Game Genre

CSE 788.14

Based on slides by Rolf Lakaemper (Temple)

Genres

ADVENTURES

Genres

• Adventure Games cast the player as the protagonist of a story in which the player participates

• Solving of puzzles, finding various artifacts

• Sub-genres:• Textbased• Graphical• Action

Genres

Textbased Adventures:

• First adventures

• Typical use of verb-noun phraser

• Earliest titles: ‘Hunt the Wumpus’ (G. Yob, 1972, Basic Game) and ‘Adventure’ (W. Crowther, 1972)

Genres

‘Hunt the Wumpus’

Essentially, you're wandering through a network of numbered caves, looking for the Wumpus; when it's nearby, you'll smell it, and you can try to kill it by shooting into one of the caves that's near you. If you wander into the same cave as the Wumpus, you die. Other hazards include bats--which pick you up and dump you somewhere else--and pits, which kill you.

source code !

Genres

…or ZORK (1981)

Genres

Hybrid Text / Graphic

The Hobbit (1982)

spectrum emulator

Genres

Graphic Adventure

• Graphical (point and click) Interface

• Introduced by Sierra Online’s King’s Quest 1984

• Lucas Arts: Maniac Mansion 1987

Genres

King’s Quest I (by Roberta Williams)

Genres

Action Adventure

• The only commercially successfully remaining action genre

• Reflex Based as well as puzzle solving

• Most prominent: The Legend of Zelda, Nintendo, 1986 (US: 1987 on NES)

Genres

Legend of Zelda, NES 1987

Genres

Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, Game Cube 2004

Genres

Educational Games

• Attempt to teach the user using the game as a vehicle

• Mostly target young users• Growing market !• …can also teach programming on a very

high though entertaining level, e.g. ‘Robot Wars’

• Best known: ‘Carmen Sandiego’

Genres

Example: ‘Alpha Beth’ 1985PLAY

Genres

Fighting (Beat’em Up)• Emphasize on one-on-one combat between

(two) players• Usually focus on martial arts• Usually as dramatic and physically

impossible as comical• Sophisticated interfaces !• Early title: ‘Way of the exploding fist’,

Melbourne House 1985 PLAY!

Genres

‘Way of the exploding fist’, Melbourne House 1985, Sinclair Spectrum

Version

Genres

‘Mortal Combat: Deadly Alliance’, Midway,2002, XBOX

Genres

First Person Shooter• Emphasize shooting and combat from a

specific perspective, most of them place player behind hand/weapon

• Tend to be scaringly violent

• 3D effect is usually enhanced by 3D-sound

• Most prominent: DOOM, Quake, HALO

• First title: …

Genres

Battlezone, ATARI, 1980

Genres

DOOMId software,1993

Genres

HALOXbox,Bungie Studios,2001

Genres

MMOGs (Massive Multiplayer Online Games)

• Subscription based virtual worlds for thousands of players to interact together

• Titles: Ultima Online, Everquest, World of Warcraft, etc.

Genres

Everquest

Genres

Platform Games

• Probably the best known genre, ‘the’ computer game

• Running, jumping etc. on 2D or 3D platform• ‘Side-scrollers’, usually (2d) from a side

perspective.• Most prominent: Mario Brothers, Donkey

Kong, Lode Runner, Sonic, …

Genres

Jumpman1983, ATARI 400

Genres

Donkey KongNintendo, 1981

Genres

Mario BrosNintendo, 1983

Genres

Super Mario BrosNintendo, 1985

Genres

PUZZLE Games

• Require the gamer to solve logic puzzles or navigate complex locations such as mazes.

• Genre crosses frequently with adventure and educational games

• Titles: Tetris, Sokoban, Boulderdash,…

Genres

Tetris1985 Alexey Pazhitnov, Vadim Gerasimov

Genres

Boulderdash1987 Databyte

Genres

RACING GAMES• Place player in the driver seat of vehicle

• Emerging in early 80s

• Extremely popular

• Various input devices

• Titles: OutRun, MarioKart,…

Genres

OutRunSEGA, 1986

Genres

MarioKart Double DashNintendo, 2004

Genres

Role Playing• Player acts as adventurer who specializes

in certain skills

• Emerged from board (pencil&paper) role playing games

• Usually science fiction or fantasy setting

• Titles: Ultima, Diablo, …

Genres

ULTIMA 1• 1980• Written in basic• 3000 lines of code• Memory takes less than one texture in

current version…

Genres

ULTIMA 1, 1980

Genres

ULTIMA 9, 1999

Genres

Fixed Shooters

• The classic 2D shooters

• Space Invaders, Galaga, R-Type, …

Genres

Space Invaders

Galaga

Genres

Simulation

• Aim to simulate a specific activity (e.g. flying an airplane / running a company) as realistically as possible

• Usually time consuming to play, huge manuals etc.

• Titles: Little Comp. People, MS Flight Sim., The Sims, Medieval,Warcraft,…

• The SIMS is the most popular game ever !

Genres

Little Computer PeopleActivision, 1985, C64

Genres

The SIMSBill Wright,Maxis, 2000

Genres

Sports

Sports simulation, of course.

Genres

Winter GamesEPYX, 1983,C64

Genres

Strategy

• Focus on careful planning and skillful resource management

• Thinking games• Often turn based• Usually war strategy• Titles: M.U.L.E., Civilization, War Craft,…

Genres

M.U.L.EEA, 1983

Genres

Civilization 1Sid Meier, Microprose,1991, DOS

Genres

WarCraft IIIBlizzard, 2003, PC

Genres

Traditional

• Board Games

• Card Games

• ETC