First Post Of The Year

The following dialogue actually happened- I should know, because I was there; actually I was the one I chose to nickname "Ghost".

Dude: "What's that you're playing?"
Ghost: "That's Bejeweled 2."
Dude: "Any good?"
Ghost: "Yup."
Dude: "Hey... That's one of those Match 3 things, yes?"
Ghost: "Yes, it is."
Dude: "Got one, too."
Ghost: "Which one?"
Dude: "Treasures Of Montezuma. Bit lame."
Ghost: "Oh, I know that, got it too. Pretty good."
Dude: "Eh? Why would someone buy the same game twice?"

This is where I realised that the conversation would get pretty philosophical, and I switched on the inner tape-recorder that my mind can become when necessary.

Ghost: "Because it's not the same game."
Dude: "It is. Match three things to make a row, get points, over and over until you fall asleep."
Ghost: "It's still not the same game."
Dude: "Come on."
Ghost: "No, really. Would you say that... (I hesitated here. The Dude plays games based on how good their multiplayer is.) ... Half-Life and Bioshock are the same games?"
Dude: "Heh, no. In..."
Ghost: "In both you shoot at things."
Dude: "You can't compare that to matching stuff on a grid!"

But I can and I do. When all's said and done, you can divide games into genres that stick to pretty small rulesets. In Shooters you shoot at things, in Point-and-Click adventures you point and click at things, in strategy games you move units around and conquer things, and in Phantasmagoria you yawn as a mediocre plot unfolds and the most exiting thing you do is swapping disks.
Heck, why stop at games? Almost all books I know work exactly the same. You flip the pages and read one word after the other until you reach the last page. And movies? Let's not even go there.

The fact we willingly shell out hard money for a couple of games that have the SAME RULES is, when discussed totally logical, very strange. Isn't it against logic and common sense that some people will praise one game of a genre and feel indifferent, or even dislike, another one? If you really like building simulations, why would you prefer, to take an example at random, Sim City 3 over City Life? In both you build cities. If adventure games are your favourite genre, why do you like the Gabriel Knight series but hate, loathe and ignore Legend of Kyrandia? I mean, from a dispassionate and logical point of view it makes no sense, because clearly in both games you collect stuff, use it somewhere else, and eventually solve a sting of puzzles.

I like to think a game's genre is something pretty different for the designer and the player, and with that sentence this article finally goes somewhere (pfew!). Once the designer has decided for a genre, he knows how the player will expect the game to play. Real-time strategy: Fast-paced base building and so on. Match 3: Match three somethings. Arcade racing game: Cars with unrealistic (but hopefully fun) handling. And so on. The player, however, will expect some unique flesh on this skeleton, because that's really all what makes the games of a genre unique, and sometimes very iconic.
For you as a designer the "expected rules" are also a great way to decide where to deviate from the formula, and how much, and in what way. I think that putting "flesh on the bones" is easier when the game really has a small ruleset. Many Match 3 games really play identically, but become unique by having themed, pleasing graphics or a really good background music. Adventure games, being stories to be played, become unique by their setting and story, but rarely by introducing a fabulous new way to open the inventory. And could you really distinguish any two modern shooters of you removed all the textures and eye candy? Thought so.

When all's said and done, there are no new genres anymore, and I think there haven't been new genres for quite a while now. But there are still new games. So putting interesting new clothes on well-known skeletons seems to be the way to go.

That's it, folks, for the first post of the year.