Do We Need a Soulslike Genre? | Game Maker's Toolkit - General

[QUOTE=Loadingue;52461072]Words do become dated after a while, Doom-clones isn't used much because FPS's have evolved into so many different directions that it didn't mean anything anymore at a point. But don't you see that it's for this reason that "Doom-clone" used to mean something: back when it [I]defined[/I] what an action game is. Game devs take inspiration from one another, it's always about using the ideas of a game or making something that looks like it. As long as a game is the [I]direct[/I] inspiration for another, instead of a whole genre, then the use of "thing-like" terms is justified. [/QUOTE] Again I really just suggest watching the video because it talks about exactly this kind of thing and I am far too tired to sit here and repost arguments from a short video that we're supposed to be talking about -after- we've watched it

[QUOTE=Loofiloo;52461111]I'm assuming people are following the thought process of -"Do we need a soulslike genre?" -"No, we don't" -Therefore disagree[/QUOTE] Personally I disagree with his assertion that genres should be as wide as possible, that's how you end up with shit like "Action Adventure" which is so broad that it's useless. A game can be multiple genres at once and I think genre should describe specific themes, mechanics, or ideas to give people a better idea of what the game is going in.

Makes me think of The Surge; It took a lot of things copy pasted from souls games but it didn't need to really. It could've ignored the entire souls drop on death, leveling up (it wasn't even a big deal in the game). but instead they literally copy pasted their own type of souls, bonfire etc.. I liked the game though but I always felt like it copied too much when it didn't really need to

I'd say its a valid genre if only because the demand for it exists.

In regards to the video itself, I'm surprised he is weirdly ok with keeping "roguelike" around as a term, when it has become a far more meaningless buzzword than "soulslike" already, getting attributed to basically every single indie game that comes out anymore. These days, you randomize one or two elements and make your save system less than constant (maybe) and it's another roguelike. I made a couple videos on the very subject of roguelikes back in 2014 (not as well-made as this one since I was really new to it) but I'm surprised to see that the state of the genre has only gotten worse. I think the thing to note is that game genres fall into both broad categories and specific categories. "Action game" is a broad genre, "Shooter" is a more specific genre, and "First-person shooter" is a still more specific genre. Similarly, "RPG" is a broad genre, "Action RPG" is more specific, and "Soulslike" is yet more specific. In the past, "Roguelike" was yet another specific RPG sub-genre, maybe even more specific than Soulslike. But over time, it means less and less, but is used more and more. I kind of think I believe the opposite of a big part of this video. I think genre names are only useful insofar as they [i]efficiently[/i] indicate what kind of game you're playing. If you tell somebody "I'm playing this new soulslike" they still have a pretty damn good idea of what you're talking about. But if you say "I just tried this roguelike" you're telling them basically nothing. Unless they're a dinosaur like me who still just uses "roguelike" to describe that very specific genre of turn-based RPGs. And I think the argument that these followers need to remove the original game's name from the genre is kind of moot. That alone will never stop (bad) developers from blindly imitating successful games. It goes without saying that they should not blindly imitate specific mechanics, but focus on the great qualities that pioneered the genre, and what makes them work... but a lot of developers are just too lazy to put that level of critical thought into their own creations. They just want to ride a more successful game's coattails to make a quick buck. Changing the name of the genre won't stop lazy developers, nor will it stop people from solidifying the pioneer of the genre as a shining glorious piece of history.

He did touch on rougelike not being a great term until it became clearly defined, but I think the emphasis on how the definition didn't end up being a pigeonhole genre in the end is critical to it being a valid term. Like he was getting at, if "soulslike" never evolves beyond derivative works it's not very useful (though I think divergence from source material is inevitable in art). It's just that how you define things can determine the rate of progress. Same with what he said about metroidvania games. It's just a different way of looking at it than you are. You [i]want[/i] the definition to be specific, but his whole point is that this can be a detriment to art. From my own background in studying art history, I tend to agree with that sentiment. Overly specific definitions historically always create styles with too limited variety.

[QUOTE=DOG-GY;52461810]He did touch on rougelike not being a great term until it became clearly defined, but I think the emphasis on how the definition didn't end up being a pigeonhole genre in the end is critical to it being a valid term. Like he was getting at, if "soulslike" never evolves beyond derivative works it's not very useful (though I think divergence from source material is inevitable in art). It's just that how you define things can determine the rate of progress. Same with what he said about metroidvania games. It's just a different way of looking at it than you are. You [i]want[/i] the definition to be specific, but his whole point is that this can be a detriment to art. From my own background in studying art history, I tend to agree with that sentiment. Overly specific definitions historically always create styles with too limited variety.[/QUOTE] I can't speak much about other media, but in the case of games, I've always felt more like genre names exist more for the benefit of the consumer than to the detriment of the creator. I think a bad or derivative game developer will be bad or derivative regardless of the more specific terms used by the community. I don't think any developer worth their salt would go "Well, since I'm making an action RPG with deliberate stamina-based combat, I guess I HAVE to add estus flasks and bonfires and fog gates too." Good developers will always be able to think analytically about very specific elements that work, and bad developers will always be able to go "So-and-so made X, so I'll also make X." Those bad developers would try to imitate Dark Souls regardless of whether "soulslike" was a word, just like so many developers (capable or not) have tried to imitate Minecraft, even though (as far as I know) there's no name for that "genre" yet.

That's only because Minecraft clones haven't gotten past the initial Doom clone stage mentioned in the video. I think your argument doesn't consider that game's aren't developed in a bubble. Developers often react directly to consumer interest. If this weren't true, these kinds of clones wouldn't exist on the scale that they do. Yeah that makes them a lazy creator to carbon-copy, but they're reacting to demand. If those demands are for works with more open ended similarities it affords them more freedom to experiment rather than rehash what others have done.

I don't see why you need a genre descriptor [I]per se[/I]. Labeling a game with a single term can be misleading, since it creates an expectation that might not reflect what the game is actually about. Both Mario Kart and Forza are "racing games", but they're worlds apart. Monster Hunter, for example, shares a lot of characteristics with Dark Souls (or the other way around, since MH predates DS). But then, no one was twisting a nut over calling it anything else than "action adventure". If you wanted clarification, you were told that you kill big dinosaurs with oversized weapons.

People give Dark Souls way too much credit. It may have breathed life into it's gameplay style, but games like Onimusha, Ninja Gaiden, and even God of War to an extent, had essentially the same gameplay style, but on much more archaic hardware. Obviously Dark Souls slowed things down a lot in regards to combat though.

[QUOTE=Silikone;52460902]To be frank, all these twists of "roguelike" are silly excuses. They are still all basically attributing an idea/mechanic to a single game. We need proper terms.[/QUOTE] It's sad how roguelike used to describe a genre, but now it is used for basically anything with random generation.

Apparently I've been hella out of the loop here. This is the first I've heard of "roguelike" being used to describe games that [b]didn't[/b] have the following attributes to its game design: 1.) Random world generation on every playthrough 2.) A complete reset of player progression on death (permanent death) 3.) No continuity between playthroughs* 4.) Turn-based gameplay *In a major sense. There are some minor exceptions to this, such as in Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead, you can sometimes find the corpses of your previous characters (and I believe the corpses don't have anything on them, but it's just a corpse with your character's name); or in FTL: Faster Than Light, where if you achieve specific goals, you unlock ships you can use as an alternative start in later games.

Roguelike still means something, that's why we have roguelite. The two are perfectly capable of co-existing as terms.

roguelite is sort of a crappy, elitist term though. 'procedural death labyrinth' is ok but it will never catch on

[QUOTE=krail9;52463261]roguelite is sort of a crappy, elitist term though. 'procedural death labyrinth' is ok but it will never catch on[/QUOTE] i don't see it as being elitist

[QUOTE=Ninja Gnome;52463295]i don't see it as being elitist[/QUOTE] It is. Even games that fit in the genre by strict standards will be called "Not true-roguelikes" because they have done something different from the accepted norms, even if its nothing that compromises that strict standard. "Roguelite" is just a snobby and elitist term to be dispensed freely on any game that does something different and ergo isn't good enough hold the holy-grail "Roguelike" title.

[QUOTE=Doctor Zedacon;52463359]It is. Even games that fit in the genre by strict standards will be called "Not true-roguelikes" because they have done something different from the accepted norms, even if its nothing that compromises that strict standard. "Roguelite" is just a snobby and elitist term to be dispensed freely on any game that does something different and ergo isn't good enough hold the holy-grail "Roguelike" title.[/QUOTE] The distinction between roguelike and roguelite has nothing to do with quality or "elitism." It's literally about having different names for different things. This would be like saying "breakfast" is an elitist term because food snobs don't consider steak and potatoes a breakfast food.

[QUOTE=Doctor Zedacon;52463359]It is. Even games that fit in the genre by strict standards will be called "Not true-roguelikes" because they have done something different from the accepted norms, even if its nothing that compromises that strict standard. "Roguelite" is just a snobby and elitist term to be dispensed freely on any game that does something different and ergo isn't good enough hold the holy-grail "Roguelike" title.[/QUOTE] Since when has it been elitist to keep to a relatively strict definition? Roguelike means one specific thing so roguelite exists to encompass the broader concepts without including the final parts that make up that specific thing. Take out the turn-based combat of a roguelike? Now you have a roguelite. Keep the turn-based combat but remove the permadeath and random generation? You've got an SRPG. You see how it's nice to have different words for different things? It's not like there's a finite space for genre terminology where one has to be shoved out to accommodate another. Not every term has to be all-encompassing, so people invented a term that does fit broadly because they didn't think that the original term should lose its meaning. There is no pedestal that people are holding roguelikes on, it's just something it either is or it isn't. Roguelite is not a dirty words for games that don't "deserve" the lofty position of "game that is like rogue".

[QUOTE=Loadingue;52461060]But this kind of semantics was never about what those terms actually mean in concrete; it's about what they represent in the minds of people. People say Souls-like because you know exactly what it means from the moment you hear it, even if it's not a game so close to the real thing that one might think the same devs made it. That's not the point at all, it's about understanding the intention. Watch Dogs and Saints Row are clearly GTA-like, especially since they were both created to be direct competitors to Rockstar's GTA games. Saints Row 1 didn't have the humor of the sequels, and was made solely to bank on GTA San Andreas' success. That's why it's a GTA clone. The sequels went for a more comical and over-the-top script that made it different from GTA and appreciated differently, but they still remain GTA clones at heart, meant to compete and appeal to the GTA audience. That's why we talk about GTA-likes.[/QUOTE] We can't go around arguing semantics in a discussion about genres. Categorizing games into genres is by its definition arguing semantics. Saints Row started as a GTA clone series, but that's not what it is anymore. Duke Nukem 3D is in many ways a response to Doom's success. It's one of the games that can accurately be described by the term "doom clone", because that's what it is, but we don't call it that anymore, because we have a better term for it now.

[QUOTE=Antimuffin;52461050]Diablo, Path of Exile and Viktor Vran are Action RPGs.[/QUOTE] hack-n-slash RPGs You can call Action RPG a Borderlands game.

Rougelite sounds really dumb. It will never realistically catch on. You just have to accept that the word rougelike means something different now. You cant undo the damage that the marketing of all these indie games did. If fans of original ascii turnbased rougelikes want to have their own genre so much, why wont they just call them "classic rougelikes" or invent a new name instead of fighting a pointless battle to confuse the general audience?

The only bad thing about Roguelite is that if you don't know about the term it's easily misheard as Roguelike, but like it's already caught on, not everywhere by everybody, but people do use it.

Slapping labels onto games is ultimately a short-term solution that cannot, and never truly will be able to define a good game in its entirety. You can regroup games under smaller or larger categories, but those categories are nothing more than basic indications. They're useful to describe a title quickly or sort them out in a somewhat coherent manner but no matter how many terms you make up and how far down the rabbit hole of typology you're willing to go, you're still gonna fall short.

[QUOTE=Ganerumo;52464661]Slapping labels onto games is ultimately a short-term solution that cannot, and never truly will be able to define a good game in its entirety. You can regroup games under smaller or larger categories, but those categories are nothing more than basic indications. They're useful to describe a title quickly or sort them out in a somewhat coherent manner but no matter how many terms you make up and how far down the rabbit hole of typology you're willing to go, you're still gonna fall short.[/QUOTE] Short-term solution? [B]They are the current solution.[/B] Genres are essentially used as tags, "a label attached to someone or something for the purpose of identification or to give other information." If you want true "definition" of a game, you have to resort to an in-depth review or a demo. Good luck filtering through that. If a tag is too "generalized", one way to improve it is to add even more relevant tags in hopes of narrows it down. I'd like to think that Valve had a good idea when they implemented the tag system. On the subject of the video, aren't the devs to blame for "stagnating innovation" instead of the naming of the genre? The easier the success of a game is to dissect and deconstruct, the more blatant the inspirations and clones will be. Identify important mechanics, instead of conforming to the rules of a shoehorned genre; "traverse a series of obstacles in a 2d plane with..." instead of "we are making a 2d platformer so it must have...". Genres are overly-compact generalized descriptions. The more people understands it, the better; If it doesn't represent, stop associating specified genre to said game. In this case, there is no need to change the "soulslike" name just because it gets compared to the literal Dark Souls game, it just means "so it plays like [a general, vague idea]", which is basically what every other genre does.

I mean short-term solution as in, if you want to describe a game as an individual piece, using genres will only take you so far. When it comes to the industry as a whole it's like music and literature and films, you can't avoid using genres but you can't really cement it either. It comes and goes and the terms evolve in their meaning over the course of years of usage with each release adding to the pot. A good example of that would be Action RPG which far as I'm aware was a term created to define Japanese top-down RPGs which used real time fighting instead of turn-based combat, and the term evolved to the point where a first person shooter made by a western team can be considered an ARPG.

[QUOTE=WhyNott;52464383]Rougelite sounds really dumb. It will never realistically catch on. You just have to accept that the word rougelike means something different now. You cant undo the damage that the marketing of all these indie games did. If fans of original ascii turnbased rougelikes want to have their own genre so much, why wont they just call them "classic rougelikes" or invent a new name instead of fighting a pointless battle to confuse the general audience?[/QUOTE] Well, too late for that, Roguelite is already in widespread use and has been for quite a bit. I mean, Steam has had a Rogue-Lite genre section in the store for a while now and they did invent a new name, Roguelite...

[QUOTE=FingerSpazem;52465312]Well, too late for that, Roguelite is already in widespread use and has been for quite a bit. I mean, Steam has had a Rogue-Lite genre section in the store for a while now and they did invent a new name, Roguelite...[/QUOTE] Steam has both rogue-like and rogue-lite tags and it uses them to describe the same non-gridbased non-turnbased games. It's a fucking mess.

[QUOTE=Drury;52465426]Steam has both rogue-like and rogue-lite tags and it uses them to describe the same non-gridbased non-turnbased games. It's a fucking mess.[/QUOTE] I guess a lot of people just don't know how to use them properly, that's not at all exclusive to those tags tho.

[QUOTE=Doctor Zedacon;52463359]It is. Even games that fit in the genre by strict standards will be called "Not true-roguelikes" because they have done something different from the accepted norms, even if its nothing that compromises that strict standard. "Roguelite" is just a snobby and elitist term to be dispensed freely on any game that does something different and ergo isn't good enough hold the holy-grail "Roguelike" title.[/QUOTE] But they're called Roguelikes [I]because[/I] they take heavy influence from Rogue. Games like Nethack and Tales of Maj'Eyal are direct evolutions of Rogue's gameplay. Roguelites usually only have a handful of elements like permadeath and random levels. It's not meant to be "elitist". It's meant to signify that these games are very different from what is considered to be part of the standard roguelike. It'd be like calling the first Rainbow Six a "Doom clone". Sure you are shooting in first person but Doom is about running from point A to B while blasting everything in your way while Rainbow Six is about carefully planning out a mission and playing far more cautiously. They are completely different games.

[QUOTE=FingerSpazem;52465312]Well, too late for that, Roguelite is already in widespread use and has been for quite a bit. I mean, Steam has had a Rogue-Lite genre section in the store for a while now and they did invent a new name, Roguelite...[/QUOTE] I have never heard that name before in my life. Everyone I know calls games like Spelunky and Strafe rougelikes.