[game_preservation] Descriptive terms for Video Games

[Rowan Kaiser]

Jan, what is a "Personal Development" game? And I agree whole-heartedly
about Action-Adventure being necessary. It started as a genre hybrid,
perhaps, but it's become its own, Zelda-like thing.

I actually agree with Andrew about multiplayer, at least in one crucial
instance, which is the MMRPG. I'm not sure classifying WOW as just an RPG is
enough - especially if the classification system is intended to lead people
to games that they play.

Rowan

On Wed, Jun 15, 2011 at 5:55 AM, Jan Baart <jan_baart at yahoo.de> wrote:


>  Very interesting replies everyone. My excuses in advance though, this

> turned out to be a much longer mail than I had hoped!*

>

> Richard Pugh

>

> *> Absolutely!  Pipe them along!

>

> Will do so in a private mail, but in case others are interested too, here

> are our "main" genres, which contain further granular subgenres:

>

> Action-Adventure

> Adventure

> Arcade

> Compilation

> Construction and Management Simulation

> Fighting

> Life Simulation

> Music

> Other

> Personal Development

> Platformer

> Puzzle

> Racing

> Role-Playing Game

> Shoot 'em Up

> Shooter

> Sport

> Strategy

> Traditional

> Vehicular Simulation

>

> A few notes about them as some will no doubt be questioning these already,

> skip this if you are only interested in the actual discussion we were having

> ;)

> - Compilation is obviously not an actual gameplay based genre but it is a

> technical necessity to have it, unless you accept certain "games" not to be

> classified at all. Our database contains compilations as companies released

> them, no way around this really.

> - Shoot 'em Up should be a subgenre of Shooter, we're aware of that. But

> again, usability creeps in. People want to differentiate between Shoot' em

> Up subgenres and we didn't want to introduce a third level of genres (we

> only have genre and subgenre now) just for this one exception. Usability

> trumps strict definition in this case, although you can of course write both

> definitions in a way that excludes the other.

> - Traditional might not be intuitive, it refers to conversion of

> traditional real world games like board games, card games, slot machines,

> pinball etc.

> - The controversial "other" exists, yeah. Please note thought that it's

> actually just a grouping for distinct and well-defined subgenres that do not

> fit the definition of any of the other main genres. If you read through my

> whole mail you'll see examples and reasoning for why I think even a real

> catch-all-oddities "Other" is okay for a taxonomy.

> - Action-Adventure might stick out as a hybrid between often used terms

> Action and Adventure. You might notice we have no Action main genre as we

> think it is entirely useless label. Almost every game contains action

> elements and there's absolutely no way to properly define what constitutes

> an "Action game". E.g. the "Action" definition at MobyGames fits sports

> games perfectly as well. As a rough definition for Action-Adventure you

> might consider something like this: "Action-Adventures are all games

> mixing adventure game elements like exploration, story and puzzles with the

> physical challenges of an action game without either type dominating". That

> definition has its problems for sure, but it still gives you a good idea of

> what it encompasses.

> - Arcade might be controversial too but I don't think going into detail

> here helps, let us just say it encompasses, among others, ball & paddle

> games and maze games.

>

> >We don't want to exclude LCSH of the LC genre headings from this project;

> that would be throwing out the proverbial baby with the bathwater.  What

> we're trying to do is >develop something to add to the existing structure.

> Also, we want to have the terms follow the general structure of LCSH/LCGFH,

> to make it easier to integrate with the rest of >the catalog. If you've ever

> used the LC genre form headings for motion pictures, you'll find that a

> given movie can have three or four genre headings; we expect similar results

> in >the game world.  If a given game gets over a dozen genre headings, then

> the usefulness of the record comes into question.  The cataloger's "rule of

> three" will likely be applied:  >We will choose the two or three terms that

> most adequately describe the game in hand.

>

> Not being American and not being an active archivist or similar I'm not

> familiar with the LCSH headings but a quick round of research (aka: typing a

> few words into Google) indicates that those are more like tags too. I see

> things like "Ghost films", which seems useful if you want to know about

> games featuring ghosts, but not so useful if you want to know what the film

> is like. Think of Casper vs. Ghostbusters vs. A Chinese Ghost Story. I have

> my doubts that mixing this in with classifiers like Thriller or Comedy is a

> good idea. But maybe I'm just looking at the wrong list of headings!

>

> In general though, I wouldn't look at movie classifiers too much. After all

> they have a vastly different accepted used of the term "genre" than games.

> And they also have a history of mixing narrative, formative and structural

> terms into the same taxonomy, if you even want to call it a taxonomy.

>

>

> > My brain may be wandering here, but the "cloud tag" versus taxonomy

> debate seems to be just another iteration of an old, long-running battle.

> Namely, free text versus

> > controlled vocabulary.  I remember that debate raging while I was in

> graduate school (now approaching 20 years ago), and it's still going on.  In

> the words of Mr. Spock,

> > "fascinating."

>

> It does indeed boil down to that I guess.

>

> *Jim Leonard

> *

> > In other words, I blame the MobyGames framework for not being

> fully-featured enough, but I still think the concept is sound and true. *

> *

> Jim, please note that I did not mean to critisize the system itself, but

> rather the implementation. I love having a well thought of multi-layered

> approach to classifying a game in place and your work in that regard was

> certainly pioneering (as was MobyGames as a whole). I just think there is a

> need for a traditional genre taxonomy on top of that.

>

>

> > The problem with this is that there are some games that are equally two

> or more genres.  Your single genre is therefore subjective.  I maintain that

> the goal of any taxonomy is to > be objective, so that there is no debate or

> confusion what makes up a game.

>

> This is where we disagree then. I think this stems from your approach of

> having a very limited number of very broad genres. You have only eight basic

> genres on MobyGames, and one of those is Educational, which is debatable in

> itself. Of course you can find thousands of examples that equally blend some

> of those seven basic genres, that's a given. What I'm referring to when I

> speak of genres are much more granular sets of games. And I maintain the

> stance that you can classify every single game into one of them, with two

> exceptions:

>

> - Games that feature distinct levels with completely different gameplay.

> You had a lot of these on the old computer platforms. You know, three

> levels, one a racing level, the next a platforming one and a puzzle in

> between. You can never place those in a taxonomy other than giving these

> mixes their own "genre". C'est la vie.

>

> - Games that do actually define their own granular genre but that no one

> followed up on, resulting in a genre with so few entries that it is probably

> not worth having its own granular genre. These do indeed end up in catch-all

> kind of classifiers, but where's the problem with that really?

>

>

> > By definition, all role-playing games are adventures.

>

> This is of course true, but only if you enforce an outside world definition

> of "adventure". See the Tetris example further down as to why I think that

> is a problem in itself.

>

>

> > I think that some people are uncomfortable with a game not being able to

> fall into a single genre, so they create many "meta-genres" to give a game a

> single label, even if it's not > the best way to classify something.

>

> I can only speak for myself but this is not the reason why I try to have a

> "single label" system. My reason is usability of the database itself. I want

> to provide users an easy way to find similar games. Be it because they liked

> the initial game or because they are researching a certain type of game. For

> this purpose, it IS the best way, in my humble opinion of course. Again, I'm

> all for a multi-layer and tag based approach, but I think it should be an

> alternative method, not the only one.

>

>

> > "Indie" tells me nothing, and is not a genre

>

> I think we can all agree on that. It's a very subjective term anyways which

> makes it inapt even as a simple keyword.

>

> *Rowan Kaiser*

>

> >Well, there are two aspects to discussing genre which have come up here, I

> think. The first is genre as a classification tool, which theoretically

> gives people the opportunity to >determine the essential characteristics of

> a game in a word or three or ten, which is, I think, the aim of the initial

> question here.

>

> Yeah, that for me is the purpose of a classical genre taxonomy. Being able

> to deduce the actual gameplay (to a certain degree) just from this single

> term attached to a game. This might seem naive and overambitious but so far

> I've successfully (I think) done it for around 2000 games across all

> generations of console games so I still think it is possible.

>

>

> >On the other hand, there's genre as a social construction, which,

> regardless of accuracy (how is *Tetris *a *puzzle* game? It's an abstract

> action game!) is used and will be used. This, >Jim, I think is where you had

> problems with your RPG classification. You may consider it inaccurate, but

> the social construction is popular shorthand. It is how gamers understand

> >games, I think.

>

> > Still, it's part of that labeled genre and I accept that, even if I think

> it's kinda silly.

>

> That's exactly what I am referring to above in the adventure vs. rpg point

> and below in the Tetris example.

>

>

> > I think you could do a pretty comprehensive labeling system if you base

> it around three categories: Gameplay Genre, Setting, and Perspective, in

> descending order of importance > (this system would not look so different

> from MobyGames, which is part of why I like MobyGames!)

>

> Heh, believe it or not but when I started designing my database I actually

> had a table prepared with exactly those three columns. There was a fourth

> one though I think, let me dig out that document, I must still have it

> somewhere. Aha, found it, I actually had two more columns: Style and

> Technology. I'm not exactly sure what those were meant to be about but I

> think Style was meant to distinguish between realistic and arcade approaches

> and Technology between sprites, polygons, etc. Looking back I don't know

> exactly what I was thinking there, but hey, we all start somewhere ;)

>

> As for perspective, this is a pet peeve of mine. People seem to attack any

> use of perspective as part of a genre name, like in First-Person Shooter.

> The reasoning I always hear is that genres should be based on gameplay

> mechanics and different point of views are just different representations of

> the same thing. To this, I can only shake my head in astonishment. While I

> can agree that a different point of view does not necessarily result in a

> different gameplay experience, I cannot accept that it is deemed impossible

> that a different perspective can(!) result in entirely different gameplay.

> First-Person Shooter does not equate to "Space Invaders from the cockpit

> perspective" and thus to two tags "shooter" and "first-person perspective"

> but rather labels a very specific set of gameplay elements that result in

> their own unique gameplay experience. Sure, you could probably come up with

> a fancy alternate label that does not incorporate the perspective in its

> name. But how is that more useful really? Again, I think the problem here

> lies in accepting the rather abstract meaning of a term within this limited

> universe of discourse as opposed to its meaning in general use of language.

>

> *Tetris*

> This is a really good example of the problems that can arise with genre

> taxonomies. Established genre names do not necessarily match up with their

> literal meaning. Even more so, a game can fit a genre name perfectly from an

> outsider's point of view and still not be part of it. Not every game with

> puzzle based gameplay is a "Puzzle game", see Point and Click Adventures.

> Not every game where you play a role is a role-playing game. Trying to

> ignore the existing genre names and, even worse, redefining a main genre

> while using the same name will not result in a taxonomy that's useful to

> most of its users. They might not make sense objectively, but they're there

> and established, we have to live with that.

>

>

> *Andrew Armstrong*

>

> >I'd agree with whatever actually works; show me a system and if I can't

> find certain games with certain search, tag or category terms it's not

> encompassing enough (be that by >content genre, gameplay genre or abstract

> "social" genre).

>

> This I would agree with, I measure the success of a system by its ability

> to actually use it for filtering and finding what I intended.

>

>

> > I think the ranking of different genres is the important point; the

> choice of divisions or inclusions of different ones is great, but having it

> priorities so at a glance you know if a

> > game focuses heavily on one mechanic or gametype over another would be

> even better (where it also notes secondary ones though).

>

> To me, that is what the classical genre taxonomy provides. It does not

> state "this game only has role-playing elements" but rather "this game's

> dominant mechanic is role-playing". That for me is the beauty of combining

> such a system with a tag cloud. You have a (hopefully) clearly defined term

> that lets you know what you can expect in a game but you also have tags that

> tell you about all the other aspects of it.

>

>

> > For instance, many games include multiplayer (surely some form of genre

> we'd all agree!)

>

> I would disagree, at least in the sense I think of genres. But even with a

> multi-genre tag approach (Strategy+Action etc.) I would not accept

> Multiplayer as a genre but rather as a mechanic or feature.

>

>

> >Knowing the focus and intent of a game, where perhaps it does contain a

> side quest where you race stuff but isn't really a sport game, but perhaps

> that side quest could be actually >a widely accepted unique selling point

> and gameplay feature especially at the time so important to note, having

> some division where it can be noted but not be the primary focus >would be

> cool.

>

> Oh, definitely, tagging a game with racing elements (if only one

> subsection) is worthwhile. But if you only have a "racing" tag without an

> attached importance value this would mix it up with "real" racing games.

> That's the problem with simple tag clouds. It's not a problem though if you

> have classical genre taxonomy along with your tag cloud. The tag racing

> would show this game, the genre racing wouldn't.

>

>

>

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