Hi! Im coming from the latest post about onions:) The periodic table of gaming sounded interesting.
Personally I don’t see the intent for trying to fit genres into categories. As you said the lines are blurry, and they are being pushed everyday.
To me genres are a good means of roughly classifying the foundational systems of a game, but I’ve found anytime someone tries to nail down a consise “These are the real genres” it’s never perfect.
I’m curious how you were hoping to introduce this organizational method in a medicinal context?
No need to apologize m, I do the same myself. It’s always hard to translate what’s in the head to tangible words. But yes, this clears things up a lot, thank you.
I’m super glad to see you trying to do this for medicinal purposes, honestly I had no idea there were health professionals that used video games for rehabilitation, that’s super cool.
I wonder if it’d help to split the genres into two sections, systems and mechanics.
Mechanics being the things the player is actually doing in the game. COD for example, is running, throwing grenades, shooting.
Systems would be the things that isn’t actively done by the player on screen, but still affects how the player thinks and approaches the game. In COD, map positioning, respawning system, enemy ability.
Sort of like drawing the line between what the player has control over and what the player doesn’t, although both deserve the players attention.
Yeah, video games are being used for all sorts of things from training in surgery to rehabilitation to pain desensitization...there's a whole world out there!
I like where you're going with systems and mechanics!
It does simplify the classification a bit or at least, doesn't introduce as many variables right from the beginning. I may pull you and several others into a side chat/DM -- maybe a big collaborative post?
I’d love that. I’m always down for talks on game theory, especially regarding systems and mechanics.
It’s definitely simple, and certainly won’t be a means to an end of classification, but perhaps it could serve as a solid foundation. It could be alot easier to classify just the systems of games and then just the mechanics of games.
Maybe it would end up with the mechanics being a prefix and the systems the suffix. “Shooter roguelike” “creature collector auto battler”
Of course the definitions and guidelines for what a system and mechanic is should probably be bent a bit.
Welcome! And...thank you and apologies for making you wade through my thoughts lol
Sometimes I get lost in them myself...which I seem to have done here.
To answer your question, there's several "goals" that I have for classification:
1. An at-a-glance way to know where the game fits relative to other games. It seems intuitive but depending on what aspect of the game you focus on, there may be similarities between games that you normally wouldn't associate together. Ultimately, I thought something like this would help shine light on games that otherwise might get lost in the shuffle.
2. The same classification system could also help make consumers make informed decisions about the games they play. I wrote about an addictability score for games some time ago, recognizing that everybody gets "addicted" to different aspects of a video game. If a player wanted to avoid those triggers, having a way to categorize games to avoid those triggers could help. The same kind of filters could work for parents looking to introduce their kids to games, etc.
3. From a medical point of view, I think the classifications could help us better identify games that could help with rehabilitation, for example. There's a lot of studies that say action video games are good for hand-eye coordination and therefore could be useful to rehabilitate movement. But is it ALL action games? A subtype of action game? Would playing Call of Duty have the same effect as Street Fighter? So my thinking here was to also be able to classify games for not what they are but what they do to your body (force you to have quick reflexes vs. needing planned actions vs. a hybrid of the two). This kind of classification can help researchers better compare games when it comes to their effects on our health.
This was a very long reply to your question but hopefully I answered some of your questions...as you can probably tell, I love discussions like this, so keep it coming!
Hi! Im coming from the latest post about onions:) The periodic table of gaming sounded interesting.
Personally I don’t see the intent for trying to fit genres into categories. As you said the lines are blurry, and they are being pushed everyday.
To me genres are a good means of roughly classifying the foundational systems of a game, but I’ve found anytime someone tries to nail down a consise “These are the real genres” it’s never perfect.
I’m curious how you were hoping to introduce this organizational method in a medicinal context?
No need to apologize m, I do the same myself. It’s always hard to translate what’s in the head to tangible words. But yes, this clears things up a lot, thank you.
I’m super glad to see you trying to do this for medicinal purposes, honestly I had no idea there were health professionals that used video games for rehabilitation, that’s super cool.
I wonder if it’d help to split the genres into two sections, systems and mechanics.
Mechanics being the things the player is actually doing in the game. COD for example, is running, throwing grenades, shooting.
Systems would be the things that isn’t actively done by the player on screen, but still affects how the player thinks and approaches the game. In COD, map positioning, respawning system, enemy ability.
Sort of like drawing the line between what the player has control over and what the player doesn’t, although both deserve the players attention.
Any thoughts on this?
Yeah, video games are being used for all sorts of things from training in surgery to rehabilitation to pain desensitization...there's a whole world out there!
I like where you're going with systems and mechanics!
It does simplify the classification a bit or at least, doesn't introduce as many variables right from the beginning. I may pull you and several others into a side chat/DM -- maybe a big collaborative post?
I’d love that. I’m always down for talks on game theory, especially regarding systems and mechanics.
It’s definitely simple, and certainly won’t be a means to an end of classification, but perhaps it could serve as a solid foundation. It could be alot easier to classify just the systems of games and then just the mechanics of games.
Maybe it would end up with the mechanics being a prefix and the systems the suffix. “Shooter roguelike” “creature collector auto battler”
Of course the definitions and guidelines for what a system and mechanic is should probably be bent a bit.
Also to counter my own point, what about games with multiple main systems and mechanics?
It’s almost as if games are to plentiful in their possibilities to have such a simple system.
Welcome! And...thank you and apologies for making you wade through my thoughts lol
Sometimes I get lost in them myself...which I seem to have done here.
To answer your question, there's several "goals" that I have for classification:
1. An at-a-glance way to know where the game fits relative to other games. It seems intuitive but depending on what aspect of the game you focus on, there may be similarities between games that you normally wouldn't associate together. Ultimately, I thought something like this would help shine light on games that otherwise might get lost in the shuffle.
2. The same classification system could also help make consumers make informed decisions about the games they play. I wrote about an addictability score for games some time ago, recognizing that everybody gets "addicted" to different aspects of a video game. If a player wanted to avoid those triggers, having a way to categorize games to avoid those triggers could help. The same kind of filters could work for parents looking to introduce their kids to games, etc.
3. From a medical point of view, I think the classifications could help us better identify games that could help with rehabilitation, for example. There's a lot of studies that say action video games are good for hand-eye coordination and therefore could be useful to rehabilitate movement. But is it ALL action games? A subtype of action game? Would playing Call of Duty have the same effect as Street Fighter? So my thinking here was to also be able to classify games for not what they are but what they do to your body (force you to have quick reflexes vs. needing planned actions vs. a hybrid of the two). This kind of classification can help researchers better compare games when it comes to their effects on our health.
This was a very long reply to your question but hopefully I answered some of your questions...as you can probably tell, I love discussions like this, so keep it coming!