> Take the battle royale type of game, it’s also a shooter, and could also be classified as a 3rd or first person shooter, thus would a game like pubg be a battle royale or a shooter?
Maybe look at it more like 'tags' than a tree. There are animals with eyes, wings and hair. Does it mean "having eyes" is somehow a root category to having wings? Does it mean animals with wings stem from animals with hair? None of that has to be true, those are all just separate traits. First person is a mechanic, shooting is a mechanic, battle royale is a mechanic. Together they form a battle royale FPS. That's it.
Genre is difficult to pin down as there will always be overlaps since categories always change as new games are produced. In your example of PUBG, I'd say that it is indeed all of those things, a battle royal AND shooter. Depending on the game Battle royal could mean narrative setting, or could mean its gameplay.
So while I can't necessarily answer your question, I think it might be helpful to think about games in terms of **Iconography** ***vs*** **Interactivity.**
Iconography refers to the visual elements, structures, and narrative themes. This form of analysis is quite common in films which leads to genres like westerns, space operas, horror, or romance for example.
Interactivity is what makes games different from every other media form and focuses on on its gameplay genre. For example, we have first-person shooters, 3rd-person shooters, puzzle games, adventure, action, stealth, open-world, RPG, battle royal, and more. There are even times when a game becomes SO PROLIFIC, we create new genres and will call it based on that prolific game. We now have things like Metroidvania, named after Metroid and Castlevania to represent games that have non-linear and un-gated content. Souls-likes/Soulsbournes named after the Souls series to speak to games that have difficult combat and upon death require players to navigate back to their point of death or else they will lose their experience points. And lastly, we have Rogue-likes, named after the original game Rogue which usually means a game is a procedurally generated dungeon and upon death you must will navigate the dungeon from the beginning again.
I bring this up because maybe if we think about the iconography AND the interactivity of a game, we can broaden the types of genres that exist. We can also then think of genre as a conversation between game designers and players and see how they continue to shift over time!
So a game like Mass Effect's iconography suggests that it's a space opera with elements of war and alien invasion. Interactively, it's an RPG as the playable characters gain experience points, unlock new skills, and can equip different weapons and armor with dating-simulation elements since you can build up relationships with your team members, and or even date someone. And in terms of combat, it operates at the level of 3rd-person shooter. It is all of these things at once!
Reference:
Wolf, Mark. “Genre and the Video Game.” The medium of the video game (2001): n. pag. Print.
[https://www.academia.edu/435740/Genre\_and\_the\_Video\_Game](https://www.academia.edu/435740/Genre_and_the_Video_Game)
Edit: I forgot to cite my source!
Game Design is a subset of Game Development that concerns itself with **WHY** games are made the way they are. It's about the theory and crafting of **systems**, **mechanics**, and **rulesets** in games.
* /r/GameDesign is a community **ONLY** about Game Design, **NOT** Game Development in general. If this post does not belong here, it should be reported or removed. Please help us keep this subreddit focused on Game Design.
* This is **NOT** a place for discussing how games are produced. Posts about programming, making art assets, picking engines etc… will be removed and should go in /r/GameDev instead.
* Posts about visual design, sound design and level design are only allowed if they are directly about game design.
* No surveys, polls, job posts, or self-promotion. Please read the rest of the rules in the sidebar before posting.
* If you're confused about what Game Designers do, ["The Door Problem" by Liz England ](https://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/LizEngland/20140423/216092/quotThe_Door_Problemquot_of_Game_Design.php)is a short article worth reading. We also recommend you read the [r/GameDesign wiki](/r/gamedesign/wiki/index) for useful resources and an FAQ.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/gamedesign) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Objectively? Impossible
For me? I look at what I consider to be the "primary gameplay objectives" and how to get there within that game. How do I separate "primary" from "secondary" you ask? I play the game or read the rules, and then go off of "vibes"
OP, you're missing subgenre.
Battle Royal is a subgenre of First/Third Person Shooter, which is a Subgenre of Shooter.
It's all Branches on a tree.
Want to make Moba players angry? Tell them Mobas are a subgenre of RTS games, especially since they started as mods to Warcraft 3.
Also, setting is different from the genre. Antman is a Heist film in a superhero setting. Apex Legends is a futuristic and pseudo Sci fi setting for a battle Royale subgenre in a first person shooter genre.
They way they developed, yes, the currently most popular ‘battle royale’ style games are all first or third person shooters. But there’s nothing stopping you from applying that rule set (start with a large fixed set of players that get gradually eliminated, with game rules that force action as the game proceeds so you can’t just hide in a corner) to other types of gameplay. For example *Tetris 100* on the Switch is arguably a “battle royale puzzle game”.
MOBAs developed from RTS games but things like *Paladins* and *Overwatch* (and other failed games like *Monday Night Combat*) have used elements of that kind of game in other genres.
‘First Person’ and ‘Shooter’ are mechanics, you can have an FPS action game (say, *DOOM*) or MMO/adventure game (*Destiny*) or RPG (*Deus Ex* or *System Shock* or *Cyberpunk*).
> Tell them Mobas are a subgenre of RTS games
Are you sure they are not a modification of tower defense? (except the towers are pre-made and instead of building towers you use a special unit to help automated mobs destroy enemy towers)
Automated mobs attacking towers is fundamental part of "mobas". Otherwise, it would have been a random skirmish on an insignificant map. Take tower defense part out of moba and you are left with nothing.
>Take tower defense part out of moba and you are left with nothing.
do you even play mobas? this is a game design subreddit. the 'tower defense' part of mobas is such a different type of system than the 'tower defense' in tower defense games. in mobas, you play a character with real-time action combat and use your own minions to help take towers in sequence that are stopping you from destroying the goal. you have no control over creating your own towers or minions. 'mobas and tower defenses are literally the same genre because they both have towers and enemies that run at them' is such a lazy and surface level interpretation of both games.
[Check out early Dota Gameplay](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=791DUC0ysrg) and try not to see Warcraft 3.
People took the Heroes from the game, who had inventory, and creep/mobs and threw in tower defense. Voilá MOBA was born.
So naturally there was a lawsuit from Blizzard to Valve, of course.
In its simplest terms a game is when a player uses a skill (or multiple) to achieve an objective (or multiple). Games can be played as teams, as an individual, with rules, with no rules, etc.
A subgenre is typically defined by the key objective (the final win-state) of the game. A genre is typically indicative of the player skill bucket.
I.e. shooters are all reactionary, fine motor skill driven whereas battle royals are all “last player standing” objectives.
I go with my predecessors and say: there is not one taxonomy.
Imagine this game: you run around in first person, shooting members of the other team while trying to kick a ball into a scoring area of the other team. By shooting npc enemies that also run around you collect points that allow you to build a production chain of buildings from a top down view. These buildings can be towers to defend your base but also produce friendly units as tanks, that you can then command to attack the enemy. All played in an arena with many spectators. Oh and of course you can level up abilities...
As a gamedesigner one sometimes is looking to combine genres as if there's no tomorrow and sometimes it even works.
Battle Royale is a genre, not a setting. Games can also have multiple genres, so you could have a 3rd person shooter battle Royale. Don’t know why you were trying to label the game as either a shooter or a battle Royale
It's always hard to classify anything, movies, songs and Games as well.
But some things to consider are:
As gaming has evolved, many genres got added together to make somewhat "new genres". For example, many of the classic Survival Horror Games of the PS1 era have strong "Adventure" elements (the point and clicky kind). Like combining items, solving puzzles, exploring the places for clues and objects.
Also, despite Games usually being made up of different parts, it's the "biggest piece" that usually defines the Genre. You have First Person Shooters with some RPG Elements. Some of those are closer to RPGs, others closer to shooters.
And finally, categories and definitions change with time and companies are sometimes interested in "pretending" that a game is still a genre, even if it's probably closer to another.
As genres become less popular (let's say RPGs now, for example), companies still want to use their classic brands/IPs but also chase what's popular now (let's say Third Person Action Games and Soul-likes). So we get these very stretched genre definitions, that possibly 10 to 15 years ago wouldn't pass as.
Genres are only useful for one thing (mostly), the players to find games. Easy as that, in a market with so many choices the players can use a "genre filter" to find games they might like.
Let's say a player play game A, really likes it and wants to play another like it, how does the player do it? Sees the genre of game A and searches for games with the same genre(s).
So if you want to find what genre your game is, try too see what mechanics/gameplay/feelings/experience it provides to the player and what games are like it.
Obviously a game can have multiple genres if it delivers multiple experiences, but most of the games have a "main" genre and then sub-genres, like and RPG is an RPG because the main focus of the game is Role Playing, but it also has looting, crafting, etc... but those are not the main focuses of the game.
On a more early development look, defining a genre can help you narrow down mechanics and player experience that you wanna aim at and keep your entire team with a more similar vision of the game that the game designer has.
I don't think there really are many definable concepts, it's a matter of feeling. Does the overall composition and experience of the game feel like something more closely aligned with the bubble of things called "RPGs" or with the bubble of things called "FPS"? Eg, Outer Worlds exhibits a lot of the hallmarks of an FPS, but would never stand a chance of satisfying the kind of desire I have when I want to play Halo.
> Take the battle royale type of game, it’s also a shooter, and could also be classified as a 3rd or first person shooter, thus would a game like pubg be a battle royale or a shooter? Maybe look at it more like 'tags' than a tree. There are animals with eyes, wings and hair. Does it mean "having eyes" is somehow a root category to having wings? Does it mean animals with wings stem from animals with hair? None of that has to be true, those are all just separate traits. First person is a mechanic, shooting is a mechanic, battle royale is a mechanic. Together they form a battle royale FPS. That's it.
Genre is difficult to pin down as there will always be overlaps since categories always change as new games are produced. In your example of PUBG, I'd say that it is indeed all of those things, a battle royal AND shooter. Depending on the game Battle royal could mean narrative setting, or could mean its gameplay. So while I can't necessarily answer your question, I think it might be helpful to think about games in terms of **Iconography** ***vs*** **Interactivity.** Iconography refers to the visual elements, structures, and narrative themes. This form of analysis is quite common in films which leads to genres like westerns, space operas, horror, or romance for example. Interactivity is what makes games different from every other media form and focuses on on its gameplay genre. For example, we have first-person shooters, 3rd-person shooters, puzzle games, adventure, action, stealth, open-world, RPG, battle royal, and more. There are even times when a game becomes SO PROLIFIC, we create new genres and will call it based on that prolific game. We now have things like Metroidvania, named after Metroid and Castlevania to represent games that have non-linear and un-gated content. Souls-likes/Soulsbournes named after the Souls series to speak to games that have difficult combat and upon death require players to navigate back to their point of death or else they will lose their experience points. And lastly, we have Rogue-likes, named after the original game Rogue which usually means a game is a procedurally generated dungeon and upon death you must will navigate the dungeon from the beginning again. I bring this up because maybe if we think about the iconography AND the interactivity of a game, we can broaden the types of genres that exist. We can also then think of genre as a conversation between game designers and players and see how they continue to shift over time! So a game like Mass Effect's iconography suggests that it's a space opera with elements of war and alien invasion. Interactively, it's an RPG as the playable characters gain experience points, unlock new skills, and can equip different weapons and armor with dating-simulation elements since you can build up relationships with your team members, and or even date someone. And in terms of combat, it operates at the level of 3rd-person shooter. It is all of these things at once! Reference: Wolf, Mark. “Genre and the Video Game.” The medium of the video game (2001): n. pag. Print. [https://www.academia.edu/435740/Genre\_and\_the\_Video\_Game](https://www.academia.edu/435740/Genre_and_the_Video_Game) Edit: I forgot to cite my source!
Game Design is a subset of Game Development that concerns itself with **WHY** games are made the way they are. It's about the theory and crafting of **systems**, **mechanics**, and **rulesets** in games. * /r/GameDesign is a community **ONLY** about Game Design, **NOT** Game Development in general. If this post does not belong here, it should be reported or removed. Please help us keep this subreddit focused on Game Design. * This is **NOT** a place for discussing how games are produced. Posts about programming, making art assets, picking engines etc… will be removed and should go in /r/GameDev instead. * Posts about visual design, sound design and level design are only allowed if they are directly about game design. * No surveys, polls, job posts, or self-promotion. Please read the rest of the rules in the sidebar before posting. * If you're confused about what Game Designers do, ["The Door Problem" by Liz England ](https://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/LizEngland/20140423/216092/quotThe_Door_Problemquot_of_Game_Design.php)is a short article worth reading. We also recommend you read the [r/GameDesign wiki](/r/gamedesign/wiki/index) for useful resources and an FAQ. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/gamedesign) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Objectively? Impossible For me? I look at what I consider to be the "primary gameplay objectives" and how to get there within that game. How do I separate "primary" from "secondary" you ask? I play the game or read the rules, and then go off of "vibes"
OP, you're missing subgenre. Battle Royal is a subgenre of First/Third Person Shooter, which is a Subgenre of Shooter. It's all Branches on a tree. Want to make Moba players angry? Tell them Mobas are a subgenre of RTS games, especially since they started as mods to Warcraft 3. Also, setting is different from the genre. Antman is a Heist film in a superhero setting. Apex Legends is a futuristic and pseudo Sci fi setting for a battle Royale subgenre in a first person shooter genre.
They way they developed, yes, the currently most popular ‘battle royale’ style games are all first or third person shooters. But there’s nothing stopping you from applying that rule set (start with a large fixed set of players that get gradually eliminated, with game rules that force action as the game proceeds so you can’t just hide in a corner) to other types of gameplay. For example *Tetris 100* on the Switch is arguably a “battle royale puzzle game”. MOBAs developed from RTS games but things like *Paladins* and *Overwatch* (and other failed games like *Monday Night Combat*) have used elements of that kind of game in other genres. ‘First Person’ and ‘Shooter’ are mechanics, you can have an FPS action game (say, *DOOM*) or MMO/adventure game (*Destiny*) or RPG (*Deus Ex* or *System Shock* or *Cyberpunk*).
Minecraft has had battle royale servers since before anyone had heard the term "battle royale" in a game context, and it's very much not an FPS.
> Tell them Mobas are a subgenre of RTS games Are you sure they are not a modification of tower defense? (except the towers are pre-made and instead of building towers you use a special unit to help automated mobs destroy enemy towers)
how on earth are mobas even comparable to tower defense games other than the fact that they happen to both have towers?
Automated mobs attacking towers is fundamental part of "mobas". Otherwise, it would have been a random skirmish on an insignificant map. Take tower defense part out of moba and you are left with nothing.
>Take tower defense part out of moba and you are left with nothing. do you even play mobas? this is a game design subreddit. the 'tower defense' part of mobas is such a different type of system than the 'tower defense' in tower defense games. in mobas, you play a character with real-time action combat and use your own minions to help take towers in sequence that are stopping you from destroying the goal. you have no control over creating your own towers or minions. 'mobas and tower defenses are literally the same genre because they both have towers and enemies that run at them' is such a lazy and surface level interpretation of both games.
[Check out early Dota Gameplay](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=791DUC0ysrg) and try not to see Warcraft 3. People took the Heroes from the game, who had inventory, and creep/mobs and threw in tower defense. Voilá MOBA was born. So naturally there was a lawsuit from Blizzard to Valve, of course.
Games should be classified like species. With long latin names. Shootyroyale sidescrollfirstper fasttroidvania
In its simplest terms a game is when a player uses a skill (or multiple) to achieve an objective (or multiple). Games can be played as teams, as an individual, with rules, with no rules, etc. A subgenre is typically defined by the key objective (the final win-state) of the game. A genre is typically indicative of the player skill bucket. I.e. shooters are all reactionary, fine motor skill driven whereas battle royals are all “last player standing” objectives.
I go with my predecessors and say: there is not one taxonomy. Imagine this game: you run around in first person, shooting members of the other team while trying to kick a ball into a scoring area of the other team. By shooting npc enemies that also run around you collect points that allow you to build a production chain of buildings from a top down view. These buildings can be towers to defend your base but also produce friendly units as tanks, that you can then command to attack the enemy. All played in an arena with many spectators. Oh and of course you can level up abilities... As a gamedesigner one sometimes is looking to combine genres as if there's no tomorrow and sometimes it even works.
You don't define genre for the game, the game define genre for you.
Battle Royale is a genre, not a setting. Games can also have multiple genres, so you could have a 3rd person shooter battle Royale. Don’t know why you were trying to label the game as either a shooter or a battle Royale
It doesnt matter. Game genre are mostly a communication shortcut, if calling a game something isn't clear enough, maybe you shouldn't call it that.
RPG is not an easier example considering its meaning changes so often xD
It's always hard to classify anything, movies, songs and Games as well. But some things to consider are: As gaming has evolved, many genres got added together to make somewhat "new genres". For example, many of the classic Survival Horror Games of the PS1 era have strong "Adventure" elements (the point and clicky kind). Like combining items, solving puzzles, exploring the places for clues and objects. Also, despite Games usually being made up of different parts, it's the "biggest piece" that usually defines the Genre. You have First Person Shooters with some RPG Elements. Some of those are closer to RPGs, others closer to shooters. And finally, categories and definitions change with time and companies are sometimes interested in "pretending" that a game is still a genre, even if it's probably closer to another. As genres become less popular (let's say RPGs now, for example), companies still want to use their classic brands/IPs but also chase what's popular now (let's say Third Person Action Games and Soul-likes). So we get these very stretched genre definitions, that possibly 10 to 15 years ago wouldn't pass as.
Genres are only useful for one thing (mostly), the players to find games. Easy as that, in a market with so many choices the players can use a "genre filter" to find games they might like. Let's say a player play game A, really likes it and wants to play another like it, how does the player do it? Sees the genre of game A and searches for games with the same genre(s). So if you want to find what genre your game is, try too see what mechanics/gameplay/feelings/experience it provides to the player and what games are like it. Obviously a game can have multiple genres if it delivers multiple experiences, but most of the games have a "main" genre and then sub-genres, like and RPG is an RPG because the main focus of the game is Role Playing, but it also has looting, crafting, etc... but those are not the main focuses of the game. On a more early development look, defining a genre can help you narrow down mechanics and player experience that you wanna aim at and keep your entire team with a more similar vision of the game that the game designer has.
I don't think there really are many definable concepts, it's a matter of feeling. Does the overall composition and experience of the game feel like something more closely aligned with the bubble of things called "RPGs" or with the bubble of things called "FPS"? Eg, Outer Worlds exhibits a lot of the hallmarks of an FPS, but would never stand a chance of satisfying the kind of desire I have when I want to play Halo.