Video game genres Totally Explained

Everything about Video Game Genres totally explained

Video games are categorized into genres based on their gameplay interaction. Thomas Apperley states that an "agreed form of interaction suggests a consistent genre has been established". Thus, genres are based on "underlying similarities rather than their superficial visual or narrative differences". As with nearly all varieties of genre classification, the matter of any individual video game's specific genre is open to personal interpretation. Moreover, it's important to be able to "think of each individual game as belonging to several genres at once." Gameplay involves the player fighting through a series of increasingly difficult levels. The sole distinction between these two genres are that beat 'em ups feature hand-to-hand combat, and hack and slash games feature melee weaponry, particularly bladed weapons. Both genres feature little to no use of of firearms or projectile combat.
This genre became popular in 1987 with the release of Double Dragon, leading to a large number of similar games. The fighting style is usually simpler than for versus fighting games. In recent times, the genre has largely merged with that of action adventure, with side-scrolling levels giving way to more open three-dimensional areas, and the melee combat co-existing with shooting, puzzles and missions.

Fighting

Fighting games emphasize one-on-one combat between two characters, one of whom may be computer controlled.
   These games are usually played by linking together long chains of button presses on the controller to use physical attacks to fight. Many of the movements employed by the characters are usually dramatic and occasionally physically impossible. Combat is almost always one-on-one,
   The first light guns appeared in the 1930s, following the development of light-sensing vacuum tubes. It wasn't long before the technology began appearing in arcade shooting games, beginning with the Seeburg Ray-O-Lite in 1936. These early light gun games used small (usually moving) targets onto which a light-sensing tube was mounted; the player used a gun (usually a rifle) that emitted a beam of light when the trigger was pulled. If the beam struck the target, a "hit" was scored.
   Modern screen-based light guns work on the opposite principle — the sensor is built into the gun itself, and the on-screen target(s) emit light rather than the gun. The first light gun of this type was used on the MIT Whirlwind computer. Some "light gun" games actually use guns mounted on joysticks, giving the illusion of using a light beam, but all control is transferred through the movement of the stick; notable examples of this include and Revolution X.

Examples of light-gun shooter games include: Time Crisis and Duck Hunt.

Shoot 'em up

A shoot 'em up (or shmup for short) is a genre of shooter game in which the player controls a vehicle or character and shoots large numbers of enemies. During the peak of their popularity they were commonly called simply shooters, But with the emergence of first-person shooters, shoot 'em up has become an inclusive term to describe various kinds of non-3D shooter games.

Examples of shoot 'em up games include: the Star Fox series and Ikaruga.

Tactical shooter

Tactical shooters are variations on the first person shooter genre (though also, less often, on third person shooters). Some are modifications of existing games; the aim of such modifications being to increase the realism of the original game. These games emphasize tactical play such as planning and teamwork (for example, co-ordination and specialised roles), whereas more conventional first person shooters tend to reward individual skill and heroism. In single player modes, the player commands a squad of AI controlled characters in addition to his/her own; in multi-player modes, players must work in teams to win the game. Also, in multi-player games, winning a match is likely to be dependent on capturing an objective of some sort rather than gaining the most kills (as is often the case in more conventional first person shooters).

Examples of tactical shooter games include: the Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon series and the SOCOM series.

Third-person shooter

Third-person shooter video games, known as TPSs or 3PSs, emphasize shooting and combat from a third-person perspective of the character the player is controlling. This perspective gives the player a wider view of their surroundings as opposed to the limited viewpoint of first-person shooters. Furthermore, third person shooters allow for more elaborate movement such as rolling or diving, as opposed to simple jumping and crouching common in FPS games. Greater interaction with the player's environment is often possible. The emphasis remains on shooting however; these games lack the platforming and puzzle elements of action-adventure shooting games.

Examples of third-person shooter games include: the Grand Theft Auto series and Gears of War.

Adventure

Adventure games were some of the earliest games created, beginning with the text adventure Colossal Cave Adventure in the 1970s. That game was originally titled simply "Adventure," and is the namesake of the genre. Over time, graphics have been introduced to the genre and the interface has evolved.
   Unlike adventure films, adventure games are not defined by story or content. Rather, adventure describes a manner of gameplay without reflex challenges or action. They normally require the player to solve various puzzles by interacting with people or the environment, most often in a non-confrontational way. It is considered a "purist" genre and tends to exclude anything which includes action elements beyond a mini game.
   Because they put little pressure on the player in the form of action-based challenges or time constraints, adventure games have had the unique ability to appeal to people who don't normally play video games. The genre peaked in popularity with the 1993 release of Myst. The simple point and click interface, detailed worlds and casual pace made it accessible, and its sense of arty surrealism helped it escape the stigma that games are for children. It had four proper sequels, but none managed to experience the same level of success. The success of Myst also inspired many others to create similar games with first person perspectives, surreal environments and minimal or no dialogue, but these neither recaptured the success of Myst nor of earlier personality-driven adventures.
   In the late 1990s the genre suffered a large drop in popularity, mass-market releases became rare, and many proclaimed the adventure game to be dead. More accurately, it has become a niche genre. Adventure games are not entirely uncommon, but they tend to be very low budget in anticipation of modest sales. However, as of 2005, the adventure game genre is showing signs of a revival, with games such as Trace Memory, Fahrenheit,, and Dreamfall being produced.

Text adventure / Interactive fiction

The earliest adventure games were text adventures, sometimes called interactive fiction. Games such as the popular Zork series of the late 1970s and early 1980s allowed the player to use a keyboard to enter commands such as "get rope" or "go west" while the computer describes what is happening. A great deal of programming went into parsing the player's text input.

Graphic adventure

Graphic adventure games emerged as graphics became more common. Adventure games began to supplement and later on replace textual descriptions with visuals (for example, a picture of the current location). Early graphic adventure games used text-parsers to input commands. But the growing use of mice led to the "point-and-click" genre of adventure games, where the player would no longer have to type commands. The player could, for example, click on a hand icon and then on a rope to pick up the rope.

Escape the room

Escape the room is a genre of online graphic adventure game, usually created for Adobe Flash and utilizing a point and click style of play. The object of the game is to find a way to escape from a mysterious room.

Visual novel

A is an adventure game game featuring mostly static graphics, usually with anime-style art. As the name might suggest, they resemble mixed-media novels or tableau vivant stage plays. Many visual novels track statistics that the player must build in order to advance the plot, and permit a variety of endings, allowing more dynamic reactions to the player's actions than a typical linear adventure plot. Many visual novels are dating sims.
Visual novels are especially prevalent in Japan, where they make up nearly 70% of PC games released. They are rarely produced for video game consoles, but the more popular games are sometimes ported to systems such as the Sega Dreamcast or the Playstation 2. The market for visual novels outside of Japan, however, was nearly non-existent prior to the success of the Nintendo DS, for which several Japanese visual novels were released in the West, such as Ace Attorney and .

Interactive movie

The interactive movie genre came about with the invention of laserdiscs. An interactive movie contains pre-filmed full-motion cartoons or live-action sequences, where the player controls some of the moves of the main character. For example, when in danger, the player decides which move or action, or combination to choose. In these games, the only activity the user has is to choose or guess the move the designers intend him to make.
   Interactive movies usually differ from games that simply use FMV extensively between scenes in that they try to integrate it into the gameplay itself. This has been used in everything from racing games (Megarace) to fighting games (Supreme Warrior). Because of this, it's arguable that the term is more of an antiquated buzzword (like how many early 3D games were tagged as "virtual reality") than a real genre.
   The term itself has come to be associated with a lot of clumsy, poor quality games from the early-to-mid '90s, and thus it's rarely ever used anymore. A few adventure game have tried to use the term to liken the storytelling of their games to those in movies, most notably the later Tex Murphy games and the more recent Indigo Prophecy, but few would include these in the same genre as games that used FMV in their gameplay.
   Examples of interactive movies include: Dragon's Lair, Space Ace and Night Trap.

Construction and management simulation

Construction and management simulation games (or CMSs) are a type of simulation game which task players to build, expand or manage fictional communities or projects with limited resources.

City-building

In city-building games the player acts as overall planner or leader to meet the needs and wants of game characters by initiating structures for food, shelter, health, spiritual care, economic growth, etc. Success is achieved when the city budget makes a growing profit and citizens experience an upgraded lifestyle in housing, health, and goods. While military development is often included, the emphasis is on economic strength.
Perhaps the most known game of this type is SimCity, which is still popular and has had great influence on later city-building games. SimCity, however, also belongs to the God Games genre since it gives the player god-like abilities in manipulating the world.

Business simulation

Business simulation games generally attempt to simulate an economy or business, with the player controlling the economy of the game.

God games

Unlike other genres of games, god games often don't have a set goal that allows a player to win the game. The focus of a god game tends to be control over the lives of people, anywhere from micromanaging a family to overseeing the rise of a civilization.

Examples of god games include the genre-setting Populous, SimAnt, SimEarth and the forthcoming game Spore.

Government simulation

A government simulation game (or "political game") involves the simulation of the policies, government or politics of a country, but typically excludes warfare. Recently, these types of games has gained the moniker "serious game".

Life simulation

Life simulation games (or Artificial Life Games) involve living or controlling one or more artificial lives. A life simulation game can revolve around individuals and relationships, or it could be a simulation of an ecosystem.

Biological simulation

Biological simulations may allow the player to expermient with genetics, survival or ecosystems, often in the form of an educational package.

Pet-raising simulation

Pet-raising simulations (or digital pets) focus more on the relationship between the player and one or few life forms. They are often more limited in scope than other biological simulations. This includes popular examples of virtual pets such as Tamagotchi, the Petz series, and Nintendogs.

Social simulation

Social simulation games base their gameplay on the social interaction between multiple artificial lives. The most famous example from this genre is Will Wright's The Sims.

Role-playing

Computer and console role-playing games (CRPGs or simply RPGs) draw their gameplay from traditional role-playing games like Dungeons & Dragons. Most cast the player in the role of one or more "adventurers" who specialize in specific skill sets (such as combat or casting magic spells) while progressing through a predetermined storyline. Many involve maneuvering these character(s) through an overworld, usually populated with monsters, that allows access to more important game locations, such as towns, dungeons, and castles.
Since the emergence of affordable home computers coincided with the popularity of paper and pencil role-playing games, this genre was one of the first in video games and continues to be popular today. Gameplay elements strongly associated with RPGs, such as statistical character development through the acquisition of experience points, have been widely adapted to other genres such as action-adventure games.
Though nearly all of the early entries in the genre were turn-based games, modern CRPGs have introduced a real-time aspect. Thus, the CRPG genre has followed the strategy game's trend of moving from turn-based to real-time combat. The move to real-time combat began with the release of Square's (now Square Enix's) Final Fantasy IV, the first game to use the Active Time Battle system; this was quickly followed by truly real-time role-playing games such as the Mana series, Soul Blazer and Ultima VII.

Computer and console role-playing

Due to cultural differences in role-playing video games, there are two different types of RPGs. The first involves the player creating a character and a non-linear storyline along which the player makes his own decisions. In the second type, the player controls a party of predefined characters through a dramatically scripted linear storyline. These styles are sometimes referred to as Western/Computer RPGs and Japanese/Console RPGs respectively, although there are numerous exceptions.

Examples of computer/Western role-playing games include: Ultima and The Elder Scrolls.

Examples of console/Japanese role-playing games include: Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy.
Action role-playing
The action role-playing game or action RPG is a type of role-playing game which incorporates elements from action games or action-adventure games. The first action role-playing games began in the 1980s with games produced by Nihon Falcom, such as the Dragon Slayer series and Ys series. Later so-called "Diablo clones" are also part of this genre.
Although the precise definition of the genre varies, the typical action RPG features a heavy emphasis on combat, often simplifying or removing non-combat attributes and statistics and the effect they've on the character's development. Additionally, combat always takes place using a real-time system (hence the "action") that relies on the player's ability to perform particular actions with speed and accuracy to determine success, rather than mainly using the player character's attributes to determine this. Typically many action RPGs focus more on the collection of randomized treasure than story progression that's found in other types of RPGs.

Examples of action role-playing games include: Diablo and Kingdom Hearts.
Massively multiplayer online role-playing
Massively multiplayer online role-playing games, or MMORPGs, emerged in the mid to late 1990s as a commercial, graphical variant of text-based MUDs, which had existed since around 1979. The massively multiplayer concept was quickly combined with other genres. Fantasy MMORPGs like, remain the most popular type of MMOG, yet other types of MMORPG are appearing. Sci-fi MMORPGs, which began with Phantasy Star Online, hold a smaller part of the MMOG market, with the popular space sci-fi game EVE Online being the most notable.

Examples of massively multiplayer online role-playing games include: MapleStory and World of Warcraft.
Roguelike
The roguelike video game sub-genre borrows its name and gameplay elements from the 1980 computer game Rogue. Superficially, a roguelike is a two-dimensional dungeon crawl with a high degree of randomness and an emphasis on statistical character development. Though traditionally featuring a text user interface, many such games utilize graphic tiles to overcome character set limitations.

Examples of roguelike games include: ADOM and NetHack.
Tactical role-playing
The tactical role-playing game sub-genre principally refers to games which incorporate gameplay from strategy games as an alternative to traditional RPG systems. Like standard RPGs, the player controls a finite party and battles a similar number of enemies.
"The origin of strategy games is rooted in their close cousins, board games".]]
Turn-based strategy
The term "Turn-based strategy game" (TBS) is usually reserved for certain computer strategy games, to distinguish them from real-time computer strategy games. A player of a turn-based game is allowed a period of analysis before committing to a game action, and some games allow a certain number of moves or actions to take place in a turn.

Examples of TBS games include: Civilization, the Nintendo Wars series, Heroes of Might and Magic and the Master of Orion series.
Turn-based tactics
The gameplay of turn-based tactics games is characterized by the expectation of players to complete their tasks using the combat forces provided to them, and usually by the provision of a realistic (or at least believable) representation of military tactics and operations.

Examples of TBT games include: the Jagged Alliance and X-COM series.
Wargames
Wargames are a subgenre of strategy video games that emphasize strategic or tactical warfare on a map. Wargames generally take one of four archetypal forms, depending on whether the game is turn-based or real-time and whether the game's focus is upon military strategy or tactics.

Examples of video wargames include: The Close Combat series, Panzer General and its sequels and spinoffs, and the Romance of the Three Kingdoms series.
Vehicle simulation
Vehicle simulation games are a genre of video games which attempt to provide the player with a realistic interpretation of operating various kinds of vehicles.
Flight
A flight simulation tasks the player with flying an aircraft, usually an airplane, as realistically as possible. Combat flight simulators are the most popular sub-genre of simulation. The player controls the plane, not only simulating the act of flying, but also combat situations. There are also civilian flight simulators that don't have the combat aspect.

Examples of combat flight simulators include: Falcon 4.0 and IL-2 Sturmovik.

Examples of civilian flight simulators include: Microsoft Flight Simulator and X-Plane.
Racing
Racing games typically place the player in the driver's seat of a high-performance vehicle and require the player to race against other drivers or sometimes just time. This genre of games is one of the staples of the computer gaming world and many of the earliest computer games created were part of this genre. Emerging in the late 1970s, this genre is still very popular today and continues to push the envelope in terms of graphics and performance. These games "tend to fall into organized racing and imaginary racing categories". Some of these games have no specific ending or goal in the game. Rather, the player learns a real life lesson from the game. For example, games from websites such as Newsgaming.com raise political issues using the distinct properties of games.

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