A Brief Look at Genre

What is genre?

I’ve talked about it before, I’ve brushed past it before, I’ve even ignored it before. Is now the time to have a long-form discussion about genre?

Nah.

I can talk a little bit about it, sure, but other people have covered genre in much better ways than I ever could. My go-to example is the marvelous Ian Danskin over at Innuendo Studios, who talks about genre in this third video in his [[Who Shot Guybrush Threepwood series.

Did you watch the video? Good, because I want to jump off of a question he begged.¹ Specifically, the question: “do Video Games tend to have descriptive genre titles?”

It’s true that Video Games have a different relationship to genre than most other mediums. As Ian Danskin puts it, it makes sense that if all art is interactive, the most interactive medium would have the most proscriptive genres, telling the audience what they are supposed to actually “do.” This is why we have genres like “First-Person Shooter” to describe action games where you move around as a entity in a three-dimensional space with a first person perspective and fire guns at enemies.

“Oh, like TIE Fighter?”

What?

“Well, in TIE Fighter, you have the first-person view of a TIE pilot, and you move around a three-dimensional space shooting lasers at—”

Ah, yes, I see the confusion. No, TIE Fighter is a space-simulation game, like Wing Commander or Freelancer. These games are designed to give players a portrayal of operating a spacecraft, to varying degrees of realism.

“Oh, I know those games. Like R-Type, right?

Uh…no, not like those. R-Type is an action game — or a SH’MUP, actually; short for Shoot ’em Up — focused on testing the player’s reflexes against large groups of enemies.

“Ah, I see. Like Starcraft.”

I…what?

“Starcraft. Take a look at professional Starcraft players, and you’ll be amazed at their reflexes. They build their bases really fast, and if you don’t have your reflexes finely honed, you’ll get beat by huge armies while you’re still upgrading your first town hall.”

Yeah, that’s true, but Starcraft is a Real-Time Strategy game like Total Annihilation or Age of Empires. RTS games are all about, well, doing strategy in real-time with groups of units like soldiers.

“I’m hesitant to say ’like Cannon Fodder,’ even though it has strategy and real-time and groups of units.”

Right, Cannon Fodder doesn’t have much strategy.

“But it does though, same as Doom and Dusk and all those other action games. You have to decide where and when to engage enemies, decide which targets have priority over others, when to spend resources like grenades…”

Sure, but…Well, I suppose RTS games are easier to understand when compared to their counterparts; Turn-Based Strategy games. Before computers were fast enough to do strategy in real-time, strategy games were more like chess. Turn-Based Strategy games like Reach for the Stars or Empire led to games like Civilization.

“And Final Fantasy VI!”

Okay, explain that one.

“Well, Final Fantasy VI has combat that’s more or less turn based, and there’s strategy in what actions you take: do you use a healing item, what magic do you use, which characters you bring along…”

Okay, I see where you’re coming from, but no. There a lot of the early Final Fantasies that isn’t Turn Based Strategy, where you’re walking around and talking to people and advancing a story.

“Oh, so Shining Force isn’t a Turn-Based Strategy game? It also has walking around and talking to people and a story between battles.”

No, it’s…well, it is, but…look, Final Fantasy VI is a Role-playing game, usually sub-genred as a Japanese RPG, because there are different conventions between European and Japanese RPGs. JRPGS are usually heavily story-based, have turn-based combat, and provide you characters that you play as.

“Like Balder’s Gate and Icewind Dale?”

No, those are European RPGs, though they used to be called just RPGs thanks to Eurocentrism.

“Okay, so ERPGs are games like Planescape: Torment.”

Yes! But they can also be in first-person like Skyrim; that’s another ERPG.

“Okay, so Morrowind and System Shock 2 are also ERPGs, while Quest for Glory is a JRPG?”

No, not at all. System Shock 2 is what’s called an Immersive Sim, while Quest for Glory is an Adventure game.

“But System Shock 2 has combat like Skyrim, lockpicking, skills you can upgrade, a story, people who talk to you…it even has a currency system where you can purchase items from vendors. It has puzzles and inventory management. It has classes you can choose at the start of the game. How is System Shock 2 not an RPG?”

That’s actually an interesting point: it seems like the difference between the Skyrim style of RPG and the Immersive Sim genre is largely one of freedom. In System Shock 2, the story is largely linear, with little in the way of side-quests or choice in what to do next. While there are people who talk at you in System Shock 2, you don’t really have narrative choices. In Skyrim you can choose to go anywhere and do anything largely at your own pace. You can engage in conversations, of a kind, and combat/conflict is not nearly the constant that it is in Immersive Sims.

Morrowind is also closer in style to the isometric Balder’s Gate than Skyrim. Imagine the whole game was isometric and you can see the similarities: hitting and missing is done via math rather than reflexes or coordination, inside and outside are usually separate “scales,” meaning the insides of buildings are much larger than outsides, and you can pause the combat to heal, re-equip, or talk to someone.

But let’s play another game: Consider the clumsy combat of Morrowind and compare it to the slow and stodgy action of Total Chaos, a survival horror game. Again, there are a lot of similarities, enough so that there are quite a few Morrowind Mods and quests that turn the game into survival horror.

It seems to me that the use of qualia and a spectrum of genre is an incomplete aspect of the discussion. You noticed how I brought in the historical influence of Turn-Based Strategy games on the RTS genre? RTS games would not have been called RTSs if TBSs had not already existed.

But this can be a dilatation without a difference. Duke Nukem 3d, Realms of the Haunting, Deus Ex, Skyrim, and Morrowind are all “first person shooter” games. You move your character around, you aim at bad-guys, you click until they’re dead, and you move on. They all have inventories, a narrative plot, and NPCs you can interact with. Nevertheless, it’s hard to say they’re all the same genre, because regardless of the describable facts, they all feel different. They have to be different genres, because if someone wants to play more Duke Nukem, you wouldn’t point them at Skyrim. If someone loved Deus Ex, you might not suggest Realms of the Haunting.

This isn’t exclusive to video-games; The Lighthouse and Nightmare on Elm St. are both horror movies, but you’re sure going to be getting a different experience from both. It’s hard to recommend one to someone just because they’re a fan of the other. They may be trying to elicit similar emotions in the audience, but they go about it in such different ways…

Are they the same genre?

The original Doom has millions upon millions of mods, a near constant stream of experimentation and update since its origin, over 20 years ago. It has mods that turn it into survival horror, over-the-top boomer-shooter, puzzle, immersive sim, ERPG, and even walking simulator genres. Is Doom really just a “first person shooter?”

I wonder if genre isn’t so much a descriptor that is bestowed or “purchased” through qualia, but rather is claimed. Doom led to the over-the-top excess of Serious Sam the same way it influenced Thief. Heck, Doom 3 is still very much “Doom” even though its tone is much darker and horror-focused. The original Half-Life had platforming sections right out of Mario 64 levels. Terra Nova had simplified tactical options, giving it a tie to Rainbow Six titles; while outfitting your combat suit gave it a strong Mechwarrior 2 feel. For crying out loud, one of the seminal action games of its time, Battlezone, combined FPS and RTS so well that it can’t be conclusively labeled as either one; it’s both.

(As a side-note: a fascinating thing to me is that video-game genres pretty-much ignore audience reaction. Both Deus Ex and System Shock 2 are called Immersive Sims, but Deus Ex is an action thriller while System Shock 2 is sci-fi horror. Both Skyrim and Saint’s Row have large maps you can wander around in and do what you like, but one is a serious(ish) fantasy game while the other is a sandbox giggle-fest. Resident Evil 4 and Spec Ops: the Line are both third-person shooters, but one is campy horror-comedy and the other has a dour and gritty narrative.)

One of the things my little shadow-play above was meant to illustrate is that “qualia” exist across all spectra. Horror movies often have comedic bits, action scenes, and dramatic character moments. Comedies include serious drama all the time, and action movies often include romances. Games steal little bits from each other all the time. Ian Danskin suggests that genre is designed to explain to the audience how it is supposed to react to the text. I like this idea, but it suggests genre is chosen by the author, rather than the audience.

Consider Brütal Legend, which is very clearly a sandbox game in the style of Grand Theft Auto, mixed with the action-combat of Devil May Cry and the simplified strategy combat of Solarmax and its ilk. What genre is Brütal Legend? There was a bit of controversy when the game came out, because Double Fine had “hidden” an RTS game in what players thought was a sandbox. Had it been marketed as an RTS, would players have complained about all the action and exploration that surrounded the strategy?

Okay, so what does my inner Better Socrates say?

I think, personally, that there are two uses for genre: one is historical record, such as with the Punk, Grunge, and Disco music genres. These genres exist to not only describe a text, but also the culture in which it was made. The other use is to facilitate audiences and artists who “want similar.” There is a bit of controversy in the Video-game space about the genres “Roguelike” and “Metroidvania:” they are genres that require knowledge of another game to make any sense, and don’t describe the game beyond “like-Rogue,” or “like-Metroid-and/or-Castlevania.” For me, however, these are ideal genres. If you want more Metroid, look for Metroidvanias. If you like Rogue, take a look at other Roguelikes.

I wonder if our current use of genre can be limiting. Can I say I like Horror if I hate movies like Friday the 13th, but love The Lighthouse? What if I like Star Trek but hate Star Wars, am I a “Sci-Fi” fan or not? There can be so many things that go into what we enjoy that wrapping it up in a single broad brush-stroke can only be destructive. It keeps us from discussing what it is we actually like.

This is a fine place to bring in sub-genre, but I’ve already ranted on for long enough. Next time, I’ll talk about a specific genre, and an interesting discussion being had about it.