sorry for the delay. I actually wrote 'this' post yesterday but it vanished into the depths of the poorly designed profile/proxy infrastructure at my work. I must remember to Copy these before posting in future.
I've been thinking a lot about videogames lately. Especially about the nature of "genre." Last week one of my most anticipated games of the year arrived direct from Hong Kong. Actually, I'd been anticipating Every Extend Extra for MORE than a year, ever since I'd played the game it was based on, the PC freeware: Every Extend (do yourself a favour and grab it from HERE) The concept is devilishly simple, basically a modified version of the classic Asteroids, only, instead of SHOOTING the "asteroids" in Every Extend you blow yourself up near them and try to create chain reactions to blow up as many of the buggers as possible. Your limitations are TIME (which runs down from 2minutes and 30seconds) and STOCK (how many ships you have left) You can "extend" STOCK by scoring the right amount of points, and extend time with one of the 3 special power-ups released when certain yellow coloured "asteroids" explode. The other two power-ups are greens which give you exponentially increasing bonus points and the most valuable of them all: The pink Quicken. Quickens increase the speed of ALL of the asteroids in the field of play, thereby gaining the classic videogame Risk/reward axis. Getting Quickens is essential to scoring points because with them come more asteroids flying more quickly, giving you more objects to create bigger chain reactions.
It's a nearly perfect concept for a game. Simple, rewarding requiring just the right combination of skill and luck. Skill to dodge the flying objects and know when and where to blow up, luck in that the patterns of "asteroids" will sometimes give you an easier go of it than others. Many of the things which have been written about Every Extend and Every Extend Extra note the "cross-genre" nature of the game, calling it a "Puzzle-shooter" or "shooting-puzzler." This really got me thinking about the nature of videogames and the idea that, perhaps, the concept of genre in this context is an outdated one. To ME, more important than genre is what I'm going to call: "Modality" based on the idea that HOW we play is more important than WHAT we play.
Taking a step back: Both the Xbox360 game Oblivion and the (now) Playstation Series Final Fantasy are both placed within the RPG genre. Because in both of them you play in a fantasy universe with a character who can "level up" as well as shop and "preform quests" But beyond this they are quite different. Oblivion is a action oriented first person experience while Final Fantasy is a menu driven 3rd person one where you play as multiple characters at the same time. In Modality Final Fantasy has more in common with Major League Baseball games in Franchise or Dynasty mode than with Oblivion. People who write about games have tried to deal with this in much the same way as has been done with genre tags in music: combine existing ones and make up all new ones. But rather then infinitely sub-divide I would rather pull together games of disparate genre into similar modality.
The first two Modalities I've come up with are:
"Zen" or "Pure" videogames
vs
"Grinding" or "Thinking" games
the first category contains games like Every Extend Extra and Tony Hawk where in order to play them well one must enter an almost zen-like state where both conscious and unconscious thought are expressed instantly in physical movement and reaction.
The second contains games like Final Fantasy and Civilization where most of the game is being played in the players head before any action is taken. These kind of games often require a lot of time to be expended.
One isn't better than the other, and some games artfully combine both modalities. Madden for example is a fairly even mix of both but also allows players to tailor their experience so as to wholly reside in one mode or the other. If you JUST play other humans or the computer in scrimmage mode you are existing within the Zen, if you JUST play dynasty and simulate the actual football games in between making management decisions then you are just Grinding.
I think this is a really useful way of thinking about interactive entertainment. And it will only get more useful as technology works to provide more possibilities. Maybe this way we can get away from the argument about if Metroid Prime is a "First Person Shooter" or an "action adventure" and realize that at it's core it is a "Grinding Explorer"
What do you think about the nature and labels of genre? What Modalities do you think there are?
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2 comments:
ok, jones here. it is interesting you bring this up, because i have been partaking in debates with some of my friends on whether or not genre even exists anymore. their contention is that it is a meaningless and outdated nomenclature, whereas i tend to think that it is still useful for organizational purposes because we as humans tend to like to classify things into smaller divisions that allow us to consume/discuss/etc a specific aspect (of whatever the subject is). so i find that genre is still a useful, if blunt, tool.
i am intrigued by your thesis here, and would agree that most games fall into one or the other (or blended, as you point out). however, i do not think that this will take off as an accepted industry norm (probably not your goal anyway), as genre is extremely helpful in focusing discussion/reviews. oblivion and final fantasy should be grouped together for review/discussion sake.
there is an amazing video store here, called scarecrow video. they have over 60,000 movies, and while they do have an "animated room" and a "mystery room" to me the best is the fact that most of the 1st floor is simply dedicated to directors, thus completely taking genre out of the picture. it is a great way to browse for movies, and i wish that all video stores did it.
You're right, my goal isn't the elimination of genre. I hate it when people say things like "we are living in a new paradigm, old concepts like genre are outdated and dead...blah blah blah" But I do think that use of genre in regards to gaming is very unwieldy. Already there is a conflict between content (what the game is about) and modality (how you play) with some genres such as Puzzle or RPG residing more within the former model and others such as "First Person Shooter" and "Real Time Strategy" residing more within the second. It's interesting to me that it seems that this latter group seems comprised of more of the recently developed "genres" which owe a large part of their existence to evolving technology.
For years I've been saying that a whole mess of different games in different genres are "like Tony Hawk" by that I mean that there is a large component of dexterous juggling involved... Winning Eleven Soccer (Pro Evo) for example is "Like Tony Hawk" in that the moves on the 2nd stick allow for the kind of precise tricking which is the basis for the Hawk games.
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