We've always used genres as indicator "how a game is played" (as opposed to a theme which is "what the game is about"). With more than 1000 games covered, we may need to rethink a little, as some genres have become very crowded – i.e. they slowly lose their classification power. The idea is to basically have "sub-genres". Here is a "draft 0", which most certainly is incomplete:

Action
	Beat 'em Up
		Duel
		Scroller
	Shooter
		Horizontal
		Vertical
		Multi-direction
		Single-screen
		Ego
	Platformer
	Bats, Balls & Paddles
	Misc.

Adventure
	Text-only
	Illustrated text
	Point & Click
	Multple Choice

Puzzle

RPG

Simulation
	Plane
	Helicopter
	Submarine
	Misc.

Sport
	Manager
	Action

Strategy
	War
		Hex-tactics
		Global wargame
		Real-time
	Management

One big change compared to the status quo would be that "sports" games, which are currently classified as "sports/action" (Sensible Soccer etc.) or "sports/strategy" (Football Manager etc.) would not be classified as "action" or "strategy" anymore. Or would they? In fact, it could be argued that "sports" should not be a genre at all, but rather a theme. What do you think?

As you can see, I do not have any sub-items for puzzle and RPG yet. These are not particularly crowded on the site yet, so it's not so urgent. And, honestly, I'm not really an expert in these fields. So if anyone could add something there, go ahead.

What about the other genres? Does this categorization make sense to you? Are we missing major sub-genres?

Sorry for taking so long. Lately i'm not in the best of moods, so i don't really keep up much (you may have noticed i haven't written any reviews in quite a while). Alright, let's see...



I don't think this is quite accurate. Beat-'em-ups never imply 1x1 fighting games, so these are better off walking separate roads as standalone genres. Now, you could turn it the other way around, include both Beat-'em-up and 1x1 into Fighting category... though still, i'm not sure how accurate that would be. Well, at least it would make a lot more sense.



Hm... not sure if this isn't a little superfluous. First off, i'd rather we don't use Shooter genre but just Action and condense the sub-genre list a bit. Instead of horizontal, vertical etc just use "Scrolling shooter" or "Fixed/static" Also, i would rather we use FPS or first-person/1st person instead of Ego. Much as i like the sound of it, i don't think it would ring a bell to just everyone, so it's best that we stick with standard terminology. Incidentally, Fighting and Beat-em-up should join this category as they are action games, too.



Don't forget about 1st/3rd person.



I don't think we should expand this one.



1st/3rd person, Action, Adventure, Turn-based/Real-time...



I would just add "Marine", "Space", "Combat" and "Racing". I don't think we should go as far as to name all the vehicles and other attributes of secondary importance. Not sure what these are, sub-genres or themes, but they are definitely missing. We have Driving, but no Racing (could be applied to flight or marine racing, too). We have War, but no Combat, and these do make a huge difference in my opinion. For instance, you have Elite, a space simulator. Does it include some combat elements? It sure does. Would you call it a war game? I don't think so. Yet i believe the tag "war" has been widely misused on here simply for the lack of appropriate one.





Sounds good to me.

Well it happened to me that i tried to browse the current list of games on an mobile phone but i came a little bit frustrated over it.
Specifically i searched for Manager games something like Zeppelin. But clicking (well on phone i should say touching but that sound wired) strategic bring lots of War games, some Management games and also some Simulations. Later one are very interesting for me. Next Sport that is an kind wired category too but. It contains Action games, Management games and sometimes games that classify as Simulations. Next Simulation has the same Problem as Strategic War games are mixed with Civil ones, also is it unclear to me why some simulation are mixed in other genres. RPG sub categories are SRPG, TRPG, ARPG or other Genres with a little bit of RPG elements. Action, Adventure and Puzzle i didn't have say much to it.
On the other Hand some game appear to be something other than they really are for example Oil Imperium is sometimes sayed to be an Economic simulation, but under the hood it is an Mini Game Collection.

In this case, I would have gone for the advanced search and ticked "strategy" plus "business" or "strategy" plus "logistics". Though that's beside the point. Indeed, it is clear that searchability needs to be improved.


Yup, and this reminds me of Cinemaware, of course. This desire to classify everything, to put everything into neat drawers, is of course bound to fail. That is why we shouldn't strive for perfection. Nevertheless, we have to do it, because it helps people finding things. Which gave me a new idea.

That being that we seem to be stuck between conventions (or expectations) and the desire for correctness.

This is best illustrated, in my view, with the so-called "simulation" genre. Honestly, I have no clue where this convention comes from, but a lot of "management" games are usually classified as "simulations" (Maxis' Sim games being the prime example). It's a convention, so people will look for Sim games under "simulation". Even it it makes zero sense.

So here we have a problem: do we cater to expectations or do we try and build actually distinct categories (well, as far as possible)?

The second big issue we're facing is that the term "genre" is, again for historical reasons, used differently from all other media. If you talk about an adventure film, you do not associate this with technical aspects, like a cutting technique or techniques to tell its story to the audience. No, you associate it with a group of people going to the jungle or the desert and facing the dangers of nature. In computer games, "adventure" has, on the other hand, become associated with solving puzzles, going through dialogue trees and either a text parser or clickable verbs and objects.

Thinking about the "ideal" solution, my idea was always to build two distinct axes of definition; one being "how the game is played" (genre) and "what the game is about" (theme – the "genre" of all other media).

Though it fails, because of games which don't fall into one class (to use a neutral term) clearly and, more importantly, due to conventions and expectations. Because, in the classic genre, there was indeed a reason why it was called "adventure": the games were "adventurous" (in the film/book sense). Then, the term became associated rather with a gameplay style.

Often, it happens the other way around: for some reason, the first thing people associate with "strategy" is war games (i.e. a theme in the strict sense) – because there are so many of these, I guess. What is "real time strategy"? Thematically, it is a war game, isn't it? Unless, of course, you take the basic meaning of the word, because then, other games would fall into that genre, too. E.g. management games played in real time, but if we try to be academically correct and include them in "RTS", people will be confused due to a clash with their expectations again.

So, yes, the issue statement is abundantly clear, I believe. It is the solution which escapes me. Maybe it would be best to simply abandon the idea of the different axes of genres and themes and just go with a flat tag system, though I don't know. (And, well, having the sole responsibility of keeping the site running and updated right now doesn't help to give me time to think.)

Totally disagree. Most Maxis games came with an Manual that has an large part (in Sim Earth 3/4 of the Manual) of the Scientifically background of the Simulation. Where one few so called Flight Simulators (except Flight Simulator itself) has nearly no information about the used simulation Model (or maybe they lack simulation model). On the other Hand there are games classified as Simulator that are clearly not an Simulator for example Goat Simulator. On the other Hand does the cost minimization part of some RPGs classify them as economic? You know most output (damage) for less input (gold) is an classic Business administration task.

By the way there was one Game magazin that classified games by the skill that was addressed by the game.

Well, then The Bugs Bunny Hare-Brained Adventure is a cartoon simulator, Simon the Sorcerer II is a teenager simulator and Druid 2 is a wizard simulator. (I picked the first three random games examples I got from the site.) The point is that every computer game simulates something.

Though, once again, the specific question is beside the point right now. The point is that there are many conventional classifications which are debatable to say the least. If it's not this one for you personally, I'm sure you'll find many others.

You gave a great example when you said you were looking for games like Zeppelin, but couldn't quite pin it down in the classification. This is the issue which should be solved (or at least softened) as far as possible. Though what makes sense for one person will not for somebody else. Some people will search for such games under "strategy", others under "simulation". Though neither "genre" classification of the two will be sufficient alone. Without arguing who is right or wrong, how should a website account for that (without becoming totall "wishy-washy")?

But all three didn't contain an Model description. Nor is the ultimate goal of the game to understanding of the model. In Simulation you play with the Model itself like in Train Simulator or Sim Earth. Also you must be able to set most of the Parameters of the model which is not trough in the three mentioned games but it as least in Sim Earth. For example how do i specify the inventory in Simon the Sorcerer 2? But well we could name those games "Model iteration and experimentation games" instead. As the term Simulation is already doomed http://www.kongregate.com/sim-games or https://play.google.com/store/apps/category/GAME_SIMULATION.