Ten Years With No New Genre?
Here’s a pickle: Stefan at VideoLamer picks an interesting argument and comes out seemingly on top (although I know you can break him, my gaming geniuses!) with his declaration that there hasn’t been a really new genre in gaming since 1996, when Parappa the Rapper introduced the rhythm genre.
He makes a fairly sturdy case, primarily by finding older examples of genres we might think of as new. For example, Stefan breaks down a pretty brutal timeline for the MMORPG, which any true geek older than 21 can probably recite aloud, backward: 1978 saw the primitive MUD, or Multi-User Dungeon wherein gamers built and leveled characters, fought PvP, guilded, crafted and bartered – most of the gameplay elements of modern MMORPGs; AOL added graphics to the mix when they released the original first Neverwinter Nights back in 1991 as a god-awful online mess, if I recall my disappointment correctly; finally, Meridian 59 brought the genre into the 3D era in 1996.
Some of Stefan’s other origin dates: 1-on-1 fighting games began with Warror in 1979; beat’em ups with Kung Fu Master in 1984; FPS had worldwide, networked multiplayer with both Spasim and Maze War in 1973; stealth games began with the original 2D Castle Wolfenstein in 1981; RTS hearkens back to at least Herzog Zwei in 1990, or Dune II in 1992.
Survival horror? Sweet Home in 1989 or 1992’s Alone in the Dark for 3D purists.
Even minigame-based party games have been around for years, emerging from sports games with Caveman Games in 1990.
Stefan argues that this reflects a stagnation in gaming culture, wherein new genres are either not following through with ground-breaking games that could otherwise found a new genre:
Gears of War is succeeding by being a very well done 3rd person shooter, and Geometry Wars has shown us what a well-done rehash of Spacewar can do, even today – but while both are great games, neither one brings anything new to the table in terms of what the game is, and neither has so far convinced me that they are good enough for me to buy a 360. While I will pay for better versions of what I’ve seen before, it’s a path of diminishing returns. What I really want is something new – something that opens up possibilities I had never thought of before, something that makes me feel like I did when I was young and I caught glimpses of great things to come.
Katamari Damacy was the first rebuttal that came to my mind, and apparently to some Diggers as well, but on the whole I found myself nodding along with Stefan. That may be as much a kind of nostalgia for ignorance as it is a legitimate critique of the state of the gaming union, but I knew some of you would have something to add.
So what’s it gonna be?
Ten years without a new genre [VideoLamer]
[Via: Aeropause]
tiny dancer
Posted to Video Games on 14 January 2007
· Comments (25)
Other stuff like this: a whole bunch of old games i ain't gonna list here, genre, no new genre, videolamer
“nostalgia for ignorance”
Worded perfectly – the common argument that that gaming will fail due to a lack of new genres overlooks the benefit of a set standard. Namely, you can perfect the formula.
It was pretty unpopular, but Starpath Party Mix for the Atari 2600 was certainly a selection of party minigames and came out in 1983. It seems to me there was an Intellivision party game even before that, but Party Mix is the earliest example I can come up with.
I think whoever would cite Katamari Damacy as the first “collect objects by interacting directly with the environment” game (I haven’t read the Digg comments to know what they would call it) is right on. Elebits is the latest example and I’m sure there are some indie games that make use of the same theme. In some ways they resemble 3D platformers, but being timed and having a frantic drive to level up make them distinct, I think.
Further, there are constantly new genres being created in the fields of indie games, game competitions, etc., but no one notices because they never gain the popularity of Katamari or Parappa. And that’s been happening throughout gaming history, the current tendency among publishers to spurn new gaming mechanics be damned.
Things can and will change. In 1982 I couldn’t have imagined that we wouldn’t all still be playing “maze games” (what we now call “Pac-Man knockoffs”) 25 years in the future. But then, I was 12.
Forgetting about Katamari for a moment, I wonder what genre he feels Cooking Mama fits into, or Trauma Center. (I would throw Phoenix Wright in there, but I’m willing to call that a text adventure with graphics.) I think the chances are good that Nintendo’s bizarro world control schemes may give rise to half a dozen new genres before this decade is over, even if some of them never get more than one game.
Aren’t there only actually 3 stories, archetypally speaking? How many new genres of film or books have you heard? Probably nothing since choose-your-own-adventure. Genre blending doesn’t count.
What is Phoenix Wright, genre wise?
For a possibly irrelevant tangent, we could think about Russian Formalist Vladimir Propp, whose Morphology of the Folk Tale is still used in Universities for its breakdown of every story ever told (more or less) into 31 basic plot components. I remember a class where we broke Star Wars down as an example of how universal Propp’s viewpoint could be, and it fit beautifully.
A similar system could theoretically be applied to gaming, wherein there are only a limited number of game-moving-ideas or -actions that can be used and beyond that number, like TrevWolf said, the art becomes one of perfecting the formula, of arranging the basic game elements in innovative ways.
Or that could be total hooey.
For what it’s worth, Stefan does mention that there are gameplay innovations that could form new genres if they’d been given more attention, which fits well with Raindog’s comments.
Ultimately, I’m not sure if I’m a Formalist or Structuralist at all…I chafe at the idea of genre in fiction and games alike, although I recognize the usefulness of genre from a marketing and conversational perspective. The games I love the most are the ones that either ignore the boundaries of genre (Modern Zelda games, really, seem like they have never heard of the distinction between RPGs, action platformers, puzzle games, adventure games, etc) or are exemplars of their genre (Baldur’s Gate II; Morrowind).
I’m not sure if restricting ourselves to the notion of genre puts an arbitrary restraint on our imagination, or if that’s a necessary framework for discussing and improving upon games.
Phoenix Wright is a “graphic text adventure” according to most sources.
Hey raindog, thanks for pointing out Starpath Party Mix – that one had escaped my attention.
As far as games like Katamari and Trauma Center go, they are all amazing new creative games, and I hope they spawn new genres (katamari and electroplankton are arguably in the process right now, but haven’t quite gotten there yet). For the time being they remain one-offs – perhaps with direct sequels, but no widespread adoption by other developers. My article was attempting to deal with that fact, and was looking for genres that had taken root and actually been picked up by the industry at large.
I know we haven’t developed all the possible game genres, in part because unique games like trauma center keep coming out. My frustration stems from the fact that these games and their innovative gameplay are allowed to remain unique, rather than being fully explored and fleshed out.
The gems of a genre tend to come when it hits maturity, and I would love to see the new and different games that were created over the past 10 years undergo the type of refinement that we saw in adventure games, RTS, and rhythm games.
And what would you call Katamari, other than, and I quote raindog: a “collect objects by interacting directly with the environment” game? I can’t fing a genre for it.
I think there are probably very few actual genres when it comes to gameplay. The nature of our interaction barely changes from game to game; the dressings like plot, graphics, sound, settings, etc tend to be what vary the most. Given the assumption that our input into the controller rarely changes, should we define genre as the overall goal of a game (Katamri was a collecting game, other games have had you collect items but that was not the focus) or by the dressings (Katamari would then be a new genre of “rolling games”)?
I don’t think that’s really relevant. It is the innovation in each genre and the actual originality in story and level design what actually counts.
I think about Half life as the perfect example of this in FPS.
Hey, Stefan! Welcome to the discussion and thanks for writing such a “discussable” piece!
I do think it’s important to reiterate the distinction between “genre” and “description of gameplay.” Seems to me that “genre” doesn’t refer to any one given game or how it plays, but a type of game that’s been codified and imitated such that it is recognizable as “that-type-of-game.”
Take fiction, for instance. When Chesterton and Dunsany and Lovecraft wrote their stories almost a century ago, they didn’t know anything about “Science Fiction,” “Fantasy,” or “Horror” as we know them today. It was only after their innovations (their Katamari, you could say) caught on with other writers and, of course, a marketable public readership, that we began knowing them as distinct genres and seeing books separated by genre at our local bookstore.
Not that I disagree; Katamari comes as close as I can think of to something that’s established a new pattern of gameplay…but whether or not it’s a “genre” is probably still very debatable. Katamari does seem to be a sticking point, since it’s a game that’s had several iterations and therefore can’t really be considered a “genre-that-could-have-been-but-was-ignored.”
But is that enough to make it a new type of game that we can expect to see more of outside its own franchise? And Jay's point about it being a collecting game brings up a super question...how specific do we need to get in delineating genres, and where do we stop picking nits and decide upon a category out of sheer necessity?
what about a new genre that maybe you could call the objectiveless game.
I think Katamari might fit in there, as well as things like Linerider and Flow.
Thanks Tiny Dancer, I’ve been trying to come up with a good way of expressing the distinction between a new genre and a single game that doesn’t fit into any of the existing ones, your definition of genre works very well for that. With your permission I may borrow that for future explanations.
As for formalism and structuralism, and Jay’s comment…In broad terms I think formalism is a useful tool for abstracting, in part because it allows us to set somewhat arbitrary characteristics for delineating between groups. That way I can tailor my grouping of games depending on whether I’m talking to a best buy clerk or to the people on this site, for instance.
However you draw the lines, I think it’s generally possible to craft a formal representation that can account for the complete body of work to date that has occurred within a given art. (I could merge some of Propp’s components and make one with 27 components, or divide it more granularly into 80, but the system would be about the same.) In a very mature art, such as fictional stories, that formal system can stand for a long time, because there are very few new concepts being added. That is why I don’t think video games are likely to tell new stories.
The art of designing the mechanics of interaction, however, is fairly new. One could definitely take a formal approach to it, but it would (hopefully) have to be revised in the future because there is still a lot of territory out there to be explored – things that nobody has ever done before.
Whether it’s a formal abstraction or a gestalt grouping done in casual conversation, we used to have to adjust our systems/gestalts regularly, even at a fairly high level, and except for those of us who group in the most granular manner we haven’t had to make those adjustments in a while.
Stefan, borrow away! I’m glad to have been of help.
I think you sum up the usefulness of formalism as a tool for grouping and delineating genres for the purposes of communication and mental tidiness. As a rigid concept or static system it presents limitations, but being able to spin out different structural relationships on the fly, like you’ve said, is pretty important if you plan on talking about such things with different people/groups.
You also clarify what I’ve been trying to hash out in my head, namely the difference in gradations of formal systems – thinking of them somewhere on the spectrum between “granular” at the nit-picky end and something like “fluidly abstract” at the other.
Most of all I respond well to your point that “designing the mechanics of interaction,” is a relatively new art that we shouldn’t allow to stagnate just because we’ve come up with a working way to categorize its (current) constituents. We should keep our eyes and minds open for not only new genres, but new ways of conceptualizing genres – the kind of spin Katamari puts on games involving collection and puzzle-solving, for instance, doesn’t necessarily mean it belongs to the “collection game” or “puzzle game” genres:
Maybe in 30 years our kids will be discussing Katamari and the merits of the long-established gaming genre of “Classical Physics & Material Acquisition” as a “method for reconciling consumerism with the ideals of Eastern philosophy!”
Ooh, plus, Essex: if you’re interested in reading more about “objectiveless games” (which is an excellent thing to mention, I think), you might enjoy browsing flOw designer Jenova Chen’s online thesis, appropriately entitled Flow In Games.
I say that the reason for no new genres is because all games tend to branch from genres already there. The only way to expand on anything is sandbox and god games. And those fall under simulations or open ended RPGs.
I probably didn’t make it clear enough in my post, but to me Katamari typifies a new genre because I think Elebits is a second, independently produced game in that genre. But sure, Cooking Mama and Trauma Center are probably still “one of a kind”.
To be honest, when I look for something new and different to play, I don’t look for a new genre, but one that doesn’t fit into any of the ones I feel are overused now (FPS, sports/racing sim, RPG.)
And I think there’s actually more novelty in games now than there was 10 years ago, even if the novelty is expressed one game at a time rather than through multiple developers expanding a new concept into a new genre.
It’s also possible to revive genres that haven’t been used in a long time and be called “fresh” and receive market success for doing so. Case in point: Brain Age. I had a math quiz game for my Odyssey2 in like 1979, but I’m guessing it didn’t sell like Brain Age did.
It really depends on whether you argue that the newer games like Katamari and Cooking Mama are twists on very old established genres or new ones in themselves.
Cooking Mama and Trauma Center can easily be swept under the cover of “simulation”
Katamari is really just an expanded mission-based platformer with sandbox elements thrown in.
Of course it should be debated whether these “genres” are just labels manufactured to allow consumers to easily place games in categories.
Calling the newer Zelda games “action-adventure” is just kind of lazy.
Wouldn’t trauma center be considered in the puzzle genre? That’s what it was described as in a review at gametrailers I think. I was going to get it, but timed puzzles stress me out, so I decided against it :/
Oh, and I just browsed the comments, so I don’t know if this was stated.
Personally I thought that Katamari was the most original game released since Tetris.
I wrote a huge response to this, but I think it’s a straw man. I do want to make one point, though: things can be entirely conventional from a genre perspective, but still be fresh, new, unique, and exciting. Take Comix Zone. Completely conventional from a genre perspective, but completely new in another. Same with the Columbine RPG.
Things can be inventive in two ways: content and genre. ColumbineRPG and Comix Zone are inventive in the latter. I think your discussion, by focussing on the former, neglects some of the innovation in the latter. Also, I think that a lot of the innovation can come from the incorporation of different elements into a single whole. System Shock had the FPSRPG, perfecting it in SS2, and then Deus Ex came out and added significant stealth opportunities to the mix. And, sure, stealth games are old, but Thief II brings so much open-ended stealth that it is revolutionary.
That said, I agree: gaming has become much less inventive. I blame it on the corportisation of gaming, really—that’s why I agree with Nintendo’s approach of a cheaper system that’s easy to develop for (to say nothing of the controller).
My personal take is that trying to genre games at this early juncture is doomed to long term failure because they’re just plain not evolved enough.
In 50 year’s time, calling a game a shooter is likely to be tantamount to calling a movie a talker. Genre by mechanic is inherently flawed because games can dip their toes into many at the same time, and often there is no clear centre one.
Take Katamari for instance. Collection game? Maybe, in as much as in Mario you collect level unlocks and in Space Invaders you collect points.
So someday, I reckon we’ll evolve games to a point where there are clearer genre divides, and they won’t be the ones visible from here.
Having said that, the points made above by tiny and Stefan are very valid about having a leg to stand on for now. How on earth can we attempt to look at where we’re going if we have no way of speaking of the present?
So I propose a new genre for Katamari: snowball games. Games where the primary mechanic involves a obtaining a resource in a manner that is enhanced by owning the resource. This escalation (superbly illustrated by Katamari’s use of scale to illustrate) is the primary reward for both Katamari and Elebits, in the same way that the primary reward in an FPS is the successful shooting of a target.
I think the confusion here is that in any art, it is rare that a new entrant into a genre is so fantastically well turned out.
Katamari was less of a groping into new teritory and more a masterful leap. It’s hard to grok something to polished being so young.
I wrote about this at my site. The genres are just too broad to be meaningful. You might as well say there ahve been no new movie genres since the silent era.
Nintendos Touch Generation software… nearly all of it is new-genre stuff… Trauma Centre, Electroplankton, WarioWare, Project Rub. a ps2 Katamari game is nothing more than a collectathon, like Banjo was a decade ago.
I think Warioware is just the ultimate evolution of the “set of minigames” genre that originated with Gorf and Tron. (I love all three games, naturally. I’d love to write my own Gorf mock sequel one of these days where after you blow up the mother ship, instead of going back to the beginning you then have to play lousy low-res versions of Pac-Man, Frogger, Donkey Kong, etc, all with the Gorf character substituted for the enemies and the barely understandable synthesized voice taunting you all the time. Then the second boss would be a giant Gorf character that keeps spawning little Gorfs like was supposed to happen in the actual “Ms. Gorf” sequel that never got finished.)
And actually, there were editorials in gaming magazines circa 1982 worrying that we had reached the end of gaming innovation because new games were trending towards either sets of minigames, or games too complex for most players at the time (such as Defender and Zaxxon, and I liked Defender so much I had one in my living room for a couple years). So even back when you had to stick quarters in a box to play games, we had “casual gamers” and “hardcore gamers,” in a way.
And then, just like Katamari, along came a genre-defying cult hit that most reviewers loved and most gamers never played, namely Reactor. (“A sci-fi game where you never shoot?! Impossible!”) Plus ça change, I guess….