Categories by gameplay - thinking about game design

[JetFred]

Okay, I haven't done a self-indulgent meta-gaming post like this in a long time, so bear with me. I finally switched my 569 Steam games from collection-based categories like "physical, key in box" to gameplay categories. I wanted categories that were specific enough to describe games that feel similar to play, but not so specific that I don't have at least a few like it. I broke down and made a couple of 2-game categories, but most have about 6-20 or so. I spent a lot of time rewriting these, which is an enormous pain in Steam.

Anyway, take a look at these categories and tell me what you think. I placed a reasonably recent and well-known game next to each as an example that typifies my definition of the category. Of course there are a few categories of games that I just do not play, so there is some bias. Obviously I wasn't going to be content with action, strategy, and role playing, so some of those got really specific. And I wasn't going to do indie as a category either.

Action platformer - LEGO Lord of the Rings
Adventure core - The Book of Unwritten Tales
Adventure miscellaneous - Machinarium
Base building - Stronghold 3
Battle arena - Demigod
Beat 'em up - Shank 2
Board game style - Delve Deeper
City building tycoon - Tropico 4
Driving - FlatOut
Field commander - SpellForce 2
First person brawler - Dark Messiah Might and Magic
First person frenzy - Serious Sam 3 BFE
First person shooter - F.E.A.R. 3
Grand strategy - Crusader Kings 2
Hacker - Hacker Evolution Duality
Lemmings - Spirits
Metroidvania - Cave Story+
Multiplayer only - AirBuccaneers
Puzzle platformer - Vessel
Puzzle RPG - Puzzle Kingdoms
Puzzle, matching, and cards - SpaceChem
Real time battles - Rome: Total War
Real time space strategy - Star Wolves 3: Civil War
Real time strategy - Supreme Commander 2
Retro arcade and minimalist - BIT.TRIP BEAT
Rhythm - Sequence
Rogue-like variants - Dungeons of Dredmor
Role playing - The Bard's Tale
Role playing action - Torchlight 2
Role playing fantasy epic - Dragon Age: Origins
Role playing old school - Avernum 6
RPG first person - Fallout: New Vegas
Shmup and twin stick - Renegade Ops
Six DoF space flight - Miner Wars 2081
Space 4X strategy - Galactic Civilizations 2
Stealth - Death to Spies: Moment of Truth
Stealth arcade - Mark of the Ninja
Strategy and arcade hybrid - A Valley Without Wind 2
Swarm based strategy - Eufloria
Tactical - XCOM: Enemy Unknown
Third person action adventure - Darksiders 2
Third person mayhem - Saints Row: The Third
Top-down shooter - Shadowgrounds: Survivor
Tower defense and variants - Orcs Must Die! 2
Trading strategy - East India Company
Turn based battles - King's Bounty: Warriors of the North
Turn based fantasy - Warlock: Master of the Arcane

(I modified the title of the topic to include "thinking about game design", because I'm not so much interested in whether this is a good use of categories but how much you can distill game design into types.)

[astyanax]

How about The Sims and flight sims?

[JetFred]

How about The Sims and flight sims?

Don't play 'em, but unless you had a lot of types of flight sims, that would make sense as a category. Something like The Sims, Spore, Black & White etc. could be thrown into some sort of life sim, God sim, or emergent gameplay category.

[Grifman]

Too many categories, you might as well call each individual game a category at this rate

[JetFred]

Funny, and I was thinking that it's sad there are only about 50 different types of games. Wouldn't be much point to having a category with 100 games in it.

[Kraken]

I have 8 games installed. They are all in the categories "Games I Play" and "Games I Don't Play Anymore, But Could If I Wanted To."

With 569 games I'd break it down into Games I Play, Games I Don't Play, Games I Used to Play But Don't Anymore, Games I Used to Play and Might Play Again, Games I'll Never Play, Games I Haven't Played Yet But Might Someday, and WTF Was I Thinking?

[Blackhawk]

I used to break them down like that, but I found that I ended up with so many categories that it was just like scrolling through all the games. I ended up combining similar types to good effect.

Turn-based strategy
Real time strategy
Vehicle sims (everything from flight sims to Battlezone)
First person shooters
Tactical shooters (OpFlash, Ghost Recon, etc)
Action (action games that aren't first person)
RPG
MMO
Multiplayer (dedicated multiplayer titles - Mechwarrior Online, TF2)
Adventure
Misc (a catch-all for the few that won't fit into one of the above.)

[Kasey Chang]

I really have 3 categories:

Normal
Completed
Abandoned

[Isgrimnur]

Add 'Free to Play' and you have my system.

[Grifman]

Funny, and I was thinking that it's sad there are only about 50 different types of games. Wouldn't be much point to having a category with 100 games in it.

Actually, there is, if the category accurately describes the game. Using dozens of categories sort of defeats the purpose of categories to begin with.

[Grifman]

I used to break them down like that, but I found that I ended up with so many categories that it was just like scrolling through all the games.

Bingo, my point exactly.

[Grifman]

The other problem with so many categories is the more categories you have, the more categories a game fits into. So how do you decide? For example, X Com is both Tactical and TB Battles. Sword of the Stars is Real Time Battles and Space 4X Strategy. So picking a category becomes somewhat arbitrary, which sort of defeats the purpose of categories to begin with. If they aren't clear, then they are less useful.

[Kelric]

Playing, On Hold, Completed.

[JetFred]

The other problem with so many categories is the more categories you have, the more categories a game fits into. So how do you decide? For example, X Com is both Tactical and TB Battles. Sword of the Stars is Real Time Battles and Space 4X Strategy. So picking a category becomes somewhat arbitrary, which sort of defeats the purpose of categories to begin with. If they aren't clear, then they are less useful.

This is a problem with the name "turn based battles" though, not the idea. XCOM is clearly a tactical game. Another example of turn based battles, meaning there is no broader turn based strategic level, is Fantasy Wars.

Also realize that I collect things just for this sort of exercise. Of course the whole thing is impractical. But I have a particular flavor of quirkiness that means I get much of my gaming pleasure out of this analysis. Hence the 570 games (added one). I would never expect anyone else to adopt this. And Steam can't even handle scrolling this many categories. It jumps up and down like a moving target while you are scrolling.

So as much as I appreciate that the discussion immediately turned to more practical ways of managing categories, I really posted this as a comparison of gameplay types. It doesn't surprise me in the least that what most of you are listing are categories by play time.

[Smoove_B]

First person brawler - Dark Messiah Might and Magic

What other games are in this category?

[JetFred]

Zeno Clash, and I thought about putting Dead Island, but I really struggled with Dead Island across several categories. It's a tiny category.

To sum up my comment above, "the point of categories" is not the point at all. What to call the categories is more to the point, in that you have to consider game design.

And by "real time battles", I specifically meant Total War knockoffs, of which there are a bunch.

Also realize that I need absolutely no convincing that I'm neurotic.

[Grifman]

So as much as I appreciate that the discussion immediately turned to more practical ways of managing categories, I really posted this as a comparison of gameplay types. It doesn't surprise me in the least that what most of you are listing are categories by play time.

Well, you did say:

Anyway, take a look at these categories and tell me what you think.

[Blackhawk]

What's the difference between Role Playing, Roleplaying Fantasy Epic, and Role Playing Old School?

Some games, say, Icewind Dale, could fit in all of them.

[Kasey Chang]

First person brawler - Dark Messiah Might and Magic

What other games are in this category?

XenoClash?

[JetFred]

What's the difference between Role Playing, Roleplaying Fantasy Epic, and Role Playing Old School?

Some games, say, Icewind Dale, could fit in all of them.

Mainly budget and production values, which aren't about gameplay, but they do affect the feel of the game. Avernum vs Icewind Dale vs Dragon Age. A bit of a dubious distinction.

[Grifman]

What's the difference between Role Playing, Roleplaying Fantasy Epic, and Role Playing Old School?

Some games, say, Icewind Dale, could fit in all of them.

Mainly budget and production values, which aren't about gameplay, but they do affect the feel of the game. Avernum vs Icewind Dale vs Dragon Age. A bit of a dubious distinction.

But your description says nothing of "production values". Your categories need renaming, maybe "High", "Medium" and "Low" production values.

[JetFred]

What I'd really like to hear is what you yourself think about different gameplay elements as they are assembled into the games you've played. I am mocking my own pitiful descriptions and completely failing to start a discussion about designers' use of recognizable gameplay elements in supposedly original ways. So be it.

[Kasey Chang]

Perhaps it's time to "rate" a game in terms of amount of content in different genres, instead of trying to pigeonhole it into a SINGLE genre.

RPG, Adventure, and MMO can be easily mixed together, but some of the modern MMO FPS has RPG and Adv elements too. Tribes Ascend is primarily FPS, but quite a bit of RPG.

And is the "Empire" series historical sim, RPG, tactical battle, strategy, or all of the above?

Even in the 3rd person open world games (i.e. GTA3 style) there are plenty of variations, from Maximum Overdose to Sleeping Dogs (and True Crime series, its predecessor) to Prototype series.

or just good old fantasy RPG... party or no party? Turn-based or real-time? Light (like Torchlight), Semi-serious (Dungeon Siege), or Hardcore?

And how do you classify massive online racing games like Test Drive Unlimited 2 and NFS: Most Wanted 2012?

[Hipolito]

I thought a lot about genres back when I wanted to do a best-of-each-genre poll on this forum. It's really tough, maybe impossible, to define genres that don't cause unfair comparisons while not being too numerous.

Escapist made an interesting attempt with its Genre Wheel.

[JetFred]

Now we're talking. I'm going to have to take time to read that, I hadn't seen it before.

I was playing Dark Messiah just now and thinking about how it really is the precursor to Dishonored. I clearly would lump it in with Thief and Dishonored even if it doesn't get as much right as those games.

The truth is that it all looks like a big mind map. I've spent quite some time on a mind map of movies using freemind, but I haven't done it with games.