Targeting high-value, low-risk video game genres were key for some publishers, and small and independent developers were typically forced to compete by abandoning more experimental gameplay and settling into the same genres used by larger publishers. With the industry expanding in the 1990s and budgets for video games began growing, large publishers like Electronic Arts began to form to handle the marketing and publication of games, both for consoles and personal computers. Subsequently, retailers displayed games grouped by genres, and market research firms found that players had preferences for certain types over others, based on region, and developers could plan out future strategies through this. To assure they would get these licenses, console developers tended to stay with gameplay of previously published games for that console, thus causing groups of games within the same genre to grow. Ĭonsoles manufacturers that followed the NES followed similar behavior in requiring licenses to develop games for their systems. By the time of the Game Boy and Super Nintendo Entertainment System, Nintendo had retired the Arcade, Light-Gun, Robot, Programmable, and Educational series, but added RPG & Simulation and Puzzle. The series description appeared on early "black box" covers and subsequently in the NES Player's Guide. To support this, Nintendo classified games into eight major series: Adventure, Action, Sports, Light-Gun, Programmable, Arcade, Robot, and Educational. To solve this, Nintendo required approval of all games for the NES. Nintendo, in bringing its Famicom system into the North American market as the Nintendo Entertainment System in 1985, looked to avoid the issues with loss of publishing control that had led to the 1983 video game crash and to prevent unauthorized games from being released for the system. We would therefore expect the taxonomy presented to become obsolete or inadequate in a short time." He wrote, "the state of computer game design is changing quickly. Crawford focused on the player's experience and activities required for gameplay. Ĭhris Crawford attempted to classify video games in his 1984 book The Art of Computer Game Design. Comparisons between computer and console games showed that players on computers tended to prefer more strategic games rather than action. Computer Gaming World initially used three categories in 1981-arcade, wargame, and adventure-but by 1989 had expanded its genre list to strategy, simulation, adventure, role-playing adventure, wargame, and action/arcade. Within the personal computer space, two publications established a small number of categories based on the best-selling software in the early 1980s: Softalk, which ran its Top Thirty list from 1980 to 1984 with the genres of strategy, adventure, fantasy and arcade and Computer Gaming World, which collected user-submitted rankings. The first two of these correspond to the still-used genres of fixed shooter and multidirectional shooter. ("Classics", in this case, refers to chess and checkers.) In Tom Hirschfeld's 1981 book How to Master the Video Games, he divides the games into broad categories in the table of contents: Space Invaders-type, Asteroids-type, maze, reflex, and miscellaneous. A 1981 catalog for the Atari VCS uses 8 headings: Skill Gallery, Space Station, Classics Corner, Adventure Territory, Race Track, Sports Arena, Combat Zone, and Learning Center. History Įarly attempts at categorizing video games were primarily for organizing catalogs and books. ![]() ![]() An individual game may belong to several genres at once. A specific game's genre is open to subjective interpretation. For example, a shooter game is still a shooter game, regardless of where or when it takes place. This is independent of setting, unlike works of fiction that are expressed through other media, such as films or books. ![]() Classification assigned to video games based on their gameplay A science fiction-themed side-scrolling shoot 'em upĪ video game genre is an informal classification of a video game based on how it is played rather than visual or narrative elements.
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