Genre and game studies: Toward a critical approach to video game genres

Abstract

This article examines the notion of genre in video games. The main argument is that the market-based categories of genre that have been developed in the context of video games obscure the new medium's crucial defining feature, by dividing them into categories (loosely) organized by their similarities to prior forms of mediation. The article explores the inherent tension between the conception of video games as a unified new media form, and the current fragmented genre-based approach that explicitly or implicitly concatenates video games with prior media forms. This tension reflects the current debate, within the fledgling discipline of Game Studies, between those who advocate narrative as the primary tool for understanding video games, “narratologists,” and those that oppose this notion, “ludologists.” In reference to this tension, the article argues that video game genres be examined in order to assess what kind of assumptions stem from the uncritical acceptance of genre as a descriptive category. Through a critical examination of the key game genres, this article will demonstrate how the clearly defined genre boundaries collapse to reveal structural similarities between the genres that exist within the current genre system, defined within the context of visual aesthetic or narrative structure. The inability of the current genre descriptions to locate and highlight these particular features suggests that to privilege the categories of the visual and narrative is a failure to understand the medium. The article concludes by suggesting that the tension between “ludology” and “narratology” can be more constructively engaged by conceptualizing video games as operating in the interplay between these two taxonomies of genre.

Action video game training for cognitive enhancement

“…Little to nothing can be inferred by merely knowing that an individual plays 'video games,' as 'video games' can mean anything from simplistic matching of colored blocks on a mobile device up through navigating highly complex, laboriously designed virtual worlds on the newest consoles [15]. Researchers across psychology have thus typically focused their investigations at the level of specific game genres, wherein games are grouped by, among other things, commonalities in format, content, dynamics, and mechanics.…”

The influence of strategy video game and its background music on cognitive control

“…The player has to manipulate the simulation as it progresses through time in order to get the result with the most utility. So this may involve long periods of surveillance, where the player makes no direct interventions [35]. That is to say, the players in strategy video games even cannot lower their vigilance for a moment until they finished the whole game.…”

“…It is different from other genres of video games that emphasize the ongoing play of contextualization [35]. The strategy video game requires the constant attention and performance of the player, and that require a more distant approach characterized by intervention [21].…”

“…That is to say, the players in strategy video games even cannot lower their vigilance for a moment until they finished the whole game. So they has to constantly perform kinaesthetic actions, manipulate the controller, following the visual cues supplied by the screen [35]. This highly and persistently concentrated mind state will inevitable exert a much more significant influence on cognitive control ability, especially on proactive control ability [29,33].…”

“…Taken as a whole, the field of video games can hardly be considered as uniform-or consistent [35]. In view of this kind of situation, different researchers deployed different types of video games when examining their influence on the cognitive control ability.…”