The Eternal Struggle of Video Game Genres
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- Опубліковано 26 вер 2024
- Let's scream into the void about genre theory in video games.
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Source Bibliography:
Adams, Ernest. “The Designer's Notebook: Sorting Out the Genre Muddle.” Gamasutra, 9 July 2009, www.gamasutra.....
Altman, Rick. “A Semantic/Syntactic Approach to Film Genre.” Cinema Journal, vol. 23, no. 3, 1984, p. 6.
Altman, Rick. “Film/Genre.” London: BFI Publishing. 1999.
Apperley, Thomas H. “Genre and Game Studies: Toward a Critical Approach to Video Game Genres.” Simulation & Gaming, vol. 37, no. 1, 2006, pp. 6-23.
Arsenalt, Dominic. “Video Game Genre, Evolution and Innovation” Eludamos. Journal for Computer Game Culture, vol. 3, no. 2, 2009, p. 149-176
Caldwell, Nicholas. “Theoretical Frameworks for Analysing Turn-Based Computer Strategy Games.” Media International Australia Incorporating Culture and Policy, vol. 110, no. 1, 2004, p. 42-51.
Carr, Diane, et al. “Computer Games: Text, Narrative and Play.” Google Books, Polity, 31 Mar. 2006, books.google.c....
Chandler, Daniel. “An Introduction to Genre Theory.” University of Washington, Aug 1997, faculty.washin...
Clarke, Rachel Ivy, et al. “Why Video Game Genres Fail: A Classificatory Analysis.” Games and Culture, vol. 12, no. 5, June 2015, p. 445-465.
Lee, Jin Ha, et al. “Facet Analysis of Video Game Genres.” IConference 2014 Proceedings, 2014, pp. 125-139.
Neale, Steve. “Genre.” BFI Publishing., 1980.
Whalen, Z. “Game/Genre: A critique of generic formulas in video games in the Context of ‘The Real’”. Works & Days, vol. 22, Issue 1/2, 2004, p. 289.
Wolf, M. J. P. “The medium of the video game.” University of Texas Press, Austin, TX, 2001, p. 113-234.
Ah yes, the "Action-adventure" genre, the vague answer to a game that's pretty light on everything.
I got a better name for it, filler games
Action adventure is what I call a ubisoft game
@@aser3951 Before games like Tomb Raider (PSX Classics) would have been considered Action Adventure games, now they're just filler games designed to waste our time and money.
@ I meant it as games that don't really have anything special to them, they're designed to appeal to softcore gamers who just play what's popular these days kinda like Ubisofts cookie cutter output of "Games"
Aser X action adventure is what Icall a sony’s exclusive game
bloodborne: *tries to scare you, contains horror elements,
vampires (the hunter), cainhurst castle (dracula’s castle) werewolves, gothic arquitecture, overall classic horror elements*
youtube commenters: i did not get scared, this isnt horror. im a big boy.
Only scary things are horror. Just like all those horror movies we all get scared by. Every single one.
@@thefreshestslice4105 does this mean donkey kong country is a horror game because its game over screen scared me when I was younger?
@@xanious3759
*YES*
it's definitely a love letter to horror and lovecraft. But would you call a love letter to Tolkien, or fantasy that plays like Call of Duty an RPG? Bloodborne plays like a souls game overall, which are ARPG's, it's an ARPG with a horror aesthetic if anything. Is Darkest Dungeon a horror game? Is Telltales TWD a horror game? It's all the same answer. Nadda.
@@theworstcatholic7247 well guess we have very different opinions. I believe horror arises under the scenario that is presented. 'Is Darkest Dungeon a horror game?' Yes 'Is Telltales TWD a horror game?' Yes. Tolkien wasn't writing RPG manuals. Not sure how taking pieces from tolkien would make someone assume that an RPG was trying to be developed, high fantasy =/= RPG.
They're just Western movies with really good Western.
They’re just Western movies, with really good tumble weeds.
Nah bro they’re Spectacle Westerns or Cowboy Action Films
"They're just action games with really good combat" kappa
I kid. I love TGB 😊
Then that means Dark souls and dad of war are action games with BAD combat systems.
And DMC/Bayonetta/NInja Gaiden are action games with GOOD combat systems.
@@vorpalinferno9711 The Souls games are overrated, they have a lot of flaws in their combat design, but if you think the new God of War is on the bad side, you couldn't be more wrong. The one thing with the cooldown is a bit misplaced here, but DMC has also some old bad trades it hadn't get rid off, so out of the way, I'm not talking of "perfect" but one of the best in many small disciplines I have ever seen. It's a very good and highly scaleable combat design that isn't worth to be sh*t on by someone who probably never had to consider most of the things that went in such a design!
Well this looks like a thread of people not understanding that the previous person was joking...
@@zaphero5518 I do understand that the first one was joking but I believe the second, to whom I was refering to, was not! ;)
Marc Braun if you think dad of war is good combat design you probably don’t know what you’re talking about. The developers themselves they prioritized the story telling over the gameplay that’s the end of that discussion as far as I’m concerned
As someone who studies this kind of stuff at university i was really interested and once again amazed of the quality of you videos. Love it! Keep going man
I find explaining certain elements of the gameplay works the best. When I recently explained to my brother what Astral Chain is like to play I told him that you have a Zandatsu and Witch time and he immediately knew what he could expect from the general combat flow.
Of course this doesn't work with people who don't play many games.
Agreed, it can be more tedious to describe tropes but if they are actually narrowly defined though the application of them helps. That goes a lot further than action adventure or platformer.
Another one which would work a bit would be Dodge Offset which isn't the most important element outside of Bayo but it gives a distinct sense of how combat can flow and is true for Astral Chain.
You should add a list of video games used in the video, or place a title in the name of the game you are showing. There are a lot of times that I am watching your videos and get interested in a video game, based on the video and have to rely on comments to get the answer to what video game is being shown.
I've added lists of games at the end of a couple videos but I still get those questions, but putting the title into the video along with the game is a good idea that I will keep in mind for the future!
Foxcade just list the games used in the video in the description in order of appearance
Genre is important because
Someone looking for a 'shooter' can be handed Last of us, Doom or Fallout. They all play extremely different.
That is not an efficient system.
A good way to do is create a standard of Genre Elements.
Where I am going with this is that most games now have overlapping elements. And as such by reading these genre elements as #tags people can get a better idea of what they are getting would be to their satisfaction or not.
But Fallout it's an rpg, the latest games have shooter elements
This is definitely a video more people need to watch. Kudos to you, Foxcade.
I don't think I'll ever tire of this channel. Clear, concise, quality content. Love it. Keep up the great work ( :
Since it's close to halloween, Fox here must be having that one old nightmare again...
"They're just aaaaaction games, with really good coooombat!!!"
Did he foxcade dislike gaming brits whole take on what genre DMC is in?
DMC 2 is not a shooter huh? Because guns aren't your main offensive tool? Infested Chopper would like a word.
Even on that front it fails, what a perfect game that DMC2.
@@Comkill117 To quote Dante: "That's just a piece of crap."
Damn son he lives!! Always waiting for the new foxcade video, I don't mind if you take your time cuz it's always such a well written and insightful experience.
I don't know if anyone really talks about this, but I really appreciate your background music choice. It's very chill, and a lot of it tends to come from lesser known games with wonderful soundtracks I happen to recognize, so it's nice to see them getting some love.
I love this channel! Always excited for more🦊
I really like Tom Oliver's term for Dark souls, and it's sequels and the games it inspired: Action-Anxiety games. The moment to moment gameplay has you anxious about failing and losing, prompting careful and considered play, but the gameplay is action oriented.
"I have to justify the amount of film studies classes I took in university" gosh what a mood XD
I saw the chart. Pop tarts are sandwiches.
So happy I ran into your channel! Love your content, dude!!
Aye we are blessed with quality content yet again, Foxcade you have great week.
You too!
“They definitely know what sonic is" I lost it
I never thought TOO hard about the idea of gaming genres until I asked myself a question: What genre is NiGHTS Into Dreams? The most I've been able to find or come up with are extremely vague terms like "action" and "arcadey".
Genres are weird but are useful when you are trying to advertise a piece to media to someone. It's kind of like a template on the game or film you want to make. Great video.
great video!! but it would be nice if you could put the names of the games that are on screen, like above de lodading bar of the video, because some of them look very intresting and are not that well known. Good video keep it up!
For something that was presumably a 'rough' essay - This one is very well put, and tackles an issue i hope more people at-least sometimes consider when approaching any work of art.
Well done Fox, I really enjoyed this one!
Horror and shooter aren't traditional genres. Traditionally it would be Survival horror, action horror, FPS, third person shooter, etc. Video game genres explain the playstyle. MOBAs play diff from rhytm games. Shooter is too broad and can lead to confusion, that is true. Also, Video game genres aren't exclusive, such as FPS MOBA, which can add a little to confusion. But generally the confusion lies in mixing theme genres with video game genres. Comedy doesn't tell me about the playstyle. But it does tell me about the theme. By theme, both plants vs zombies and portal are comedies but the former is a tower defense game, the latter a puzzle FPS. More effort probably should be put into keeping theme genre distinct from the video game genre.
Umm... I tought Syntax is the building block and Semantic is the deeper meaning of it. Or am I wrong?
Not in this context specifically.
Game genres are a thing I've been struggling with for some years now. I tried making some kind of a list, but have always dropped the idea. Mainly because I can't do so myself and have it be good enough, I need other people's opinions too. But that always comes to people not wanting to think about it, not wanting to rethink their misconceptions, not wanting to let go of old genres and classifying something as something new, etc. I'd like to conduct some kind of a proper study at some point, because I'm really frustrated how nowadays genre of a game doesn't mean almost anything at all when someone tries to explain their game.
Dang, that ThorHighHeels name drop. Ya'know I started following him around 2, maybe 3 years ago when and his sub count was far from remarkable, but his content with its laidback approach of not so much "critiquing" games but just casually talking about them, unique video topics, as well as his overall aesthetic was something I found to be very underrated. Even when so few people watched his videos his passion for making them with so little incentive never faded out. Glad to see him become a big boy and get the recognition he deserves!
Love all your videos and this one was no exception. Thanks Fox!
To me is not that complicated...
Doom: First person shooter.
Devil may cry: Hack and slash, or, third person action game
Condemed: First person horror or terror game.
Fear: First person shooter horror game.
Ikaruga: Bullet hell or 2d scroll action shooter game.
Metal slug: 2d scroll lateral action or shooter game.
Eternal sonata: action jrpg
FFVII: turn-based jrpg
In jrpg you dont need to say is third person, because this is usually the norm. But, if is diferent, you can say "first person action jrpg"
Basically you can describe the mecanics and the point of view, and you almost any game, and I think it is prety clear for anyone who is listening.
....IS there a first-person JRPG? I can't think of one. The likes of Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest started out as 2D sprite-based games and slowly evolved to 3rd person 3D games.
@@jedimasterpickle3 Maybe not yet, but nothing is imposible, and if someone do a JRPG in first person, I know how to call it.
It is really not taht complicated to calll a Genre Today.
The problem with calling DMC “hack and slash” can be narrowed down to a single letter: V
I think the biggest problem people have when talking about genres is that they imagine there to be some hypothetical "correct" way of defining them, rather than acknowledging that genre is a tool for communication and as such is a moving target. Like, any genre definition is only as useful as far as it helps you communicate the type of game you are thinking about to someone else with as little confusion as possible. That's it.
I can understand your exhausting at these studies, hell, Advanced Government was NOT worth taking. But I gotta appreciate your dedication, or should I say... *MOTIVATION* ?
Also speaking of bad genre names, I HATE the term “walking simulator” as it completely fails to convey what is the central conceit of a game like Gone Home or The Stanley Parable. It’s why I’d rather call them “Narrative Games”
I tend to refer to those games as "first-person adventure."
Percival917 didn’t Nintendo refer to that as Metroid Prime’s genre?
Still, that’s a good one.
@@sambeckettcat That is correct, though we classify that one as a first person metroidvania now.
Zaphero makes sense. I suppose genres are often named more by the players than the devs
True, and in a way, most games would be walking simulators wouldn't they? You can walk in most of them.
You're teasing us with NieR popping out here and there.
I have no comment towards these wild allegations that I am or will ever release a NieR video.
AYYYYY ThorHighHeels getting that much deserved shout-out. Easily the most under-rated YT channel.
Saying "Trust me ive considered it" at 1:29 with that on the screen is hilarious
If Berserk is classified as horror Bloodborne can be too.
Well done mate, composing a clear discussion on this could not have been easy. I've literally just wrote myself into knots of confusion while simply trying to understand the difference between the three main Rpg types by simply using games I've actually played. It was most certainly the wrong way to do it.
I realized I’ve watched multiple of your videos and had to sub . You make great content !
I *NEED* that picture at 2:04
Also, what bugs me is something like "Metrovania". It's long, LONG past time for that to have a better name. It just feels wrong tacking two entire franchises into the name, especially considering there are a plethora of Metroid and Castlevania games that you wouldn't really call "metrovania" games, be they Federation Force or Lords of Shadow.
How about... Labyrinth platformer genre? Sounds pretty apt. Also, good point about Federation Force and Lords of Shadow
@@Layazeroda I've been thinking that "labyrinth" or "labyrinthine" should be in the genre title somehow. I'm just not sure how to put it...
These aren't all platformers, though. There's games like Dark Souls, Darksiders III, and Batman: Arkham Asylum that fit into this category, too.
Old comment, but it it the same with "rougu-like".
It is literally named after single, very old game that poipularized RPG combat, permadeath and procedural generation combination (with genre fandom being eternally in the state of a civil war over which games are even a part of a genre).
I like your videos a whole lot, man, the DMC retrospective series being my favorite. This video though still enjoyable, seems a bit superfluous, not necessarily by itself, but due to the fact that this topic has been discussed at length by now with almost always the same conclusions.
I flinched at the jumpscare and still got scared
I have always thought that there's a genre (sub. mechanics), a perspective and a theme that form a media(in this case a game). First describes how action is presented like shooting, puzzle solving, roleplaying or "adventure". Second is FPS, TPS, isometric, topdown etc. Last one is how we perceive visuals and what were the creators intention. These categories are not restricted to single entity, but can be mixed, fused, created or sub-ed. I have no preferences for this theory, just my pennies. I have also somethings described games having a element of something, like Mass effect 1 is not open world but has a choice for which order you want to clear planets, this same kind of "open worldness" is in SMB3. Are JRPG with a world map an open world games? Not really but they have an (proto) element of that.
thanks for this content, appreciated
I hate that everyone thinks Diablo-clone is some kind of genre, and then Rogue-like is a completely different kind of genre, and there's no relation between the two at all. Diablo is just Rogue in realtime. Randomly generated floors, randomly generated items, and death ostensibly matters. "Oh it doesn't have permadeath" Doesn't matter. When you die your corpse is left on the ground and you have to go find it to get your stuff back. That's literally how it works in Rogue. Just in Diablo you keep your levels and skills, and just lose your items.
In other words, yes I agree, people absolutely SUCK ASS at naming and grouping things with any sort of coherence and often get stuck on the most minute details that don't at all matter.
have you considered adding captions that show the name of the game when they appear similar to how Every Frame A Painting does for movie titles?
"More complicate in identifying video games"
NieR Automata: you can say that again.
You really did some studying on this topic, I can tell. Not just research, but some deep analysis and insight of your own. It seems to be a lost art these days on UA-cam
repetition has nothing to do with appealing to the mainstream.
creating tight design that is entirely unique is basically impossible
Putting this video's category into lifestyle or something would've been a good fuck you to the unreasonable bloodborne guys.
I have friends that refer to Portal as a First Person Shooter.
That hurts me on a very deep level.
You are shooting things. It's just not in an offensive or confrontational way.
It's a puzzle-fps
Very nice, cool and well done. thanx.
I was gonna sit down and read some Manga, so I jumped on to youtube to find me some lofi anime beats. But then I saw Foxcade uploaded and that went out the window.
You clearly put a lot of work into this! Great work :)
that duck game looks really dope
what is the name of that game please
i already studied genre theory at college specifically for video games and i think the most important very small bit of information i learned was: video game genre is the gameplay. ignore presentation. "horror" is a presentation. the gameplay's genre could still be action, stealth, survival, etc. and that is the Game's Genre
My nigga, video game genres headaches don't hold a candle to the headaches of the metal genres and subgenres.
And how many people either misuse them or want nothing to do with the discussion because they think genres are useless (they aren't imo)
Awesome as always bro. Hope you have a good Samhain brother go well.
Personally, my standard for this is, for example, if somebody asked me to recommend them a Fighting game, I'm not going to recommend Smash. When they ask for Fighters, they're CLEARLY not talking about Smash, they mean games like Street Fighter and Tekken, because games like Street Fighter and Tekken are representative of the genre, whereas Smash is very, very different from the genre and is really in a class of its own. I personally would be pissed if I asked for a Fighter and somebody gave me Smash, so I tend not to do this to others.
So, the test that I apply is "if somebody asked me to recommend them a game in "GENRE X", would this game be suitable?", and if the answer is no, then it isn't part of the same genre. I think that works better than the standard that some folks seem to have, where they believe that ANYTHING with the slightest bit of platforming in it can be called a Platformer, as if it represents the genre. Or anything with the slightest bit of racing in it can be called a Racing game. Or anything with swords in it is a "Hack and Slash" like DMC. Or anything with Horror in it is "Survival Horror" like Resident Evil, even if there's no survival elements like limited resources, and no combat. This is what lies at the bottom of this issue, IMO, because that standard just doesn't work. It's so lax that actually, I think I'm wrong to even call it a "standard".
I thought you were gonna argue to Gaming Brit again.... I like his Jak X review
Nah, I said everything about the character action thing last year, and dont have any lingering issues with TGB about it. This is just a deep dive into genre theory because I've always found it interesting
Excellent video. Thank you very much for sharing!
Foxcade: *Makes a video about genre*
Also Foxcade: *Considers roguelike to simply mean random levels and permadeath*
my problem isnt that the definition is too narrow, quite the opposite, i think that definition is too broad, roguelikes are always turn based, focus on narrow margins of success that you have to manage and some other characteristics that make the genre have that particular feeling.
simply having random levels and permadeath would make diablo 3 on hardcore mode a roguelike, do you play diablo 3 for the same reasons you play nethack, TOME or unreal world?
no, again, just no, gungeon is a twin stick shooter with random levels and perma death, but thats it, it would be like arguing that since portal is in first person and has a gun of sorts, its a first person shooter.
the point is that it is close, adjecent even, but not a roguelike, same thing with stuff like the pokemon mystery dungeon games, you have turn based combat on a grid and random levels, but without perma death its just not a roguelike.
for me genre is defined by the reasons you play it, do you play symphony of the night for its RPG elements? do you play nuclear throne for taking your time to make strategic choices? do you play smash bros 4 and ultimate for its character building? thats my way of seeing game genre, because mechanical purpose replaces aesthetics when it comes to translating the concept of genre to games.
but then its just a different genre, which is my point exactly, even those people that play the genre for random dungeon crawling with insta death wont play gungeon and nethack for ONLY those 2 reasons, because they are drastically different games that only, sorta, share 2 elements of their core design.
COD and Doom have more to do with one another than TBoI and angband
they are both first person and have guns? that doesnt mean FO3 is an FPS, its a first person RPG that happens to have guns.
Excellent video! Love this kind of content
Okay, the term souls-like has come into existence and replaced the term "difficult action rpg" which feels like it's a devolution of the preexisting term. Look at anything that's labeled "souls-like" that isn't just people meming and it's gonna be what someone 8 years ago would describe very simply as a difficult action rpg.
People treat genres as though it's a classification system but they never specify important things for classification like the characterization criterias. For example we can say that a fighting game should have health bars and character select screen and the win condition of depleting opponent's life bar and be 1v1. But when faced with a game with these things but is so unfamiliar to us the genre police start making up new rules.
Take JRPG. Ignoring how unhelpful RPG is anymore, JRPG is also unhelpful because at first it was made to classify RPGs from Japan which in itself is already a problem but if Japanese can be use to describe cinema or music then why not. But then a game like Dark Souls comes out but there's still doubt over its status because now we have to add new rules regarding aesthetic, which is insane to think that genre police would ever do that since we treat genres as mechanical identities. But then a game like Nioh comes out which earn its J in JRPG more than any JRPG yet there is still some doubt. So now we have some starting to use the term anime RPG. Some don't classify them as genres at all. Gamefaqs used to call games like Final Fantasy console style role playing games but I guess nobody understood that so they changed it to Japanese-style roleplaying games which is used to describe the style of menu based RPGs FF made popular and interestingly enough, Lord of the Rings The Third Age is in this category.
Beat em up like TMNT Turtle Of Time are so timeless
The city-builder shooter-action puzzle simulation genre
What's that game shown around 19:27
Btw, awesome content as always
That's one of the Galaga sections of Nier: Automata.
when you started talking about point and clicks you reminded me of the cyanide and happiness game.
I consider blood-borne a horror game with action elements basically a city that was using a certain material called the old blood thinking it would bring about Prosperity but instead turn the inhabitants into beasts that's horrifying
I think the confusion is coming from people not having proper definitions for things so they make up their own definitions
i.e. Bloodborne doesn't have mechanics that I would typically associate with a horror game, or the horror games that I've played, therefore it must not be a horror game.
Great video as always!
Bloodborne is not only horror because it has horror themes, it is horror because the Souls subgenre owes more to the survival horror genre than any other genre out there. The fact that gamers don't notice souls is a subgenre of survival horror just shows how oblivious the average gamer is.
This was very well done, thanks for another great video! You got your points across and it all made sense with how you worded stuff.
I'm dying to know but what games are the ones featured at 1:20 and 17:45 ?
Thank you very much!
And the two games are Nelo (still in early access on Steam) and Lucah Born of a Dream, which is on PC and Switch
0o00ooo, another Foxxxxyyy vidya!!
In parallel with advancing technology, concepts,ideas and philosophy moves forward along withit. So the genre names/title should evolve at the same pace.
The cause of contention is the hard headed self proclaimed guardians of video game culture.
There's something you didn't discuss that actually makes genre much easier to understand (but I totally understand why you didn't mention it apart from once). In language, it's fairly common for two phrases to be combined together to create a very detailed description of an idea or object.
For example, the definition of a room is commonly understood. It's a subsection of the interior of a building. Combining it with other words turns it into a completely different thing, usually different enough to not be associated with other rooms. Bathrooms, dining rooms, and courtrooms are all rooms, but no one would mistake one for the other.
With this in mind, we can take games with nebulous genres like Survival Horror, and call one game a Fixed Camera Survival Horror and the other a First Person Stealth Horror to distinguish Resident Evil 1 from Alien: Isolation. Genres need to be brief to be useful. As accurate as it is, calling RE1 a "Hardcore Fixed Camera Shooter-like Survival Horror Puzzle Game" sounds stupid when you say it in conversation and isn't useful for the sake of using genre as a descriptor. Genre needs to be purposely vague to some degree, so it's umbrella can define more things at once. It doesn't make sense to have an entire genre only include two or three games (which is why Souls-like became a genre now that there's dozens upon dozens of games that fit the bill, instead of when Demon's Souls was released).
To go even further, Tales of Maj'Eyal, Fallout: New Vegas, Final Fantasy VII, classic Neverwinter Nights, and Dark Souls all contain core RPG elements: dialogue trees/narrative control (to some extent), experience point based character development systems, some elements of a job/class system, and an equipment/inventory system. You could arguably call each of these games an RPG and not be wrong. However, they are each so different from each of the other games that it's difficult to associate with the others.
You can break each of these games down based on things like camera perspective, degree of narrative influence held by the player, degree of emphasis on narrative as being important to the gameplay experience, combat pace and style, number of allies present in combat, number of characters directly controlled by the player at a time, job system or lack thereof, character improvement systems, item/equipment systems, movement mechanics, ect, ect. You can start to see precisely why umbrella genre names actually aren't a bad thing at all : )
Tales of Maj'Eyal (or ToME) is top-down and turn based, has extremely simplified dialogue trees (typically only two choices), mostly linear story with a greater emphasis on gameplay over narrative, turn based rougelike combat, no allied party system apart from temporary summons or allies, extremely rigid class system, and a Diablo-like loot and character skill system. So, most people would just call it a rougelike RPG and be done with it. But then, this game is arguably the same genre as Dwarf Fortress: Adventure Mode, Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup, and tabletop D&D when it is clearly nothing like any of them. Calling it a "Diablo-esque turn based rougelike" gives a much more clear impression of the job system, character progression, and narrative emphasis than simply "rougelike". (and yes, I broke my own rule bc ToME is one of the only "Diablo-esque turn based rougelikes" that exists currently)
You can do this with each of the games I mentioned in relation to strict, well thought definitions of genre. I won't be doing that, for the sake of brevity (and sanity). Unless you ask. Then I probably will.
Yes! Finally someone gave ThorHighHeels a shoutout
Haha we watched this in class for our Game Design class.
That's rad! I spent a lot of time on the research of this video, so I'm happy to hear that!
@@Foxcade Hey also, I wanted to say I really loved your Malcolm in the Middle video, that show means so much to me and me and my friends enjoyed it so much :))
What genre is your game?
Yoko Taro- it's an action RPG bullet hell side scroller text adventure top down hack and slash
As hard as Extra Credits has jumped the shark these days, their video on genre came with it's own names for semantic and syntaxic genres: "aesthetic" and "gameplay" genres. But either way, it's a much better way of classifying games in a way that tells you what you'll get out of a game.
I'll be honest, I think it's a market problem -- a capitalist one, if you will. People want to know genre because it helps inform them before a purchase. Reviewers want to know and quantify it to better know how to inform their readers, and marketers want to know so they can sell it better. That being said the reason it's almost impossible to agree is because of the marketability of the product. If we narrowly define genres to the point of genre -> subgenre -> sub-subgenre then the customer already knows what their buying taking away the surprise. This could be harmful to the buyer if they want a surprise but harmful to the producer because they want to surprise people for some potential free/extra sales. On the other hand, if we define genre too loosely then the seller doesn't have a language to sell it on and the buyer can't trust anything that they are buying is in anyway related to what they want. At first it would be exciting, but soon after being burned too many times it would become untenable to keep buying things that the buyer doesn't know what they actually are. Now, I'm not saying that without markets there would be no genre definitions. But I doubt they would be nearly as important to the general public or even the more serious game player.
Earned a sub
Great video! I think this kind of discussion is actually very healthy honestly. After all, perception is one of the most important factors in any genre, and we all percieve things differently. Take your example of bloodborne as horror. If you weren't scared, was it really horror? I have no doubt bloodborne scared more than a few people, yet I also imagine there were plenty of others who had an absolute blast and were grinning as they gained mastery over its systems and cut down swathes of monsters. I feel the most important thing about horror is what it makes you feel, that being horror. Different people can be afraid of different things, but there are things most people can relate to. Games can pull from those elements, even if for but a fraction of the game. We can see this in games like Metroid which occasionally pull pages right out of a horror game.
It's not the core game mechanics that define the genre, but rather the general feeling we get from playing. That's why we have the action adventure genre. Sure, it is broad, but so are those feelings. How a game's mechanics are framed can really set the tone for how players will experience the game. Take Celeste for example. Celeste is a precision platformer that frames its tough mechanics under a narrative about overcoming self doubt and accepting the parts of ourself we struggle with. That simple but powerful framing changed my experience from one of challenge and frustration into one of self mastery and introspection.
Ultimately what I'm trying to say here is that it is our personal experience that shapes the genres of the games we play. As video games are a medium which relies heavily on input from the audience in order to create an experience, and as individuals heavily differ from one another, we find a greater deviance when trying to nail down a specific game's genre. We need to acknowledge those differences, as that is part of what makes both us and this medium special, however, we also should acknowledge our similarities as well. The wide range of emotions we can experience is shared among us to some degree or another, and even though it takes different things to bring it out of each of us, it is those very emotions that unite us as people. Our experiences are different, yet no more important than the other. Do having hands make your feet useless? Of course not, so we should try spending more time working together to share our experiences and less time squabbling over if a hot dog is a sandwich.
As long as we agree that SOMA isn't a horror game...
If you ask me, a way to do genre is actually to kind of break things down. Something like “horror” would function better as a theme as you can apply the concept to almost any genre of game. From there you’d apply other elements as we define them. There’s also the matter of recognizing what elements make a genre. For instance, how important are dialogue trees to a Western RPG?
It tickles me pink that you included the goose game
I don't hate the idea of genres per say, I just hate the endless amount of pointless and non productive time spent arguing about them. And I just hate some terms used when describing some games. Like Thief being an "immersive sim" when it's basically a stealth game. And how RE4, 5 and 6 get lambasted for not being scary enough when they are basically third person shooters. Or how Dead Space and the Evil Within are called horror games when they are third person shooters. Or how Metroid Prime is called a "first person adventure" when it's clearly a metroidvania in 3D. Fuck, is Unreal and the Half Life games first person adventures too then? But hey, I already started a potentially pointless discussion now, great.
Let's break down the brawler/beat-em-up (wtf is "character action") argument sandwich style...
Hard traditional: *Final Fight is a brawler*
Structure pure, ingredient neutral: *Battletoads is a brawler*
Structure neutral, ingredient pure: *Bayonetta is a brawler*
True neutral: *Nier Automata is a brawler*
Structure pure, ingredient rebel: *Smash Bros: Subsapce Emissary is a brawler*
Structure rebel, ingredient pure: *Yakuza is a brawler*
Structure neutral, ingredient rebel: *Dark Souls is a brawler*
Structure rebel, ingredient neutral: *Breath of the Wild is a brawler*
Radical brawler anarchy: *Smash Bros: World of Light is a brawler*
I didn't really think this through so feel free to debate what should be where and offer better examples.
Bayonetta had swords, claws, guns, whips, the wtf weapon, and magic. The character technically doesn’t get her hands dirty
And character action is a genre that stereotypically grades your play style based on combo mad (if you don’t know what combo mad is it’s one UA-cam search away)
I wasn't a fan of your opener in the 'last' video, despite enjoying it. This feels much more organized and calculated, I'd give you a B+
You left off the part where RPG initially referred to games where... you actually played the role of a character (Dungeons and Dragons) then when video games were made based off of D&D style gameplay (Final Fantasy 1 being HEAVILY D&D inspired) they were called RPGs too. Which is reasonable considering they were adaptations of RPGs, even if they lost the things that gave RPGs their name. However, this gave RPG a second alternative meaning and... well... yah.
I try to sort my games by genres and am often scratching my head about how one can define games into clear genres here and there. Example: Super Mario Bros. is a platformer, but if something like Marble Madness or Super Monkey Ball also is a platformer, aren't such games still somewhat different than the first one? I mean, in the latter ones there is basically no jumping but the task of an obstacle course as the focus to maneauver through. Though by removing the jumping, isn't the feel of the gameplay differnt then? Is it then just up to preference of what design is it that one person might prefer when determining what platformer they might like more?
The aspect of genres sure is an interesting one.
Another great vid 👌🏾
I don't use genres as a strict set of rules that must be followed indefinitely, but more as a general umbrella that most explains the majority of the game. This way, when someone tells me "This is a turn-based rpg with a hub world and lite dating sims mechanics' I mostly understand what the game is like. (Or would have in the past.) Today, it seems as if both sides are trying to be either too free with the terms or too strict that they make the terms pointless. What is the goal of the gameplay and what is the delivery method of said gameplay? I also think that the misuse of terms is due to people and marketing attempting to make their tastes/a game more varied in presentation.
One immediate example I think of is Cyberpunk 2077. I see may claim it's a RPG, including CPR themselves. I would say that it is more clearly a third-person shooter, with elements from other genres sprinkle in to give it more depth and flesh out the vision of the game. This pisses people off as if I said that the game is bad or something. Or that I need to stop gatekeeping cause the genre is evolving. Something can only stay as a genre if you can easily enough identify it at a glance. When you start including massively different games into the mix, the point of the term is moot. If I say, 'I'm really in the mood for a RPG" and then someone recommends that I go play Horizon or God of War, I might come back upset at them, as while those games are debatably very good, that wasn't what I was looking for at that moment.
Genres to me are hard to do, but that's cause of the human aspect to it. I think people need to understand that just because something isn't a genre, doesn't mean it's not good (or is good) and be okay with the idea that you might only like a very few genres. Also, stop looking at genres as this hard set of rules that are meant to be followed, and instead look at the purpose of the work instead.
How to start a fight:
1) Show someone this video.
2) Now tell them about how gender is like genre. It's a limiting and intrinsically flawed concept that is sometimes helpful. Nothing more
Nice content bro
Sorry, linguist here: did you get semantics and syntax flipped? Because in the study of spoken/written language at least, syntax is structure and semantics is underlying meaning. It may be different in film studies though (again, only took linguistics classes), so I don't know. If that's the case, all I can say is: I really don't miss academia either. Anyway, another great analysis of a very interesting topic!
Its flipped in film studies, or at least in this case, but it still makes sense, it's just a matter of "semantics" haha syntax in this context is about how the semantics are structured and the semantics are visual difference/nuances between genres
Guys help me with this I’m making or tweaking genre names:
*Shooter class*
First person gunner
Battle royal gunner
Third person gunner
2D/3D platformer gunner
On rail gunner
*T/SG (tactical/ strategy game)* replacement for RPGs
Turn-based T/SG
Real time action T/SG
Command T/SG (fire emblem etc)
MOT/SG (MMORPG equivalent)
Action T/SG
to me the defining lines are some genres just aren't mutually exclusive & in rare cases it could also have a multiple sub-genre or even a totally "new" sub-genre.