It sounds crazy, but perhaps genre should be seen differently when viewed in the realm of video games. Of course, for all intents and purposes I am merely playing devil's advocate when I broach the topic from this side, but the thought came to mind about how we should approach genre in video games, whether we should consider taking up a new side instead of following the norms of already established conventional media like movies and books.
This thought is primarily motivated by the wish for video games to be differentiated from movies, considering the current trend throughout its life cycle of developers wishing to emulate movies (and whether that as a deal breaker for you is up to you to decide). But I believe that 'first-person shooter' and the like can be classified as a genre, especially taken at face value - your point of view is through the characters eyes and more often than not you have a weapon or a tool of some sort. Obviously, this does not apply to all games set in the eyes of your character but I genuinely believe that the mechanics in place are unique enough artistically to merit their own categories. Perhaps it sounds esoteric to classify some video games by where the camera simply is (after all, there is first-person and third-person, but how would you go about creating a second-person video game?) and maybe I am just considering what I myself as a gamer for a majority of my life have come to expect out of video games without even thinking about how we perceive their genres.
My argument could also be put forth as simply adding this new type of genre to the list - with the myriad of games both coming out in staggering numbers utilising the first-person and third-person modes it makes sense to me to put the moniker as a new way of classifying video games. Judging a game by their merits of camera placement can provide a little insight or idea into the way the video game is being played... or perhaps it seems really shallow. You make the call.
This thought is primarily motivated by the wish for video games to be differentiated from movies, considering the current trend throughout its life cycle of developers wishing to emulate movies (and whether that as a deal breaker for you is up to you to decide). But I believe that 'first-person shooter' and the like can be classified as a genre, especially taken at face value - your point of view is through the characters eyes and more often than not you have a weapon or a tool of some sort. Obviously, this does not apply to all games set in the eyes of your character but I genuinely believe that the mechanics in place are unique enough artistically to merit their own categories. Perhaps it sounds esoteric to classify some video games by where the camera simply is (after all, there is first-person and third-person, but how would you go about creating a second-person video game?) and maybe I am just considering what I myself as a gamer for a majority of my life have come to expect out of video games without even thinking about how we perceive their genres.
My argument could also be put forth as simply adding this new type of genre to the list - with the myriad of games both coming out in staggering numbers utilising the first-person and third-person modes it makes sense to me to put the moniker as a new way of classifying video games. Judging a game by their merits of camera placement can provide a little insight or idea into the way the video game is being played... or perhaps it seems really shallow. You make the call.