Genre - Game Invaders: The Theory and Understanding of Computer Games - page 16

very well (good games, that is). Part of the pleasure of games is that users feel they
fi t snugly into the “ ideal player ” position, as if the game developers had each one
of them specifi cally in mind when they made it.
Such systems of genres can be seen as a practical way to help those who work
in any mass medium to produce new content consistently and effi ciently and to relate
this production to the expectations of customers and users. Since the genre system
is also a practical device for enabling individual media users to plan their choices,
it can be considered as a mechanism for ordering the relations between the two main
parties to mass communication: in our case, developers and players.
Recognizing a fi lm as belonging to a particular genre identifi es the viewer with
other people who know enough about fi lms to assign genres to them. The same is
true with computer games genres; probably more so. Almost everyone watches fi lms
on TV even if they don't go to the cinema. Fewer people play computer games and
one way of identifying yourself as a member of this more select grouping is to know
and use genres appropriately. One of the pleasures of game playing is being adept
at particular genres. This has more signifi cance to games and gamers than with many
other communications media because to be fully adept with a game genre means
you have to have certain skills and knowledge particular to it. Anyone can watch a
fi lm but you have to develop skills to play particular games effectively. Because of
this, knowing and using game genres effectively acts as a sort of badge of member-
ship of the games community.
In a straw poll conducted among Clive's Games Futures students we asked
everyone to put up their hand if they felt adept at one game genre. Not surprisingly,
everyone put a hand up. We asked people to keep their hand up if they played games
from two genres, then three, then four, fi ve, six seven, eight, nine . . . by nine or ten
we stopped the survey because no one still had a hand up. After six or seven the
number of hands fell away dramatically. People seemed happy with up to about six
or seven genres. Compare that to the genre map of TV fi lms, and the picture is quite
different. Although many people would have a number of favorite fi lm genres almost
everyone would be able to recognize and watch fi lms in all the genres. With com-
puter games, all the class would be able to recognize most if not all genres if they
saw someone else playing them or saw them advertised on the television. But they
only see themselves as adept at games from a relatively small number of genres.
What does this tell us about game genres and can we use this to our advantage? Can
this observation lead to a theory of game genres that will in turn lead to some insight
into the nature of games? Yes, because the difference between recognizing a game
genre and being an adept in it makes games genres very different from fi lm genres.
As we already pointed out, a game genre will posit an “ ideal player ” and many
players are happy to be able to recognize themselves as that ideal player. By choos-
ing to play a particular game we are identifying ourselves with the kind of person
the game maker was designing the game for. I believe the link between game devel-
oper and player is far more potent than the link between fi lm director and fi lm viewer.
I don't need new skills to watch a fi lm from an unfamiliar genre but I certainly do
to play a game in a genre I am unfamiliar with for the fi rst time. It' s our fi rst clue
on the road to understanding games.