Format
In short Format is how a game is packaged, delivered and played, such as single-player, multiplayer, episodic or live service.
Definition
Format is how a game is packaged, delivered and played, as distinct from what you do inside it. It covers who you play with (alone, cooperatively, competitively, or with thousands of others), how the game arrives and lasts (a finished release, a run of episodes, a live service updated for years), how long a session or the whole work runs, and the platform it needs. Format shapes habits more than verbs: a live service invites daily return, an episodic release invites waiting between parts. Second Playthrough keeps it separate from genre, theme, perspective and mechanic, because many labels that sound like genres, such as "MMO" or "mobile game," are really statements about format.
Not to be confused with
- Genre
Genre is the shape of play inside a game, while format is how that play is packaged and delivered, so a shooter can be a finished single-player game or a live service.
- Perspective
Perspective is where the view sits during play, while format concerns the larger frame of who plays, for how long and in what installments.
- Theme
Theme is what a game is about, while format is how it reaches and holds its players, and neither tells you the other.
Where the game lives
- rules: dropped
- goals: used
- feedback: dropped
- uncertainty: used
- choice: dropped
- play: used
Format governs when, how long and with whom play happens, which shapes goals (seasons, episodes, daily tasks) and uncertainty (other people). The rules of moment-to-moment play belong to genre and mechanic.
used dropped · What the six structures are
Examples
World of WarcraftBlizzard Entertainment, 2004
A persistent, subscription-based online world shared by many players, a format that outlasts any one genre description of it.
The Walking DeadTelltale Games, 2012
Released in five episodes over most of a year, so the wait between parts became part of how it was played.
FortniteEpic Games, 2017
A live service whose seasons, events and changing map matter more to its identity than its shooting.
In the essays
Why “RPG” stopped meaning anything
“RPG” fuses five separate things—mechanic, theme, format, perspective and role-play—and once progression spread to every genre, the label stopped sorting games.
Sources
- BookA Casual Revolution: Reinventing Video Games and Their Players. MIT Press, 2010. Shows how session length, platform and interface reshape who plays and how, independent of genre. Reading list
- PaperGenre and game studies: Toward a critical approach to video game genres. Simulation & Gaming 37(1), 2006. Argues that conventional genre labels group games by surface resemblance, which leaves room for separate axes such as format.