Action Game Genre

Action game is a video game genre that emphasizes physical challenges, including hand-eye coordination and reaction-time. The genre includes diverse subgenres such as fighting games, shooter games, and platform games.

In an action game, the player typically controls the avatar of a protagonist. The avatar must navigate a game level, collecting objects, avoiding obstacles, and battling enemies with various attacks. At the end of a level or group of levels, the player must often defeat a large boss enemy that is larger and more challenging than other enemies. Enemy attacks and obstacles deplete the avatar's health and lives, and the game is over when the player runs out of lives. Alternatively, the player wins the game by finishing a sequence of levels. But many action games are unbeatable and have an indefinite number of levels, and the player's only goal is to maximize their score by collecting objects and defeating enemies.

History

Almost all the earliest video games were action games. Space Invaders from 1978, Asteroids from 1979, and Pac-Man from 1980 are some of the earliest video games, and have since become iconic examples from the action genre. Paperboy was released in 1984, and managed to turn the task of delivering newspapers into an action game, thus demonstrating the versatility of the genre. Once Robotron: 2084 was released in arcades in 1982, it became an instant classic in the shooter subgenre.

Although Doom was not the earliest first-person shooter, it became a worldwide classic for its emotional tone, and for breaking away from rectangular rooms and flat floors.

Defining elements

The action genre includes any game where the majority of challenges are physical tests of skill. Action games can sometimes incorporate other challenges such as races, puzzles, or collecting objects, but they are not central to the genre. Players may also encounter tactical and exploration challenges, but these games first-and-foremost require high reaction speed and good hand-eye coordination. The player is often under time pressure, and there is not enough time for complex strategic planning. In general, faster action games are more challenging. Action games may sometimes involve puzzle solving, but they are usually quite simple because the player is under immense time pressure.

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Adventure Game Genre

An adventure game is a video game in which the player assumes the role of protagonist in an interactive story that is driven by exploration andpuzzle-solving instead of physical challenges such as combat. The term originates from the 1970s computer game Adventure and relates to the style of gameplay pioneered in that game, rather than the kind of story being told.

The adventure genre's focus on story allows it to draw heavily from other narrative-based media, such as literature and film. Adventure games encompass a wide variety of literary genres, including fantasy, science fiction, mystery, horror, and comedy. Nearly all adventure games are designed for a single player, since the heavy emphasis on story and character makes multi-player design difficult.^{[citation needed]} Because these games require strong characters and plots, character development tends to follow literary conventions of personal and emotional growth, rather than growth that affects gameplay.

In the Western world, the genre's popularity peaked during the late 1980s and mid 1990s when many considered it to be among the most technically advanced genres, and it is now sometimes considered to be a niche genre. According to the Entertainment Software Association, in 2007 Adventure Games comprised 4.3% of Video Game Super Genres by units sold in the US (up from 3.4% in 2006) and 5% of best-selling Computer Game Super Genres (down from 5.7% in 2006), although it is not clear how the Super Genre was defined. In East Asia on the other hand, adventure games continue to be popular in the form of visual novels, which make up nearly 70% of PC games released in Japan.

History Early development The first adventure games to appear were text adventures (later called interactive fiction), which typically use a verb-noun parser to interact with the user. These evolved from earlymainframe titles like Hunt the Wumpus (Gregory Yob) and Adventure (Crowther and Woods) into commercial games which were playable on personal computers, such as Infocom's widely popular Zork series. Some companies that were important in bringing out text adventure games were Adventure International, Infocom, Level 9 Computing, Magnetic Scrolls and Melbourne House, with Infocom being the most well known. Older adventure games told the story as if the player himself inhabited the game world. The games did not specify any details about the protagonist, allowing the player to imagine him- or herself as the avatar. Sub-genres Text adventure Text adventures, also known as Interactive Fiction, convey the game's story through passages of text, revealed to the player in response to typed instructions. Early text adventures, such as Adventure,"Hugo's House of Horrors" and Scott Adams' games, used a simple verb-noun parser to interpret these instructions, allowing the player to interact with objects at a basic level, for example by typing "get key" or "open door". Later text adventures, and modern interactive fiction, can interpret far more complex sentences. Graphic adventure Graphic adventures are adventure games that use graphics to convey the environment to the player. Games under the graphic adventure banner may have a variety of input types, from text parsers to touch screen interfaces. Point-and-click adventures are a common type of graphic adventure in which the player uses a pointer, typically a mouse, to interact with the environment and solve puzzles. This input method remains popular in the genre, and is well-suited to interaction with the environment, as opposed to direct control schemes which emphasize character control. Puzzle adventure Puzzle adventures are adventure games that put a strong emphasis on puzzle solving, at the expense of elements such as item gathering, item use, character interaction, or plot. Instead, they typically emphasize exploration and deciphering the proper use of complex mechanisms, often resembling Rube Goldberg machines. The plot of these games can be obscure, and may be conveyed only through interaction with the puzzles. Many puzzle adventures are played from a first person perspective with the player "moving" between still pre-rendered 3D images, sometimes combined with short animations or video. Examples of the genre include Schizm, Atlantis: The Lost Tales, Riddle of the Sphinx,Zack & Wiki: Quest for Barbaros' Treasure, and Myst, which pioneered this game style. One kind of puzzle adventure is the Escape the room sub-genre, consisting of short games where the sole object is to find a way to escape from a room. These games are typically implemented in a graphic point-and-click style, which (owing to their popularity on the Internet) are often delivered in Adobe Flash format. Examples of the sub-genre include Submachine-series, Mystery of time and space and Crimson room. Visual novel An image of a visual novel: Visual novels are commonly characterized with dialog boxes and sprites denoting the speaker. A visual novel (ビジュアルノベル bijuaru noberu?) is an adventure game featuring mostly static graphics, usually with anime-style art. As the name might suggest, they resemble mixed-media novels or tableau vivant stage plays. Visual novels are especially prevalent in Japan, where they make up nearly 70% of PC games released.[7] They are rarely produced for video game consoles, but the more popular games are sometimes ported to systems such as the Dreamcast or the PlayStation 2. The market for visual novels outside of East Asia, however, is limited. Visual novels overlap with Japanese adventure games in many ways, including a menu-based interface for all navigation and interaction, reminiscent of ICOM games. Japanese adventure games very seldom feature on-screen avatars or inventory based puzzles in general, and visual novels have an even further diminished emphasis on puzzles, or indeed gameplay. Instead these titles are driven by narrative, focusing almost exclusively on character interaction, in a structure similar to a Choose Your Own Adventure story. Visual novels frequently feature romantic storylines in which the main character may end up with one of several possible mates. This premise is similar to dating sims, but they are distinct from them in that they lack stats-based sim elements in which the player builds up his character, instead relying on simple choices of dialog, actions, or navigation. Visual novels have been a staple of PC software sales in Japan and other East Asian countries for over a decade, so much so that popular titles are open ported to consoles, and some even have famous manga and anime series based upon them; such titles include Kanon (1999), Air (2000) and Clannad (2004) by Key; Rumbling Hearts(2001) and School Days (2005) by Age; Higurashi no Naku Koro ni (2002) by 07th Expansion; and Fate/stay night (2004) by Type-Moon. Visual novels are sometimes called "dating sims" in the West, because many visual novels track statistics that the player must build in order to advance the plot. This is also because many visual novels permit a variety of endings, allowing more dynamic reactions to the player's actions than a typical linear adventure plot. The cultural differences between Western and Japanese adventure games are closely related to those in role-playing games, such as the storyline being more linear and tightly-scripted in the latter.

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Real-time Strategy Genre

Real-time strategy (RTS) games are a genre of computer wargames which do not progress incrementally in turns. Brett Sperry is credited with coining the term to market his video game, Dune II.

In an RTS, as in other wargames, the participants position and maneuver units and structures under their control to secure areas of the map and/or destroy their opponents' assets. In a typical RTS it is possible to create additional units and structures during the course of a game. This is generally limited by a requirement to expend accumulated resources. These resources are in turn garnered by controlling special points on the map and/or possessing certain types of units and structures devoted to this purpose. More specifically, the typical game of the RTS genre features resource gathering, base building, in-game technological development and indirect control of units.

The tasks a player must perform to succeed at an RTS can be very demanding, and complex user interfaces have evolved to cope with the challenge. Some features have been borrowed from desktop environments, most prominently the technique of "clicking and dragging" to select all units under a given area.^{[citation needed]}

Though some game genres share conceptual and gameplay similarities with the RTS template, recognized genres are generally not subsumed as RTS games. For instance, city-building games, construction and management simulations, and games of the real-time tactics variety are generally not considered to be "real-time strategy".

History

Precursors and early Genesis

The genre that is recognized today as "real-time strategy" emerged as a result of an extended period of evolution and refinement. Games that are today sometimes perceived as ancestors of the real-time strategy genre were never marketed or designed as such at the original date of publication. As a result, designating "early real-time strategy" titles is problematic because such games are being held up to modern standards. The genre initially evolved separately in the UK and North America, afterward gradually merging into a unified worldwide tradition.

In the UK, the genre's beginning can be traced to Stonkers by John Gibson, published in 1983 by Imagine Software for the ZX Spectrum, and Nether Earth published on ZX Spectrum in 1987. In North America, the first game retrospectively classified as real-time strategy by many sources is Rescue Raiders (1984), designed by Sir-Tech. It was followed by The Ancient Art of War at Sea in 1987, though Dani Bunten Berry's (of M.U.L.E fame) Cytron Masters (1982), developed by Ozark Softscape and released by SSI, also has been considered the earliest game of the genre.

Some writers list Intellivision's Utopia by Don Daglow (1982) as the first real-time strategy game. In Utopia two players build resources and carry out combat by proxy. It contains the direct-manipulation tactical combat now common in that the players can assume direct control over a PT boat and sink the opponents fishing boats. Another early example from the same year is Legionnaire on the Atari 8-bit family, written by Chris Crawford for Avalon Hill. This was effectively the opposite of Utopia, in that it offered a complete real-time tactical combat system with variable terrain and mutual-help concepts, but lacked any resource collection and economy/production concepts. As a result, this game might be better considered an early forerunner of the RTT (real-time tactics) genre.

Herzog Zwei for the Sega Genesis in 1989 is the earliest example of a game with a feature set that falls under the contemporary definition of modern RTS. In Herzog Zwei, though you only control one unit, the manner of control foreshadowed the point-and-click mechanic of later games. Also, control and destruction of bases was an important aspect of the game, as were the economic/production aspects of those bases.

Notable as well are early games like Mega Lo Mania by Sensible Software (1991) and Supremacy (also called Overlord - 1990). Although these two lacked direct control of military units, they both offered considerable control of resource management and economic systems. In addition, Mega Lo Mania has advanced technology trees that determine offensive and defensive prowess. Another early (1988) game, Carrier Command by Realtime Games, involved real-time responses to events in the game, requiring management of resources and control of vehicles. The early game Sim Ant by Maxis (1991) had resource gathering, and controlling an attacking army by having them follow a lead unit. However, it was with the release of Dune II fromWestwood Studios (1992) that real-time strategy became recognized as a distinct genre of video games.

Gameplay

In a typical real-time strategy game, the screen is divided into a map area displaying the game world and terrain, units, and buildings, and an interface overlay containing command and production controls and often a "radar" or "minimap" overview of the entire map.^{[citation needed]} The player is usually given an isometric perspective of the world, or a free-roaming camera from an aerial viewpoint for modern 3D games. The primary form of input is the mouse which is generally accompanied by keyboard shortcuts, with which commands are given and the map is scrolled.

Gameplay generally consists of the player being positioned somewhere in the map with a few units or a building that is capable of building other units/buildings. Often, but not always, the player must build specific structures to unlock more advanced units in the tech tree. However, all RTS games require the player to build an army (ranging from small squads of no more than 2 units, to literally hundreds of units) and using them to either defend themselves from a virtual form of Human wave attack or to eliminate enemies who poses bases with unit production capacities of their own.

Resource gathering is sometimes the main focus of the RTS games (Age of Empires II for example), but in other games where the tactics of how units are used in combat is more important (the Total War (series)'s Multiplayer matches are an example of this). Likewise having a maximum number of field able units is also a key element in some games (StarCraft for example), but not in others (the Command & Conquer game series is an example of this).

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Role Playing Game Genre

Role-playing video games (RPGs) form a loosely defined genre of computer and video games with origins in pen-and-paper role-playing games such as Dungeons & Dragons, borrowing much of their terminology, settings and game mechanics.

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Characteristics

Generally, the player controls a small number of game characters, usually called a party, and achieves victory by completing a series of quests. Players explore a game world, while solving puzzles and engaging in tactical combat. A key feature of the genre is that characters grow in power and abilities, and characters are typically designed by the player. RPGs rarely challenge a player's physical coordination, with the exception of action role-playing games.

These games usually have a highly developed story and setting, which is divided into a number of quests. Players control one or several characters by issuing commands, which is performed by the character at an effectiveness determined by that character's numeric attributes. These attributes increase each time a character gains a level, and a character's level goes up each time the player accumulates a certain amount of experience.

Role-playing video games borrow their genre terminology, settings and game mechanics found in early role-playing games such as Dungeons & Dragons. However, at least as of 2006, computers do not yet have the power to simulate nonplayer characters with the skill of a human game master. The behavior of these characters is instead hand-coded using scripts.Thus, role-playing video games borrow more of the core mechanics from early role-playing games without as much of the role-playing activity and character freedom.^{[citation needed]}

When compared to other gaming genres, role-playing games have a tendency to become more in-depth and complicated because of their levelling and skill systems. For example, thePokémon series of games has a vast economy of users who actually use mathematical calculations and various other obscure, hidden methods to give their Pokémon team an advantage over others. This likely was originally used by the game creators to support the shallower levelling. This behavior is most commonly seen in online battle veterans.^{[citation needed]}

Story and setting

The premise of most-roleplaying games tasks the player with saving the world, or whichever level of society is threatened. There are often twists and turns as the story progresses, such as the surprise appearance of estranged relatives, or enemies who become friends or vice versa. The game world tends to be set in a fantasy or science fiction universe, which allows players to do things they cannot do in real life and helps players suspend their disbelief about the rapid character growth. To a lesser extent, settings closer to the present day or near future are possible.

A strong story often provides half the entertainment in the game. Because these games have strong storylines, they can often make effective use of recorded dialog and voiceover narration. Players of these games tend to appreciate long cut scenes more than players of faster action games. While most games advance the plot when the player defeats an enemy or completes a level, role-playing games often progress the plot based on other important decisions. For example, a player may make the decision to join a guild, thus triggering a progression in the storyline that is usually irreversible. New elements in the story may also be triggered by mere arrival in an area, rather than completing a specific challenge. The plot is usually divided so that each game location is an opportunity to reveal a new chapter in the story.

Whereas non-electronic role-playing games have a human gamemaster who can dynamically react to a player's choices, role-playing video games are confined to a smaller set of actions and do not yet have the power to simulate nonplayer characters with the skill of a human game master. Thus, role-playing video games borrow more of the core mechanics from such games without as much of the role-playing activity. Characterization in video games is limited to conversations with non-player characters using a dialog tree, although multiplayer onlinerole-playing games are a notable exception where more role-play is possible. Saying the right things to the right non-player characters will elicit useful information for the player, and may even result in other rewards such as experience.

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