What provides the primary source of value in games? In general, it is game play. Not theme. Not setting. Not plot. Will someone pick up Starcraft after enjoying Warcraft or Command and Conquer? Yes, because ultimately the mechanics of an RTS are a larger predictor of consumer value than the various settings that each variant takes place within.

In highly mature game genres, mechanics become commoditized. The interface stabilizes. The core mechanics sport only minor variations from title to title. There is an established audience and they have very specific expectations of how a game should play. In order for a product to stand out, it needs to turn to non-gameplay differentiators. Such as licenses, graphics, content, etc.

At this point, critics trained in pontificating about ‘content’ emerge from the woodwork and started gushing about how games are finally an artform and are worthy cultural artifacts just like movies, books, etc.

And then out of the blue, another game comes along with new fresh mechanics. And it dominates the market. Sims, Social games, casual games, Wii Sports. (All of which were decried as barbaric by the self appointed defenders of games as art.)

Why is Wii Fit seen as a revolution and The Beatles: Rockband seen as a retread? Because Wii Fit innovates with new core mechanics and jump starts the exciting new fitness gaming genre. The Beatles: Rockband…that’s just content. Players see it as another set of buttons to push in sequence just like they did with the Rockband before it. For the people that like that genre of established mechanics, it is a pleasing content variation.

What is the primary value of our medium? Identify this and you understand genre.

take care
Danc

‘People think of animation only doing things where people are dancing around and doing a lot of histrionics, but animation is not a genre. And people keep saying, “The animation genre.” It’s not a genre! A Western is a genre! Animation is an art form, and it can do any genre. You know, it can do a detective film, a cowboy film, a horror film, an R-rated film or a kids’ fairy tale. But it doesn’t do one thing. And, next time I hear, “What’s it like working in the animation genre?” I’m going to punch that person!’

I think it is similarly so with video games. More generally, a distinction should exist between category of a work’s content versus its presentation. The first-person shooter is a sub-medium of the video game, with which a romance or a war epic or a Kafkaesque surreal plot/story/idea/whatever is presented to the player. The same goes for all the other categories of the mechanics.

It’s apparent once you think about it, however, that the other media suffer from the same problems too, though perhaps in varying degrees. Cel-animation/live-action/computer-generated/etc. for the film, for instance. Or similarly, if one painted an Impressionist-style painting, people expect its content to be constrained within a certain domain. This is a result of failure to distinguish art style, presentation, and so on from thematic content. The video game simply adds another axis to this already confusingly multidimensional space.

Interesting post. Must think on it.