When you look at a videogame do you pay attention to the genre that it belongs to? If so do you think that it is accurate? Does it even matter? With game developers expanding and trying new ideas it is not surprising that genres would be crossed more often than not. When this is the case it is the advertising teams job to say what the game should be categorized under, but how should they do this?
They could be like Mark J. P. Wolf and say that genres should “take into consideration the dominant characteristics of the interactive experience and the games’ goals and objectives, and the nature of the game’s player-character and player controls” in his 6th chapter of Genre an the Video Game. By doing it Wolf’s way all that needs to be done is figure out which genre is dominant and go from there. What happens though if, lets say, the two genres in the game are close to or are equal to one another in dominance? According to this theory the advertisers would either have to figure out which one has a more prevalent standing in the game or just try and make a good call by choosing one over the other.
If we ignore Wolf’s ideology then another conclusion can be made, one in which the two, or more, genres are mentioned. By doing it this way the player is able to get a better idea of what is in store for them when they start playing the game. If a game says ‘fantasy adventure’ for example you, the player, know that these two genres will both be important in the game play. Given this simple solution of acknowledging and mentioning the cross of genres is not as devastating or drastic as some companies might think. Gamers are well aware that their games are not going to be solely action or first person shooter, but rather that the genres will mix. If gamers only wanted a genre per game then games would so limited that ideas for them would soon run out and one game would be a carbon copy from the one before it. If this were the case then the game industry would soon go under and that would be the end to videogames. However this is not the case and video gamers are more accepting than some people would give them credit for.
I’m curious as to what other people think about the topic. Is the videogame industry doing the right thing in trying to categorize games under only one genre? Or should they accept that games will cross genres?
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I do not believe that industry is trying to categorize everything into one genre. As many games are released in this time period, they're coming with more labels then ever. We have first person shooter games who now get tagged with having RPG elements, that some called then FPS-RPGs. Or we have a game like Mirrors Edge that is an action platformer. I think the labels should be just considered one thing as people already know what comes with a standard first person shooter, or role playing game.
ReplyDeleteI think ALL games cross genres in some amount. Can you think of a game that can be described perfectly using only one genre? That question is what I attempted to address in my blog. As Van S. mentioned, as more modern games are released, the lines between genre is further blurred and I think to label a game with specific genre is futile.
ReplyDeleteI think that people need the labels on the games and the industry is feeding to the need. It's like things in popular culture, music and artists needs to be labeled, but they can cross over and should cross over all the time. I really like Taylor Swift, but I really don't like country music, she is a country music singer, but her songs are played on stations that play the "popular hits" like 96.3 WDVD with plays all the pop music without rap thrown in. People cross their likes all the time, without even realizing it sometimes.
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