[game_preservation] Descriptive terms for Video Games

Alan Au aau at alum.mit.edu
Thu Jun 16 17:07:59 EDT 2011



Sorry, late to the party, but perhaps that's for the best. ;)
Personally, I classify games by their mechanisms of play, which is to say, what the player actually *does*. Descriptive modifiers can be important too, but only insofar as they inform the characteristics of play. To simplify things, I insist that game types be nouns (and not adjectives or noun modifiers).
As an example, "action adventure" makes more sense if you consider that "action" is a modifier used to distinguish those games from the more traditional "adventure" titles (which you could call "story adventure" games to further reinforce the distinction). I wouldn't call anything a pure "action" game because that only indicates how the game is played, not what the game is.
- Alan
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