Games - Computer and video game genres

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	Games - Computer and video game genres

This is a listing of computer and video game genres with brief descriptions and examples from each genre. This list is by no means complete or comprehensive. As with nearly all varieties of genre classification, the matter of any individual computer or video game's specific genre is open to personal interpretation.

Within game studies there is a lack of consensus in reaching accepted formal definitions for game genres, some being more popular than others. For example, some schemas are largely semiotic, while others rely more strongly on configurative patterns of interface and mechanics. For an alternative arrangement of super- and sub-categories see the List of computer and video games by genre article.

Many of these categories overlap due to the subjective nature of many genres. For example, the Legend of Zelda series has elements of action, adventure and role-playing. This overlapping is further pronounced as more games are being produced and styled as hybrids, blending elements characteristic to one or more popular genres (for example, action-RPGs like Diablo, Vagrant Story, and Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance
).

Major genres

Action

Action games are perhaps the most basic of gaming genres, and certainly one of the broadest. Action games are characterized by gameplay with emphasis on actions that the player must perform reflexively, in realtime.

Fighting

Fighting or beat 'em up games emphasize one-on-one combat between two players, one of whom may be computer controlled. These games usually focus on martial arts and other forms of unarmed combat. Many of the movements employed by the fighters are usually dramatic and occasionally physically impossible. Less regularly the characters engaged in combat may also employ handheld weapons such as swords, and/or ranged attacks such as chi-based energy blasts.

This genre arose in the mid-1980s and became a phenomenon with the release of Street Fighter II; the genre is still popular today.

Notable series of games include Super Smash Brothers, King of Fighters, Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter, Soul Edge and Soul Calibur, Tekken, and Virtua Fighter.

First-person shooter

First-person shooters (FPS) emphasize shooting and combat from a specific perspective. Most FPSs place the player behind a gun or other weapon with the player's "hand" holding the weapon. This perspective is meant to give the player the feeling of "being there." However, many FPSs allow for the player to also play while viewing their character from some place outside the character's body. Most FPSs are very fast-paced and require quick reflexes on high difficulty levels.

The fast paced and three dimensional elements required to create an effective looking FPS made the genre technologically unattainable for most consumer hardware systems until the early 1990s. Wolfenstein 3D was the first widely known FPS, and Doom was the first major breakout in graphics; it used a number of clever techniques to make the game run fast enough to play on average machines.

Some of today's most popular FPS series are Half-Life, Doom, Unreal, Quake
, and Halo
.

Third-person shooters

Third-person shooters (TPS) employ a third person perspective for the player. This is normally just behind the game character, but it is sometimes an isometric perspective. Some shooters default to either a first- or third-person perspective but allow the player to choose between the two; others switch between the two at predetermined points in the game.

The Grand Theft Auto series falls into this genre, as do such games as Heretic II, Jet Force Gemini, Max Payne, Mafia, Oni and Shadow the Hedgehog.

Role-playing

Computer role-playing games (CRPGs or simply RPGs) often place the player in a fantasy or science fiction setting and drive the gameplay via a prominent storyline. Most of these games have the player acting in the role of a specific type of "adventurer" who specializes in a certain set of skills (such as combat, or casting magic spells). These various types of adventurer are called "classes" and players can normally control one or more of these characters.

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