Digital Games - Game Genres

Game Genres

Narrative
Genres

Perspectives
Links

This generation is so dead. You ask a kid, 'What are you doing this Saturday?' and they'll be playing video games or watching cable, instead of building model cars or airplanes or doing something creative. Kids today never say, 'Man, I'm really into remote-controlled steamboats.' [Jack White]

Narrative

Videogames are more than just games. They have the ability to tell stories and communicate a narrative. When creating your final project you should be thinking about how you will tell a story with your game.

Basic Plot Types

The Quest (action / adventure)
Voyage and Return (circular journey)
Comedy (not a great game idea)
Tragedy (arcade games)
Rebirth (? game ?)
Overcoming Monster (definitely)
Rags to Riches (rpgs)

Best Video Game Stories (maybe)

Metal Gear Solid
Grim Fandango
The Longest Journey
GTA San Andreas
Beyond Good and Evil
AstroBoy Omega Factor
Portal
Half Life 1 + 2 + Episodes

Gabriel Knight: SOTF
Bioshock
Planescape: Torrent
Fallout 2
God of War
Star Wars: KOTOR
Final Fantasy VI
Silent Hill

Action / Adventure Example

Heroic Journey
- Man vs. Man
- Man vs. Nature (or machines)
- Man vs. Himself

Definitions

Dialogue - 2 or more characters advancing the story, providing hints and clues
Cut Scene - A pause in the action to narrate or show dialogue
Trash Talk - Dialogue before a fight or boss scene
Banter - Useless chatter between characters to fill space
NPC - Non playable character

Choose a basic plot type and research stories in that domain

Think about how you will tell your story during your game: what format will you use? Will there be NPCs or narrated cut scenes?

Game Genres

Videogames have an incredible technical scope in terms of the stories they can tell. This creates a wide range of genres that have further been split into sub sub sub sub ... genres. For your final project you should be chosing a game genre that you can (1) implement and (2) explain why you chose it and (3) tell a story.

Genres (incomplete)

FPS (first person shooter)
Side Scroller
RPG (role playing game)
Shooter (raiden / time crisis)
Top Down (dual stick) Shooter

Simulation (plane / god)
RT / TB Strategy (tower def.)
(real time / turn based)
RPG (TB or RT action)
Puzzle + Zen

Warning

This list is incomplete, do the reading in order to find out about other genres and ideas

There are many sub genres that are quite interesting and within your ability to implement

Graphics and Perspectives

How you see the world is how you see yourself. [Anon]

Due to the limited scope of this course, you will of course be limited technically by what you can achieve in terms of graphics and perspective. We will only discuss 2D game implementations in order to keep things simple, but I don't want to discourage you from looking into 3D games and possibly taking a simplified approach.