Classifying Genres: Datings Sims and Anime-style Adventures

Post by **racketboy** » Mon May 12, 2008 10:12 am

There are a lot of Dating sims and Anime-style adventure games on the Dreamcast (and I think the Saturn as well)
I'm trying to classify games for my database with the best genre terminology as possible.

I'm planning on having 4 or 5 genre fields for each game.
The first one I would like to have as a very broad genre like "Adventure" or something like that.
The later tags would be like sub-genres and such.

What should I call them in order for them?
Also what percentage of Japanese graphical adventure games are dating sims as opposed to a "standard" adventure game?

Post by **peace4myheart** » Mon May 12, 2008 12:08 pm

Shouldn't "Simulation" be a genre all by itself and not a sub-genre???

Post by **racketboy** » Mon May 12, 2008 12:10 pm

peace4myheart wrote:Shouldn't "Simulation" be a genre all by itself and not a sub-genre???

Could be, yes.
You can also have more than one major genre per game
You Could have something like Adventure, Simulation, Dating Sim, and maybe something like Visual Novel.

Post by **Doctor Fugue** » Mon May 12, 2008 2:08 pm

It depends if you want to classify them as the Japanese do, or as Westerners might.

In Japan, I believe there is a clearer distinction between adventure and simulation games. A visual novel is a sub-genre of adventure while a romantic/dating game is not considered adventure, but simulation.

Post by **racketboy** » Mon May 12, 2008 2:11 pm

doctorfugue wrote:It depends if you want to classify them as the Japanese do, or as Westerners might.

In Japan, I believe there is a clearer distinction between adventure and simulation games. A visual novel is a sub-genre of adventure while a romantic/dating game is not considered adventure, but simulation.

Hmm. Well, I've made the decision that I'm going to cater the database towards Western users as that is the bulk of my audience, but I would like to classify them as accurately as possible so those that are into those games can identify them easily.

I wish there was an easy way for me to tell which ones were which without trying to play them....

Post by **marurun** » Mon May 12, 2008 10:12 pm

I think you should use the Japanese genres as a guide, and modify them for your purposes.

Post by **Doctor Fugue** » Tue May 13, 2008 5:22 am

You probably know about this site already, but I always go here first if I want to know a few general comments about an obscure game. I've found a few that he is missing (unfortunately I've forgotten which), but he has tried out almost everything and it is still being updated. There are cover scans for almost everything (JP), but I don't know if he would get upset if you used them...I see another thread about this, I'll say something there.

http://segagagadomain.com/welcome-news.htm

Post by **marurun** » Tue May 13, 2008 9:03 am

YEah, that site is indeed interesting if a bit engrish-y at times.

Post by **racketboy** » Tue May 13, 2008 9:41 am

I reference SegaGaGa a number of times. There's lots of obscure stuff on there

Back to the main topic, is there one or two terms that I could safely apply to any anime-style adventure game that would differentiate it from the Adventure games were are used to in the West?

Post by **Doctor Fugue** » Tue May 13, 2008 6:11 pm

I think the term "visual novel" is great. It is a western name, but it covers almost all of those type of games. And since that kind of game essentially doesn't exist here (and is extremely popular in Japan), people will automatically associate it with Japanese Anime-Style Text Adventures without having to say all whole title.

"Visual novel" can cover games that are literally a novel with background art, but also games that give you a little bit of choice over the direction of the story...minimal gameplay is still important, though.

However, the dating games cannot be in the visual novel category. They are more like RPGs with statistics-building and encounters. But really they are "simulations" (yeah right, my high school wasn't like that).

How exact are the sub-genres going to be and will each game be defined by increasingly-small categories?

Adventure - RPG - turn-based - random encounters - ...
Adventure - RPG - real-time - steampunk - ...
Adventure - Visual Novel - fantasy - ... - Sakura Taisen
Simulation - City-Building - ... - SimCity
Simulation - Trains - ... - Densha De Go
Simulation - Dating - ... - Sentimental Graffiti
Action - Hack'n'slash - Ninja - ... - Ninja Gaiden
Action - STG - 2D - Horizontal - ... - R-Type

Or maybe you are doing it more like this where there will be a list of 30 labels and any can be applied to each game:

Sakura Taisen 4 - Adventure/Visual Novel/Fantasy
Beyond Oasis - Adventure/Action/Zelda-clone
Ikaruga - Action/STG/Puzzle
Kingdom Grand Prix - Action/Racing/STG