A Definitive List of Gaming Genres? 119
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."
wikipedia strikes again... (Score:5, Informative)
It's a good place to start. If you can think of more, you can always add them.
wikipedia "seriously" strikes again... (Score:1, Informative)
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Role Playing; and
Simulations
Look through the list, think of a game that fits the category, and I guarantee you can fit it into one of the two genres above.
Action FPS: Ghost Recon = War Simulation, Quake = Role Playing
Adult/Action-Adventure: Leisure Suit Larry = Role Playing
RTS: Any RTS you are practically G
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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 a
RTS = RPG (Score:2)
On the extreme side, you can say that the troops are talking to you when they say "Your orders?", "Ready, sir." or "Commander?"
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with your looser use of the term literaly almost any game could be called an rpg. at that point you would have only one catagory of game, which would be silly.
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Has cheat codes = Role Playing game because of God mode.
Does not have cheat codes = Movie.
As someone who edits the Wikipedia alot... (Score:3, Insightful)
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Interesting that the Wikipedia artile misses out "roguelike"..
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I was curious... (Score:3, Interesting)
:S (Score:5, Insightful)
"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
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Honestly, I think trying to pigeon hole any form of media into precise genres is a lost cause. Sure, you can say "That's a race game", and "This is a sports game", but if you get much more specific than that, you're just wasting your time. Not everything fits into an existing genre. Nor are the existing genres well defined. And many things blur the lines between adjacent genres.
This is something people usually get into with mus
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Zelda: Ocarina of Time was a 3d adventure.
Though I prefer to divide up "adventures" into two sub-types. Action-adventures (Zelda) and Puzzle-adventures (Monkey Island). This is kind of an outgrowth of PC vs. Console definitions of what "Adventure" games were.
I like to split the genres into ... (Score:4, Funny)
2) Games I don't play
And if you really want you can expand section 1) into:
1.1) Games I enjoy playing
1.2) Games I don't enjoy playing
Although 1.2) should really be grouped in section 2) as:
2.1) Games I didn't enjoy playing
There
Re:I like to split the Ask Slashdot into ... (Score:1, Funny)
2. Seek professional advice not the advice of anonymous Slashdotters
3. What??? OP was swimming in the shallow end of the gene pool.
Guess which one this?
I'm guessing .. (Score:4, Funny)
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Try using multiple tags (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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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.
In addition, we could use tags like "fud", "notfud", "dupe" for rip-offs and "thinkofthechildren" for GTA.
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Are you sure you aren't defining tags for
Re:Try using multiple tags (Score:4, Insightful)
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For games you could use something like simulation (sub-tagged with with flight, people management, sports, city building, etc), roleplaying (mmo, fantasy, sci-fi, slash and hack, etc), sports (football, golf, baseball, etc), mmog (fantasy, scifi, fps, etc), etc. Since certain subtags are genres of themselves h
Fast way to do this is go to the Nintendo website (Score:1)
Now add their new genres of Brain Games too.
That will start you off.
Luckily, you can play all of them on the Wii and the DS.
look to literature (Score:4, Interesting)
If you can disambiguate literature into its components there is no reason this cannot be applied to games. Games are another kind of story telling and so the same rule apply.
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games as storytelling, however, I might disagree with. some games tell stories, some do not.
game genres can be distilled into the following:
sports
shooting
jumping
thinking
thank you, and have a nice day.
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> had shooting, thinking, AND sports, with some jumping thrown into the mix.
Well, the guardian class could jump-attack with devastating effect on the first leap into battle (standard attack on distant foe if they haven't attacked you first) but that wasn't "jumping" in the puzzle-solving-game sense. In fact, I can't recall a single thing in either KotR game where you even could jump "over" something you couldn't also walk over. Not a single chasm
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Turn-based, Real-time Action;
3D, 2D, 4D [ign.com](PS3 added a new dimension to gaming
Frist Person, 3rd person, Ortogonal;
And those are only technical tags for the gameplay.
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The essential question is whether people want definitive genres or want less accurate, more ambiguous ones.
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This post is the hallmarks of anon coward reading previous post, taking one thing OP said and generalizing based on on it. I mentioned that that Kyd's ur-Hamlet was based on Saxo Grammaticus' Gesta Danorum, in which Grammaticus writes of Hamlet or Amleth. However his sources were never discovered so it was likely that the tale was past down through story telling. I mentioned this as an example, and happe
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True. Even the legend about the Slashdot poster who scored only goes back to the mid '90's.
My list (Score:2)
RPG
Adventure
2D platformer
3D platformer
Fighter
Flyer (Spaceships and submarines count too.)
MMO (MUDs would probably fit in here too)
Strategy
Sports (Many sub-catagories)
Rythm (DDR, Guitar Hero)
Casual/Puzzle (Bejewled, Tetris)
Racing
Genre-defying (Katamri, The Incredible Machine)
There, I think that almost any game wil fit into one of those catagories. Many games should also only fit nicely into one category. Though there are excepti
Incredible Machine (Score:3, Informative)
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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
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Unless you mean that you get to choose race/class/profession, and then you have to move most Final Fantasy games to the American side.
Instead, define them like:
Japanese RPG: Focus on plot.
American RPG: Focus on action.
Oh hey, now the 'dungeon diggers' also fit under American. Surprise surprise.
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The first thing you do in Morrowind and Oblivion is create a character from scratch. You choose the race, you choose the class, the skills, the sex, everything. Ditto Wizardry games, but with an entire party. Ditto the other games I mentioned.
In a Japanese-style game, like Chrono Trigger, you've given a character whose appearance you can't change, whose name you (often) can't change, whose set of skills you usually can't change, except for maybe selecting some skills over others. Wh
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For example, in Final Fantasy IV, your characters were static and you couldn't do much more than change their equipment.
In Final Fantasy V, you couldn't select your characters, but you could develop them however you wanted, choosing any job/skill you desired.
Final Fantasy VII had characters with few distinct features. All characters could be equipped with all skills/magic.
Final Fantasy VIII had a system unlike anythi
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The looks, name and the starting stats are given, but using this grid you *are* free to choose what skills which character learns. It's not totally freeform because there are two skills which are pre-configured to be for a certain character (for story purposes), but other than that you're free to let
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And I stand by my categories. Japanese games tend to focus on the plot, and American games tend to focus on the action. Of course they both contain both, but I disagree that they are equal measures.
You 'Chrono trigger got monotonous in the middle' example is even a point for me. An American game has plot so that there's a reason for the action. The plot tends to be on the boring, shallow side while the action tends to be constant and exciting. A Japanese game tends to have
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Anyway. The difference is that Japanese-style games give you a pre-made plot, where American-style games are more into letting you create your own story as you progress. That doesn't mean that Japanese-style games have *more* plot, that just means that the plot they do have is less reliant on imagination, and more reliant
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You need to get out more, then. There's plenty of 'non-prick' people that use that statement. It's called sarcasm, in case you hadn't figured that out yet. And you think I suddenly turned nasty, maybe you shouldn't call someone a 'condescending prick'.
I totally disagree with your Oblivion bit, too. Oblivion was a great
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Hate to say it but sarcasm and being condescending kind of go hand in hand much of the time. Also what most people seem to forget is on message boards no one can hear the tone of your voice or body language.
That being said I am remembered of a bit of wisdom.
Only a fool takes offence when none is intended. And it is a bigger fool that takes offence when it is intended.
Or in other words
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I don't think the plot was actively bad, just short and
At the risk of totally hitting a tangent, Horror films are the same way. Japanese horror films are about 'omg that's a horrible thing to happen' where American horror films are about 'scare them, scare them! quick, more plot so we can sc
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different ways to categorize (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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.)
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I like Wikipedias list of categories.
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Non-goal directed games... (Score:2)
There's no particular end to achieve, yet it is play and it uses a computer. It's *like* a simulation, in that it does *simulate* reality (or a form of it), but it is open-ended, unlike, say, SimCity, which is a closed-end simulation.
Other than that, this is a pretty comprehensive list.
Oh, good. Kill it until dead. (Score:4, Insightful)
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
Genres are only useful for movie stores... (Score:2)
Mark J. P. Wolf in Medium of the Video Game [utexas.edu] list a bunch of genres that are fairly useless such as listing demos as their own genre.
While I'm not a fan of applying film theory to videogames, I think that Rick Altman in Film/Genre [bfi.org.uk] makes the most interesting use of genre by syntax and semantics. (Actually, there isn't a lot of need to read the entire book. He lays out syntax and se
The Definitive List (Score:1)
2) Not Nethack.
It's impossible to master either.
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And here I thought it was for PnP RPG genres... (Score:1)
genres considered harmful (Score:2)
I have observed that many of the things I like are hard to classify in terms of things that were created before. On the other hand, many of the things that bore me can easily be classified.
What might this mean? Perhaps the difficulty of classifying existing games into genres is a good indicator of the state of the game industry.
It might be an interesting exercise not to list existing genres, but to make a list of games that are hard to classify, and use it as a benchmark against any genre list.
To be
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Scorched Earth is a 2.4 - Artillery game
Magic Carpet could technically be classified into several - it should, because of it's complexity in terms of content, be classified as 1.1 - Action (it is an action game - but most games are). It can also be classified as a Flight Sim, but then, many flight sims contain action and vice-versa, action games can simulate flight (which Magic Carpet does, if unconventionally).
As game
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The wikipedia article
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Tags are definately a better idea. There are no absolutes.
You can tag Scorched Earth as Artillery, Turn Based Strategy, Multiplayer, etc
You can tag Magic Carpet as all those genres at the same time, it all works. You pick out every game that's tagged flight sim and you'll get Magic Carpet, but you'll still get it if you go looking for action games too.
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David Crane's original Ghostbusters [wikipedia.org] doesn't easily fit a template. Whether that invalidates a set of genres or is the exception that proves them however...
Coincidence? (Score:1)
Kill "Action RPG" (Score:2)
What makes a roleplaying game a roleplaying game isn't the system its built on, but what occurs in the game
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I think what you were trying to say is, "I like RPGS", not "I consider action games as easier to beat when a 6 year old programmer friend of mine constructs a bot for it and screw the world for lumping RPGs into the action genre."
All games are easy fodder for bots if game supports them. If you think RPGs are 'deeper' than action games, well, then its time to argue about what
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There are 10 genres of games in the world (Score:2, Funny)
0: Games I don't have
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Have you read the EULA for World of Warcraft? I would not be surprised if that game said you're
you will fail (Score:3, Informative)
I offer you the following theorem:
Any genre-based categorization of computer games will either be too generic or too specific to be useful.
Same thing applies to movies, books, etc.
A more comprehensive list of genres (Score:2)
Of course, if you're of the more discerning adult crowd who is PS3-bound, this list would look more like:
(It's a joke)
Continuous, not discrete (Score:2)
impossible (Score:1)
Mobygames (Score:2)
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Where would you put Space Invaders that differentiates it from Quake? They both seem to fall into "Action".
Next up... (Score:2)
I'm sorry but it doesn't work. Try reading any album reivew that goes like "draws inspiration from 60s [bar-music], but with rythm taken from the 90s [foo-music], with a local color of [region]. What about mixed games and games that have several game modes (e.g. strategy game with RTS fighting? Or an app with Japanese anime-style graphics but Western-style
My Genres? (Score:4, Interesting)
So I scratched the surface on this question last week on my blog:
PipForPresident.Org/blog [pipforpresident.org]
the gist of which is:
"I dream of helping to enable everyone in the world to create and play their own video games together."
so... I want to eventually write (or contribute to) tools that enable people to reconstruct or derive any possible game... assisting with:
Not possible (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
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Or indeed complexity, storyline, atmoshphere etc... all of which apply to, let's be honest, any creative medium, to some degree or other. Okay, maybe static media like photography, sculpture etc are not so time-driven, but all of these things merely describe the different aspects of the way we use creative media to describe the world - whether the real world or an imagined one.
Film, books, music, computer games, theatre - all
Definitive List (Score:1)
You can see their genre list on their search page [spong.com] as well as their POV and dimensionality lists.
Genres (Score:1)
Descriptive tags over traditional Categories (Score:4, Interesting)
So I think using a series of tags that can be freely applied where necessary can help describe and generalize games without trying to nail the outliers and hybrids and unique games into categories they don't necessarily belong. I would say it is best to apply the series of tags in a standardized order, where a game can incorporate multiple tags from their different categories if applicable: e.g. it isn't necessary to add "real time" to a game with the "1st person" and "shooter" categories since that is generally implied. However you would have to add "turn based" to such a game if necessary since that is generally not typical of 1st person shooters. The tags should be (and generally are) applied in roughly the following order:
Narrative style (if applicable):
Linear
Branching
Sandbox (open ended?)
Setting:
Sci Fi
Fantasy
Historical
Modern
Sports
Dimensions/Perspective:
3D
2D (sidescroller, static, etc.)
1st person
3rd person (implying camera anchored to player's avatar)
"god" (or "bird's eye," implying camera free roaming over a map)
Text based
Gameplay Progression (can be implied by gameplay type):
Real Time
Turn Based
Avatar(s):
Solo
Team (a.k.a. squad, or party-based)
Army
Gameplay Element(s):
Shooter
Brawler
Racer
Tournament fighter
Puzzle
Strategy
Tactics
RPG (or some other form of character ability progression)
Sim
Exploration
Beat-matching
Obviously the Gameplay Elements category has the most descriptors and is still the least complete of all the categories, but you get the idea. By taking and applying all the necessary elements above to any game you can think of you can generally paint a fairly clear picture of what type of game it is relative to other games that may be similar or different. Not all the tags are necessary, and in most cases are left off because they're either obvious or implied, but for the sake of completeness in archival purposes they can help distinguish subtle differences between very similar but fundamentally different games. The "Avatars" category is one I've never actually seen applied to any games, but I think it's useful in describing some fundamental differences between games that have the player using a single character or pawn, as opposed to commanding multiple characters or entire squads/armies in various types of games.
For example, Baldurs Gate would fall under Fantasy, Branching, 3rd person, real time, party-based, RPG. Whereas NeverWinter Nights I would generally categorize as Fantasy, Branching, 3rd person, real-time, solo, RPG when describing the single-player campaigns at least (although you could take on a henchman at times, this was not necessary to play through or complete the game, so I would count that as an optional tag). Final Fantasy, or other Japanese RPG's would generally fall under Fantasy, Linear, 3rd person, turn based, party-based, RPG. Oblivion would be Fantasy, Branching, 1st person, real time, solo, RPG. So here we have 4 very different games that would previously all be described simply as RPG's are now much more clearly fleshed out with this system.
Multiplayer games are a whole other beast and in many cases should probably deserve their own list of categories to describe adequately. Splinter Cell's multiplayer consists of both 3rd person and 1st person perspectives, depending on which team you're playing on. A game which is designed as a solo campaign that can become a party-based campaign wh
Gamefaqs has a simple but correct system. (Score:3, Interesting)
And if you want Driving is a sport.
Basically any game can fit into one of these genres, many will fit in two (an action role playing game. An driving Simulation)
You can expand your genre list more and more but the fact is every time you have them all next year there's a new one that people are trying to make up. However it's not a "GTA" genre, at best it's a free roaming genre, but in reality it's an Action Adventure game.
There's many sub genres that can tacked on underneath it all. The only problem with games with this simplistic approach is Niche games and stuff that defies convention, you will never be able to label those because the whole point of them is that they defy conventions like genres, that's why many places have Miscellaneous, as well as "compilation" which spans all genres (aka Activision Anthology)
This is the best answer though because it's specific and precise. Most games will be one genre with a second as a sub genre (the Adventure game that has a lot of action and so on) but that's fine.
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