Genre
In short A genre is a name for a recurring shape of play, meaning what you actually spend your time doing in a game.
Definition
A genre is a name for a recurring shape of play: what the player actually spends their time doing, and toward what end. "Platformer," "strategy" and "roguelike" each describe an activity that holds steady across many games, whatever those games look like or are about. Second Playthrough treats genre as one axis among several. It is separate from theme (subject and setting), perspective (where the view sits), format (how the game is packaged and played) and mechanic (a single rule-defined action). Many arguments about labels such as "RPG" come from asking one word to cover all of these at once. Genres are also historical: they are named after the fact, drift over time, and overlap at the edges.
Not to be confused with
- Mechanic
A mechanic is one action the rules allow, while a genre is the overall activity those actions add up to; many genres share the same mechanic.
- Theme
Theme is what a game is about and where it is set, while genre is what you do, so a war game can belong to almost any genre.
- Perspective
Perspective is where the view sits, which is why a first-person game and a top-down game can still share a genre.
- Format
Format is how a game is packaged and played, such as single-player or live service, and labels like "MMO" describe format rather than genre.
Where the game lives
- rules: used
- goals: used
- feedback: dropped
- uncertainty: dropped
- choice: used
- play: used
Genre names the recurring activity, so it describes the goals players pursue, the choices they repeatedly make and the rules that frame them. How feedback is tuned and how much is left to chance vary from game to game within a genre.
used dropped · What the six structures are
Examples
Doomid Software, 1993
So influential that the shape of play it set was first called the "Doom clone" before it was called the first-person shooter.
Final Fantasy VIISquare, 1997
A turn-based, menu-driven role-playing game that shares its genre label with games played in a completely different way.
The Elder Scrolls V: SkyrimBethesda Game Studios, 2011
Also called an RPG, but played first-person in real time in an open world, which shows how one label can span several different shapes of play.
Why the axes matter
Most confusion about what kind of game something is comes from reading one label as if it answered several questions. “RPG” can mean character statistics (a mechanic), a fantasy setting (a theme), a long single-player campaign (a format) or a particular rhythm of exploring, fighting and growing stronger (a genre). Second Playthrough keeps these apart: genre answers what do you do, and the other axes answer the other questions.
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
- PaperGenre and game studies: Toward a critical approach to video game genres. Simulation & Gaming 37(1), 2006. Argues that genres borrowed from older media hide what is specific to games, and that genre should be understood through interaction.
- BookGenre and the Video Game. University of Texas Press, in The Medium of the Video Game, 2001. Proposes classifying games by the kind of interactivity they demand rather than by their imagery. Reading list
- PaperVideo Game Genre, Evolution and Innovation. Eludamos: Journal for Computer Game Culture 3(2), 2009. Traces how game genres change over time, using the first-person shooter as a case study.