Ooookay, here we go. Nonsensical tl;dr incoming!
Yeah, I was more pointing to the idea that we had a lot of interesting ideas last generation- whether the actual product was good or not- though not necessarily anything that sent waves. Which is a shame, I suppose, but when we live in this age were doing something truly different can be a damning prospect as a bigger name company...well, it makes sense.
True; doing something even
slightly different causes waves of outrage still. People do not like change. Change is bad. Always. More of the same, or else! This idea that genres can be perfected with a single game is one that is still infuriatingly prevalent amongst both gamers and developers, although I suppose that's the nature of series: you get a few changes between each instalment, but that continuity is what makes it a series, rather than just a string of titles by the same developer. It's not a bad thing in and of itself - if it ain't broke, don't fix it; improve on it - but it attaches this godawful stigma to the series and brings with it a barrel of expectations that MUST be met or there is going to be hell to pay. One game typically sets the bar for the whole series as well, which in my opinion holds the development of future games back, as it stifles the creativity of developers...but I digress.
Notable changes in series spark fury amongst self-entitled fans. I mean, look at the reaction to Wind Waker's cel-shaded graphics when it was first released....it was the end of Zelda. That was it. That one turned out to be a moderate success though; the game was great and it even spawned a couple more titles in the same format; hell, Toon Link has become pretty well established by this point. But then you've got games like FFXIII...ah, FFXIII. Sure, I bash this game to hell and back, but not for the reasons a lot of people do: my complaints are with the story and the characters, NOT the gameplay. Linearity gets thrown about a lot in relation to FFXIII...but FF has been a linear series for years; the freedom you have is an illusion, as you ultimately have to go to one point to advance the story.
But with FFXIII, Square Enix DID try something different - they provided a story-focused RPG, cutting out things like towns entirely to get you from Point A to Point B as fast as possible. People praised PS1/PS2 FF games for the story more than they did the gameplay; FFXIII seemed to try and push you towards the story - the thing people were playing the game for - as quickly and efficiently as possible. The core gameplay was still there; it had the ATB system, the levelling system in the Crystarium; sidequests, and many other things you would associate with RPGs. It just funnelled you down corridors towards the next story point for 75% of the game. If it was released now, in the wake of these episodic titles and so many other games that classify as RPGs and have streamlined progression, it wouldn't have caused such a fuss. But at the time, it was a different approach, and it was
satanic.
I suppose, considering that, it isn't surprising that Nintendo have had this "more of the same" attitude towards their bigger titles for years, and you rarely see any deviations in big-name series like Call of Duty, Final Fantasy, etc. Even the smallest of things gets picked up on and criticised, and when the masses gravitate towards one particular title and hoist it up on a pedestal - FFVII, OOT, etc - deviating too much from that is the equivalent of committing financial suicide. Far safer, far easier, far more profitable, to just give the fans what they clearly want. Even if what they don't want they might enjoy more. Nope. Change is bad!
Also, ideas are hard, and genres are getting a little too established. I mean, I like this idea that you can say the name of a genre and you'll have some idea of what a game's like, but...it really can be more of a curse than it is a blessing. I suppose in the shittier side of things where we have the term "Roguelike", which has basically been warped to this idea of a loot quest with permanent death, despite the fact that these things didn't exactly define what made Rogue it's own thing (Roguelite's a nice term, too, but it's less of a genre and more of a descriptor). Problem is, people'll see the tag "Roguelike" and think Spelunky or The Binding of Isaac when, I suppose, it could just as easily describe Nethack or Dungeons of Dreadmor, and that ambiguity rakes in the cash. Not really a good thing.
But then we have genres like...I feel like the JRPG is a great example. RPG, as a video game term, put simply, is 100% ineffectual. Names should matter. Here, they don't. And if you get people together to describe what makes an RPG, you'll just get this incredibly broad number answers. It's essentially a term that people use if *ahem* your game has levels maybe, but also it might have towns and NPCs probably, and if it doesn't (or does) there are skills and class points more than likely unless it doesn't, but you probably do have classes or jobs maybe.
Get my point? Honestly, this barely relates to my original point, but screw it, Imma keep going. This bothers me.
Ideas are hard...but ARE genres too established, though? I think there's a case for the opposite - genres are meaning less and less these days, and therein lies the problem...well, it's not a problem in reality, but more a problem of perception. The
idea of a genre is too well-established, but the genre itself? It's constantly being redefined and expanded upon by different titles. The problem is that people are too bound by history and too busy making comparisons to see a game for what it is. Yes, there needs to be a basis for comparison - otherwise you're going to struggle to find things you want to play - but a basis is not an absolute and, in mainstream media at least, it is too often treated as such. A game needs to fit certain criterion to be considered part of a genre, and is considered somehow less if it doesn't...like FFXIII and its lack of towns. As awful as that game is, it's a great illustration piece.
I mean, two generations ago, would you ever see a "Shooter RPG" like Borderlands? Or even something like Mass Effect, which combines a lot of RPG elements with third-person shooter gameplay? Things used to be extremely segregated, with clearly defined aspects for each genre: levelling systems were the sole province of RPGs, etc. Games have been transcending those traditional boundaries for quite a long time, though...you're getting adventure games with levelling systems, RPGs that forego them entirely in favour of upgrade systems, etc. You got rare examples of those - Zelda II and FFII spring to mind here, and look at how THOSE were received - back in the day, but that kind of thing is ridiculously commonplace now; nobody bats an eyelid at it...well, the concept, anyway.
Traditional definitions of genres are outdated, yet people still cling to them. They're not describing types of games as a whole as they are one or two games that codified the genre and, since their release and popularity, have been benchmarks for comparison. I believe that was your point in part; I just wanted to clarify and add my two cents on it.
So RPG's an ineffective term and a not-so-relic of tabletops, where it is defined pretty well. Cool. So JRPGs. Th- y'know what, this "too defined" thing works far more for MMOs than JRPGs, but I'm talking about JRPGs so- This term is the absolute worst. Worse than RPGs, because the added J should be quite literally the simplest descriptor of almost any genre. Really. A Japanese Roleplaying Game. Makes sense, right? Well if you don't count something like the Souls games as a JRPG, what the hell is the goddamn point of calling it a JRPG? The name becomes completely antiquated and useless as far as actual description goes, because it doesn't tell you anything about what games might be included in it or what their features are, experience does.
And I don't blame the term, I blame the masses. These same people who would call Cthulu Saves the World a JRPG would just as soon blaspheme the idea that RWBY or Avatar is an anime. That the cases are parallel is a bit silly.
I'm making a thread about this. Not right now, but I didn't realize I had so much to say about it. Glad to see you still know how to light my fire, Mel.
That "J" carries a lot of excess baggage with it...probably because mainstream JRPGs have, for the longest time, adhered to a formula more strictly than any other genre, and during the PS1 era when people thought of video games a lot of them thought of JRPGs...or even before that. It's always been a highly visible genre, at least in part. Of course, they're just as diverse as any other genre, but a lot of them fit into the niche category because of the cultural dissonance between Japan and the West. This gets sucked right out of the mainstream JRPGs like Final Fantasy, which are as culture neutral as they come for the most part, but for the niche titles...nope. It's left in, it's off-putting to a lot of Western players, and they slip under the radar. JRPGs could almost be sub-divided by this...but, of course, it's far more diverse than that, but that clinging to the traditional definition comes into the foreground again. The Souls games are JRPGs. They're not niche. But they're nothing like traditional mainstream JRPGs, so of course they're not JRPGs. But they clearly are, because they're Japanese and they're freakin RPGs. But they're not JRPGs. WHAT.
Seeing as how the masses define the term - or, rather, cling to an outdated definition of the term - I'd agree with you. It's getting to the point where I don't honestly think games should be defined by their genre; the genre should be a starting indicator for the type of gameplay you could expect, not an absolute indicator of what you're going to get.
...I should probably have saved half of this for the thread, but...eh, I didn't want to lose my train of thought, and I'll probably have more to say anyway. The segregation of genres - or lack thereof - and their definitions is an interesting topic, because it really is down to interpretation these days...when you can't innovate, you diversify. It's working within a defined set of rules to come up with something fresh, pretty much.
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