Roundtable Discussion: Genre Design Evolution

Roundtable Discussion takes the intrepid 61FPS blogging team and pits it against itself in the search for deeper truth. The moderator for today is Derrick Sanskrit.

Hey kids, I think it's time for another roundtable chat. I've actually been wanting to ask this of you guys for a few weeks now, because I've noticed that lately I've been playing a lot of games I never would have even considered playing as a kid. Am I alone in this or are we all doing it?

What sorts of games are you playing now that you didn't play during what I assume was the glorious childhood heyday of gaming we all experienced? What sorts of games did you play then that you don't now? Have our tastes changed or have we merely opened/closed ourselves to certain experiences? What is fundamentally different about how these games are made now and how has overall design changed over time, affecting us as game consumers?

I know that's a bit of a loaded series of questions, so I'll kick things off.

I pretty much never played racing games as a kid. As a lifelong urban New Yorker, I never romanticized the concept of driving a car and have veered away from it for as long as I've been able. My college roommates pressured me into playing Gran Turismo, but it was Need For Speed Underground that made me a convert.

Joe: Haha, yeah. Need for Speed Underground is the secret best racing game of the PS2 era, and given the state of the franchise these days might be the only Need for Speed I'll ever...need. I thought I was the only one.

Derrick: Right? It felt like such a guilty pleasure. I began to appreciate racing games the same way I appreciate traditional science fiction: they're based in reality, but you do things that you should never ever EVER do in reality. EVER. And now I'm all about Burnout Paradise, a racing game where they break so many rules of what you should and shouldn't do with cars that they can't even legally use the likenesses of real-world vehicles. I love smashing rival cars off the side of the road. I love doing barrel rolls over open bridges. I hate being in actual cars, now, because I keep thinking the other cars will do all of that... but I still secretly smile.

Another genre I find myself seriously enjoying these days is the shmup/arcade shooter, which is wild because I HATED the shmup when I was a kid. Never got along with the memorization of R-Type, nor was I ever quite ADD enough for Geometry Wars. This is where design comes in, though. Genuinely thoughtful and creative game designers who love the shmup have gone about putting their own unique spins on the genre lately. From the simplified only-boss-battles-no-power-ups rRootage to the minimal-shooting-equals-sensory-overload Every Extend (Extra) to the additive-soundtrack-suggestively-philosophical Everyday Shooter to the bright-colors-we'll-make-up-out-own-damn-rules Big Bang Mini, I find that I LOVE avoiding one-hit destruction and blowing shit up. I'm even enjoying Retro Game Challenge's "Star Prince" a great deal, and that's just a rehash of the classic Star Soldier. It's not just these ones either. There's a plethora of artistically experimental shmups on the internet that, while still over my head as far as gameplay goes, fascinate me.

Cole: I don't think there's a specific genre that I play now that I didn't before, though I am much more likely to play online multiplayer games now than then, simply because I have the technology to do so at my fingertips.

Another thing that's changed for me over the years is that I've developed a much more discerning palate. As a kid, I got my hands on maybe two games a year (one for Christmas, one for my birthday). You best believe I finished each one to completion, no matter how frustrating, no matter how poorly designed. No cheats, no Game Genies. No Warp Zones.

Today, I only continue to play a game if it thrills me. I don't feel obligated to play through a game (unless of course I'm doing a review) just because. My time is much more precious than money, now that I'm a young urban professional. This has a huge impact on the way I approach leisure time in general. I'm much more interested in games that offer high-impact fun, even if they don't offer epic quests and cutting-edge visuals, as well.

Derrick: I remember being like that, Cole, getting a check from my grandmother every birthday and trying to decide which game was worth playing until the next special occasion that I had money for another game. Kirby's Dream Land 2 and Donkey Kong '94 were both acquired that way and they had metric tons of replay value, so I was happy for years. I think I've traded back more games for my DS than I ever owned for my Game Boy.

Joe: In terms of pure genres, I would say that I play less of them now than I did as a kid. The reason for this: I am a casualty of genre design bloat.

Although it's worse in some genres, generally speaking most of them have through the years experienced an increase in design complexity, which in turn makes the communities that play those genres smaller and more insular. For the types that I've invested myself heavily in, I'm able to keep up-the vagaries of modern JRPGs and 3D action/adventure platformers are something I can handle, and to an extent first-person shooters also don't provide a problem (modern shooting games actually straddle a line between feature bloat and blockbuster accessibility that makes many of them interesting beasts).

But at the same time, I've been pushed out of genres I used to enjoy: RTS (the last one I played a lot was Warcraft III), 2D Fighting (Marvel vs Capcom 2), shoot 'em ups (okay, I always sucked at these. You get my point). If something comes out in these genres that offers increased accessibility or something really new and fascinating, I will likely check them out because well, I love games. But I do feel like for the most part, these things aren't for me like they used to be.

Derrick: Just out of curiosity, Joe, why do you feel you lost interest in those genres? I know I used to play every Capcom fighter fiendishly, but now I practically had SSF2THDR forced upon me and I still can't muster up the enthusiasm to buy Street Fighter 4.

Joe: I didn't lose interest in them so much as they became too esoteric for me. A great example is the Guilty Gear series. I love guitar witches as much as the next red-blooded young man, but with all of its dead angles and false roman cancels the actual mechanics of the game are completely opaque to me. I cannot for the life of me translate such complicated glyphs into meaningful gameplay, let alone fun.

Derrick: That is a great example. Guilty Gear XX Accent Core Plus was playable at New York Comic-Con and I remember seeing a crowd of kids playing it with the general air of "so what? Its the same game we've played a million times" floating on all of their eyes. The sheer number of instant-kill moves I saw performed was staggering. There should be no such thing as an instant kill move. That defeats the "game" of it! And these kids were just used to it because they somehow wrapped their heads around it years ago!

Joe: The biggest exception to this rule is western RPGs, led by the console-based development of BioWare. For example, Baldur's Gate is an intricate and terrifying beast to me, but Mass Effect is one of my favorite games of all time. I also love Bethesda's new work, but the procedural wilds of early Elder Scrolls games scare the hell out of me. It's the best example of a genre that's actually trying to slim itself down, which in my opinion is making the games in it a lot easier to get into, yet no less engrossing once you're in.



Derrick: Alright, that's all the time we have for this discussion right now. I want to thank Cole and Joe for sharing with me here today. The conversation doesn't have to end here, 61fpsers. Keep it going in the comments!

Previously Roundtable Discussions:
The Relevance of Japanese RPGs
Where is the Handheld Version of Console Wars?
The Fandom Phenomenon part 1 - part 2 - part 3