Homongenized Genre's

I love MMO’s. I’m not sure when it happened but they are the games I prefer to play most of all. Second would be a tie for old school RPG’s and Turn Based Strategy games. It’s not that I can’t handle twitch based games, it’s that I prefer a battle of wits.

Back in Starcraft: Brood wars heyday I was on a 2v2 team ranked 2nd on IGN. I use to spend 3 or 4 hours a night doing rail gun duels on Quake Arena. I’m no newbie to games that require reflexes… I just prefer the purity of a game whose only goal is testing your mental ability.

The last 6 years I’ve noticed a trend in the MMO market and strategy gaming market. MMO’s, RPG’s and Strategy games have slowly shed their chains of slow methodical combat and traded it for the flashy action packed combat style of action games. In a way this is a good thing. It opens up the genre’s to people who like a wider variety of games. An Action RPG will get people who like action games and people who like RPGs, in a sense doubling your possible consumer base.

The problem I am having with these types of games is that they are losing their identity. First Person Shooter games are getting character development much like standard RPG’s and RPG’s are getting combat that requires quick reactions and accurate timing. As these development trends continue I feel we are going to reach a point where there is only one homogenized genre.

The game developers are slowly pillaging all the uniqueness from games by targeting their games for the broadest market available. I fear it’s only going to get worse before it gets better.