Pet peeve: games using other games as descriptors
Pet peeve: games using other games as descriptors
This is admittedly not that big of a deal I guess but it drives me nuts how often modern games describe themselves like: a zelda-esque soulsborne roguelike metroidvania- or something equally indecipherable to anyone outside of the entrenched Gamer demographic. I am thoroughly "search action"-pilled...we really gotta use words better!
It has its uses. If you tell me a game is a soulslike I know I can avoid it
Every genre should be called [something]-em-up
Shoot-em-up
Explore-em-up
City planning-em-up
Cute-em-up is my favorite genre
Yes
Untitled Goose Game is definitely a Honk em up
I’ll accept metroidvania because it’s specific enough to differentiate it from “combat sidescroller” without using too many words, but when it gets too wordy that’s silly.
“Roguelike” is different in that it doesn’t describe gameplay directly but rather replayability so that also gets a bit of a pass
“Roguelike” is different in that it doesn’t describe gameplay directly but rather replayability so that also gets a bit of a pass
cries in traditional roguelike fan
"search action" means nothing to me
it sounds like something a D&D character can do once per turn
When you take the Search action, you devote your attention to finding something. Depending on the nature of your search, the GM might have you make a Wisdom (Perception) check or an Intelligence (Investigation) check.
From experience, most players and DMs interpret this wildly differently, although I can't exactly blame them because in 5th edition the rules for perception, hiding, invisibility, and searching are all split up and located in different parts of the book.
Soulslike pixel art metroidvania with spelunky roguelite deck building stardew valley vibes
What's even worse is when the descriptors don't really make sense. Like, "It's the Mariah Carey of medieval torture devices" or something.
How else would you name the genres? The last two (arguably last three) terms you give are pretty specific to the extent that you can't give it a self-evident name like FPS, RTS, Racing, etc.
I don't particularly have an answer, but games don't seem to be more or less special to me than any other medium of expression, and books aren't going around calling themselves potterlikes or whatever (maybe the critics/pundits do, but that's not where my complaint goes)
As mentioned I do really like "search action" to replace metroidvania.
I think this is just kind of how language works. Most words are just referencing other words that were ultimately made up by someone and used often enough to become part of language. The problem is that gaming, as we know it, is such a novel medium that we don't have all the language to describe things yet, and we keep coming up with new things. Most of the "X-like" terms are used to describe genres that are relatively new, even by gaming standards. The soulslike genre, for example, has only existed since 2009. You have to give language time to develop, and there has to be a reason to replace perfectly good language. Terms like "metroidvania" or "soulslike" are used not because people are lazy, but because they're effective at conveying a specific concept better than other words. That's what we want from language, the ability to communicate clearly.
An example of this is the evolution of the term "Doom clone" into "first person shooter". Doom was the quintessential FPS, so it made sense to refer to other FPS games by referencing Doom. Once the genre saw enough success, novelty, and variety, it no longer made sense to reference a single game to describe them. Further, we now have a bunch of games made in the same style as the original Doom and Doom clones, but we call them "boomer shooters".
Language evolves organically and as-needed, and if "roguelike" or "soulslike" are useful and clear ways to communicate the concepts that they communicate then they'll probably stick around. When it's time to retire them, we'll have already moved on to different terms.
Well because JK Rowling didn’t innovate anything or have a feature tied to her brand unlike From Software. Eventually “souls like” or “rogue like” will just be no different than “cyberpunk” or “fantasy.”
I feel like the other side of the coin here is that if you don't describe games using other games, next to everything is just an open world adventure game, you gotta use other games as a reference point. At least everything AAA.
Superb video on how dumb that way of defining things are https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zrxN3_JHy0
Darksouls is the Ninja Gaiden of Oblivion-likes
But games are about gameplay and mechanics, and some games pioneered them. Every first person shooter was a doom clone until people decided to expand on the vocabulary. So far there are phrases or words to describe the mechanics of from software’s games holistically outside of “soulsborne” or “souls like”. Maybe a non English word that sounds intriguing might push it to newer descriptions, similar to “umami”. Or fuck it just create a new word.
Zelda is a bit different because it doesn’t necessarily do anything too notable these days in terms of uniqueness. So describing a game as “Zelda like” is similar to describing an action movie as “mission impossible like”
this is the Dark Souls of taxonomy posts
I'm like the one person in the world who dislikes Zelda games specifically so telling me the game is like Zelda makes me want to avoid it lol
Slay The Princess is the Dark Souls of Visual Novels with Bad Rats elements
Only tangentially related, anyone think we'll get dark souls themed magic cards? Since wotc/Hasbro is just turning ip, ink, glue, and paper into Monet ad infinitum and the playerbase are lil abuse piggies.
