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Concept
Video game genre
Summary
A video game genre is an informal classification of a video game based on how it is played rather than visual or narrative elements. This is independent of setting, unlike works of fiction that are expressed through other media, such as films or books. For example, a shooter game is still a shooter game, regardless of where or when it takes place. A specific game's genre is open to subjective interpretation. An individual game may belong to several genres at once.
Early attempts at categorizing video games were primarily for organizing catalogs and books. 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. ("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. The first two of these correspond to the still-used genres of fixed shooter and multidirectional shooter.
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 (CGW), which had a "Reader Input Device" that drew from reader input. CGW initially only ran with three categories in 1981, Arcade, wargame, and adventure, but by 1989, had expanded its genre list to strategy, simulation, adventure, role-playing adventure, wargames, and action/arcade. Comparisons between computer and console games showed that players on computers tended to prefer more strategic games rather than arcade.
Chris Crawford attempted to classify video games in his 1984 book The Art of Computer Game Design. Crawford primarily focused on the player's experience and activities required for gameplay. He wrote, "the state of computer game design is changing quickly.
Official source
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