels though, back in the 8-bit days.

[AppleQueso]

Yeah, classifying games by plot doesn't work for the simple fact that video games aren't really a storytelling medium.

[Hobie-wan]

I think it is better to define games by the type of gameplay when a quick label is needed, then they can be further refined as necessary. If that means calling Guardian Legend a shmup/action RPG since it blends 2 types of gameplay, then so be it. I like science fiction and fantasy, but I do not like Warcraft or Starcraft because I do not enjoy RTS games. So having the story genre being the most important or only descriptor fails me. I like FPS games and while an interesting story is wonderful, as long as the game mechanics are done well I can find enjoyment in it whether it is future scifi (Half Life), modern day scifi (Stalker), fantasy (Heretic), or paranormal (Fear). I can adapt to the setting.

[the7k]

The way you interact with a game is the whole thing that separates video gaming from other mediums like books and movies. Thus, the mechanics are really the only way we should classify games.

Golden Axe and Age of Conan, as books, would both be of the Low Fantasy genre, but would you in all honesty recommend a Golden Axe fan to play Age of Conan?

[Ivo]

The way you interact with a game is the whole thing that separates video gaming from other mediums like books and movies. Thus, the mechanics are really the only way we should classify games.
(...)

Not the *ONLY* way, but definitively a major and important way.
Personally I think it is important also to at least classify games according to overall quality, even though that is a bit subjective it is definitively useful.

JT I see where you are coming from. Labels, classifications are just ways to lump stuff together and lumping stuff together is useful. There is indeed risk, like overseeing individuality of each game and so on. This applies beyond games and movies and often is seen at its worse when applied to groups of people...

Ivo.

[J T]

I agree that game mechanics are the most important aspect of video games, but that's the main reason why I feel unsure about defining genres by their mechanics. I think game designers should set out to make a horror game or an action game and then think creatively about how they can best capture the experience in the game play. This is better than having them decide I'm going to make an FPS that plays by the rules of FPS games and then get creative about the storyline.

I guess my concern about this stems from being involved in the electronic music scene for a long time where there are way too many genres and those genres are incredibly specific to the point of being creatively stiflig in their narrow definitions. I've heard way to many tunes in drum n bass that sound almost exactly the same and it's often because producers set out to make a drum n bass tune, not to simply make good music or music that conveys a certain feeling. No, they set out to make a tune at 180 bpm with snares on the 2 and 4, kicks on the 1 and the upbeat of 3, a few clicky hi-hats and ghost snares for good measure, and a wobbly bass line to top it all off.

Then the other problem, when somebody actually understands the soul of drum n bass that is captured by that particular form and they come up with a different form with that soul, the audience complains and says "ah no, that's not drum n bass! You don't have the right clicky hi-hats and your snares aren't on the 2 and 4!" It's maddening to me because in the mid 90s, drum n bass was one of the most creative and thriving musical genres and it has become so absolutely cookie cutter that robots could make more soulful and creative music.

I worry about games going a similar route where if you try to do something from the first person, but you don't have your movement on the WASD, jump on the space, reload on the R, then people are going to complain that it's not an FPS. If you don't have little monsters that jump out and go BOO!, then it can't be survival horror. Of course, people will still make some creative stuff (as still happens in drum n bass), but it might just be a little bit harder to do and harder for people to understand if the genre labels are getting in the way of creative thinking.

[Limewater]

I agree that game mechanics are the most important aspect of video games, but that's the main reason why I feel unsure about defining genres by their mechanics. I think game designers should set out to make a horror game or an action game and then think creatively about how they can best capture the experience in the game play. This is better than having them decide I'm going to make an FPS that plays by the rules of FPS games and then get creative about the storyline.

Now I'm confused. Is the point of this thread to discuss game development, or do discuss players' reaction to and classification of games?
Regarding development, I think that both development styles are already in place. Miyamoto usually starts with a play mechanic or concept in mind, and then builds the game and story around it. Colossal Cave (Adventure) was created around recreating the experience of caving on a computer. Adventure on the Atari VCS was created around capturing the experience of playing Colossal Cave. Most movie licensed games are designed around the narrative of the movie.

For an original IP, it seems to me that creating a particular experience should drive the gameplay rather than building the gameplay around a pre-existing story line. Don't design gameplay around a story of folks fighting zombies in a ruined city. Design the gameplay around what you think you would experience to see your world destroyed and find yourself struggling for survival against a horde of people who used to be your friends and neighbors, but now are driven only by the desire rip you to pieces. The narrative is just window dressing, and is only good if it serves enhance the ability of the gameplay to create an experience in the player. If a non-zombie scenario appears to better serve the desired experience, then it should be selected.

If you're going to classify games by something other than gameplay, it should be the experience conveyed, but usually this is pretty tightly coupled to the gameplay. When I play a shmup, I'm not thinking about the dehumanizing effects of war. My experience is, "Shoot shoot shoot! Dodge! Gah!!! Special Special! Yes, powerup! Oh son of a bitch! I died!"

Maybe I'm the only one, but I applaud the typewriter system in Resident Evil.

I worry about games going a similar route where if you try to do something from the first person, but you don't have your movement on the WASD, jump on the space, reload on the R, then people are going to complain that it's not an FPS. If you don't have little monsters that jump out and go BOO!, then it can't be survival horror. Of course, people will still make some creative stuff (as still happens in drum n bass), but it might just be a little bit harder to do and harder for people to understand if the genre labels are getting in the way of creative thinking.

Or, the worst possible thing of all could happen. Someone could try to talk about a Zelda game in the RPG forum here at Racketboy!

[Ivo]

JT I think I really see where you are coming from and agree (not totally but a lot).

I like cross genre games mixing stuff from 2 or more genres for example, and find them interesting even when the implementation is not that good. They are rare though, and I think it is likely that one reason that they are not common is that developers are stuck in the genre trap - but lets face it there are also commercial reasons for it, because like in your drum n bass comparison the gamers often frown upon this kind of stuff and say "No this is not a shmup because it has an experience system instead of regular power-ups" (that example actually doesn't quite hold, as players seem to like Radiant Silvergun; but you get the idea).

Ivo.