Talking about genres is taken for granted in game design.

From players to game designers, it quickly comes to mind when discussing games and their crafting. However, it’s a great “talking tool” as much as a bad “design tool”.

If the concept of genre is an integral part of your design process or if you think about it as something useful when starting a new game project, this blog post is exactly what you need.

I will tell you why genre is one of the most dangerous concepts for your game design career, why great authors and professional game designers ignore it, and, most importantly, the secret ingredient in their design process they don’t even know about themselves.

Do You Know What A Genre Is? Trust Me, You Don’t

The concept of genre is not by far something new.

People have been talking and writing about it throughout art history. In Ancient Greece and Rome, there were definitely fewer genres than now, but they were pretty well known even among common people.

At the time of Aristotle, there were epic poems, dramas, lyric poetry, and so on.

The reason genres exist is the same as what we can find in scientific disciplines like biology, chemistry, physics, etc.

Humans need to categorize things.

The reason is simple. Setting a line between concepts by identifying differences is a basic need for understanding.

A massive pile of books is overwhelming, but if you define a bunch of buckets with different categories based on criteria and put each book in them, everything gently falls into place.

We like order, and genres give us that.

However, genre, as any categorization of human behavior, has a fundamental problem. It's practically impossible to do it, at least in a scientific way.

Meaning you'll always end up with something loose that has no rigid application whatsoever.

It's always a simplification because you're abstracting a huge amount of variables, most of which you can't even identify. That's also why I always roll my eyes whenever I see people try to categorize player behaviors somehow.

Doing that has always been (and it still is) a dead end.

You've created your beautiful categories that should describe more or less precisely the personality of people who like or do certain things in games. Ok, and then what?

What are you supposed to do with those categories? There's no real and provable correlation (Google Form surveys don't count; they're not exactly "scientific"; I'm sorry) between a category and a type of player behavior.

The worst part is that they often correlate player personality types with game genres! I'm going to call it the Random Correlation Party.

Genres are not only arbitrary, as we'll see in a moment, but they're also dynamic, meaning they change as the medium changes. Time and technology greatly influence how people think of a particular genre.

But let's make a simple game.

Choose a known game genre. Let's say RPG (Role Playing Game), but it could be any genre you want.

Now, write down a definition of that genre, meaning what are the common elements of a game in the RPG genre? Basically, answer the question: "What's an RPG?".

Once you have your definition, find a bunch of friends (or random people, if you like) who are passionate about games and ask them the same question. Write down all their definitions.

Now look at them. No matter the length or preciseness, they will have some elements in common and some that do not.

So, let me ask you a question: What is the correct definition of an RPG? And an FPS? A Stealth Game? Let alone an Action Adventure?

The answer is there's no definition for any genre.

A genre is just a label we use to understand the kind of game we're talking about. It's just a shortcut that helps us identify what can happen in a game without spending 10 minutes or more listing all the game features one by one.

Giving it a meaning beyond that leads to flawed reasoning and ultimately incorrect conclusions.

"Ok, so the problem is we don't have a clear definition of each genre."

Stop right where you are.

Don't try to build your definition of Stealth, FPS, Open World, or whatever. It's a waste of time. Genres don't come out of a single person who wakes up and one morning chooses that an RPG is what he thinks it is.

The problem is not that a genre does not have a clear definition. The problem is that you consider genre to be a useful tool for designing games.

A Genre Is Never A Paradigm, So Don’t Follow It

Despite what many people believe, genre as a structured paradigm to follow has not been there since the dawn of time.

It can even be considered a somewhat recent event in mankind's history. Before the Renaissance (around 1400-1600), genre was primarily a categorization method used by the audience.

But moving on with history, many academic institutions started to emerge and gain influence.

At some point, these academics started to talk about Canon.

You're probably familiar with this concept, or you've even used it yourself to praise or condemn a movie or a game.

A canon is supposed to be a set of rules that artists must adhere to so that they will craft a great piece of art. If you don't strictly follow the Canon of that genre, you've made a mistake, and, of course, this is an objective evaluation.

Something along the following lines. If you're designing an RPG game, you should have a leveling system, a customizable protagonist, moral choices, a complex inventory, etc.

On the other hand, if you're designing an FPS, you should have action-packed sequences, lots of weapons, health packs, a multiplayer mode, etc.

Many of these things are taken for granted because they're part of the current Canon of the genres.

However, I beg your pardon in advance because it's tough to hold back a laugh when I hear people talking about Canon and objectivity.

If following a precise canon (a.k.a. a set of creative rules) would translate into a good work of art, there would not be any reason for having artists or creative people in the first place.

We could build a machine that follows those rules precisely, and eitvoilà… Here is your [insert genre] masterpiece.

But why limit the production line to one masterpiece? Let's create hundreds… no, wait… thousands of masterpieces every day. It would just be one click away.

Someone could say, "unfortunately, it doesn't work that way".

I say, "luckily it doesn't work that way", instead. It would be a disaster because art forms would immediately lose value and meaning in human society and ultimately disappear.

The extreme defense of canon and genre rules is that they're "proven to work".

Here's where I could become violent.

What the hell does it mean that something in art "works". Wake up! We're talking about art, not science. You have no parameter whatsoever besides your personal taste to say something works.

The concept of Canon is just a way of imposing one's tastes over others who need to conform.

Genre is not a paradigm to follow.

Not convinced yet? The art history is there to prove it to you.

The greatest artists of any medium did (and still do) exactly the opposite. They devise genres to create something new and it's precisely that new work that suriprises people that gets praised and rememberd through time.

Think of a famous artist of any kind in the past. You'll find a work of art that devised a genre or even created one anew (even in the videogames medium, albeit we don't have as many as other media, unfortunately).

Here's a truth you need to always remember when talking about genre.

None in the history of mankind became a famous artist who made clones or followed some guidelines.

When we look at art, and games are no exception, we need to look for extensive ranges of time. In today's fast and dynamic world, a few months seems like an age since you see many more things happening that your mind can wrap around.

Yet, art is something that needs time to get absorbed by culture. In this process, the more different and intellectually stimulating your works are, the higher the chance of being remembered.

It has never been, and it will never be a matter of Canon or genre. Leave categorizations of this kind to critiques and audience who uses it to understand each other.

"Ok, I get it. Genre is not a paradigm to follow. Yet, it can still be helpful in my design process, right?"

The answer is yes if you want to drive on a highway blind and on the wrong way. You see nothing before you, so you suppose everything is fine.

If you're not having fun driving this way, go ahead reading because you need to fix this bullshit right away before making a head-on.

How Using Genre Your Design Process Severely Limits Your Analytical Thinking

Searching through the web to find game design content quickly reveals one truth.

Game designers seem not to agree with each other on most topics.

And that's true indeed. Online, you can find everything and the opposite, and there are rarely some principles you can hold yourself to and count on.

Yet, there's one type of content that you can systematically find everywhere. It takes different shapes but roughly keeps the same structure and underlying mindset. I'm sure you've encountered this type of content many times, especially on YouTube.

I'm talking about the "How To Make A Good [insert genre] Game" kind of stuff.

The video/blog content itself is not actually the issue, because sometimes there is even good stuff to learn and apply. The main problem is the mindset and approach to game design that lies behind that kind of content.

Follow me because this is 100% counterintuitive and not talked about much.

If you amass all these videos and blogs about design tips, tricks, and techniques for different genres, you could derive the feeling that every genre is a totally different game. Every genre needs a different approach, a different design process, and a different way of thinking.

However, the truth is exactly the opposite.

Everyone believes it because they look at games on a superficial level, like players. From that point of view, yes, every game is a totally different thing.

But if you really want to become an Analytical Game Designer, you can't stop at that level of analysis and thinking. You must go deeper. And, trust me, the deeper you go, the more a fundamental truth becomes visible.

Genre in Game Design doesn't exist because, from a structural standpoint, every game works exactly the same.

Yes, you read it right, I'm saying that genre is bullshit for game designers. And if you read this until the end, you'll see why and how you need to change your thinking in your design process.

Hold on, though, I'm not saying every game is the same, but the system's structure (because a game is always a system of rules) is based on the same principles, no matter the genre.

I won't make you this harder than that. The reality is that structure doesn't change even for board games, physical games, or any kind of game you can think of. Let's keep it easy for now.

Do you understand what it means to you?

If you acquire and improve the skill of shaping the analytical structure of a game, you can quickly adapt your way of thinking to all genres that exist and will ever exist in the future.

So, what are you actually doing when using genre as a game design tool?

You're imposing yourself a limit. That's not bad in itself; self-imposed limits are good, but many people ignore that not all limits are the same. There are good and bad limits, and genre is a bad one.

Why?

Because they're arbitrary since they keep changing as new games come out. A genre is unstable, and you don't want to ground your process on something that could change in a finger snap because of something you have zero control over, such as other games.

A genre is made by grouping various game elements and perceiving it as a whole, as they have always been together.

The keyword here is "perceive". Genre is always a consequence of one or more games becoming famous for something different from the previous ones. It's a perception that makes people organize things in their minds. If the first game in a genre would have been something different, that genre would be, too!

Think about it for a moment. Why on earth did a game make something in some way, and after that, all games should follow it by taking its structure as a guideline?

It doesn't make sense, and it's the road to failure.

"But I need to follow it because that's an improvement!"

Don't you dare going back to the "genre canon" thing. That's bullshit.

"Improvement" in art means nothing; there's no measurable parameter, and there will never be because art always grows from a vision, and improving a vision doesn't mean anything.

Art is not Science.

Many aspiring game designers (sometimes even veterans) believe that following "genre good principles" will automatically lead them to create something good.

The reality is quite different, and sometimes even the exact opposite.

I have lost count of how often I have seen game designers justify questionable design choices because they "fit the genre's standard". This kind of thinking means your design process is broken and out of your control.

But let me go further than that and uncover more to you.

It's not only about genre; it's about every kind of content guideline landed from above by someone at random.

The sort of tips like: in an RPG, you should do this; if you do this in an FPS, it's a mistake; this thing is what makes combat good; a good crafting system is made like this, etc.

There's never any solid argument for forcing game designers to follow guidelines imposed from above by someone who decided that "that way" is the right way to do something.

As art history teaches us, for every content restriction, there will be a work to make a fool of that restriction.

This is even truer for beginner game designers.

Starting with a pre-made template of something that "works" puts your mind into dangerous rails in game design. You have your design process backward, and you have stuck yourself on a superficial way of thinking about games.

You essentially mistake playing a game by designing it because you're blind to the fundamental elements that make it work. Your brain cannot reason at that atomical level, and your skills in shaping the player experience won't improve.

The Game Direction you build is your primary (and good) self-imposed limit.

A well-done Game Direction never gives a shit about the genre because it is about the target experience and not a bunch of content patterns that someone else decided should be done that way and not otherwise for whatever reason.

And this prompts me to make another critical point where most game designers fall into revealing a shallow understanding of the discipline.

In game design, things are not good or bad in absolute terms; they are always related to a context.

And surprise…that context is always your Game Direction. However, most of the time, I'm talking in the void since you don't have a Game Direction or probably don't even know how to build one.

But don't worry, you're in great company since even some big development studios have this issue.

As a consequence, the game loses coherence and purpose because, at that point, you can only work in 2 ways:

• Look at what other games of that genre did (follow the canon)
• Come up with random ideas and throw them in to stir the pot (making sure to not move too far away from the canon)

Both ways are disastrous to approach game design. You don't really know what you're doing and, most importantly, why you're doing it.

Genres are not guidelines or starting points. They're just labels and, at most, communication tools you can use with your friends and colleagues.

Ultimately, there are no shortcuts. No genre rules that can prevent you from facing reality.

You need to learn how games work at a fundamental level and understand that every design decision has a purpose.

If you want to design at a high professional level, you can't throw features in because "the genre wants that". Do you really believe that great Game Designers reached that level by following genre guidelines or with tips and tricks?

Wake up, please!

If it were that way, everyone would easily be Hideo Kojima, Shigeru Miyamoto, Will Wright, Hidetaka Miyazaki, etc. Just follow the genre, and you'll be on top of the game design world as an author who crafts meaningful experiences.

However, the "secret" to meaningful experience is to ditch genre in your design process.

Think about those big names for a moment.

They're generally not "guideline followers", they always try to explore new things that sometimes even go against the standards of the time.

Hideo Kojima never thought about the "stealth genre guidelines" while developing the Metal Gear Solid Series games. He wanted to communicate a theme and craft an experience specifically built for that.

Shigeru Miyamoto had always had an experimental approach. He said numerous times that for The Legend of Zelda, he took inspiration from exploring nature as a child and his desire to capture certain emotions about it.

Hidetaka Miyazaki, like many of these giants, created a new genre that, back then, was the exact opposite of the standards, again focusing on a specific target experience and without any genre guideline.

Great game designers don't follow; they lead.

They focus on designing meaningful, innovative, and unique experiences with a strong vision in mind. They always strive for high quality, and they could never do it by following pre-made genre guidelines.

"But, wait, if genre is not a thing, how do I make design decisions on my game?"

Good question, my friend. You do exactly how all those top-class game designers (and artists in general) have been doing and still do.

And that's precisely what I will tell you next.

The “Secret” Design Process Top 1% Game Designers Unconsciously Follow Instead Of Genre

The short and straight answer to this is just one powerful word: Game Systems.

Oops, I lied; they're 2 words instead. Never mind, it's still one fundamental concept that not only holds for how to design games but also how to think about them.

Let me explain.

A game system is a pretty complicated thing. I'm telling you right now that we're not going to dive deep into the structure aspect since it will take me an entire book to fully explain it to you, even on a practical level.

Yet, I want to put your design process on the right track so you avoid some pitfalls.

First things first, what's a game system?

To put it as simply as possible, a game system is a set of behaviors with a purpose perceived as a whole thing.

So things like a combat system, a movement system, a crafting system, a leveling system, and a lot more I'm sure you know.

Each of these has a purpose, meaning it's used to make something possible in the game, and also has some components that are the individual behaviors.

"Hmm, wait, are you describing something similar to a genre, or am I crazy?"

You're not crazy, indeed; game systems, too, are arbitrary in terms of definition and internal components. However, this is exactly their power.

It's you, the game designer, who defines what a system is called, how it works, its purpose, and what it's made of. You have complete control over it.

So, what's the difference with genre, then?

2 fundamental things make all the difference in the world between them:

• First, a genre is something you pull out from the "average" of other games, not yours.
• Second, you can't shape a genre in any way you want.

The second reason is what you need to remember the most.

A genre is not just a set of systems but a pretty strict configuration of intertwined elements. If you change something about a genre or try to mix 2 or more genres (like many studios try to do), you'll need to redesign everything from the ground up.

The reason is the Theory of Player Experience, which clearly says that if you change the game's design, you're forced to change its experience.

So, when this happens, you can't help but fall down to the game system themselves and fix everything at the foundations.

This should tell you once and for all that genre is a shallow and high-level perspective on game design. Genre doesn't exist in game design because it emerges way after that.

So, going back to our systems, how can you use them to put your design process on steroids?

That's where lies what none is telling you: how the top 1% of professional game designers and authors reason.

But let me tell you more because this is fascinating.

Even some great authors don't actually know they use the process I'm going to tell you because they're so in it and so good at it that they don't even realize it.

They have automated this kind of thinking on a deeper level.

Do you remember when I told you that every game element has a purpose? Good, keep it in mind because that's the core of all of this.

Great authors and professional game designers work and reason about game features with a "necessity mindset". That is the exact opposite of the vast majority of "traditional" game designers out there.

The first thing that cannot absolutely be missed here is the Game Direction. Without it, you can't do anything. Yet, bear in mind that a Game Direction is not just a simple idea or an emotion you want to elicit from the player. It's much more than that.

It's a detailed description of the Target Game Experience you want for the player.

Once you have that, you do everything in relation to it. It's your lighthouse, your guide in the vast ocean of possibilities you have, that makes you find those gold nuggets to craft a meaningful game experience.

But what does it mean exactly?

It means that you don't add a game system (or any kind of feature) if it doesn't enhance, at least a little, that Target Game Experience you set as your goal in the Game Direction. You add a system as a necessity to communicate something, not because you find it "fun".

This is true not only for which game systems to add but even

• how they work,
• how they're balanced,
• where the player can use them,
• the feedback the player needs,
• etc.

Again, every single element is done because you NEED it to make the game generate that Target Game Experience.

Here is the finesse of this approach.

For Analytical Game Designers (and great Authors as well), the design of the game is a means to an end, which is the player experience.

In fact, the standard and common mistake about it is to focus on the game.

Yes, of course, you need to build the game with its systems and such, but you always need to remember that you're designing an "experience engine" and never a mere set of rules to entertain for the sake of it.

All of this is not something you can just do tomorrow morning.

You need to develop these skills through time and by understanding how games work under the hood. But I mean how they really work, not just the surface-level stuff about genre and so on.

By the way, do you see genre in this design process? Of course not, because it is never about genre or any kind of content guideline to follow.

Falling for this means you're blindly following those "gurus" on social media who promise quick success because they have a "genre blueprint".

Following that course of action, you only achieve one result: skipping the fundamentals.

You believe that doing game design is picking up a trending game genre and following its "rules". Are you sure game design is that easy?

Are you sure you can really bypass the hard work and skill improvement required by using some pre-made blueprint?

Are you sure you want to build a house of cards that will eventually be burned to the ground from the next reality check?

Are you sure you want to face the companies who want deep thinking from you with the "I will follow the genre guidelines" type of mindset?

If your answer to just one of these questions is yes, you can go away. Do whatever you want because I can't help you.

If, instead, you are determined to face what you need to become a real Analytical Game Designer and gain an edge over everyone else by building practical game design skills, you need to make a serious step ahead.

You need to move away from seeing games like a player would.

I know. It's hard, and I get the feeling because I, too, was on that side before I started seriously studying the game design discipline years ago.

I was a passionate player who loved games and was always on the spot about everything that happened game design-wise. Yet, I could not open my eyes because of the perspective from which I looked at games.

And that was the player perspective influenced, and mostly distorted, by the online world. When I began to study how games work at the analytical level, I realized how shallow my view was.

I discovered that a Game Designer is much more than a passionate player who makes games.

So let me tell you something important about it.

Your energy is finite, and you should be investing it wisely. Yet, here you are, scattering it on quick fixes that leave you stuck in place.

Do yourself a favor and trust me; begin as soon as possible to shift your mindset towards studying, improving the right skills, and avoiding dangerous shortcuts.

You need to understand that becoming an Analytical Game Designer isn't about genre or any kind of stupid content rules (even if they come from renowned senior-level game designers).

It's about mastering the craft of analytical thinking to design meaningful and structured systems from a strong, defined vision.