Genre is a pretty simple concept, one simple enough I’m surprised it’s started to get a bit of backlash from people. There is a growing number of people who feel genre labels do nothing but restrict art to a basic form, and somehow this limits creativity. I feel like this is missing the point entirely; all genre does is sum up the kind of art you’re about to watch, read, or play in a matter of one or two words.
Which brings me to what the topic is about: How genre naming conventions work, and how it’s not always the best when said rules are bent. Let’s start with books, as much as theatre and traditional storytelling are older, theatre shares a lot of genres with film thanks to both being purely visual mediums. And besides, if you are just reading the script to a play, your pretentious high school English teacher will boast that it counts as literature anyway. Because Romeo and Juliet was only intended to be read……
Ponder for a second what you call a book where the central premise is that the main character needs to unravel a mystery. You guessed it, this is the Mystery genre. In only one word, even someone who doesn’t actively read can instantly tell what kind of book they are about to read. That’s the true practice of genre naming, turns out. Using language not inherently unique to the medium to prevent as few questions as possible.
Sticking with Mystery, there are a lot of subgenres you can use that classify these books more carefully. If the mystery is a bit light, not exactly dark and honestly more about a vibe than anything, we call that a Cozy Mystery; telling the reader this is a Mystery novel that’s rather Cozy in feeling. Now, if the main character is a Detective, you can classify your book as a Detective Novel, as yes there is genuinely a subgenre for when the person solving the mystery is properly licensed to solve crime. And of course, when the crime is a murder, you have yourself a Murder Mystery.
Subgenres help further classify, but they can also strangle themselves when they try to be too broad. For a film example of genre, I really can’t help but mention the ever-popular Action-Adventure label that basically every movie has these days. Now, Action is a genre, a movie defined by there being a large focus on fighting and intense moments. Adventure is also a genre, a slightly dying one, where the idea is the main character goes on one long journey where they encounter many friends and foes along the way, also called an Epic or Odyssey.
But Action-Adventure is sort of a combination of these things, it’s a light-hearted story for all ages usually with clear-cut good guys and bad guys and tons of comedy with sometimes a love interest thrown in. In other words, it’s a salad. A bunch of things all thrown together that maybe weren’t enough on their own so when together, yeah, it’s acceptable. But some salads you’d order again, and some you didn’t even finish eating, if you catch my drift.
Action-Adventure is such a hodgepodge because it’s created to be appealing to everyone, taking the basic and often not genre-defining traits of other genres to cast the widest net. I won’t go as far to say this practice is devoid of creativity, but I will go as far as to say that if you are someone who lacks creativity, you’re probably the kind of person who greenlights a lot of Action-Adventure stories.
Every genre example thus far has been what the characters in the story get involved with, but once we venture into the realm of gaming, that’s when the genre naming takes a complete shift. For a lot of video games, the genre is supposed to signpost what you will be doing in it, instead of anything the characters get up to. Platformer, for example, means that you the player will have to land jumps onto platforms. Survival Horror is a horror game where you have to learn how to survive whatever it throws at you.
Terms such as horror, action, comedy, they do exist, but it tends to be secondary just like I explained with Survival Horror. The actual story and tone of the game barely matters in video game genre names, and for those of you about to bring examples of games where the story matters most, let me just remind you those are already called Narrative-Driven games.
I really can’t think of a genre name gaming-exclusive that isn’t just a breakdown of the mechanics. First-Person-Shooter, Massive Multiplayer Online, Role Playing Game, Visual Novel, Virtual Reality, Procedurally-Generated Dungeon Crawler. Got your interest with that last one I’ll bet, probably have your eyebrows screwed up in confusion. Well, reader, that’s the original name for,- ugh, Roguelikes.
Or Roguelites, I have heard both. Back when I was working for DualShockers I pitched an article voicing my frustration for the genre name and was dismissed from writing it because the editor figured that Rougelike was a good enough name and everyone was used to it. My problem with this argument is that all it proves it both gamers and gaming journalists alike still feel gaming is in a tight bubble. An echo chamber that feeds known information to all parties in a heartbeat. This I feel cannot stack with the reality of gaming being mainstream, and there will sooner than later be many gamers who shun anything Roguelike purely because the genre name confuses them.
To say a positive, I do see why the genre was quietly renamed. For starters, it’s a mouthful, thereby breaking the rule that genre names should be quick and easily identifiable. But then if you try to shorten it to Dungeon Crawler, well, that’s too vague. You can crawl through dungeons in Skyrim but it sure as hell isn’t the same genre as Spelunky or Hades.
It’s important to clarify what kind of games Spelunky and Hades are of course, and I don’t think Roguelike covers it by a long shot. Both games are about learning to deal with the randomly generated circumstances and how to eventually master those random elements to conquer the game. You will start out miserably unprepared and may well get to a point where you you can finish the game in one sitting without anything more than a scratch of damage. If this is how Rouge plays, that’s cool, but that does no justify Rogue being the namesake of a genre.
Imagine if instead of Murder-Mystery, we just called them Agatha Christie-likes. Try it at a book club and see if they kick you out. Although going back to books, there is a little fact we need to discuss in how sometimes fiction does create the very word needed to eventually describe itself. Remember how I said the Adventure genre is sometimes called Odyssey? That’s due to The Odyssey, a Greek myth/poem about Odysseus who spent 10 years traveling back to Ithica after the war and encountered many monsters along the way. Odyssey has become a word now, it means “a long voyage”. So, yes, if you’re calling something an Odyssey you’re technically saying the story is comparable to The Odyssey, although Adventure and Epic also exist, so even in this example we have other genre names to use instead.
Soulslike is starting to see this too, unless it’s actually Rougelikes I’m seeing get this rename. You’ll have to tell me in the comments what genre name Recursive is trying to replace. From the name I can easily guess it’s all about retracing your steps, and learning from past experiences. But dammit, that both sounds like the boss-pattern learning of Dark Souls as well as the memorization or generated scenarios! It’s only not a perfect name because I don’t know which it’s referring to, because I’ll be real, I do like Recursive more than both Rougelike and Soulslike.
And look, even my rigid self can be flexible in the right circumstances. I’ll admit I have nothing against the phrase Arcady. A genre given to games that emulate the frantic and heartthrobing action you find in arcade machines. It’s deliberate in the inspiration and happens to be the kind of word that rolls off the tongue anyway. I also think cRPG does a good job separating itself as a subgenre, despite the fact that the c stands for Computer. Not joking, unless I’m very mistaken, the acronym stands for Computer Role Playing Game. Role Playing Games such as the original Fallouts, where choices shaped the story and allowed for heavy player freedom, and the C only stood for the platform you played them on. You’d think something like Choice or Customized, hence why I like the term cRPG as it’s flexible even if possibly on accident..
But what about one I dislike and genuinely have my own solution? Such the thing with games, these If-you-know-you-know genre names will be erased one day anyway, it’s the nature of a new medium finding itself. If you don’t believe me, First-Person-Shooters used to be called Doom Clones until enough people realized it’s reductive.
Just like the popular genre name Metroidvania. Well, popular to gamers, you may have noticed in showcases that developers tend to avoid using the name and instead call them Action Platformers. Makes sense, you don’t want to piss off either Nintendo nor Konami for mashing the two game titles together and demanding this other game is just like them. But that said, I also don’t like Action Platformer. I can’t for the life of me name a Platformer that doesn’t have combat. Mario and Spyro aren’t giving diplomacy to the Goobas and Rhynocs after all, this distinction does not distinct anything.
My name for this genre was and always has been Exploration Platformer. A Platforming game where you must explore the entire area for the secrets as plenty of them are more necessary than you think. Or, in the example of my first ever Exploration Platformer, Kirby and the Amazing Mirror, necessary just to find the correct way to the bosses and plot progression. Two words (or maybe one hyphenated word) that explain the core mechanics in a way that should explain itself even to someone who doesn’t play all that many video games.
That is the real goal. To put it bluntly; the name of a genre is supposed to try as hard as it can to explain the tone and concept to even the dumbest person you know. There’s no such thing as a 100% success rate, but add in any unnecessary layers and even slightly-educated people will be lost. Like all rules, sure, bend it when needed, but think if over before you bend it recklessly.