Playing thatgamecompany’s Flower got the cogs in my skull whirring. Nothing too profound, a mere question in fact.
“What the cock am I actually playing here?”
Try to categorize Flower and you might come up with a completely new genre of game. Some might call it a puzzler but if locating flowers constitutes as a conundrum then I should be getting achievement points for using the kettle in the morning. The creators describe it as a ‘poetic adventure’ but I would class it as a third…wind…floater…(TWF! You heard it here first.) and I would put some serious money on us never seeing one of those before. So all credit to thatgamecompany for giving us something truly unique.
A trek into the cockney world of Fable 2 also prompted some cog movement. In danger of straining the few brain cells residing behind my temple I began to ponder further. If asked you’d probably refer to Fable as an role playing game or RPG. As is common of most games you assume the role of a person or thing. If that was why we put these games in that category then about 90% of all games would be RPGs. However we consider games to be RPGs if they use the mechanic of progressing a character via gaining experience and making decisions. Nevertheless by definition nearly all games require us to take control of someone other than our self and we are therefore role playing. Who came up with these damned rules eh? So lets rename this genre. I decree that the common RPG should now be known as a Experience Gaining Levelling Up Decision Making Role Playing Game or EGLUDMRPG. Lovely, rolls off the tongue doesn’t it?
So lets keep questioning these genres, the next bone I’ve got to pick lies in the world of survival horror. I’m talking your Resident Evils and your Silent Hills, your Dead Spaces and your Dead Risings, your Fears and your Bioshocks.
“Hold up there Sue Barker what were those last two again?”
Yes indeed, I am finding scruples with these definitions again. Two games where you are surrounded by horror and what are you doing? You’re trying to stay alive and some might call that surviving. The only difference between these two games and the latter ones is that the ones known as survival horror games are third person. Restricting this genre to the third person just doesn’t seem fair so its time for some more renaming. Fear and Bioshock you are now in the category of first person shooter survival horror (FPSSH) and as for the rest you will consequently be known as third person shooter survival horrors (TPSSH).
So gone is the age of RPGs and FPSs, this is now the decade of EGLUDMRPGs and FPSSHs! Reckon it’ll catch on? Probably not and you know why. Those names sound bloody stupid. Thats why. Oh well. At least I tried.
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