genre posts

Despite the fact that we live in the 21st century, fantasy as a genre is still with us, and shows no signs of going away any time soon. As an environment, it is so poorly defined that it can take the aesthetic of nearly anything, provided that certain tropes are in place: swords, archery, royalty, magic, assorted humanoid monsters with orcs being the mainstay, and the like. Temporally, there is a nebulous period of time during which all fantasy takes place, but you recognize it when you see it.

However, it's this vagueness that lends itself to abuse. Stylistically, there is little to cause any one fantasy-themed game to stand out from any other. And how many times can you get excited about playing the same character class over and over again? I'm in favor of any attempt to leave the stale fantasy genre behind and striking out into new territory, but how can we replace it, and with what?

When speaking of genre in video games, there are two ways to approach the subject. We can talk about genre as it relates to story setting -- science fiction, fantasy, horror, westerns, military, romance, etc. We can also talk about gameplay types -- first-person shooter, role-playing game, real-time strategy, simulation, etc. With regard to the idea of innovation in games, have we reached a point where we've stopped inventing and started refining? Have we mined all possible genres to death, or can we come up with new ones? Is it possible to create a compelling historical non-fiction game based on the life of Benjamin Disraeli?