CO1301 - Games Concepts Week 4 - Genres

1. CO1301 - Games ConceptsWeek 4 -Genres • Gareth Bellaby

2. References • Rabin, Introduction to Game Development: • 2.2: "Game Design" • I have not suggested you buy this one, but it is in the library and it has a lot on genres: • Rollings & Adams, Rollings & Adams on Game Design.

3. Why do we play games? • What motivates people to play games? • Consider the variety of games and the different environments in which games are played: • in isolation or with others; • complex strategy games or shallow FPS's; • rich storyline or computer solitaire. • There's been a big resurgence in board games. Why?

4. Genres • The word "genre" is a way of categorizing something, typically an artistic creation such as writing, music, film or games. • Genres are defined, differentiated or categorized by such criteria as style, theme, shared conventions, shared features and formal criteria (e.g. fiction vs. non-fiction).

5. Game genres • Give me the names of some game genres.

6. Game genres: a list • action (include FPS: First-Person Shooter) • adventure • education • interactive fiction • puzzle • CRPG • simulation • sport • strategy (RTS: Real-Time Strategy) • wargame • MMO (Massively Multiplayer Online)

7. Exercise • Split into groups. Write down 5 key words for each of the genres. (You can write down something longer than one word if absolutely necessary but try to keep to one word). • Don't do this for more than 10 genres.

8. Why genres? • Historical reasons, e.g. CRPGs are derived from RPGs. • Marketing, e.g. magazines, shelving in shops, categories in on-line material. • People like categories. Categories help us structure data. • It is possible to be too original...

9. Exercise • Do genres help or hinder creativity? Or have no effect upon it at all? • List some cross-genre games that worked and that failed. Why did this happen? • List some games that in effect created a new genre. What was the effect of this? • List reasons why, for the buyer, genres are good and why they are bad.

10. Conventions • There are no hard and fast rules for what happens in a game from a particular genre. • However, conventions have arisen. • A developer should be aware of the conventions before developing a game within a genre. • Why?

11. Exercise • Controls are perhaps the most important part of conventions. • Pick one genre from the following list and write down the typical controls: • FPS • RTS • RPG • TBS (Turn Based Strategy)

12. Conventions • W key - move forward • A key - move left • S key - move backwards • D key - move right

13. Notes - Why do we play games? • People play games for a wide variety of reasons. Some games are fun. Some games are played to pass the time or to take your mind off things. Some games appear to leave the player in an almost trance-like state (watch someone play Tetris.) Games can have a story element and this can engage strong emotions, even unsettling or unpleasant emotions. • I would also like to you to consider the word "game-play" in this context.

14. Notes - Game genres • There is no definitive list of game genres. Genre definition is fluid; it changes over time. The list I provided came from a large repository of games, so its divisions at least arose out of the real need to categorize a large number of games. • Genres are perpetuated by the needs of marketing, but genres also appear to be a response to a fundamental human need to organize data through categorization.