Abstract
This paper provides a critical overview of the notion of genre in game studies and in the video game industry. Using the concept of genre requires one to acknowledge the recent developments of genre theory in other fields of research; one such development is the contestation of the idea of generic evolution. After a comparative analysis, video game genres are found to differ from literary and film genres precisely on the basis of evolution. The technological imperatives that characterize video game production are also pinpointed as relevant to the establishment and development of video game genres. Evolution is linked to the processes of innovation, and so a model of innovation is laid out from a compare-and-contrast approach to literary and film genre innovation. This model is tested through the history and analysis of the First-Person Shooter genre. This results in new insights for the question of genre in video games, as it is established that genre is rooted not in game mechanics, but in game aesthetics; that is, play-experiences that share a phenomenological and pragmatic quality, regardless of their technical implementation.
Highlights
Every once in a while comes a video game that claims – or is claimed – to ‘revolutionize’ its genre, to bring it beyond what it used to be, or to ‘evolve’ it, defining a new step along the generic road it is treading.1 As a case in point, Aki Järvinen’s (2002) review of Halo (Bungie Software 2001) boldly states that with this release, “the FPS is dead
One: If the idea of genre evolution is second nature to most that have written on the topic, the idea of genre itself is even more deeply seated
Why are we speaking of video game genres, and what do we mean by that? It is generally accepted that “[v]ideo game genre study differs markedly from literary or film genre study due to the direct and active participation of the audience” (Wolf, 2002, p.114)
Summary
Video games tax our current comprehension of object-bound disciplines. As Espen Aarseth signalled in 2001, the term’s field of reference is so vast that it causes sizable problems:. I may have painted in broad strokes, and in the process blurred out the landscape – which is exactly my point about genre: I think usage of the word in other languages contributes to an illusion of coherence that the concept does not have in everyday use in its native language, and the image of genre as blurry If this is true, we are facing a contradiction, for academics – linguists, literary types, film scholars, and game theorists alike – obviously do not use or build genres in such a free-form way, and are genuinely interested in defining them as well and as coherently as possible. Genre appears to be an imprecise and intuitive concept; it is impervious to rigorous classification and systematization; it denotes potentially very different phenomena across media or disciplines; and it is a multifaceted and multidimensional phenomenon Those are common to all usages of the concept, and are about the only thing that all kinds of genres share, whether in literature, linguistics, or film studies: and they apply to video game genres as well. I propose to earnestly examine how and why genre theory has arrived to these conclusions regarding genre evolution, and come back to game genres
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