"How many genres of games currently exist?" Is one of the questions I'm most often when I'm speaking to a group of people about the current gaming market. If I were doing this in mid-1990 the answer is easy: just over 10 genera. Today, only ten are the sub-genres of racing games, just to give you an idea.
Remember like today I organize my collection of games genres. Today, there is no way to make it more practical than that of completely abstracting the details that make a game like Gran Turismo 5 be completely different than a Need for Speed, for example. In my personal organization are both racing games. But you and I know what I'm talking about completely different games, right?
Believe me, the tendency is that "getting worse" even more. Take for example a game like Grand Theft Auto franchise. We're talking about a game going into the categories personnel action in the third shot in the first and personal adventure, with RPG elements, racing, sports, wrestling and even MMO. In the end his own production company (and the market as a whole) put GTA (and their clones in a single basin: the sandbox games - games or simply "open world".
There are cases where the mere fact of not knowing which game fits a genre is capable of causing real strife in a circle of friends. Who, for instance, never saw a colleague discussing the issue of the series The Legend of Zelda is a classic RPG or an action game with RPG elements? I'm particularly afraid to enter this kind of discussion, however much adore the series created by the legendary Miyamoto.
What does it change in our life gamer? Not much. Despite the fact that I mentioned the difficulty of organizing the collection itself, I believe this whole mix of genres and subgenres games become increasingly less attractive to beginners venturing into the world of games. In the short term, the market itself knows that deliver changes to the shelves of gaming styles tend to further confuse the players and especially parents seeking news for their children.
The result of all this is something we have witnessed over the past four years: the industry is splitting two games in specific niches. The casual and hardcore.
In theory, born as casual games for people to enjoy the free time or to relieve stress, as 99% of mobile games. Soon they became the star of a niche industry to embrace completely unexplored until now: the people who had never played a game before.
For hardcore gaming all remaining games that fall into the category "games for those who have much time to play." Unfair? Absolutely. This type of classification hinders more than helps.
There is no way to judge if a game is casual or hardcore just for its style and length. Remember I told you the example of my mother playing Farmville all day? Farmville is considered a casual game, but definitely not casual for my mother. Just as today, Call of Duty is my casual game of the moment, just after the game sporadically.
Get the picture? Yeah. The market is getting ready to dodge the traps lower sales of some games, create labels and more labels for something that is summarized in a single action: playing video games.
By studying game development, I have observed this phenomenon pseudo-sub-genres and categories tend to disrupt the lives of many students. Many, because they think the tendency is to try something completely unique, just concentrating on themselves to create something that is unique and innovative, but actually is just a game inspired by so many others. And this happens because we lack a clear definition of how many and what are the genres of games we have today.
Definitely if you want to enter the gaming market needs to understand how the industry has behaved. I do not think anything this healthy family tree of games that have sprung up, but I can not deny that the industry has formed to make the games evolve in a sustainable and profitable. So my top tip if you aspire to work developing games is: study the history of games, beginning with the first titles out of which the first genera. Only then deepen in subgenera. But forget once and for all this history to create specific types of game players. After all, the game has to be attractive to anyone.
Remember like today I organize my collection of games genres. Today, there is no way to make it more practical than that of completely abstracting the details that make a game like Gran Turismo 5 be completely different than a Need for Speed, for example. In my personal organization are both racing games. But you and I know what I'm talking about completely different games, right?
Believe me, the tendency is that "getting worse" even more. Take for example a game like Grand Theft Auto franchise. We're talking about a game going into the categories personnel action in the third shot in the first and personal adventure, with RPG elements, racing, sports, wrestling and even MMO. In the end his own production company (and the market as a whole) put GTA (and their clones in a single basin: the sandbox games - games or simply "open world".
There are cases where the mere fact of not knowing which game fits a genre is capable of causing real strife in a circle of friends. Who, for instance, never saw a colleague discussing the issue of the series The Legend of Zelda is a classic RPG or an action game with RPG elements? I'm particularly afraid to enter this kind of discussion, however much adore the series created by the legendary Miyamoto.
What does it change in our life gamer? Not much. Despite the fact that I mentioned the difficulty of organizing the collection itself, I believe this whole mix of genres and subgenres games become increasingly less attractive to beginners venturing into the world of games. In the short term, the market itself knows that deliver changes to the shelves of gaming styles tend to further confuse the players and especially parents seeking news for their children.
The result of all this is something we have witnessed over the past four years: the industry is splitting two games in specific niches. The casual and hardcore.
In theory, born as casual games for people to enjoy the free time or to relieve stress, as 99% of mobile games. Soon they became the star of a niche industry to embrace completely unexplored until now: the people who had never played a game before.
For hardcore gaming all remaining games that fall into the category "games for those who have much time to play." Unfair? Absolutely. This type of classification hinders more than helps.
There is no way to judge if a game is casual or hardcore just for its style and length. Remember I told you the example of my mother playing Farmville all day? Farmville is considered a casual game, but definitely not casual for my mother. Just as today, Call of Duty is my casual game of the moment, just after the game sporadically.
Get the picture? Yeah. The market is getting ready to dodge the traps lower sales of some games, create labels and more labels for something that is summarized in a single action: playing video games.
By studying game development, I have observed this phenomenon pseudo-sub-genres and categories tend to disrupt the lives of many students. Many, because they think the tendency is to try something completely unique, just concentrating on themselves to create something that is unique and innovative, but actually is just a game inspired by so many others. And this happens because we lack a clear definition of how many and what are the genres of games we have today.
Definitely if you want to enter the gaming market needs to understand how the industry has behaved. I do not think anything this healthy family tree of games that have sprung up, but I can not deny that the industry has formed to make the games evolve in a sustainable and profitable. So my top tip if you aspire to work developing games is: study the history of games, beginning with the first titles out of which the first genera. Only then deepen in subgenera. But forget once and for all this history to create specific types of game players. After all, the game has to be attractive to anyone.
