Reviews and blog
The concept of the genre
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There are many ways to define a genre and there are even more different approaches when comparing different media like literature, movies and games. Let’s take literature first: Literary devices are one way, but this doesn’t seem to be effectful since any number of devices can be used in totally different contexts, and there are many elements that more immediately separates different works. The content is a good choice – since we as humans categorizes our interest this way, if one is interested in the Vietnam War, cryptology or magic any book dealing with the subject will do (For those who doesn’t care about writing style or author perspective, which I will discuss in a second) The author perspective is a more complex way to define a work as it requires deeper analysis than just being able to describe the plot and categorizing it that way. How does the author feel about what he is describing, what is his attitude towards the characters, the subject, the conflict, be it personal, societal or philosophical.
How do we then define the genre when talking about games? The point of view/camera angle is one thing, the gameplay is another, but it seems that we very rarely define a game by its content, setting or style like in movies or literature. A game can be an FPS if it takes place in space, in future, present or past, in a war or a big city. It can be humorous or serious, cartoony or photo-realistic, but it still belongs in the category of the FPS.
This is different from movies that define it’s genres by action, comedy, thriller, drama or horror. These are overall categories but it seems that they have more in common than games that are in the same genre (or at least potential games, as there are far too many who mimic one another, e.g. WWII FPS’)
This is probably because gameplay is the defining characteristic of a game but there can still be so many differences between games in the same genre.
I myself do not like the concept of the genre especially when I am trying to categorize my own writing, something I try to avoid, but it is practically impossible as the first thing anyone wants to know about a novel or short story is what genre is or what it is about. The preceding elements of genre-placing are just a few out a million different that together defines an individual work and choosing just one defining characteristic seems hard to do. That is my problem with the genre – it doesn’t really say anything about a work, doesn’t explain if it is well written or what conflicts it deals with or how the composition of the story. It is like using a number to determine whether a book is worth reading – it tries to tell us something, but ultimately fails because of lack of information. Reading reviews are the only real option short of reading the actual book or playing the game, if you want to know whether it will appeal to you, but in the end you will never know before you pick up the book or game and experience it for yourself.
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