Thinkin' bout Genres

I was speaking with a friend today and used the term "Diablo Clone". I began thinking about the term, and realized the genre was actually a "hack 'n slack". Other terms that came to mind were "Doom Clone", "DotA Clone", and "Bejeweled Clone".

I realized that when a set of mechanics is regurgitated enough times, a new term is eventually developed to describe it. "MOBA". "FPS". "Platformer". These terms let us know that what we're playing is confined by most of the rules of this familiar style of game. Genre serves as a reference point from which we can begin to understand the 'variables' of the game at hand.

It leads me to believe that almost any game could start its own genre. How about "Sell 'n Slash" for Recettear (a game about running a shop and completing Diablo-style dungeons)? How about "Obstacle Course" for games like Bit.Trip Runner (a game about timing certain actions to navigate a sprinting man through a 2D obstacle course)? Maybe it's more of a "Steeplechase"? What would a game like Pikmin be called, I wonder? Katamari Damacy? If Bejeweled can start the "Match-3" genre, why couldn't World of Goo start the "Structural Support" genre? Is Angry Birds its own genre yet? What about Minecraft?

 I suppose there's nothing wrong with wanting to stick to the safe same-old same-old, but one of the possible outcomes of creating these comfortable boxes for categorizing games is that it can create a mindset where "if it doesn't fit in any of my favorite boxes, it's weird and scary and I wouldn't like it." Is it rational? No, but we humans are often not quite as rational as we like to believe we are.

In my experience, the most painful part of writing a game proposal is boiling the entire concept of your game, which is basically your baby, into an abstract that a guy in marketing will understand. If I told you "This is a game where players take turns attempting to move their pieces on a grid onto enemy pieces in order to land on the most important piece and win", what would you guess? I was going for "Chess". Having a reference point can be a powerful tool in explaining what a game is to people. "It's like DotA, but on a micro-transaction marketing plan" might make a lot of people say "League of Legends".

And that's what's on my mind today.