Do you have genre confusion? Do you even know who is playing it?

[imaginaryhuman]

I am noticing more and more games are ‘genre confused’. Maybe they are trying to blend genres but I feel like they do not understand who their demographic audience is. Or maybe I shouldn’t refer to this as genre confusion and more to do with just generally having no idea who the audience is or what they want and then giving them 5 different types of experiences trying to appeal to too many different types of people.

For example, car racing games. Ok to me, the racing part is the fun part. It’s something about the moving and the speed and the dodging and stuff. That kind of experience is vastly different to the kind of experience I’m then having while confronted with 50 menu screens where I “get to configure my car” or go to the realistic garage or apply upgrades or fiddle with the mechanical parameters or buy new drivers, bla bla bla. I JUST WANT TO DRIVE. TAKE ME TO THE RACE ALREADY AND STOP SPOILING THE IMMERSION!

Then as another example, a couple of days ago I was looking at this shootemup game which I thought, hey, looks like a nice bash, and then as it starts up I’m confronted with all this story and dialog, with little characters popping up on screen with speech bubbles talking about a bunch of ‘background’ hooey and fake storyline/reparte which is boring and unwanted. Well. Hey… this shootemup game genre is really all about a test of skills, intense blasting action, earning a high score, dodging aliens and picking up weapons in a very dynamic intense battle scenario… and then… there’s this slow boring click-to-advance popup storybook happening. Like WTF. It doesn’t fit. The game genre is hardcore skill-reflex-testing intense action, and you’re giving me something worthy of a musak track that I have to click through for 5 minutes? Absolutely no understanding of the kind of person playing the game.

Ok so I’m not just saying there’s a mismatch between what kind of games I like and the kind of games I’m trying to play. The core of the game I still like. I like the race. I like the shootemup experience. But then the developers are surrounding and adding to this … atmosphere… this experience… this vibe,… by throwing in all this other STUFF which is a whole different kind of experience, which really spoils the atmosphere. If I’m the kind of person that likes an action shooting game do I really want to sit and wade through some dumb RPG-like dialog or some stupid badly written nonsense conversation about how we’re about to battle the worst aliens in the galaxy or whatever? It’s gimmicky. It’s inconsistent. It’s irrelevant. And it’s destroying my mood. I’m not trying to be anti-storytelling or whatever, its just that, people keep MASHING these different kinds of experiences into a single game and its totally inconsistent with the kind of person who is playing the game and the kind of experiences they want to have, or the main reason they might’ve bought or downloaded it. Developers, please stop adding on all kinds of fluff that people have to trawl through to get to the real game experience! Get out of the way!

Another gripe I have in general is way too many screens and clicks needed that are totally unnecessary. Many iOs games are the culprit. I’m taken to a title then a menu then a level selector then some screen about choosing something else then finally after like 5 screens I’m taken to ‘the game’. Almost none of those prior screens are even relevant or needed at this point because, obviously, I’m at the start of the game so I don’t NEED a level select, and I don’t WANT to make extra choices that I have no idea what they mean yet. I don’t NEED to visit the store or have to click a button skip past 50 different upgrades that I can’t even afford yet. Developers please stop doing this. Think about the player, what they are experiencing, what they need when they need it. Extra clicks means extra reasons to leave and say bye bye, especially when it mean doing the ‘work’ of having to skip stuff that isn’t important at the time.

So I guess I’m touching on a few things here. Confusion of genres that don’t suit the same audience, confusion of features and interactions which are irrelevant to the player, and confusion of what effect this extra stuff has on the players experience and satisfaction. If you’re making a hardcore action game, make the choosing experience (aka menu) a hardcore action experience, don’t make it some long drawn out point-and-click adventure.

Consistency people!

[GarBenjamin]

Seems to me like you are basically just describing one of the key differences between older games and modern games.

They used to get straight to the point right into the heart of the game. Now they try to add padding. A huge amount of padding sometimes to try to make it a fuller experience I guess. But I agree it mainly puts me off too. But I guess maybe the younger generation likes all of this stuff and that is who they are targeting?

[Ryiah]

@GarBenjamin

But I guess maybe the younger generation likes all of this stuff and that is who they are targeting?

Some from the older generations may not have actually enjoyed the straight to the point nature of older games. Back then it frequently happened not because games were trying to get straight to the gameplay but because the hardware simply didn’t support anything else. That’s why games shipped with manuals and other feelies that had meaningful content.

[GarBenjamin]

@Ryiah

Some from the older generations may not have actually enjoyed the straight to the point nature of older games. Back then it frequently happened not because games were trying to get straight to the gameplay but because the hardware simply didn’t support anything else. That’s why games shipped with manuals and other feelies that had meaningful content.

While that is very true the majority of folks I have heard complaining about cut scenes and other “nonsense” getting in the way of playing the game are out of their 20s. Certainly there will be older people who like the fluff and there will be younger people who hate it. Always exceptions.

[Kiwasi]

This seems to be real thing. I love FPS games, like Halo. I love RPG games like Diablo. You would of thought Borderlands that combines the two would have worked for me. But it didn’t. The constant checking of which module was attached to which gun just got in the way of shooting things.

[Ryiah]

@Kiwasi

This seems to be real thing. I love FPS games, like Halo. I love RPG games like Diablo. You would of thought Borderlands that combines the two would have worked for me. But it didn’t. The constant checking of which module was attached to which gun just got in the way of shooting things.

Borderlands is much more similar to a roguelike than an RPG. Especially one like ADOM where you micromanage gear.

[RockoDyne]

The argument may have worked better if you didn’t start off confusing a racing sim for an arcade racer…

Think about action movies. How many have completely throwaway stories that are just excuses to see explosions? Now, how many action movies have great stories? So what are your expectations for something just because it’s labeled action?

Once you strip the mechanics and perspective off of game genres, most of them are just a slight shade of action. It doesn’t matter if it’s a twin stick shooter or an action adventure, they can all be thrown into the action bucket. So where should your expectations be then? Do your old expectations still seem reasonable?

[neoshaman]

Also number don’t lie, shooter and arcade racer have fallen way out of favor in the market, and Touhou changed how you do shooter.

[Master-Frog]

@imaginaryhuman_1

I am noticing more and more games are ‘genre confused’. Maybe they are trying to blend genres but I feel like they do not understand who their demographic audience is. Or maybe I shouldn’t refer to this as genre confusion and more to do with just generally having no idea who the audience is or what they want and then giving them 5 different types of experiences trying to appeal to too many different types of people.

For example, car racing games. Ok to me, the racing part is the fun part. It’s something about the moving and the speed and the dodging and stuff. That kind of experience is vastly different to the kind of experience I’m then having while confronted with 50 menu screens where I “get to configure my car” or go to the realistic garage or apply upgrades or fiddle with the mechanical parameters or buy new drivers, bla bla bla. I JUST WANT TO DRIVE. TAKE ME TO THE RACE ALREADY AND STOP SPOILING THE IMMERSION!

Then as another example, a couple of days ago I was looking at this shootemup game which I thought, hey, looks like a nice bash, and then as it starts up I’m confronted with all this story and dialog, with little characters popping up on screen with speech bubbles talking about a bunch of ‘background’ hooey and fake storyline/reparte which is boring and unwanted. Well. Hey… this shootemup game genre is really all about a test of skills, intense blasting action, earning a high score, dodging aliens and picking up weapons in a very dynamic intense battle scenario… and then… there’s this slow boring click-to-advance popup storybook happening. Like WTF. It doesn’t fit. The game genre is hardcore skill-reflex-testing intense action, and you’re giving me something worthy of a musak track that I have to click through for 5 minutes? Absolutely no understanding of the kind of person playing the game.

Ok so I’m not just saying there’s a mismatch between what kind of games I like and the kind of games I’m trying to play. The core of the game I still like. I like the race. I like the shootemup experience. But then the developers are surrounding and adding to this … atmosphere… this experience… this vibe,… by throwing in all this other STUFF which is a whole different kind of experience, which really spoils the atmosphere. If I’m the kind of person that likes an action shooting game do I really want to sit and wade through some dumb RPG-like dialog or some stupid badly written nonsense conversation about how we’re about to battle the worst aliens in the galaxy or whatever? It’s gimmicky. It’s inconsistent. It’s irrelevant. And it’s destroying my mood. I’m not trying to be anti-storytelling or whatever, its just that, people keep MASHING these different kinds of experiences into a single game and its totally inconsistent with the kind of person who is playing the game and the kind of experiences they want to have, or the main reason they might’ve bought or downloaded it. Developers, please stop adding on all kinds of fluff that people have to trawl through to get to the real game experience! Get out of the way!

Another gripe I have in general is way too many screens and clicks needed that are totally unnecessary. Many iOs games are the culprit. I’m taken to a title then a menu then a level selector then some screen about choosing something else then finally after like 5 screens I’m taken to ‘the game’. Almost none of those prior screens are even relevant or needed at this point because, obviously, I’m at the start of the game so I don’t NEED a level select, and I don’t WANT to make extra choices that I have no idea what they mean yet. I don’t NEED to visit the store or have to click a button skip past 50 different upgrades that I can’t even afford yet. Developers please stop doing this. Think about the player, what they are experiencing, what they need when they need it. Extra clicks means extra reasons to leave and say bye bye, especially when it mean doing the ‘work’ of having to skip stuff that isn’t important at the time.

So I guess I’m touching on a few things here. Confusion of genres that don’t suit the same audience, confusion of features and interactions which are irrelevant to the player, and confusion of what effect this extra stuff has on the players experience and satisfaction. If you’re making a hardcore action game, make the choosing experience (aka menu) a hardcore action experience, don’t make it some long drawn out point-and-click adventure.

Consistency people!

puts on captain bummer hat

People spend all this time making their game, and then they think…“this is my life’s greatest work… I must show the world my brilliance”… or they think “this game isn’t enough on its own. It needs moar. More what? I don’t fucking know, it just needs moar.” And so you get meandering. For a little game developer to know that he writes shit stories, he would have to know what good stories are. If he knew what it took to make a good story, he wouldn’t be a shit storyteller. So we find ourselves here, again. I’ll tell you a little secret… assume that you don’t know how to do anything. Approach everything from the angle of “I’m sure there’s something here I’m doing wrong” or “the audience is going to know I’m winging it”. A little “fear and trembling” (to get Biblical) is a good thing in this situation.

It’s as simple as this: the majority, fail.

To the person inclined to hear what you’re saying, we nod and agree… understand the game, understand what you’re trying to present and do it well. Genres are guidelines. You can also treat them as colors on a palette that can be mixed, but not all colors mix well. There’s some science to it, some art, some black magick.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
This is why people are willing to pay for games by good developers, and why all the noise and market flooding doesn’t really impact people who tend to “get it” when it comes to making games. Hint: most people have no clue what they’re doing or (arguably more importantly) why they’re doing it.