My journey toward learning how to write about video games has indelibly changed my relationship with genre. It’s forced me to interrogate the benefits of putting pieces of art into different tidy buckets and what happens when that tidiness starts to disintegrate and material from one bucket spills out into the others in a somewhat gruesome mixture of abstraction and meaning. Because the whole purpose of genre is to not have to explain exactly what a creative artifact is like each and every time you set out to describe a new one. It’s a useful way to group similar things together and, through their grouping, convey meaning. However, the genrefication of video games, as performed predominantly by those who talk and/or write about them, has led to genre being used as a crutch – to the point where even the folks talking about them are not quite sure what they mean anymore. In this environment, genre carries less and less meaning until its use is completely shot. Today, calling something an action-adventure game is even less helpful than just describing exactly what the title’s gameplay and story set out to do and how its developers go about accomplishing these aims. While this approach is long-winded and boring, at least it does its best to tell you what the hell is going on. 

How did we get here? Back when video games were first coming to prominence in the 70s, there were so few pixels on the screen that games could only be a few things. For home consoles, you had Sports games and arguably some Adventure games. Arcade games were the ones that were physically located in arcades, so that was simple. Each of these broad categories brought to mind a similarly simple image of what playing such a game would be like. Thus, when describing PONG and Intellivision Hockey, it would be easier to group them into the Sport game genre than describe exactly what the goal of each was separately, with two players trying to put a common blip past the other one’s defenses.

This was all well and good, but games kept getting more and more complicated as time went on to the point where we started having to come up with creative ways to silo their similarities into manicured categories. My favorite example of the brokenness of genre emerged when the western world saw that the progression loops of beloved Castlevania and Metroid titles were somewhat similar and coined the Metroidvania genre. Not only does this term carry no semiotic weight whatsoever outside of the video game community, but it also says nothing about what qualities make a game worthy of being placed within the oeuvre it is meant to represent. Japan did a much better job with this genre, calling it Search-Action. You spend time in games like Hollow Knight and the two aforementioned titles searching for ways to progress through obstructed maps, backtracking, and fighting enemies in action-style combat along the way. Nice job Japan.

But even in my above description, what does “action-style combat” mean? And who gets to decide? The answer to the second question is critics, reviewers, podcasters, writers, developers, and all those who engage in discourse about games. However, the most helpful genre descriptions for me these days allude to other games that folks who aren’t tuned into video game culture would not understand. Sure, a Souls-Like is probably going to include punishing combat and a death mechanic that forces you to return to the site of your demise or face a penalty, with the ability to save and bank your rewards at serialized checkpoints a la FromSoftware’s masterpiece Dark Souls. A modern Zelda-Like is going to feature open world exploration with a detailed physics system and memorable object interactions thanks to smash hits Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom. But did I have any idea about these kinds of things when I first started trying to get into video games? Absolutely not, and the ineffectiveness of such categorization when it comes to conveying meaning to broader audiences it’s a major reason why the video game community feels increasingly like a gate-kept echo chamber.

So, what about the folks who write and talk about games? Aren’t they getting something out of genre? As you can probably see from my earlier writings, I tried my best to get into the mindset of what I thought was a responsible way to discuss games. I used genre to attempt to carry meaning and even did my best to define the squirmier genres in the reviews and articles I wrote. It was an interesting way to get my feet wet, but the more I read and write myself, the more I realize that the use of genre when considering video games is futile. Because the most interesting takes on games – the ones that are worth reading – don’t attempt to make broad-strokes claims about the state of a game within the context of a flimsy genre definition. Rather, they confidently express original thoughts about how a game makes the writer feel, think, act, and/or reflect on their playing experience in a way that carries tangible meaning. 

Any old journalist can call a game a Rogue-Like and talk about how interesting it is that you have to repeat the game over and over to get at the core of what it’s trying to say. I know because I’ve done it...many a time. And those kinds of pieces aren’t at all interesting to write, so I can only imagine what it’s like to try to slog through reading them. Additionally, if the only people who can keep track of what exactly a Rogue-Like is are fellow writers and thinkers within the video game community, we end up with an unwelcoming culture that doubles back on itself and crumbles under the weight of its own inability to understand exactly what it is trying to say. If you abstract an element of art enough while critiquing it, its core sloughs off and you're left with an imprecise definition of what something should be rather than what it actually is. 

So, let’s stop erroneously grouping games and instead focus on what sets them apart from the pack. How do they make us feel? What do they have to say about what we’re going through right now? How do they help us and challenge us to interact with memory, interpersonal relationships, destruction, friendship, love? 

Don’t tell me that a game is a Metroidvania. Tell me what exploring and doubling back meant in the context of that gray and rainy day when you were playing it and nothing felt right. There’s futility in genre, yes, but what does this game have to say about the futility (or lack thereof) of writing about this stuff at all? Of the art of play? Of life itself, even?

In an age of abstraction, what we need now are features that attempt to explain what’s underneath, rather than adding to the deluge of dilution that the genrefication of video games represents. Let’s dump genre, and add our voices to a hopeful chorus of specificity, wonder, and feeling.