At 10/25/06 10:51 PM, Bezman wrote:
I'd argue that what you actually do in a defense game can vary massively though. I mean grabbing guys and flicking them in the air is different enough to shooting, and giving projectiles an actual trajectory again alters it sufficiently.
That's kinda starting to sound like instructions though. Too specific to be a premise. Don't get me wrong - if someone created the first defense game as being a click-to-shoot style, and then the next person made a flicking one, I'd still consider it pretty original. I just don't like the ones that fail to reinvent anything.
Well, technically, it may be a very specific genre, or an awfully contraining one, but can't it still be a genre?
Can it? Sure, but by whose say? You have to draw the line somewhere. A genre that only has a couple of titles is pretty redundant, isn't it? Kinda defeats the idea of organizing games into convenient categories, which is the only reason worth keeping them around. If we had 45 categories, they would no longer be convenient..
The whole concept of having to pigeonhole and label stuff is stupid anyway. Everything can just be explained on its own terms using as many or as few words as necessary.
The funny part about this is that we have different standpoints in the grand scheme, but we'd both rather do away with genres. As I said, people are justifying their idea borrowing by genrifying everything and then creating games within these self-proclaimed genres. They are an arguably essential way of organizing content, though, they just come with a bunch of side effects.
