Board 8 > The 4 Video Game Genres

(+) Yeah! (+)

You are tasked with evenly dividing all video games into exactly 4 genres. What are the genres?

You'll know you've done a good job, if: for every game you can think of, it pretty clearly belongs to exactly 1 of the genres.

If you think someone else's 4 genres is wrong, prove it by naming an important or popular game, that isn't easily placed.

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jRPG
RPG
MMORPG
Idle Clickers

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Console
Handheld
PC
Arcade


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Search
Stage Clear
Reading
Sports

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Action/Adventure/Platformer
RPG
Fightning
Racing

adventure
strategy
reflex
simulation

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Action
Adventure
Story-Driven
Simulation

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Action - includes most sports games, fighters, shooters, platformers, action rpgs, racing, open world, arcade, rhythm
Adventure - turn based rpg, point and click, VN
Simulation - sports/business/etc manager games, sim-whatever, truck/flight/etc sims
Strategy - tactics games, srpg, rts, 4x, moba, puzzles

I think everything can fit into one of those four.

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Story
Competitive
Puzzle
Simulation

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Roguelike
Roguelite
Roguelime
Metroidvania

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Strand-type
non-Strand-type
Skyrim
Doom

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Bartzyx posted...

Action - includes most sports games, fighters, shooters, platformers, action rpgs, racing, open world, arcade, rhythm
Adventure - turn based rpg, point and click, VN
Simulation - sports/business/etc manager games, sim-whatever, truck/flight/etc sims
Strategy - tactics games, srpg, rts, 4x, moba, puzzles

I think everything can fit into one of those four.

my first thought was also Action, Simulation, Strategy but I think Adventure is unnecessary, turn based rpgs can be strategy and VN/point and clicks can be simulation. I'd probably make the last category "Party" to encompass anything else

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changmas posted...

VN/point and clicks can be simulation

this is a bizarre take

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Adventure
Visual Novel
Sports
Puzzle

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Action
Adventure
Simulation
Strategy

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Raphael
Leonardo
Donatello
Michaelangelo

You get close to crossover with stuff like Dark Souls in the Leo/Raph genres, but otherwise I think it's pretty ironclad.

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DeepsPraw posted...

this is a bizarre take

i mean we're putting things in 4 categories so obviously something won't fit perfectly. you could similarly argue that not every VN fits in "adventure" because not every story is an adventure or has choices / interactivity

but i'll say that a story is, in a way, a simulation of reality (or a hypothetical version of reality with certain features changed). only the author has run the simulation though, and you're just experiencing that simulation via reading

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Kamekguy posted...

Raphael
Leonardo
Donatello
Michaelangelo

You get close to crossover with stuff like Dark Souls in the Leo/Raph genres, but otherwise I think it's pretty ironclad.

Closest anybody has gotten so far, for sure.

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changmas posted...

you could similarly argue that not every VN fits in "adventure" because not every story is an adventure or has choices / interactivity

I would definitely argue that VNs are not games at all

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DeepsPraw posted...

I would definitely argue that VNs are not games at all

nobody cares

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StealThisSheen posted...

Closest anybody has gotten so far, for sure.

Uh

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changmas posted...

DeepsPraw posted...

this is a bizarre take

i mean we're putting things in 4 categories so obviously something won't fit perfectly. you could similarly argue that not every VN fits in "adventure" because not every story is an adventure or has choices / interactivity

but i'll say that a story is, in a way, a simulation of reality (or a hypothetical version of reality with certain features changed). only the author has run the simulation though, and you're just experiencing that simulation via reading

With this logic literally every game is a simulation so we really only need one genre.
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Game
Video Game
Videogame
Interactive Fiction

UF8 posted...

Game
Video Game
Videogame
Interactive Fiction

What about Interactive Nonfiction, like JFK Reloaded?

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doesn't exist just like gacha

Achiever
Explorer
Killer
Socializer

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For a more serious answer...

Adventure (anything that could be described as a "quest," including normal adventure, RPGs, metroidvanias)
Action (beat 'em ups, shooters, sports)
Challenge (racing, score attack, puzzles, rhythm)
Casual (meaning low-stress from a mechanical perspective...so anything from "casual games" to simulation to visual novels)

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Put everything in this genre
filler
filler
filler

easy to sort games into those 4

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> evenly

dammit I missed this and failed ;(

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First person
third person
second person
strand

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Waluigi1 posted...

Uh

Spoken like a man who's a Michelangelo genre fan

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Singleplayer
Multiplayer
Co-op
Versus

Game goes into whatever category the developer spent the most time/money on.

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Action
Turn-based
Idle

There, did it in three.

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Top down/Isometric
Sideview
First-person
Moving viewpoint

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JackMan posted...

Singleplayer
Multiplayer
Co-op
Versus

Game goes into whatever category the developer spent the most time/money on.

what is multiplayer but doesn't fall into versus or co-op?

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MZero posted...

what is multiplayer but doesn't fall into versus or co-op?

PVP with more than one person.

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I would probably just find a list of all games and separated them evenly alphabetically

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Soulslike
Farming simulator
Flight simulator
JRPG

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Division 8
Division 16
Division 32-64
Division 128

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changmas posted...

my first thought was also Action, Simulation, Strategy but I think Adventure is unnecessary, turn based rpgs can be strategy and VN/point and clicks can be simulation. I'd probably make the last category "Party" to encompass anything else

I agree with this take the most.

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Competitive - This covers everything from fighting, racing, and sports to MOBAs, party games, and versus puzzles. Whether against other players or an AI, anything where you play a match against an opposing side and you could either win or lose and then choose to rematch.

Campaign - Anything with a beginning and end. RPGs, platformers, SEARCH ACTION, beat-em-ups, whatever. If you can "beat the game" in a meaningful way (not like beating M Bison in Street Fighter or winning the Super Bowl in Madden but in a way that the game is really *over*), it's a campaign.

Score Chase - Anything where you play over and over trying to improve your performance. This can include the sort of classic arcade games we normally associate with the term like Pac-Man and Donkey Kong, or more modern stuff like Overcooked.

Diversion - Something you play just to pass the time, with no real focus on "victory" in any real sense. The best example I can come up with is Picross, but it could encompass anything from crossword puzzles to idle clickers or flight sims.

Note that the same game could have multiple genres depending on how it's being played. For example an FPS in single player might be Campaign, but in multiplayer it's probably Competitive. Or speedrunning is playing a Campaign as a Score Chase.

any category system that can't place Minecraft well fails

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NFUN posted...

any category system that can't place Minecraft well fails

Minecraft is probably Diversion under my system, unless you're adding on some alternate rules I guess.

MrGreenonion posted...

Competitive - This covers everything from fighting, racing, and sports to MOBAs, party games, and versus puzzles. Whether against other players or an AI, anything where you play a match against an opposing side and you could either win or lose and then choose to rematch.

Campaign - Anything with a beginning and end. RPGs, platformers, SEARCH ACTION, beat-em-ups, whatever. If you can "beat the game" in a meaningful way (not like beating M Bison in Street Fighter or winning the Super Bowl in Madden but in a way that the game is really *over*), it's a campaign.

Score Chase - Anything where you play over and over trying to improve your performance. This can include the sort of classic arcade games we normally associate with the term like Pac-Man and Donkey Kong, or more modern stuff like Overcooked.

Diversion - Something you play just to pass the time, with no real focus on "victory" in any real sense. The best example I can come up with is Picross, but it could encompass anything from crossword puzzles to idle clickers or flight sims.

Note that the same game could have multiple genres depending on how it's being played. For example an FPS in single player might be Campaign, but in multiplayer it's probably Competitive. Or speedrunning is playing a Campaign as a Score Chase.

this is an unironically good answer imo

Yeah that's a cool answer. Very nontraditional way of looking at genres, looking at the overall goal instead of the moment-to-moment gameplay.

But really, maybe looking at the overall goal is better in some ways, like it might be better at dividing players, like for a game recommendation system. Maybe competitive gamers tend to only like competitive games, and so on. Whereas people who like puzzle games easily like action games too, so those typical genres don't have that people-dividing property.


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MrGreenonion's is the line of thinking that I would have used (although I surely would have failed at attempting to articulate the differences between the four like he did). It makes sense since you can easily see how multiple "traditional genres" fit within those 4 styles of play, whereas some of the other answers are just picking 4 of the existing "traditional genres" and trying to reclassify others into those groups. Grouping them by style of play rather than content is like expanding the scope into even more broad generalizations, so it's a better answer.

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nice answer @MrGreenonion, love this way of looking at things!
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MrGreenonion posted...

Competitive - This covers everything from fighting, racing, and sports to MOBAs, party games, and versus puzzles. Whether against other players or an AI, anything where you play a match against an opposing side and you could either win or lose and then choose to rematch.

Campaign - Anything with a beginning and end. RPGs, platformers, SEARCH ACTION, beat-em-ups, whatever. If you can "beat the game" in a meaningful way (not like beating M Bison in Street Fighter or winning the Super Bowl in Madden but in a way that the game is really *over*), it's a campaign.

Score Chase - Anything where you play over and over trying to improve your performance. This can include the sort of classic arcade games we normally associate with the term like Pac-Man and Donkey Kong, or more modern stuff like Overcooked.

Diversion - Something you play just to pass the time, with no real focus on "victory" in any real sense. The best example I can come up with is Picross, but it could encompass anything from crossword puzzles to idle clickers or flight sims.

Note that the same game could have multiple genres depending on how it's being played. For example an FPS in single player might be Campaign, but in multiplayer it's probably Competitive. Or speedrunning is playing a Campaign as a Score Chase.

Where would something like Harvest Moon go? They definitely have goals, but no like definite campaign end, and you don't go for scores.

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I'd still say Harvest Moon fits in Diversion with elements of Campaign. No focus on victory doesn't necessarily mean no goals

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Eh, I'd say Harvest Moon is a little too goal focused to be Diversion, since most of them have definite milestones and goals and time limits to hit them in that keep them from being a "do whatever to pass the time" game until you get past that.

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