Theory about popular genres

Just been thinking about it. When platformers were popular, developers released lots of them and they started to be somewhat similar to each other, when Adventure games were popular developers created lots of them and because of gameplay style they were somewhat similar, when RPG become popular(especially JRPG), developers started to release lots of them and they were somewhat similar in gameplay and story types, when FPS become popular, developers started to release lots of them and people seem to get bored about how gameplay is too similar on lots of the genre's games. Any other genres I forgot besides fighting games?(which follow the same pattern?)

Yet, even though platformers, both 2d & 3d ones, aren't that popular these days and while they DO release less them(with most of them being licensed movie games for kids), they aren't really that different from old ones but nobody anymore complains about platformer genre being stagnated. Could whole "Too samey" complain be something like It's Popular, So It Sucks!? Heck, Adventure genre isn't popular anymore, but games that DO get released are same as older times and I don't see people complain about genre being stagnated(at most about how genre is more like interactive fiction in their opinion). I mean, racing games, sport, puzzle games and such genres were never THAT popular and nobody complains about them being stagnated genres even though the games are also somewhat similar ;P

In short, I've theory that people complain that genre is "Stagnated" when ever it gets popular Doesn't matter whether genre's games are already similar to each other and if there are lots of games released in that genre as long its not popular. Its kind of natural that games withing the genre are similar to each other, otherwise they wouldn't belong to same genre, no? But why then complaints seem to focus on whatever genre is popular? I guess you could argue that its because developers keep filling the market with one particular genre, but for example, there are tons of same styled puzzle games such as Bejeweled and nobody says that block puzzle genre is stagnated.

edited 11th Jan '12 9:05:24 AM by SpookyMask

It's Popular, Now It Sucks! is a strong reaction.

edited 11th Jan '12 9:05:36 AM by lu127

I think yer mostly on the right track, Spooks, but it could just as easily be that a genre flooding the market makes it easier to spot the recurring trends.

Also when an old genre like adventure games gets revived, honestly playing like the old ones is sorta what fans want. If they played a lot differently, then it wouldn't be a revival—it would be a whole new genre masking as an old one. It's the same reason fans get pissed when a Hollywood remake or adaptation of their favorite book or game isn't exactly true to the source.

Well, in case of adventure games, main point is story and mysteries/puzzles/making player feel smart by making puzzles or solutions that aren't too easy but not so hard that they are forced to check guides and break immersion they have to the story, whether its it click and point, menu(Ace Attorney games) or text format doesn't really matter, but I do get what you mean.

Though my point was more that ALL genres have lots of games that are similar to each other in multiple ways, yet people only complain about the popular games when they complain about the industry.

edited 11th Jan '12 10:02:12 AM by SpookyMask

Back in the arcade days Beat 'em Up and Shoot 'Em Up got the same thing.

The stagnation is a legitimate thing though, not a illusion brought upon by a flooded market. The flooded market just exacerbates the problem.

Look at the Beat 'em Up genre, a set of games that is close to my heart. After Konami struck gold with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles license and capcom had the popular Final Fight suddenly everyone and their mother wanted their own quarter-muncher. Over the course of the arcade age, countless of these scrolling slugfests got released, often with everything from X Men to Cadillacs And Dinosaurs slapping their license on them. At the end of the day, they all had the exact same formula: You had a punch, you had a jump. Hitting the punch button rapidly causes you to do the same punch over and and over and you don't start your actual combo until you hit something. Hit jump and punch at the same time to execute a panic attack that saps health. Every game had their own gimmick, such as the items in the Dungeons And Dragons game or the blocking in Knights Of The Round.

Eventually people realized the games where fundamentally interchangeabl and became less popular. As these games died, some of their best games where released, like Battle Circuit and Sengoku 3 which grew the genre by leaps and bounds... But it wasn't enough.

Now that we're past the stagnation brought upon by Follow the Leader some games are coming around with more innovation than all the games in my seaside arcade combined. Dungeon Fighter Online is a Beat 'em Up MMO with complex itemization, crafting, questing et cetera and plays like a freaking dream with combos and special moves that put the older games to shame, despite the fact that there really wasn't anything stopping them from being that good besides the idea that that wasn't how the games where supposed to play. Even smaller games like Castle Crashers and Scott Pilgrim are very different despite drawing more than a little inspiration from the era.

It's similar with the FPS now. Each one has the same basic functions: L1 to aim, R1 fire. You move slowly while aiming. Take cover behind boxes so you can Walk It Off. Use your limited number of grenades to take out entrenched foes. Even games that marketed themselves as going against the curve (Which basically just includes Bullet Storm) used those same mechanics or slight variations theiren. And each game has it's own gimmick: Destructible Environments, RPG Elements, Leaderboards, Co-op, massive multiplayer, Plasmids, Megatextures and crazy animation, being in development for fifteen years...

The biggest difference? Nowadays games aren't played exclusively by gamers. Us hardcores might be migrating away from the FPS because we've been playing so many of them, but they can still be pretty fresh to people who only buy one or two games a year. Thus, they can still sell gangbusters and they can still be made en masse. I don't see a sharp decline in the number of FPS games anytime soon for this reason.

I do, however, see a sharp increase in the number of RPG games. Because of Dark Souls.

edited 11th Jan '12 6:11:19 PM by ShirowShirow

But aren't most recent beat em' ups still rather similar in gameplay with few exceptions? At least thats what I've experienced, most of the new things in beat em' ups nowadays are rpg elements or just stylistic ones.

No beat em up is truly the same. For every mindless dial a combo button masher, you have games that require a steady hand, mindful eye and surgical grace with your controller.

You make that sound oddly poetic O_o But since I haven't played those two games, I have to take your word for it

edited 12th Jan '12 2:42:45 AM by SpookyMask

Oh I agree, I'm a Beat 'em Up fanatic. But the point remainds that if you've beaten Final Fight, you know exactly how to beat every single other game released in the same timeframe. Same could be said about Shoot 'Em Up games. But now we have Bullet Hell games and stuff like Ikaruga, whose added mechanic radically alters gameplay instead of just "Being there" as a gimmick.

Sure do: bring lots of quarters.

*is not very good at brawlers*

This is what I mean though. Brawlers don't need much innovation because the art has pretty much been perfected, so all that's left is to do more of the same. Same, essentially, for shmups. It helps, too, that these genres aren't meant to be played seriously, just to keep you entertained for five minutes or so... and then you get to level five, and you absolutely have to keep playing because if you don't, your pride as a gamer is smashed, and besides, things are starting to get intereAHHH WHERE AM I oh my god is this the Bydo dimension why do I keep teleporting AHHH—

Many popular genres were simply a child of their time. Form follows function, and the available technology determined what's possible, and game developers tried to make the best out of the constraints of the hardware they used.

Atari 2600 was developed to allow only for clones of Pong and Tank. Two "players" (sprites), one "missile" (another sprite), a crude blocky "playfield" (background), that's all the hardware could do. Only 128 bytes of memory (less than a tweet). What developers achieved beyond that is nothing short of amazing.

P Cs were really business machines, so programmers used high level languages, and so something like Ultima could be developed.

On consoles like the NES however, things work very differently. You have background tiles, and you have sprites in the foreground, and you can define them, arrange them, and move them around almost in a declarative way. Perfect for 2D action. But just draw a line from here to there for some crude 3D? Some complex objects and rules? Possible, but very cumbersome on the NES. Hence, something like Zelda was born, rather than trying to shoehorn the role-playing formula of the Ultimas back then onto those consoles.

And of course, whenever someone found a successful formula to make new creative use of the hardware, a lot of copycats followed.

John Carmack came and broke many rules of how 3D games were supposed to look like on the PC. Before, 3D was associated with complicated Flight Simulators, low framerate, very low number of polygons, but everything somewhat "mathematically correct". Carmack introduced some crucial tricks and shortcuts, also the control schemes were revolutionized, and the FPS genre was born, and a lot of copycats followed.

And so on.

Today these types of constraints of the hardware don't really exist anymore, they don't inspire any new ways of doing things, and hence some sort of Analysis Paralysis sets in.

Edited by scr0llbaer on Mar 2nd 2024 at 10:56:41 AM

Wherever a 2D platformer exists, people complain that it should've been 3D. I think that's the current version of saying they're "stagnating."

Also, while 2D platformers saw massive, widespread innovation in The New '10s, the same largely has not happened in the 3D space. The only high-profile 3D platformer that's not a Genre Throwback to come out in recent years is Super Mario Odyssey, and that belongs to a new school of game design not specific to platformers where games are overstuffed to the point of obscenity with content most players aren't expected to do or even see, which I've taken to calling "Play It or Don't" (see also: Breath of the Wild, everything Ubisoft's made in the last fifteen years).

Edited by ThriceCharming on Mar 2nd 2024 at 5:41:47 AM