Genre - Game Invaders: The Theory and Understanding of Computer Games - page 15

who make games and people who are entertained by them. The fi lm genres most of
us are familiar with have arisen over time by directors and critics using them and
the fi lm-going public accepting some and not others. So the fact that genres are a
social construction is not a weakness but a strength. It means that genres in common
use have a social value and are not just the arbitrary invention of a critic, well
meaning or otherwise. In other words, the genres we recognize and use say some-
thing about how cultures view particular types of communications media. Therefore,
game genres are fully rooted in culture and are not just marketing spin.
There are other strengths of genres. Despite the fact that they seem diffi cult to
defi ne in any rigorous sense there are some general principles we can establish for
them. They are about both repetition and difference. It is the repetition of known
features that allows us to establish which genre a fi lm belongs to but it is the way
that particular fi lm differs from others in the same genre that makes it worth watch-
ing. It has to have the right type of things in common but has to be different in other
respects. A fi lm can't just be a copy. It has to be different enough to be worth watch-
ing. Jurassic Park and its two sequels were so alike as to be more or less the same
fi lm, not just the same genre, and, to some of us, the sequels are less watchable for
that very reason.
So when categorizing a fi lm in terms of genre it is how that fi lm differs from
other fi lms in the same genre that is perhaps most interesting about it, rather than
the similarities it shares with them. And yet, to make sense of a particular type of
action sequence, for example, we need to recognize it in terms of all the others we
have seen.
In a fi lm, we would all recognize the rescue sequence with alternating clips of,
for instance, the cowboy on his galloping horse, the heroine clinging to a branch
hanging over a cliff or waterfall. It only makes sense because we associate the
cowboy's haste with the heroine's predicament. We don't see the two scenes as being
entirely separate. We instantly recognize this type of rescue scene because it is part
of a general theory of fi lm that we have learned over the years. This is not even
specifi c to westerns. We recognize the type of scene but would expect all such rescue
scenes to be different but similar. It's part of the language of feature fi lms.
The balance between repetition and difference in game genres is vital to game
developers and players alike. It is one of the things we are going to try to use genre
theory to identify. Although genres are so elusive in terms of defi nition we can still
make good use of them.
WHAT ARE GENRES FOR?
Studying the genres people recognize can lead to insights concerning how they view
a particular communications medium and what is important to them. Every genre
positions those who participate in a particular medium as listener, reader, viewer,
user, or player, each implying different possibilities for response and for action. Each
genre provides a reader/player position for those who participate, a position con-
structed by the maker for the “ideal” reader or user. Computer games can do this