Maybe we should have a discussion about the genre categories used in C4A.
I think what we need is:
- nothing too complicated, just a flat space (no hierarchy/tree/DAG).
- no more than a dozen or so genres, should easily fit on one screen
- ideally, every genre is defined in such a way that they all have about the same number of games, not one huge and very general genre that contains nearly everything
- it should be very easy for anyone to classify games they know in a genre, so genres need to have as little overlap as possible and as specific names as possible. If I'm looking for something like OpenTyrian, I don't want to have to try "shooter" and "action" first before finding it in "arcade".
- it's no problem for me to have an "Other" genre (but it shouldn't be bigger than the other genres)
So I don't like genre names like "Action" or "Arcade" because they're very generic and overlapping. I also don't like genre names like "BlocksGame" or "CardGame" because they are too specific. I don't like having both "Fighting" and "Beat 'em up", because the distinction between those two is too subtle. Same with "Platformer" and "Run 'n' gun".
I don't have a specific proposal for genre names at this moment, but I would like to open the discussion about it, and perhaps it makes sense to agree on the design principles first (like the one I gave above) before we get started.
I think what we need is:
- nothing too complicated, just a flat space (no hierarchy/tree/DAG).
- no more than a dozen or so genres, should easily fit on one screen
- ideally, every genre is defined in such a way that they all have about the same number of games, not one huge and very general genre that contains nearly everything
- it should be very easy for anyone to classify games they know in a genre, so genres need to have as little overlap as possible and as specific names as possible. If I'm looking for something like OpenTyrian, I don't want to have to try "shooter" and "action" first before finding it in "arcade".
- it's no problem for me to have an "Other" genre (but it shouldn't be bigger than the other genres)
So I don't like genre names like "Action" or "Arcade" because they're very generic and overlapping. I also don't like genre names like "BlocksGame" or "CardGame" because they are too specific. I don't like having both "Fighting" and "Beat 'em up", because the distinction between those two is too subtle. Same with "Platformer" and "Run 'n' gun".
I don't have a specific proposal for genre names at this moment, but I would like to open the discussion about it, and perhaps it makes sense to agree on the design principles first (like the one I gave above) before we get started.