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The Weekly Question... Game Genres

  • Inna Kryvoruchko
  • May 10, 2016
  • 8 min read

Tell me what game genre you like, and I’ll tell you what kind of person you are. Are you into platformers, shooters, tower defence, or maybe you prefer time management and strategies? What if you’re an MMORPG kind of person? Did you know that your game choices could be indicative of not only your age and gender, but also your personality traits, such as extra-/introversion, conscientiousness, and openness to new experiences?

The recent research performed in Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia (see Ref 1), proves the link between our game preferences and the mentioned psychological traits. Thus, according to the polling, highly-extraverted people prefer games with social elements, such as casual and party games, as well as games with music, while introverts show more interest in role-playing games, MMORPGs, action role-playing games, and real-time strategy games (which is quite true from my experience).

According to the same research, people with a high level of conscientiousness are fans of racing, flight simulation, simulation and fighting games (thus, games with a strong competition component).

Last but not least, people who are open to new experiences favour action adventure and platform games. So, I guess, the next logical step would be elaborating a personality test based on your score in World of Warcraft or hours played F1.

Anyway, today we decided to learn more about our colleagues by asking them the following question:

What is your favourite game genre and why?

…And the answers we got were very interesting insofar they are raising even more questions, such as: what makes up a game genre and is there a steady classification of genres at all? But nevertheless, let’s listen to our colleagues first…

Thibault Carpentier, Localisation Project Manager:

I thought about it a lot and, no I cannot decide. My favourite genre would change every day, but rather than just jump from one to the other, I’d say it would cycle through three recurrent ones.

Point ‘n clicks and, more generally, adventure games have to be among my favourites. With Broken Sword, Grim Fandango, and pretty much all of LucasArts productions that brightened my younger days, I am only too happy to see that the genre is getting some attention again, with old glories, newbies, and veterans working hard to prove that 2D point ‘n clicks are not dead.

And then there are strategy games, since Caesar II, Lords of the Realm, Age of Empires, Starcraft, Warcraft II, I have been obsessed with them and it’s not going to end anytime soon, as I discovered only recently wargames such as Crusader Kings 2 (which has the most hilarious patch notes and forum threads).

Looking back on 25 years of gaming now (#oldgoat), the one genre that I played most and that keeps getting better and better is by far racing games. I wasted many sunny afternoons on F1 Pole Position on the SNES and Network Q RAC Rally Championship on PC as a kid, then I failed medical school with all-nighters trying to get a perfect lap in Spa with my Porsche on GTR, and since April 2015, I have spent 175+ hours on Dirt Rally and Project CARS. Time is flying and I’m still racing.

Shane Hulgraine, Localisation Project Manager:

Say what you will about George Lucas and his infernal tinkering that almost caused irreversible an black hole in a galaxy far, far away, the much derided anthropomorphic, alien duck that engaged in interspecies relations he presented us with, and the fact he married off a dithering, unsuspecting Indiana Jones to attention-hating, Shia LaBeouf’s, mother… some of his ventures actually paid off. His now defunct LucasArts game company had a serious hand to play in creating some of the most hilarious, weird, and downright bizarre point 'n click adventure games of all time.

While Lucas’ publishing company did not invent the genre they more or less shaped what it became with the likes of Maniac Mansion and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade; setting standards for years to come. Indeed, the team in the then Lucasfilm Arts, which boasted none other than Monkey Island creator, Ron Gilbert, went so far as to build a specific a game engine and programming language: Scumm™ that made development simpler and relied less on code – enabling game script and data files to be re-used across various platforms.

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The late 80s and early 90s felt like a digital playground for the avid point n’ clicker: The Monkey Island series, Grim Fandango, and, Day of the Tentacle (all of which have received minor facelifts of late to bring them in line with the modern aesthetic; while still retaining the same wit, charm, and challenge that made them classics in the first place), the high concept, and sometimes mind boggling puzzler, The Dig (anyone that has toiled over the turtle bone bomb puzzle will agree), Loom, Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, Full Throttle, and Sam & Max Hit The Road to name a few. Honourable mentions outside of the LucasArts net, to avoid sounding too much like a fanboy, are the Broken Sword series, the darkly humourous Beneath a Steel Sky, and the more mature I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream. There is a library of classics out there waiting for you.

For many years if felt like the point 'n click would continue to develop and improve but it took an impromptu sabbatical as demand waned with gamers migrating to consoles. Until recently that is. Titles such as Monkey Island, and Monkey Island 2: Le Chuck’s Revenge Special Editions, and the episodic Tales of Monkey Island, were licenced to Telltale Games – a company that are increasingly impressing on in major ways. While this new format veers slightly away from the classic point 'n click, it manages to take elements that made those games great and reshape them for modern gamers, as well as adding exceptional voice acting to the mix. Knowing their audience, they started off with Back to the Future: The Game, and went on to release The Wolf Among Us, The Walking Dead series, and continue with Game of Thrones. There is an “episodic story driven”, Batman series on the way. Holy hole in a doughnut, Batman! These guys seem unstoppable right not and they have brought a refreshing, console friendly control system, and fresh feel at the old genre.

Thimbleweed Park

This is not to say the old school point 'n click is put out to pasture. Far from it. Indie developers are chiselling away to create beautiful and detailed worlds within which to solve mysteries and Push, Pull, and Pick Up things in. Steam is the point 'n click adventurer’s harbour. There are bundles a plenty and new titles hitting the store frequently; one that has most recently impressed is the spectacular Shardlight, by indie developer Wadjet Eye Games, who also published the well-received Technobabylon, while Raw Fury Games' recent title, Kathy Rain, looks quite enticing. Better yet, the maestro himself, Ron Gilbert, has successfully crowdfunded the upcoming Thimbleweed Park, which will look and feel like a forgotten cousin of the classic games of the early 90s that inspired and shaped the genre.

So just like the Ghost Pirate LeChuck, point 'n click is not dead and buried, it just had dirt in its teeth for a while and is ready for a comeback.

Robert Hill, JP-EN Localisation Specialist:

I think more than having a single favourite genre of game that I enjoy above all else, the element that I look most favourably towards, when I think back over my enjoyment with any given game, is narrative.

This, in part, is probably down to my other big passion of reading. Not that I think my childhood was particularly different to that of anybody else, but I was brought up in a family in which reading was very much encouraged. Even if that amounted to no more than a new Asterix or Tintin, the love of moving through a story told in words was something set into me from an early age.

So when I became old enough to really start enjoying videogames at a level beyond simply marvelling at the colourful pixels darting across the screen, it was natural that I gravitated towards those which were focused heavily on narrative structure. Early examples would be playing through Indiana Jones and The Fate of Atlantis, or Monkey Island or indeed any of the other LucasArts adventure games.

However, it was probably when I hit my teenage years that I really fell in love with a game’s story. That game was of course, Final Fantasy VII. I could wax lyrical about how my world was flipped upside down by that game, but in the interests of brevity I won’t. Suffice to say, it was a game that delivered a story with such a powerful emotional impact that it took me a long time afterwards to allow myself to enjoy another game to its fullest potential.

The Last of Us, Naughty Dog

In more recent years, it has been games such as The Last of Us or Uncharted that have really stuck out for me in terms of narrative. In these titles, the narrative element is so strong that you could almost call them interactive movies. There is an argument to be had around this issue that, in some ways, they should not even fall into the same category of more traditional games, as the gameplay in them is relegated well and truly to the background. But again this is another issue for another blog post. Either way, the quality of the writing (which is hugely important in telling a good story) in these games is second to none, and was integral to my enjoyment of them.

Although many would rightly argue that storytelling and writing in games generally falls far behind that of more established mediums such as literature, film and television, it is the interactivity of games that make them unique. Much of the time, it is you who is the protagonist, and that is an empowering thing. When it is you making the decisions and pulling that trigger, you care just that little bit more.

Fallout 4, Bethesda Softworks

And then there is the issue of world building. Of course it is possible to fully immerse yourself in the world of a book or TV show, but that immersion is rarely as profound as that found in videogames. Even games lacking in other narrative aspects can draw you in through the quality of their world building (the more recent Fallout titles, for example). This aspect inevitably ties in with that of interactivity, but when you are given the agency to explore a world at your own pace (even if that world is frustratingly boxed in), you become part of that world. This is something that other mediums simply cannot achieve. In games, you are not a passive bystander, but a major part of the world. And it is this which often excites me the most.

So, yes. A good narrative is what I look for above all else in games. It is something that is not tied to a single genre, and it is something that, at its very best, relegates all other mediums to also-rans. I may enjoy particular genres for their gameplay intricacies and their inter-weaving, complex mechanics, but those are not things I often mull over when my console is powered down. When all is said and done, I love a good story, and some of my all-time favourite stories have come from this marvellous digital format we call videogames.

*Ref 1:

Peever, Nicole, Johnson, Daniel M., & Gardner, John (2012) Personality & video game genre preferences. In IE ’12 Proceedings of The 8th Australasian Conference on Interactive Entertainment: Playing the System, ACM, Auckland, New Zealand, 20:1-20:3

 
 
 

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