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

[jason3232]

Turning a game into a genre is okay, and game specific genres like Metroidvania, Roguelike and Souslike can be used to find out games that are similar. The problem is that people are putting these genre on every game they see which just makes the tag pointless again.

Meanwhile, I feel like having broad genres is almost just like having no genre at all. Things like ARPG are so broad nowadays that Diablo, Fallout, Dark Souls, Witcher and a bunch of other hugely different game are tagged "ARPG" and the term is pretty much useless when trying to filter out games.

On the other hand, while it is true that some similar games with other interesting mechanic might get ignored when they aren't getting defined as a genre, but that's what you get when a game couldn't get into the spotlight and just goes underappreciated, and that isn't really the genre's problem imo.

The reason developers are making the same game over and over again with the same formula is because the formula worked, and so they are just trying to make a game of that specific "genre". It happens even if we don't have a game specific genre, it is just more apparent since there is a "original game" to compare to when games are in these genres.

[Drury]

[QUOTE=jason3232;52465582]Turning a game into a genre is okay, and game specific genres like Metroidvania, Roguelike and Souslike can be used to find out games that are similar. The problem is that people are putting these genre on every game they see which just makes the tag pointless again.[/QUOTE]

Not really. Say, the name metroidvania was abolished, instead we started using Game of Ability Based Exploration, or GABE. This would encompass not only platformers, but if you wanted to play a platformer like Metroid you could look for GABE+platformer. Meanwhile, indie devs everywhere would finally stop rabidly trying to occupy the "metroidvania" steam tag by aping Metroid and Castlevania and putting those dumb wall chickens in every game and actually start thinking in terms of what ability-based exploration means to them rather than thinking of how to enhance their platformer with tight vents and the player rolling through them as a ball.