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."

:S

[joe 155]

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

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.

Oh, good. Kill it until dead.

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:Try using multiple tags

[drinkypoo]

This is exactly what I was going to say. Tagging is the only way to handle this particular problem. Give up on a hierarchy, it just doesn't work, it doesn't catch border cases. Tagging does, which is why we like it. It's one of my favorite things about drupal, my CMS of choice (which I found out about from a previous ask slashdot, actually.)

Re:My list

[Blakey Rat]

But what goes into RPG? I'd suggest three types:

American-style RPG (defined by the ability to create your own character):
Morrowind, Oblivion, old Might and Magic, Wizardry and Ultima games. Fallout. Perhaps KOTOR, but that's kind of a hybrid.

Japanese-style RPG (having to choose a character created for you by the developer):
Final Fantasy, Sudeki, etc. Despite being American, "Quest for Glory" is a Japanese-style RPG by this definition.

Dungeon Digger (Choose a character created for you; no, or few puzzle elements):
Diablo series, Dungeon Siege.

Those are all very different games.

As someone who edits the Wikipedia alot...

[Mitaphane]

...I wouldn't rely too much on this list. Not to descredit the entire article--most of it is pretty reliable--but there are questionable entries on that list. Even the article itself notes, "Due to a general lack of commonly agreed-upon genres or criteria for the definition of genres, classification of games are not always consistent or systematic and sometimes outright arbitrary between sources." That certainly seems the case for "Maze game", a genre noted in Chris Crawford's The Art of Computer Games but really isn't applicable these days. Looking at the article entry for "Artillery games", you can see the link it refers to doesn't talk about "Artillery games" as a genre, but rather a generic type of game called Artillery. Under that classification "Snake game" [wikipedia.org] should be a genre.

Depending on how you want to describe "genre", there can also be some other inaccurates. There's some entries that sound like descriptions. Is "Arcade game" genre? An arcade can be a fighting game or a first person shooter. If it is a genre, shouldn't "Console game" be a genre too? There are other entries that describe more game mechanics than "genres." For example "Stealth games," there are FPSs (see Goldeneye 007), as well a 3D person action games (see MGS), and Action Adventure games (see Beyond Good and Evil) that use a stealth mechanic as gameplay. So does that make it more a game mechanic or a genre itself?

Re:wikipedia strikes again...

[skam240]

yes but using two big generic catagories like that doesnt tell you anything about the games that fall under them. putting both quake and baulder's gate (two radicaly different games) into the same catagory of role playing is kind of silly.

plus (just to nit-pick), an rts is most deffinitly not a role playing game as you are simply not playing a role (except in a few exceptions where it's part of the story you are in fact not god in an rts). your position in most rts games is far too abstract to discribe it as role playing.

Re:wikipedia strikes again...

[hal2814]

Role Playing is a simulation. You're simulating social interactions. You're typically doing this in some sort of fantastical setting but it's still very much a simulation. I'd even argue that an RPG is more of a simulation than a type of game that doesn't fit well in either catergory: the puzzle game. Tetris for example could tehnically be a simulation but what exactly is it simulating? What do online logic problems simulate for that matter?

Re:look to literature

[MrHanky]

It's true that you can reduce storytelling to combinations of a few abstract categories, but neither literature nor games are all about stories. That's why literary fiction traditionally is seen as three main genres: the dramatic, the lyric and the epic. Game genres don't correspond well to these, as you don't really have anything like lyrical or epic gaming. And while you can consider many games dramatic, they don't correspond to the main dramatic genres of comedy and tragedy. Besides, only games that include representation and roleplaying have much in common with the drama. Tetris, Pong and simulations are something else, completely.

If we split games into broad genres, we can try to reuse the magic number three:
Character based representational games (games where you control a first or third person character in a 2d or 3d world).
Characterless representational games (simulations, racing).
Non-representational games (abstract puzzles like Tetris, Minesweeper and Solitaire, abstract action like Arkanoid).

Of course, all these will have undergenres, and they will also blend. An obvious problem is that it's very formal, and doesn't take into account that gaming experience will differ more within each category than between them. Quake III Arena has more in common with Pong (which I'm not sure whether to put into the second or third genre) than with The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion.

I suggest we rather focus on gameplay experience than formal features. That would create genres like action, strategy and puzzle. Oh, and simulation.

Not possible

[xtieburn]

We had to do this as part of a module on my degree course. It was fairly futile then, its still futile now.

Unlike what a lot of people have been saying I do think genres are important, they immediately allow you to narrow down what game you really want to play. However, arbitrary naming is fine. As long as you understand the terms being used people can divide the games up how they wish. Its simply not possible to have a definitive list.

The reason for this is that games are defined by too many things. E.g. FPS is a name that describes a viewpoint and an action. RTS is a name that describes the games timing and an entirely different action.

Whats more they can be crossed back and forth. There is no reason why an FPS can not be strategic and real time making it an RTS as well. (Not the most obvious example. For that youd have to look at role play which has permeated every genre out there.)

I.e. you have viewpoint, game timing, actions, setting and the constant mixing of all of them. (Most FPS can be TPS, Dungeon Keeper was top down RTS and FPS, etc, etc)

Add to this the dozens of odd ball games and the thousands of retro games that require a genre set all for themselves and you have an impossible task on your hands.