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What gaming genre could use a renaming?
What gaming genre could use a renaming?
Why? (What makes its current name a bad/imprecise/clumsy one?)
Also, an optional follow-up:
What would you propose as a better name for the genre?
Why? (What makes it better?)
From a curb appeal standpoint, we should probably just call Boomer Shooters “retro FPSes.” I personally don’t mind the name, but I think it makes a lot of folks do a double-take.
This isn’t exactly the question you’re asking, but I do think “RPG” is so all-encompassing that it’s lost all meaning. One could argue that Disco Elysium and Elden Ring are both RPGs, and they attract a very different crowd. I get that there are subgenres (I think the generic term for “soulslikes” would be action RPGs), but I feel like some folks are set up for disappointment when they dig into these categories as a whole and realize how wide of a net is cast.
I despise the name "boomer shooter" (hell, Gen X invented the FPS genre if you go by John Carmack's age)...and honestly, I kind of dislike calling them retro too. Because...uh, reasons. My childhood isn't retro.
I think "arena shooter" was a good moniker to sum up traditional deathmatch/CTF/capture point kind of gameplay, and it doesn't limit things to faux-90s graphics. For awhile, we had a brief period where there was interest in updating that sort of gameplay with modern graphics, with the discontinued Unreal Tournament or Diabotical, but neither really caught on. And I think there was Quake Champions too. (Dreadful lack of Mac support all around, so I never got to try any of them.)
I think the term “boomer” here is a tongue-in-cheek reference to the fact that the games were originally made popular by and due to gamers who are relatively old (compared the the average gamer’s age now). And kids these days call anybody older than them a boomer, hence the popularity of the phrase “okay, boomer.” Couple that with the fact that it’s also just fun to say and I’m fine with it as it is. But the fact that it requires this long of an explanation is the entire reason I think we ought to come up with something else!
I appreciate the thought of “arena shooter,” but it can be argued that arena shooters are their own subgenres wherein the players deal with waves of enemies in bespoke arenas. There is often a greater multiplayer focus in these games as well. You mentioned a few entries that fit the bill, Painkiller is another big one in this realm. But the original Quake, for example, doesn’t really fit at all. Not many “arenas” anywhere in the game to speak of. Lots of linear playing, very few instances of anything close to what I’d call arena gameplay. Which is why I landed on retro FPS, which, trust me, I feel the same way about how it ages me :)
I also like that Boomer is.. just the sound of a gun. these style of shooters are very skill heavy and aren't bound to realism, so "boom" shooting is just a fun way to describe it in my head.
I frankly like it. As we get older, let's laugh at ourselves more. Who care whether it's a slight -- Gen Z is being made fun of by Gen Alpha now. They'll get theirs 😂
Maybe it's just because I'm on the cusp, or maybe I'm not spending enough time online, but I haven't really seen much beef between gen Z and the Millennials. I know for a lot of people my age, Gen Z wasn't really a common term by the time we started feeling like we belonged to a generation, so a lot of us grow up identifying with the Millennials even if we weren't.
I also saw very little beef between Gen Z and Gen A. It feels to me like the 3 successive generations really are quite friendly with each other. Meanwhile, everyone hates the boomers and nobody really knows who Gen X are.
I think you're right and for those starting beef between groups as amorphous as generations, I think it's just rabble rousing for the sake of attention.
While the philosophy and level of tech that raised us millennials was different from Z and Alpha, so many of the lifestyle elements are shared between the generations. I'm an elder millennial with a foot in both worlds, so it's a bit easier to understand where the boomers are coming from for us than for Z, but I definitely feel like there's still a larger divide between us and them (boomers), vs us and you (Gen Z) because of the worlds we grew up in.
And maybe it's worth mentioning that the tech environment is only a part of it. Frankly, I think it's a damn shame that Z and onward wont get to experience a world without helicopter parents.
Boomer, in online terminology, doesn't literally mean baby boomer, it means "old person".
To most people who play FPS games nowadays, the older millennials and gen xers who grew up playing quake and doom are old. Hence, boomer shooter.
I'm a younger millennial and refer to myself as a boomer "Oh boy, another year older. One foot in the grave! Nearly a boomer!"
And now it's just BRs and extraction shooters as far as the eye can see. I really miss the endless fights of Planetside 2 and the sci-fi setting of older FPSes. How are parachutes cooler than jetpacks???
ARPGs. Not likely to happen, given that the granddaddy is Diablo, but they're too easily mixed with games like Mass Effect. Usually, there's little character, much less RPG like elements.
I have no idea what should replace it, but even looking for ARPGs gets confusing.
All of the RPGs are confusing. ARPG, CRPG, JRPG? At this point the only thing they have in common is that there may be a decision at some point?
RPG itself is confusing if you pick it apart.
A lot of people associate RPG with having stats and skill trees. Your character has stats? Done and discussion closed: it's a RPG.
The post AC Origins games come to mind. They introduced skill trees, and because of that people started calling them RPGs. But then, if that's the requirement, then why isn't Far Cry considered a RPG? Maybe some people might call it that but I don't remember the last time I heard someone calling it an RPG.
Then if we look at the name itself "Role Playing Game", it becomes even more confusing. Technically, aren't you playing a role in almost every game? In Mario, you're playing the role of a plumber on a quest to save a princess. In FIFA, you're playing the role of a soccer player or manager. Does that make these games RPGs?
The term has become so broad and diluted that it's lost a lot of its original meaning. Traditional RPGs were about immersing yourself in a character, making meaningful choices that affect the story and world, and often involved complex systems for character development and combat.
Now, it seems like any game with a hint of character progression or dialogue choices gets labeled as an RPG or "RPG elements". This has led to a lot of genre-blending, which isn't necessarily bad, but there aren’t hard lines that allows us to clearly categorize the games
I would say "role playing" versus gaming means actually assuming a role and making it your own. Like, if there are decisions that can make my character into a fundementally different person has I made different choices, it's an RPG. If not, it's not. Stats aren't required, they just happen to heavily tend towards role playing.
Master chief is going to be a alien killing badass who saves the human race by the end of Halo no matter what I do.
The Nameless One could be a badass hero, or a evil mewling coward by the end of Planescape Torment, and that's based on the roleplay I chose to perform.
This sort of thing makes a lot more sense in the context of tabletop games though, and gets very fuzzy towards the edges of video games.
Dyson Sphere Program is an RPG.
the name is more historical than anything else. They all hailed from trying to emulate tabletop RPGs in a (very limited) digital space. J and WRPGs are named mostly because those two countries took different philosophies to what experience they wanted out of this emulation. Then they kept splitting from there. JRPGs tend to be so linear that there are barely any decisions to make, W/CRPGs stack so many stats that they can be offputting to new players (with no DM friend to help them through the ordeal).
If I had a chance to restructure such a naming scheme:
So yeah, I think calling Persona a Kinetic turned base RPG and Fallout a shooter Sandbox RPG would be better delineators than JRPG/WRPG. Or Undertale a Hybrid Kinetic RPG (skipping over the silly "but it wasn't made in Japan" arguments some define current names by). More wordy, but people would get used to acronyms as usual.
I don't know if turn based vs real time is a really useful distinction actually.
CRPGs were almost universally real time (with pause) until divinity came around, and I'd argue that the real time Baldur's Gate 2 has far more in common with the turned based Baldur's Gate 3 than something like Skyrim.
It's not perfect, but I think it does the very minimum to distinguish between two major styles of RPG, ones that divide otherwise avid fans.
I'm not opposed to adding more identifiers like grid-based, top-down, or "over the shoulder", but that's the hard part of classifications. You divide too deeply and they simply turn into synopsis instead of a group of like games.
This is a genre where I would personally go back and call them all Diablo clones, because that's what they are. And reserve ARPGs for games like Skyrim.
All of them! They're all wrong!
RPG is extremely vague. In what game do you not play some sort of a role? Most RPGs could better be described as adventure games, except that already has a meaning. Adventure games share a lot of overlap with point and click or puzzle games, but only sometimes.
But that's pretty vague, so let's be more specific. There's JRPG, which is an RPG from Japan, except not really. And CRPG, so it's playable on Computers? Or ARPG, which sometimes refers to action games like Dark Souls, but just as often refers to top-down Diablo-esque games. Neat.
Oh I know, Strategy games! The only genre which involves using strategy. Sorry Counter-Strike players. Wait, does that mean shooters are Real-Time Strategy?
At least the concept of Survival games makes sense. We'll ignore the fact that the term "Survivor games" is looming overhead. (I much prefer "Bullet Heaven").
It's all a bit of a mess. There's clearly a lot of history imbued in each of these genre names, and you can measure the change and development through that. Still, it would be nice to go back to the drawing board. Ask some questions like "How does the game actually play?", and avoid some of the weird defining traits we've ended up with.
Realistically though, I don't think a perfect schema could ever be created to slot games into genres. They're too complicated, and cross too many boundaries. And thank goodness, because games sure would be boring if they all played the same.
I do think however that we could create a sort of tagging system for common gameplay systems and mechanics. For example, a game might feature permadeath. That doesn't necessarily mean it's a roguelike, but it tells you a little about how it plays. Maybe another game features resource gathering in the world and crafting of resources. It could be a voxel survival game, or it might just be Elden Ring. Still, the culmination of these tags would actually tell you a fair bit about how the game plays, whereas "action adventure" tells you almost nothing.
I've usually heard CRPG as "Classic RPG," meaning it has Dungeons and Dragons or some similar statistics and dice rolling heavy system inspired by pen-and-paper RPGs.
The term RPG, of course, does make a lot of sense in the context of Dungeons and Dragons, especially in the early days of the game. It was a novel concept.
I subscribe to the philosophy that games labeled CRPGs (Neverwinter Nights, Baldur's Gate, et al) are just RPGs. Something like the Witcher or Skyrim or whatever is just...a game where you play a character. It lacks most of the hallmarks of the genre.
Does it though? I don't think Witcher is fundamentally different in how it's designed with the exception of the obvious - combat is real time and with a single character. CRPGs were never a virtualized copy of a tabletop RPG, they were an implementation of parts of a TT game ruleset used to create something different, because you cannot recreate the variability and flexibility of a game played with real people and a real DM. I don't think that Witcher strays that far away from this concept unless we require the game to be built upon existing TT rules. Skyrim is a different case.
Witcher has a tenuous claim to the RPG genre not because of its combat, but because of its characterization.
You are Geralt of Rivia in the Witcher. Even though you have some dialog options, Geralt of Rivia will always more or less be a badass with a heart of gold who women fall for, and while motivated by money, also has a strong sense of morality.
The character really cannot change much based on the characters decision making, so there's very little opportunity for roleplaying.
It's a great game, but I wouldn't call it an RPG.
I think you're getting too caught up in the words used to name the genre while forgetting their origin.
Tabletop RPGs are about roleplaying, but it's not roleplaying in general, it's a specific kind, and they're also about systems, just like videogame RPGs. While nowadays I'm sure you can buy a ruleset about roleplaying a toddler in kindergarten on itch.io, RPGs emerged as combat heavy sword & sorcery tabletop games inspired by the golden age of pulp fantasy and tabletop wargames. And the systems were very important in that. There's a pretty direct line from D&D through actual D&D videogames (which don't really offer much actual roleplaying either compared to tabletop games) to Witcher.
I mean, while I don't have any experience with the original DnD for example, I'm not sure I agree with your argument.
It goes beyond there not being much roleplaying.
Even Combat wise, you are locked into a sword wielder. Sure the game has half a billion different sword which you can apply some customisations to, but it still comes down to that. There's no dual wielding or ranged fighting (that tiny crossbow does not count) or sword-and-shield or indeed sorcery as a true combat style for your character.
Those are all things that you can see NPCs do, but not you. You are Geralt.
I don't think it matters very much. In my opinion if you played a tabletop D&D campaign as a preset character tailor made for the module, it would still unquestionably be playing an RPG.
I mean, depending on the length you might be able to conduct customizations with further levels.
And while it might not be effective you could attempt a stealthy/talky/fighty whatever style even with a given character.
The C in CRPG does stand for computer, it just needs some context to make sense. Widespread computer games where a new thing when the label first came into being, and RPGs were already a thing for a while. The first RPGs just attempted to replicate d&d with a computer acting as the DM, so to distinguish them from pen and paper RPGs, which were just called RPGs, they were called CRPGs, which stuck.
A CRPG is simply any RPG on a computer which attempts to somewhat replicate a pen and paper RPG.
There are definitely RPGs that aren't CRPGs even by your standard though. Elden Ring offers a lot of roleplay opportunities and branching paths to make your character into basically whatever you want, and is not a CRPG. Same for most Bioware RPGs like mass effect or KOTOR.
The key part of RPGs as a genre is roleplaying, not being like pen and paper RPGs.
I mean, hell there are a lot of pen and paper RPGs that are absolutely nothing like d&d. The one thing they all have in common is roleplay.
I think your summary is the closest anyone has gotten to my general feelings on the topic. I actually do like a lot of the genre names we have out there, especially subgenres, when used correctly. Roguelike/lite tells me a lot about a game, but it’s not descriptive enough to tell me everything, and I think that’s okay. But you say “roguelike card game” and I immediately think “okay, like Slay the Spire.” Or you say “roguelike top-down shooter” and I might think, “got it, sort of like Enter the Gungeon.” I don’t think we ought to force ourselves to distill every game into a single-word genre. It’s an exercise in futility because, per your point, there’s just too much variety, which is an awesome problem to have. I’d say your idea of tagging as a solution works much in the same way as encouraging deliberate use of subgenres when possible instead of trying to shoehorn everything into these big picture categories.
One problem is that "used correctly" is a moving target. When I started playing roguelikes, that meant games that were like Rogue in some substantial way, e.g. NetHack or Angband, so in that sense a very literal description. Those games are categorically different from Slay the Spire or Enter the Gungeon in my opinion, which although fun in their own rights are not at all like Rogue.
Even terms like "permadeath" that seem like they would have a clear and obvious definition take on a different meaning over time, as more and more of this newer kind of roguelike have between-runs meta games that literally can't be lost and are more important to your success than your performance in an individual run.
That’s a great callout - I know I’m just as guilty of it, especially with roguelikes (whatever that term means at this point). I suppose the spirit of my question still remains the same - instead of using a blanket term like “roguelike,” we should try to focus more on the individual pieces that help define the subgenres, per Wes’s point on tagging. Another one that comes to mind in a similar vein is “soulslike,” which at this point basically just means “a difficult third person game.” FromSoftware’s games in this vein are some of my very favorite games, period, yet at this point I won’t touch a new game labeled as a “soulslike” until I have definitive proof that it actually hits the same gameplay points that FromSoft’s entries focus on.
Really? Soulslike to me still feels pretty specific.
It's not even about being third person, it's about
But also
2. Having a mechanic where refreshing all of your resources also causes world to reset (bonfires)
3. Having a shared currency used for both buying equipment, and leveling, which is lost upon death (souls)
And 3. Having a very heavy emphasis on boss fights, that take many tries to get past with relatively short run times between them, such that regular enemies really are not the challenge of the game.
Basically every soulslike I've ever played (mostly from soft games) have had those elements, and I don't know if I'd consider a game without them a soulslike no matter how difficult they were.
yea, agreed that soulslike is specific. The newer Jedi Knight games are a great example; they have bonfire mechanics and numerous, very challenging bosses
Oh, I totally agree that it ought to be specific. I’m saying that, much like the term roguelike, it’s starting to lose all meaning because people use the term to mean “a difficult third-person game” instead of specifically carrying the features you correctly laid out.
well, internet discourse has never been particularly precise among non-professional commentators, so I feel the core issue here stems much further than video game. Just this odd fixation to voice out any opinion that pops in your head, regardless of if it contributes to the conversation or if it's even relevant to the conversation.
e.g. Nothing gets me more frustrated seeing some specific news bit on Square Enix on any of their hundreds of games, and someone simply uses that to rant about how the companies never should have merged 20 years ago. Meanwhile, it's just sales news for Powerwashing simulator (a game merely published by them) and its success. I'm sure every gaming community has similar pet peeves.
I blame twitter for this. It is a good exercise to be precise, but much use of short answers these days tends to come from laziness as opposed to a statement feeling short, snappy, and complete.
The RP in RPG aren't about playing a role, it's about roleplay, which is something different. In tabletop RPGs, players will often make a distinction between combat, which is usually about following a set of elaborate rules that govern how that combat takes place, much like a videogame, and roleplay, which allows you to act as the character in a more freeform way. Videogame RPGs attempt to allow a player to roleplay, usually by presenting diverse dialog options and having those options affect the character and how they are perceived.
Obviously picking canned dialog line isn't the same as actually acting as a character, but it's an attempt to capture at least some of the experience.
Nowadays, many different types of games incorporate some of that roleplaying, but I wouldn't call any game where you assume the role of someone a role playing game. Only games that allow you some semblance of roleplay.
While I'm fairly familiar with the history of most of these genre names, I do appreciate the effort to explain them. Though my comment was more an attempt to satirize some of the terms in a modern light. eg. Counter Strike is of course not an RTS game, but it is played in real-time and involves a lot of strategy.
I think most were answering the question posed by the thread, and considering some better names that might better reflect their current definitions (some suggestions here include "gatepunk", "search action", and "curated/emergent RPG").
For RPGs specifically, while modern RPGs do often feature dialogue choices or character customization, they also frequently include world exploration, leveling mechanics, inventory systems, and some kind of combat. As far as genre scopes go, it is one of the widest.
I like Bullet Heaven too, I really like it's soundtrack - so relaxing.
Roguelikes. There's too much confusion between the original definition of roguelikes (which involves, among other things, being turn-based) and the popular but technically "incorrect" definition (games like Binding of Isaac or Risk of Rain). Sometimes this is solved by calling the former "classic roguelikes" or the latter "roguelike-likes", but those terms are still pretty confusing.
Yes, this annoys me the most out of everything in this thread, mostly because some people refuse to acknowledge that there is a difference. I understand people not caring, but this is the only genre where I've had people straight up argue with me that Spelunky and Nethack (and even the first Diablo, because it was heavily inspired by Angband) should be called the same genre (which is not very generalized, it used to be a narrow subgenre) and there are zero problems with that.
Roguelite is not even a solution either because on its own it doesn't really mean anything - you're not going to recommend Slay The Spire to someone who wants to play more games like Rogue Legacy.
Imo the first problem was overstating the importance of permadeath and procgen within the roguelike concept. They are core concepts of traditional roguelikes, but what makes their gameplay unique is the absurd complexity of interactions and tactical turn-based gameplay, neither of which are present in almost any roguelites.
Like all the other posts in this thread, I'm just an old man yelling at clouds, but I wish those people at least acknowledged that recommending Caves of Qud to someone who wants more games like Binding of Isaac is patently absurd.
Hi, it’s me, I’m guilty of treating roguelikes exactly how you described in this thread. You’re spot on, though, eventually enough people use these catch-all terms to describe new games, which can be helpful in the moment to help explain a new game, but in time it just serves to muddy the waters of a game even more.
I don’t know that I have a great solution to it. My hackneyed answer is to just use more descriptors, but then we get to a point where we have to ask why we even have these wide sweeping genre names when games are all so varied that you wouldn’t recommend, per your post, Caves of Qud to someone looking for The Binding of Isaac?
I think that the "solution" in this particular case would be to keep using the "roguelite" term, but use it as a specifier of different genres, similar to first person/third person in shooters or real-time/turn-based in strategies or RPGs. Roguelite platformer, roguelite ARPG (Hades?), roguelite fps... I think that gives sufficient information about the game, and even if people call it a rogueliKe, it's still descriptive.
The reason why I use quotation marks in "solution" is because the real problem is not the terminology itself but the fact that enough people do not want to change it and there's no way to force them. If I remember correctly, the exact terminology described above was proposed by TotalBiscuit 7 years ago, and while his proposal to define roguelites in general was mildly successful, the rest obviously did not stick.
I would say it stuck five years ago, but I barely hear anyone say roguelite now.
If you ask a random sample of 10 people what kind of game binding of issac is, I would wager 9 of them would say "roguelike".
Oh well. I try to avoid mainstream gaming spaces and prefer communities with turbo-nerds, so I guess I was too optimistic.
I enjoy the change/new naming for games like vampire survivor to bullet heaven from bullet hell, since you're the one doing the shooting
I've also heard "Garlic-likes" for that genre which is kinda funny
All of the various RPG genres, as mentioned by nearly every other post, are the big stand outs.
I personally would love to see the death of "walking simulator". It started as a sarcastic way to besmirch indie, narrative-focused titles that didn't rely on action like Gone Home, Firewatch, or Dear Esther. It's found commonplace usage in nearly every gaming community and is often used by the press. (A recent example of this is in reviews for the recently released Still Wakes the Deep or even for Death Stranding.)
Nearly all of these titles have much more on offer than just pushing w and wiggling the mouse; Puzzle elements, decision trees, deduction based on environmental clues, etc. It's a disservice to let gamergate-era snark become common parlance and make developers feel like they can't express ideas the way they want to lest the crowd spam the walking simulator tag on their steam product page and risk getting blacklisted due to its negative connotations.
Another sub-genre that could use re-tooling is immersive sim. From what I can tell it only means "has game play elements that are lifted from system shock" instead of anything regarding general immersion or simulation.
I don't hate walking simulator because, even though it's bad at actually describing a specific type of game, it's often applied to games that I like, so I can use it to find new games to play. But I suppose I would split it into at least two aspects: "Narrative experience" and "Exploration based" (I already use those to describe games, anyway.)
I thought we already had a term to describe that genre since probably the 80s.
"Adventure game."
I would put Firewatch and Gone Home in the same genre as Myst or Grim Fandango, both of which were firmly called and widely accepted as adventure games in the 90s, so why the sudden shift?
Adventure game is a really broad umbrella though. It's the problem some of the other genres people are complaining about here have. I'd prefer to go more specific rather than more ambiguous! I played all of those games and someone who likes Grim Fandango isn't necessarily going to enjoy Firewatch and vice-versa.
Eh, considering its weight and balance mechanic and its focus on traversal mechanic, I find "walking simulator" somewhat apt for Death Stranding (It's not QWOP thought).
"Immersive sim" needs to be completely eliminated as a genre and turned into a modifier like 'systemic' for other genres as having systemic components that allow for emergent game play isn't a genre specific thing. Like what does Deus Ex, Thief, Zelda ToTK have in common? I hate adding extra words but calling Deus Ex a 'systemic first person rpg' or ToTK a "systemic action rpg" makes more sense than dumping them into the immersive sim genre.
Indeed, "immersive sim" really just denotes a particular lineage of games---which, these days, is mostly just games that draw a lot of inspiration from SS2. It doesn't feel like the immersive sim is an idea that "needed" to exist the same way that, like, the idea of a first-person shooter or a roguelike (sensu lato) does.
I dunno, I'd say that Deus Ex, Thief and System Shock have a lot in common, even though Thief especially has a different focus. Never played Zelda ToTK and never seen it called an imsim in places I frequent (which is usually mildly niche communities, so I'm not saying you're wrong), so I can't talk about that.
To give a reverse analogy: one of the main reasons why I think that the bastardization of the word "roguelike" is bad is because it contains subgroups of games so different that a ton of people are going to love one and hate another and saying "if you like Spelunky, you should try Nethack" sounds obviously nonsensical.
Well, for imsims I don't believe this is the case. If we talk about the trifecta of Thief, SS2 and Deus Ex, in my experience there is a huge overlap and if someone loves one of them, there's a high chance they're going to enjoy the others as well. And I know that many people in the Thief community love Arx Fatalis, which is basically half way between an imsim and dungeon crawler - so there are certainly significant differences in gameplay and yet the games seem to attract a similar crowd.
Roguelikes and RPGs come to mind.
There are no games like rogue in the genre anymore.
xRPGs is the messiest genre I can think of that is in dire need of a renaming.
I remember back when it was just called Soulsborne or when there were only Demon and Dark Souls 1, whether Souls fit in WRPG or JRPG was a point of contention. "Western" because it isn't turn based and isn't anime. "Japanese" because FromSoft is a Japanese company. At the time I just preferred to shove them alongside ARPGs because that. Also, JRPGs was largely started by Dragon Quest, which was intended as a Wizardry(and is Western if you go by the origin) on console, which was inspired by D&D... therefore all JRPGs are WRPGs. Then if you go by what RPG means, Role Playing Game, then all games pretty much by definition are RPGs.
cogmind, caves of qud, ADOM, CDDA and the entire traditional rougelike tag would like a word. There are plenty being made, they are just niche.
I mean neither dark souls nor demon souls are RPGs so shrug
To be honest, I think to some degree genre theory is dead and tagging helped nail the coffin shut.
In ages past, you used to have very well defined gaming categories between action, platformers, racing, etc. But inevitably people will want to cross boundaries between genres and incorporate novel gameplay mechanics from other types of games. So if you combine platforming and racing to get the game Speedrunners, does that necessitate an entire new genre? Hard to say.
Roguelikes are a particularly stand out example for this topic. They've gone from ascii-tiled, grid-based, turn-based, terminal-based games to something completely different. Part of that is because of the shift in the genre after Spelunky, Binding of Isaac, and Rogue Legacy. It's worth noting that the genre has been constantly evolving since the late 80s and, despite some attempts, is nearly impossible to nail down what exactly constitutes its definition. For my podcast on roguelikes, we did an almost two hour long deep dive on the topic specifically, not that our intent was to actually settle the question, since it's effectively impossible.
Part of the broader discussion here is what exactly constitutes a genre of gaming, movies, literature, etc? In some sense, it's similar to cooking. How are desserts different than savory dishes? What constitutes a cake exactly? How are those ingredients different than getting a soufflé at the end? How much chocolate do you need in a cake to make it a chocolate cake? These questions are disturbingly similar to things like "how many of the 1980 rogue game mechanics need to be checked off for a game to be considered being labelled as a roguelike?" Is one enough? Two? Do we start descending in to a debate about Sorites Paradox for every discussion like this?
Genre is helpful for broad classifications so casual folks know how to distinguish a racing game like Forza from a platformer like Mario. Tagging systems like with Steam, or Itch, or even for products on Amazon help to break those broad categories down into more atomic elements, so you can find the base ingredients that you like the most. I feel that if a game wants to market itself a certain way by calling itself a "roguelike" or "metroidvania" or "sim racer", that's perfectly okay. If a game winds up not being in that category, then the collective wisdom of time and people's feedback will reflect it as such.
Tagging is problematic with many platforms, because they blend marketing materials with gameplay mechanics in an all-or-nothing inclusive selection mechanism. For example, with Steam if you hunt by "roguelike" you get games where the tag has been applied so many times it's in the top 5 that describe it, but you also get games that have the tag applied just once in the same result set. There's no good way to search by tag volume to eliminate those stragglers, yet. So when Steam says "ah you're looking at Caves of Qud, might I suggest Don't Starve? They're both tagged 'roguelike'", despite one of them being of a far different proportion than the other.
Prior to 2010, roguelikes were basically all turn-based, grid-based, permadeath RPGs with tile (not sprite) based graphics. Spelunky and Binding of Isaac changed a lot of that by taking some of those elements and applying them to other genres (platformers, twin stick shooters). Is that enough to warrant an entire new genre by swapping out one board on the Ship of Theseus? As the gradation of replaced gameplay elements increases, I think we walk more from the originalist, "Traditional Roguelike" sphere of influence, towards "Rogue-lites".
The term "Rogue-lite" was coined by the first Rogue Legacy game to mean the presence of a metaprogression aspect that made the game easier over time. But I think it's better suited for games that borrow some elements from traditional roguelikes. Effectively making games like Rogue-FP a "Rogue-lite", since it ticks all the traditional roguelike boxes, except possibly for the Superhot-style "real-time" vs "turn-based" difference.
All in all, I think the term "Roguelike" is fine as a super-genre that encapsulates the originalist formula of games like Cogmind, Tales of Maj'Eyal, and Caves of Qud into a category of "traditional roguelikes", and things like Vampire Survivors and Hades into a category of "rogue-lites". It's a sliding scale that no one would be happy with, which is likely the best compromise. It establishes the difference between restrictive design principles that the naming was originally designed for, but allows room for remixes and new creative design choices.
During recent discourse about the idea of separating "JRPG" from "WRPG/CRPG" I came up with leaning on the dichotomy of "curated RPG / emergent RPG" with acknowledgement that it's a bit of a spectrum as games can fall between them. Still, I'll take that spectrum any day over people being weird about what a game is like vs. where it's made like when western indie devs develop obviously-JRPGs.
Simply put the more you create your character, make choices, and have sandboxy systems, the more "emergent" it is. Players will have diverging experiences from run to run or playthrough to playthrough and there's a lot of focus put on playing it your own way and having your own unique outcomes, which is how I see most WRPGs.
On the other hand, when given a pre written character and a linear story arc, the devs do this because they have a highly specific story they want to tell, which choices would make less possible. Hence, a "curated" experience playing this type of RPG, which is how I see most JRPGs.
I'm not really sure this concept is my final version of the idea yet but this is the best way I can separate the two without relying on where the concept was developed or comparing to other games with "-like.
Metroidvania is probably one of the least accessible genres in terms of its name. So it's a format based on the Metroid series (which until Dread had a massive 15 year gap between entries) and Castlevania (with a similarly odd lull this past decade on titles, due to the creator leaving the company). And honestly, when you dissect it further, these two series have very different philosophies on how they approach every aspect.
I've seen Search Action thrown around, but I'm also not a fan of that name. I don't really know why we can't really just call them 2D Adventure games1 . Or Puzzle-adventure if their progression gating is complex enough. What Metroid and Castlevania do isn't fundamentally different from Zelda (2d or 3d), nor even some Megaman games. why not clump all these collectively into adventure?
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We seem so afraid of using that name anymore. People got too latched on "open world", I suppose. Despite Open Worlds not being needed to feel an expansive map. It may be a bit vauge, but Adventure as a tag seemed to be reduced in use the moment we got more advenerous games than ever.
A gaming podcast I listen to, Into the Aether, discussed Metroidvania moniker at length in an episode a year or two back, and landed on Gatepunk to describe metroidvainias, which while slightly humorous, i think aptly describes the genre. In my opinion, a metroidvania is a game that focuses around exploration of a large connected space, often with a focus on returning visits to old areas and/or shortcuts, which "gates" progression via knowledge or items, etc. To me, this perfectly describes most games we would attribute to the genre.
For example, Metroid uses items to gate progression, getting the morphball allows you to access areas you could not access normally otherwise. Axiom Verge gives you new weapons that interact with the enemies and environments in new ways. On the other end of the spectrum, Tunic more often uses knowledge of the game itself to gate progression. There are several abilities you have from the start of the game, only the game doesnt tell you how to preform them until you find the corresponding manual page or visual clue. For a more recent example that masterfully executes knowledge gates, Animal Well comes to mind, which uses items wonderfully as well, but really focuses on knowledge of the games systems to gate progress. A lot of the good Metroidvanias do both of these well, but usually focus more towards one of the two.
All that to say, the cult classic licensed IP tie-in game, "Scooby-Doo, Night of 100 Frights" is a gatepunk game through and through. Large connected map with distinctly themed zones and levels, shortcuts between them, items that unlock progress gates and open up minor puzzles in previous areas, varied and distinct bosses, and techniques you have from the start that the game teaches you how to apply in different ways throughout the game. Yes, I have been thinking far too much about this game for far too many years, and yes, I will die on this hill.
A lot of good discussion in this thread, specifically with regards to genres like RPG being too vague. I agree with almost all of it, but one thing I think people are missing is that these genres often work together to paint a picture of the game.
Steam tags are great for this:
RPG + Soulslike + Metroidvania + Dark gives me a pretty good feel for what the game is like compared to another one that might be RPG + JRPG + Turn-based Tactics + Fantasy.
Both games are labeled as RPGs, but the additional tags greatly help me gauge what the game is like and whether or not it's for me.
Don't think I can add anything new for xRPG but overall I feel games are better difined by its collection of elements and steam does that quite well with tags. With that said, I hate classifying a game based on elements of another.
Metroidvania is one that grinds at me. 2D side scroller with active combat systems, ability based navigation and semi-liner progression. For a while it was a fitting title, until the namesake series decided to outgrow that definition. Metroid Prime is an arcade shooter with ability based navigation puzzles. The latter castlevania game were level based spectacle fighters. Hell, some people's only exposure to those series is probably Smash Bros. I'd say a more appropriate tag that people consider is Ability Based Explorer (ABE), then you can bolt on Open World if there's a continuous map and specify other individual systems.
SoulsLike is another thorn in my brain. Just say difficult game. No shame in that.
But seriously the issue is that the definition is adjusted based on whateber Fromsoft does. So out current definition consideres them action adventure games with animation based combat, dynamic checkpoints that advances the world state and sprawling and maze like dungeon design. There's also little add ons like corpse runs, informal quests (no big objective markers and instructions) and dynamic loadouts but they seem almost incidentals. But what happens if every new "souls" game starts including more vehicles/mounts or platforming elements. Or if Fromsoft decides corpse runs are superfluous now. That makes it messy.
Overall, there's actually quite a lot of overlap with Metroidvanias but instead of Ability Ckecks like a too high platform, your progress is held back back by bosses that serve as a Power Check which measures the character stats or player aptitude. Power Based Progression sounds like the most appropriate tag to me based on the difficulty considerations most people have in that space.
Rouge Like/Lite is the last and worst one that lacks spesifics. RNG hardly discribes gameplay and woefully vague on what is random. It's a combination of loadout, encounters, levels and enemy design. So Hades, Slay the Spire, Dead Cells, Inscription and Binding of Issac all somehow occupy the same space. Each one of the elements lilely needs it's own Random x Generated tag because it is getting cumbersome.
I heard "Search Action" used a few times as a name for metroidvania and liked it. Apparently it's a pretty literal translation of what Japanese players call the genre, too.
Yesterday I started typing a comment about how we should rename "metroidvania" to "castlemetroid" but I didn't want to derail the conversation too much.
The fact of the matter is, "metroidvania" is short and to the point. It rolls off the tongue. "ability based explorer" is a mouthful and harder to fit in a little tag rectangle, and "ABE" is hard to remember. Separating concepts like "open world" also means you're dispersing a "genre" tag that carries a weight of history of many games that people (who are into that sort of thing) have enjoyed, making it harder for them to find more such games.
This kind of reasoning also applies to some of the other comments here, although probably not to RPG; that one really contains extremely dissimilar games.
I wouldn't say roguelike/lites are defined by randomness at all. The key concept is that you die and start over. You don't save stagger (or save at all) and go back to the same run. Roguelites are distinguished by meta-progression, though, meaning you carry something from your failed run into the next one.
I guess I partially agree with soulslike. Even sillier is "baby souls": Hard, but not that hard! The thing is, though, soulslike also brings something more specific to mind: Combat that requires learning complex patterns and understanding the correct timings and actions that need to be taken to overcome each of those patterns. It's almost like each fight is half-way to a puzzle. How would you express that in a short, memorable way?
FYI: This looks like a duplicate of your comment here. Are you using an app? Might be a posting bug if so.
oh, my apologies. Details are fuzzy but I basically made a post, fell asleep, woke up saw the tildes tab with my comment in it, and figured "oh, I must have fell asleep before I posted the comment. Oh well".
I do so much tab trickery that it may have simply been a duplicated tab. Odd.
I mean, this has pretty obvious historical reasons, and they go back so far that they're probably never going to change. The idea that you could make a game where you actually play a role and affect your surroundings and story to a significant degree was completely utopian at the time when CRPGs started to emerge. So what happened instead was that people started implementing rulesets similar to D&D and other tabletop RPGs and focus on things that could be implemented with relative ease, which was primarily fighting. This is a direct link to the actual roleplaying tabletop games, it "just" puts focus on a different part of them.