The Evils of Genres

there is a place for pure innovative games

and then there''s a place for games that do ONLY what games are supposed to do: Be fun.

We don''t need everything that comes out to be an esoteric, epic plot Final Fantasy game--nor do we need everything to be a Serious Sam flash in the pan but hella fun gunfest. We need a healthy mix and that''s what we''ve got.

The game market is like an ecosystem; a balancing act.

Great article!
That''s personally the method I use. Really thinking about what your game should be, building it up from nothing, instead of starting with a pre-built idea.

It''s like an RPGMaker, sure you can have some fun with it, but most everyone will tell you to stop messing around with premade stuff.

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aud.vze.com - The Audacious Engine <-- It''s not much, yet. But it''s mine... my own... my preciousssss...
MSN: nmaster42@hotmail.com, AIM: LockePick42, ICQ: 74128155

I''m not gonna lie, when I first decided to work on the design for a game I want to eventually make called Avatar, I picked the "wrong" method. I decided I want to create an original RPG. I even based a lot of themes on D&D and Final Fantasy. Now that i''ve read that article I''m going to take a serious look at what I''ve written so far and probably archive it. Thanks for the link, I needed that. Now I plan on designing a game following those guidelines.

Yeah, well, like I''ve been saying in every other post in this forum for two years now is everyone gets their inspiration from other games. Or books which seem to have heavily influenced the games in question.

It''s really simple. Do something else in life and get inspiration from that.

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Original post by bishop_pass
It''s really simple. Do something else in life and get inspiration from that.

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Wouldn''t using that approach result in reality-based games all the time? I can''t go out and be a secret agent, or an astronaut (not realistically, at least).

I guess it raises the question: Do people play games to escape reality? To immerse themselves in some other world?

Superpig
- saving pigs from untimely fates
- sleeps in a ham-mock at www.thebinaryrefinery.cjb.net

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The problem with this method of design is that it leads to me-too titles. The lack of creativity comes because starting a design with the genre means accepting all of the genre''s characteristics as given. If you start your idea with "It''s a FPS..." you automatically include all of the stereotypes of shooters: the game will be in first-person view, the fun will come from shooting many enemies, the game will probably be set indoors, etc. Similarly, if you start with "The game will be a RTS..." you mean, perhaps unconsciously, to follow the stereotypes of that genre: resources gathering, exploration, tech-tree development, creating units from buildings, etc. You cannot really avoid using those stereotypes since they form the basis of the idea for your game.

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Rot.

Genres serve as a broad classification, and if your idea is truly unique you won''t use a common genre label. "It''s a mountain climbing game..." What stereotypes come with that? FPS merely connotes exactly what it says - First Person Shooter; a shooting game in the first-person perspective. No other assumptions are implied in the genre label alone - only in the minds of designers who have made concrete associations between these labels and certain gameplay/environment features, who are the poorest sources of innovation anyway.

I''ll concretize my argument with examples from this forum - particularly with respect to the development of RTSes. Sure, tons of generic RTS designs "grace" these pages, but at the same time lots of unique and extremely innovative ideas float around here as well - delegation, elimination of resource gathering (uh-oh, PAG said the use of the word "RTS" would immediately bring this to mind), discarding God-like control, bestowing autonomy on units, limiting information access/availability/awareness... I could go on.

The general point of the article is passable, but by no means revolutionary. Hell, it''s not even necessarily correct.

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Original post by superpig
Wouldn''t using that approach result in reality-based games all the time?

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No. Unless you''re so uninspired by everything in which case you shouldn''t fancy yourself worthy of game design.

I said don''t read that which is used for inspiration of all of the games out there. It''s not hard to determine what that literature is. Also, get involved in something. Everything you do can analogize to elements in virtually any type of game. Don''t use existing games to get inspiration. And don''t use the literature which seems to inspire most of those games.

Use something else.

quote:

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Original post by bishop_pass
No. Unless you''re so uninspired by everything in which case you shouldn''t fancy yourself worthy of game design.

I said don''t read that which is used for inspiration of all of the games out there. It''s not hard to determine what that literature is. Also, get involved in something. Everything you do can analogize to elements in virtually any type of game. Don''t use existing games to get inspiration. And don''t use the literature which seems to inspire most of those games.

Use something else.

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Ahh, I misunderstood when you said ''be inspired by.''

Oluseyi: You''re correct in that a genre will apply to most types of game. However, I think his point was more that you shouldn''t start by basing your game around a genre, you should work out the genres which apply to your game?

Superpig
- saving pigs from untimely fates
- sleeps in a ham-mock at www.thebinaryrefinery.cjb.net

quote:

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No other assumptions are implied in the genre label alone - only in the minds of designers who have made concrete associations between these labels and certain gameplay/environment features,

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That''s exactly the point. We associate many things with the FPS genre. People don''t think as an FPS by it''s defintion, just like many games pass off as being RPG''s (role-playing games) just because they have stat points.
When someone says "I''m going to make an FPS", you can be almost always correct in assuming it will have a variety of weapons, players will start with a pistol/knife, the game will be split into set missions, the player can jump and crouch, the player will be a one-man wrecking crew for the entire game, and there will be power-ups scattered along the levels.

As soon as someone says "RPG" you can bet on there being some form of HP, MP, a medieval setting, infinite monsters, randomly generated items, set quests, level-ups, spells, dungeons, boss monsters, kingdoms, mages, thieves, warriors (etc, etc).

You''re arguement is fine in theory, but in real life everyone has made ties to gameply features just from the genre. Those ties are not easily broken, so it''s best to start from scratch, or you''ll end up most all of the above things.

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aud.vze.com - The Audacious Engine <-- It''s not much, yet. But it''s mine... my own... my preciousssss...
MSN: nmaster42@hotmail.com, AIM: LockePick42, ICQ: 74128155