Genre - Game Invaders: The Theory and Understanding of Computer Games - page 18

An important point about the genres that make up the map is that they are not
just made up but drawn from actual TV fi lm running schedules, so are socially rec-
ognized genres. Consider for a moment the nature of the genres represented in the
map. The categorization implicit in the map is based on the notion of content, on the
type of story being told and the conventions concerning the way the fi lm should be
made. The former relates to particular character types and plots while the latter are to
do with the photography, lighting conventions, and so on that go with them.
The map also illustrates the point we made earlier about genres, and how new
ones are made from existing ones. In other words, we can take the “science fi ction”
and “comedy” genres and make up a new one of “science fi ction comedy” of which
there are actually many examples (even though this genre does not appear in the
map). No genre map such as this will ever be complete. There will always be fi lms
we had forgotten about or which haven't been made yet. But as with genres in
general, the genre map for a given communications medium can be a very useful
tool. In fact, the genre map is a model, an approximation which helps us to visualize
the theory of genres at work. There are things the model misses and maybe even
gets wrong but it is useful nevertheless.
It ' s actually quite diffi cult to work out what the underlying theory for this model
is. Is it story type, or styles of camera work and lighting and acting? It is most likely
a combination of all these and more. Again, we see how we understand and make
use of the genre model without knowing exactly what the underlying theory is. Are
game genres as elusive? If you take a look at a typical discussion, such as the one
at Wikipedia (Game Genres) you would think so; but we know different.
COMPUTER GAME GENRES
We can try to build up a similar map for computer games genres by simply making
a list of all the named genres we can fi nd in, say, the online magazine IGN.com,
and then working out the relationships between them; in other words, what genres
appear closely related. Presumably we would end up with a similar map to the fi lm
one above. In fact, this is what we tried to do in my Games Futures classes. Making
the list wasn't too diffi cult but it wasn't always easy to agree what was an “ offi cial”
genre and what was not. It was all too tempting to just add in a genre or two of
your own.
So what genres does the game industry recognize? Table 2.1 shows a fairly
typical list of genres used by major game review sites. Most of the genres included
seem reasonable but there are one or two oddities. For instance, racing is there but
driving is not; not all drivers are racers nor are all racers drivers . Sneak -' em - ups
are not mentioned, as are not a number of other genres we'll use in this topic. We' re
sure you can all think of other omissions and anomalies.
Now here are a couple of lists of game genres drawn up by people in the indus-
try. First of all, we will include Steven Poole's list of game genres from chapter 2
of his excellent topic Trigger Happy (2004), which, incidentally, was the set topic
for the Games Futures module before we wrote this one; his genres are: