Soap Box

I’ve never seen a group of people more inclined to use labels than the blogging community. They then take those labels and try and morph the definitions into something that supports their ideal values of what makes a good game.

Labels and definitions aren’t the building blocks of a quality game. They are ways of defining the characteristics of the game so producers and developers can target their marketing better. You can’t claim that Halo is a FPS, First Person Shooter, and then in the same sentence claim that Dark Void isn’t because of the quality difference of the games.

We don’t get to choose which games are assigned to which genre category based on the quality of these games. The gaming community needs to understand that there will be bad games and good games that come from the same genre and we can’t alter the requirements of that genre to weed out the lesser games.

The purpose of genre is marketing, remember that, and hold on to that. No matter what the developers decide to label the game it will not ensure its success or failure. The entire purpose of labels is to help new customers find a game they may like based on similarities with other games. So everyone let’s step off our soap boxes together. Labels don’t define a game, they just help people get an idea of what to expect when shopping.