I think one of the issues is that people often treat "video games" as though it is a category like "prose fiction," but really it is a format like "book." A "book" can be a novel, a guide on how to do your taxes, or a collection of crossword puzzles.
In Portuguese, the word for genre and gender is also the same. I had no idea that trying to organize my downloaded music as a kid could influence me on questioning my own gender and accepting other people's.
"even in genres you hate you'll find pieces you love" I heard I Saw The TV Glow was a horror movie and almost didn't watch it. It's an accurate genre designation but I'm SO GLAD I went for it anyway
One idea I’ve mulled around regarding video game genre is the fact that we almost have two degrees we have to contend with. You have the “vibe” degree, so to speak. Your adventure, horror, racing, casual, what have you. You then also have your mechanical or interactive degree. First person shooter, top down strategy, JRPG. You can’t really just describe most games comprehensively with only one of those degrees. It’s the intersection of “vibe” and “genre of interaction” that make categorizing video games similar to other mediums so difficult, in my opinion
JENNA YES about that last "We should genre games this way"! I can't remember for the life of me where I heard that for the 1st time, but it implanted into me this idea of game genres needing 1) the aesthetic marker, and 2) the gameplay marker. It had to be a video pertaining SURVIVAL HORROR - SURVIVAL is the mechanics, and HORROR is the aesthetics/theming. Arguably HORROR is part of the way it's played, and SURVIVAL affects the theming, but I think it works well - especially for being a game genre lasting that long. Tangential note, the English teacher at the design school I went to, would pronounce "genre" the French way. And ever since I've been like... yeah I know how to pronounce it in French, so why shouldn't I ?
It is still mindblowing to me that there were not just early audiences but actual critics who watched Starship Troopers and failed to clock it as satire. From the director of Robocop, no less!
Based on both looking up where that reviewer, Stephen Hunter, was now (assault rifle advocate), and based on the people who I knew personally who didn't get it when it came out (diehard Limbaugh listeners)... maybe satire can be hard to detect when you're the target of it? Or maybe its pretending it isn't satire but is, in fact, the REAL thing (a distraction technique I'm sure we're all inured to online, now)?
Admittedly, I also didn't clock that Starship Troopers was satire at first either, and I definitely wasn't the target of it! I was horrified by the ending and how propagandistic it was. Since I saw it in theaters for a Rifftrax event, I was pre-informed of it as neither action nor satire; only as a bad movie. I was a young adult then, so upon another viewing a few years ago I was able to recognize it for what it was and appreciate it a lot more.
@@GorgonautAnimationwait Stephen Hunter? It all makes sense now. We used to call him "the complete moron Stephen Hunter." He's the guy who didn't like the first X-Men movie because "mutations don't work that way"! His reviews were actually really useful, if he liked a movie it was going to be terrible for sure, if he didn't like it, good chance it would be pretty good. Now I want to see Starship Troopers.
Though the book the film is based on wasn't satirical. So the director wasn't just commenting on fascism, he was dunking on the fascist source material.
I think another good example of this is Firewatch - I think it would really be best described as a psychological thriller but for whatever reason gamers don't like that term for games so people kind of talk around it.
Genres are a double-edged sword. I would've never played neither Pyre nor Hades if it weren't for my previous appreciation of Supergiant Games, because "fantasy basketball" and "roguelite" are just not game styles I ever found enjoyable before or since. But I'm more open to the idea, now, at least.
Hades is such a great example - I've talked to SO MANY people who resisted playing it because of its genre, but then fell in love with it once they leaped in. Supergiant is like Beyonce (?!?!) in that they are so reliable as creators, people will follow them even into places they might not normally go.
Yeah!! Exactly! For me it was those games and Cult of the Lamb! I had a weird notion that I just wouldn't like the controls bc of the genres they were in. Glad my friends convinced me to give them a try.
For many years I thought "thriller" was a genre where the movie passes over a single night, usually envolving monsters. MJ's Thriller videoclip just enforced more that idea on me.
I went into this thinking it might be "What's the point of genres?" *dislikes genres* But I really like that it's "What's the point of genres?" *analysis*
I don't know what your relationship with Polygon is these days, but the first sixty seconds of this video had me hooked in part because the intro is so sympatico with Simone's most recent video about the PNW in horror. Yet your take is different and so "you," and where the video goes is unique & though provoking. I LOVE THAT! Thank you for making this video : ) oh and happy Pride!!!
Thank you, Jenna, for putting into a cohesive argument why genres are simultaneously helpful and completely and totally arbitrary. As humans, we just love to sort things in neat boxes when the reality is that things are much messier, they overlap, they combine, they create new things, and the boxes were never a naturally occurring phenomenon to begin with but rather a post hoc arbitration imposed to try to simplify complexity... Oops wait I'm also accidentally talking about gender. But yes, genres are helpful when making the most basic, initial decisions on what to choose to engage with, but they stop being useful when we view them as rigid commandments on what a thing can/should be.
I feel like a great example of video game genre confusion is the struggle to describe Deus Ex when it first came out. We call it an "immersive sim" _now_ but that was applied retroactively after several other imitators popped up and people felt the need to group them together as a new, distinct thing. Back in the day there was a lot of "well it's _sort of_ an RPG", but the idea of RPGs at the time was either JRPGs like Final Fantasy 7 or CRPGs like Baldur's Gate so everyone knew it didn't really fit.
I haven’t even played a Silent Hill game and when she read that quote I immediately thought “uh Silent Hill” lol or in this case Silent Hill 2 apparently
I love what you said about artists becoming ungenre-able. It's definitely something I've noticed in myself. I don't really fit into the commentary or video essay niche; I do a bit of everything. The only overarching theme I cover is "social science," but that's such a broad term. Ideally, I want to be my own genre (if possible). Fantastic video as always, Jenna!
Also, totally agree with your "more genre markers" statement. I think we should all start doing that until it catches on and becomes the norm. I know I'm going to.
My personal most memorable example of genre expectations impacting my experiencing was Gone Home. Basically all I knew going in was that it had some queerness going on with the story, so I was totally willing to see it through, but had no idea what it'd be like. The game is dripping in horror vibes, but isn't remotely scary based on what's actually going on. But because I didn't have any expectations, and it *seemed* like I should be scared, I spent half the game getting increasingly tense. I then enjoyed Tacoma *way* more because I expected it to not be scary, even though it had a similar "this might be spooky" vibe.
Gone Home is such an interesting example for genre studies because of this horror-vibe but not horror-game, AND because it was such a target of dismissive genre labeling in the form of "walking simulators," which later became a legit genre.
Some people insist Smash is not a "real" fighting game. It definitely deviates in some significant ways from the conventions of the genre but the overall structure of play and the nature of competition surrounding it are the same. And even if those deviations don't fit the strict criteria for what you consider to be a fighting game, it was designed specifically as a response to fighting games that came before it and so it belongs in the conversation anyway, making me wonder what the point of making that distinction really is. The stuff about distancing and being insecure about legitimacy that Jenna brought up applies in some ways here. I think the perception of Smash as a "party game" that it gets from it's presentation and the design choices intended to make it easier to pick up has made it offputting to the sort of people who are invested in the notion of fighting games as a super serious competetive scene.
And funnily enough, it did become genre defining because we have enough imitators around that we get to call them “Platform Fighters” but that took years of people still being insecure about the “party game” so much that many decided to just make it again but change it in ways they feel make it “legitimate” as a fighting game and competitive. The attempts of distancing have only made it more legitimate as a fighting game, which is pretty funny.
I can't wait for 'Wakelikes' to become a thing. For now, it's just part of a genre I just call "Remedy games." What genre is Control? It's a third-person-shooter-metroidvania-science-fiction-action-remdedy-game of course!
I found myself disagreeing with your conclusion but I couldn't figure out why for a while, but on Rewatch I think I have a better sense. I think I disagree with your assertion that horror is a style marker. I can only speak for myself, but I think 'Horror' is perceived and better suited to being a genre marker for 'Tone' rather than 'Style' or following on from your Vamp Survivors example I think what you're describing would be an 'Aesthetic' marker. I think if someone plays and loves Silent Hill 2 for being a Horror game, and I were to say 'Oh you love horror games you should play alan wake 1" that would be bad recommendation, because tonally the games have very little in common. The have similar spooky aesthetics and set dressing, sure, but the emotional gameplay experiences, their tone and pacing, are vastly different. I think this is even more poignant with Vamp Survivors, if someone were to recommend it based on being a 'good horror game' they'd be wildly off the mark. Sam Lake announced Alan Wake 2 as "Remedy's First Survival Horror Game" and I tend to agree with him, AW2 is actually much closer to SH2 than it is to AW1 in terms of tone, pacing and gamefeel. Going off of a marker system of "Aesthetic-Tone-Gameplay", I'd describe the games as: Vampire Survivors: Spooky Arcade Bullet Heaven Silent Hill 2: Spooky Horror Survival Alan Wake 1: Spooky Action 3rd Person Shooter (if we want to avoid the T word) This is just my take though. I had a really strong 'Jenna I usually agree with you, but wth are you talking about??' reaction and I wanted to do my best to give a nuanced response.
On the topic of “a genre in how a game/movie/book is marketed will set expectation for the player/viewer/reader”… I just watched a video the other day by Savy Writes Books where she reviewed a Coleen Hoover book. She argues that it is mis-marketed as a romance rather than erotica to the detriment of the reader, because there are things that are acceptable in a bdsm scene (which that specific book takes place in) that are uncomfortable or traumatizing outside of a scene (e.g. a typical romance book). I think this happened because erotica is a ‘lower tier’ and thus less appealing/marketable genre than romance. In some ways, genres set ground rules to what is to be expected: horror can have grotesque themes, erotica has sex in it, so if you don’t want that stay away. But that conflicts with selling your product widely!
i feel like the genre discussion with video games can be interesting, and it seems mostly relevant at least when talking about the actual gameplay mechanics. the thing that absolutely boggles my mind is the way that genre is used in music criticism. SO MUCH critique of music boils down to just... describing what genre(s) it is. i've lost count of how many times i've been watching/reading a review of a song/album and realised that i'm just listening to someone list genres at me. what am i meant to get from that?! it makes me feel like a very lost alien sometimes.
in the middle of a lot of nodding and sensible chuckling, "the alanwake of Alan Wake's release" caught me totally off-guard. btw, as a non-binary Brazilian, I'm elated to tell you that in Portuguese genre and gender are literally the same word. (also our leftist academics LOVE Derrida so this whole video is very close to my heart)
yoo a hamlet shout-out! so cool to see the works of smaller creators talked about in essays. i recently went to see hamlet live, the first time i've seen the whole thing, and that genre joke got me so good, completely relatable even though im not really familiar with the genre-space of the time. as a media scholar i find it so fascinating to talk about 'media' in terms of the works. as in a 'piece of media' as a catch-all for books, tv, film, games, etc. but then i am also philosophically aligned with the notion that anything containing something is a medium. in that way, works of arts are media of authored/produced experiences. Great vid as always!
The Insert Credit podcast once made a distinction between the terms "Genre" and "Format" and i haven't been able to stop thinking about it because it's honestly ridiculous how much sense it makes. One being a signifier of tone/themes vs the other being a signifier of mechanics and how you interact with those themes
This is one of the reasons why I love movies like EEAAO, Parasite or Save The Green Planet. They defy any attempt to neatly apply a single genre to them and instead evoke, at least in my opinion, a wild and welcome mix of emotions and moods. Life, for a lot of people, isn't like that - purely tragic, purely hilarious, purely romantic. It's often so multifaceted, diverse and many things at once. And I absolutely love when different forms of media manage to capture that.
It's funny, I definitely see Alan Wake as a survival horror game, but if I saw it as a movie I'd absolutely call it a thriller. Which I guess just goes to show how genre labels are specific to their medium!
Re the PS on separating gameplay genre from aesthetic genre: This 100% makes sense. I feel like this should also be applied to the speculative-fiction genres. "Science Fiction" isn't a story genre, it's a group of setting conceits. I've seen sci-fi stories that were detective dramas, war stories, comedies, spy thrillers--in the last year. Just labelling something 'sci-fi' or 'fantasy' tells you little about what the actual guts of the plot will be, so having a second label for that is just sensible.
14:30 - wait, aren’t there are famously no draculas in Vampire Survivors? I mean I guess there’s the one on the title screen, and I guess that counts as “iconography”, but he’s pretty severely outnumbered by the ducks with astronaut helmets and the puddles of sentient milk.
I recently had the experience of defining categories for games I've played, so I got to decide how I personally wanted to define things like "horror". I intentionally left out horror-styling, as it seemed more useful to focus on the *experience* of something 'spooky or unnerving'. Thus Minecraft gets a horror tag and Vampire Survivors does not.
for the longest time i used to say i like pretty much all music except most modern country. In reality i should've just been saying, i dont like most of the popular modern country bc most of it was... a dude singing about drinking beer, driving tractors, and/or objectifying women. I've since found Anthony Wilkerson, Horse Thieves, and Orville Peck. ❤ love me some sad country boy vibes.
My first thought for more accurate labels was the 2-axis political spectrum chart, then I thought about the Nutrition Facts box required on food: Playstyle, Tropes, Perspective. Those would shift over time, but give you an idea what you were in for
The genre of the art is not defined by the artist. The artist can try to work within the confines of a genre, but once it is out, it is out of the artist hands, and an artist can definitely not announce he has created a new one. Even Kojima did not create a new Strand-Like genre. That is something that can only happen organically, which is the reason most genre aren't called after the first game of its kind (e.g. Metroidvania, Roguelike etc.) The the thing is that Alan Wake does touch on this.
this sums up perfectly how i feel about rhythm games, because on one hand you have a clearly defined game mechanic that you know will definitely be in the game, but there's no way i should be allowed to put osu, metal hellsinger, and hi-fi rush in the same genre and it makes it so hard to recommend rhythm games to people even if i know they'll love the game
Tbf I feel like there’s usually a clear distinction between traditional rhythm games (beat mania, guitar hero, osu, spin rhythm, overpass) and rhythm hybrid games (necrodancer, hifi rush, bpm, robobeat, hellsinger) - to me it feel like the latter is an emerging subgenre with its own conventions and rules (as well as ofc always including elements of another genre, sorta like how most modern rogulikes and “roguelike fps” or “roguelike deckbuilder”) (Tho admittedly having said that I just remembered Rift of the Necrodancer, the upcoming Necrodancer spinoff that basically plays like a traditional rhythm game but with different note patterns presented as “enemies” with different “movement patterns” and with rhythm heaven and punch out inspired sequences - not sure how to describe that one) (Uhm also speaking of Rhythm Heaven I totally forgor about it, I sorta feel like it’s its own category? Rhythm minigame collections? Which is mostly rhythm heaven, and like 3 indie games) (Idk maybe I’ve just proved your point um anyway send post)
@@Arakus99 I definitely get the point you're making, atm I just don't think there's enough popular rhythm hybrid games for people to consider it a separate genre yet, especially people who don't often play rhythm games who will just lump all the games into the one genre with the popularity of games like hi-fi rush and the cursed successor of rock band in fortnite now though i could definitely see a boom in new rhythm games coming out, and then there could be a distinction made between traditional rhythm games and hybrid ones (there's also the question of if 'rhythm game' is a genre or just a mechanic (or both) but I won't get into that because I don't want to write an essay in a youtube comment) (also I had no idea about rift of the necrodancer so thank you for telling me about it)
Now I'm desperately trying to figure out how "camp" applies to videogame genres. What is a campy roguelite? What is a campy soulslike? What is a campy deckbuilding game?
Here's what I've landed on. Gender is a set of norms to describe a person's identity, and camp is an exaggeration of the signifiers of that gender, to no end but the tautological end of being camp. Ultimately, camp is drawing attention to the performance inherent in expressing a specific gender, not to heighten the sense of the gender, but to heighten the sense of the performance. If we translate Gender to Genre here, then: Genre is a set of norms to describe a videogame's identity, and camp is an exaggeration of the gameplay signifiers of that genre, not to a specific end, except for the tautological end of being camp. Ultimately, camp is drawing attention to the specific gameplay mechanics inherent in the gameplay conventions of a specific genre, not to heighten the sense of the genre, but to heighten the sense of the gameplay mechanics. So in this case, a "campy" game is one which is less concerned with being a good example of its genre, but instead with glazing the gameplay conventions inherent in the genre. Cookie Clicker to me is a good example of this. It takes the idle game to an absurd place, removing the sense of a meaningful goal or progression, in order to focus on revealing that the points are completely arbitrary, and that there is no end beyond investing time in the game. Orb of Creation takes this one step further by abstracting the systems that facilitate progression so that sense of attachment to your numbers is even less authentic.
When you first asked "What is a Thriller game?" Alan Wake actually was the first thing that came to mind for me. (Though maybe that's because youtube has linked it as an ad under the description and I unconsciously noticed?) I think Thriller is a good genre description that's worth differentiating from horror. Not in the "horror is lowbrow" sense that you mentioned, though I know how prevalent that attitude is. I *like* horror games. Or at least I like the idea of them. I have anxiety so I have a whole wall of horror games in my steam library that I'm eternally too scared to ever play. The difference, in my opinion, is what emotions the game is trying to focus on. For Horror games, the emotions are well, horror, and fear. For Thriller games the emotions are more along the lines of tense excitement, and dread. Obviously for many horror games, there's overlap, they're ticking all the boxes of both genres. BUT I also think reasonable to say "Nah this isn't a horror game, it's more of a thriller." Having said that I haven't actually played much Alan Wake so I guess I'm arguing more that I can imagine a situation where it *could* be fair to say that. I think a lot of detective games could probably be called thrillers without being horror. But then we have a more direct genre to call those, and it's "Detective". Hmm, this rambling comment was pretty pointless. I would delete it, but it's better for engagement if I don't so...blah.
I think genres for any piece of art work similar to music theory. In that, at least in theory, they are something to be used either to help get over some slump in the creation process by giving you ideas based on what people before you did in similar situations, or completely after the piece is released to the world as people discuss what it is and why it works so well. They also parallel well in how, in practice, they are used to pigeon hole pieces of media into neat little boxes where people arbitrarily ascribe more or less value while pretending that it is objective.
All this makes me think of is the TV Tropes page for Genre-Busting. In which people name plenty of games that fit fine into genres they just haven't heard of, or just do something different than most games in their genre do. My favorite example is The Stanley Parable, which isn't there anymore because I guess people have figured out that it's just a visual novel played in first-person.
yet another banger video! also I want you to know that I clapped enthusiastically when you nailed that long sentence XD and when it comes to media that is undefinable and cannot be fit neatly into a box, or genre, honorable mention to the Locked Tomb series. Nobody (at least that I know of) is doing it like Muir is.
3:43 Off the top of my head, Metal Gear Solid 3 was already a touchstone game with horror aesthetics that I wouldn't describe as a horror game outright. With its Tactical Espionage Action, I'd much sooner consider it a thriller. "What a thrill."
I'm halfway through Alan Wake (playing in the (alan)wake of the sequel's success), and the idea that this ain't horror is laughable. You don't name drop King and practically have a log lady for nothing! Great video; thanks for the exploration of genre's role and purpose.
Jenna was speaking specifically about my experience with Alan Wake 1 -- as I tried to play it, hearing it was like Silent Hill 2 -- and was severely disappointed.
One of my favorite games of all time is, on the surface, one that I shouldn't like - Control is a horror-y third person shooter/action game, and I am MUCH more comfortable in the 100+ make-numbers-go-up JRPG realm. I can't even watch most campy horror movies. But the STORY and the CHARACTERS got me so good - and I'm trying to work up the courage to play Alan Wake next 😁 It took me a long time to figure out that I should spend less time dismissing things in certain categories or with certain review ratings, and more time actually reading the content of said reviews to see if the reviewer and I play games in a similar way or not. I can often be sold on a game by a 6/10 review because it's clear the reviewer liked the story but was put off by the gameplay loop - and I'm a stubborn cuss who loves a good story.
As someone that tends to avoid horror games, because of that preconceived notion about jumpscares, if I heard Alan Wake described as horror, I probably wouldn’t have played it and enjoyed it as much as I did. But when people talked to me about how the resident evil 2 remake is a gateway to the horror genre, that was a way more appealing way of describing the game that made me buy it and check it out. With that said, does anyone know if silent hill 1 and 2 have jumpscares?
Yes, but they are far and few between and they are definitely not the bread and butter of the Silent Hill franchise. They rely much more heavily on atmosphere and a sense of being chased.
This hits on a big frustration I have with film criticism. When big name critics like a horror movie, they (suddenly and very conveniently) call it a "thriller" to try to separate it from the horror label. But when its one they dont, even in the same series with the same tone, its all of a sudden a cheap "horror movie"?
I'm not sure Alan Wake II being firmly survival horror is borne out of "thriller" not catching on. Through interviews it's clear they decided to try to make a different kind of game, and they intentionally put as many horror elements as they could in (that's how you do genre right? 😅). So in Alan Wake they unintentionally made a horror game, and then in Alan Wake II they intentionally did. I'm not sure they learned their lesson on horror, they still say Alan Wake wasn't a horror game and that it was an action game *instead*. I wonder if the decision to focus on action and "thriller" was also partially borne of hesitancy, like maybe Remedy wasn't sure they could make a game that wasn't an action game, so they tried to reinforce that genre rather than risk failing to land with horror fans. I like that you pointed out the sightly awkward way Lake talks about genre, in press tours he's often trying to hammer home a specific genre as if that's the most important thing he can communicate, but it ends up not really communicating the experience of the game as well as reference to gameplay experience or specific influences could. I do think we should take more care to talk about horror games (style) that aren't "survival horror" (gameplay)! Also I love the synergy with Simone and Pat's recent videos in the first half!
I've seen it suggested to use the term 'genus' for gameplay genre and reserve 'genre' as the descriptor for a game's style and presentation. Keeping the two separate has the benefit of clarity and would let people tease apart things like limited inventory space and scarcity from Horror for example. Those being markers of genus rather than inherent to a game having spooky zombies and eldritch monstrosities.
i'm guessing i'm far from the first to comment this, but i misread the thumbnail and title as "genders are dumb but genders are also important" and i was like PREACH
See I would say that thriller is the transitional genre from which one passes through mystery and into horror. IN a mystery, the MC usually has control, reason, and competence at their command. In horror, you have a lack of control, irrationality, and often incompetence or disempowerment as benchmarks for the story. Thrillers are a mid-point between that spectrum, where reason, control, competence may be available but are not wholly capable of meeting the antagonizing forces unchallenged. Though I've never played Alan Wake, I've generally been of the opinion based on vibes that it was essentially a weird or supernatural mystery and not horror. Supernatural thriller might be more precise as to Lake's intent.
I think that Alan Wake 2 (which stands toe to toe with the best survival horror) makes the first game look like an action-spooky adventure in comparison.
As someone who has played neither Alan Wake nor Silent Hill 2, But has listened to the soundtracks of both, I can confirm that they are both Horror games but totally different in all other respects.
💓I love this video essay so much! It enlightened me. It inspired me to pause itself, so i could collect my thoughts in writing. My heart rate has arisen. I feel the blood of illumination coursing through my body
Meanwhile, I wanna make a drama film about long-distance relationships with light horror elements and market it as a romantic comedy (something that it will also be for the first, like, third of the movie) as a way of leading the audience into a false sense of security. The horror elements wouldn’t be extreme though, just enough to exemplify the themes of the mental strain that comes with long-distance relationships.
Pleasantly surprised this wasn't a "destroy genres! All categorization is fuzzy therefore it doesnt exist and all games are therefore like all other games" like I see so often (especially when someone gets pushback for trying to place something into a genre that it just doesn't belong in on some weird technicality. Like yes, I suppose Dark Souls could be considered a tween girl game because everyone is always laughing, you dress your character in different outfits in order to progress the game, and you have to save your favorite place from going dark. But you wouldnt suggest someone who wanted more Bratz to play it. Everyone gets so caught on the formal and material causes of genres that they completely miss that the final and efficient causes are just as much part of the classification)
i feel the need to complain about a huge amount of people misunderstanding and conflating "horror" with "survival horror". survival horror is a whole separate genre that's supposed to be about careful resource management and making meaningful, tough decisions in order to make it to the end. alan wake definitely isn't survival horror since resources are plentiful and the consequences are always short-term. it takes away your inventory constantly and punishes you for trying to conserve or manage it, it's more arcadey with its level structure and mechanics.
Was having a vert similar conversation about I Saw The TV Glow yesterday, it's marketing and a lot of touchstones are clearly in the horror genre, but the movie isn't really scary, neither with shock value or eerie creepiness imo, I'm still not sure how to sell it to people
@elk3407 it's still doesn't fit in with the other A24 horror movies (which don't get me wrong I like a lot) It just doesn't aim to be particularly scary I think, the closest analogy I can think of is Gone Home being called "horror" when it came out
this is just like when i told my mom the fallout tv show was a "post-apocalyptic western" so that she'd watch it
I think one of the issues is that people often treat "video games" as though it is a category like "prose fiction," but really it is a format like "book." A "book" can be a novel, a guide on how to do your taxes, or a collection of crossword puzzles.
Calling gender "the human genre" is so powerful. My gender is a Slice of Life RomCom
Reminds me of the text in the background of Cowboy Bebop: "The work, which becomes a new genre itself, will be called... COWBOY BEBOP"
In Portuguese, the word for genre and gender is also the same. I had no idea that trying to organize my downloaded music as a kid could influence me on questioning my own gender and accepting other people's.
"even in genres you hate you'll find pieces you love"
I heard I Saw The TV Glow was a horror movie and almost didn't watch it. It's an accurate genre designation but I'm SO GLAD I went for it anyway
One idea I’ve mulled around regarding video game genre is the fact that we almost have two degrees we have to contend with. You have the “vibe” degree, so to speak. Your adventure, horror, racing, casual, what have you. You then also have your mechanical or interactive degree. First person shooter, top down strategy, JRPG. You can’t really just describe most games comprehensively with only one of those degrees. It’s the intersection of “vibe” and “genre of interaction” that make categorizing video games similar to other mediums so difficult, in my opinion
now thinking about assigning a baby a genre at birth. Congratulations, it's a thriller!
This also implies the existence of high brow and low brow genders
A thrilling porspect im sure
now i have a way to convey both my transness and my medical disaster of a birth: i was assigned horror at birth
JENNA YES about that last "We should genre games this way"! I can't remember for the life of me where I heard that for the 1st time, but it implanted into me this idea of game genres needing 1) the aesthetic marker, and 2) the gameplay marker. It had to be a video pertaining SURVIVAL HORROR - SURVIVAL is the mechanics, and HORROR is the aesthetics/theming. Arguably HORROR is part of the way it's played, and SURVIVAL affects the theming, but I think it works well - especially for being a game genre lasting that long.
Tangential note, the English teacher at the design school I went to, would pronounce "genre" the French way. And ever since I've been like... yeah I know how to pronounce it in French, so why shouldn't I ?
Yes!!! They mean DIFFERENT THINGS in DIFFERENT CONTEXT!
It is still mindblowing to me that there were not just early audiences but actual critics who watched Starship Troopers and failed to clock it as satire. From the director of Robocop, no less!
Based on both looking up where that reviewer, Stephen Hunter, was now (assault rifle advocate), and based on the people who I knew personally who didn't get it when it came out (diehard Limbaugh listeners)... maybe satire can be hard to detect when you're the target of it? Or maybe its pretending it isn't satire but is, in fact, the REAL thing (a distraction technique I'm sure we're all inured to online, now)?
Admittedly, I also didn't clock that Starship Troopers was satire at first either, and I definitely wasn't the target of it! I was horrified by the ending and how propagandistic it was. Since I saw it in theaters for a Rifftrax event, I was pre-informed of it as neither action nor satire; only as a bad movie. I was a young adult then, so upon another viewing a few years ago I was able to recognize it for what it was and appreciate it a lot more.
@@GorgonautAnimationwait Stephen Hunter? It all makes sense now. We used to call him "the complete moron Stephen Hunter." He's the guy who didn't like the first X-Men movie because "mutations don't work that way"! His reviews were actually really useful, if he liked a movie it was going to be terrible for sure, if he didn't like it, good chance it would be pretty good. Now I want to see Starship Troopers.
Though the book the film is based on wasn't satirical. So the director wasn't just commenting on fascism, he was dunking on the fascist source material.
I think another good example of this is Firewatch - I think it would really be best described as a psychological thriller but for whatever reason gamers don't like that term for games so people kind of talk around it.
"Walking simulator" is a very annoying catch-all for those kinds of games, when a lot of them are doing interesting stuff with interactivity!
Best examples I can think of are Doki Doki Liture Club and that pigeon dating sim. If you don’t know they’re horror most people wouldn’t pick them up.
@@goldie819 To be fair, "Exposition via Exploration" doesn't really roll of the tongue.
Genres are a double-edged sword. I would've never played neither Pyre nor Hades if it weren't for my previous appreciation of Supergiant Games, because "fantasy basketball" and "roguelite" are just not game styles I ever found enjoyable before or since. But I'm more open to the idea, now, at least.
Hades is such a great example - I've talked to SO MANY people who resisted playing it because of its genre, but then fell in love with it once they leaped in. Supergiant is like Beyonce (?!?!) in that they are so reliable as creators, people will follow them even into places they might not normally go.
Yeah!! Exactly! For me it was those games and Cult of the Lamb! I had a weird notion that I just wouldn't like the controls bc of the genres they were in. Glad my friends convinced me to give them a try.
For many years I thought "thriller" was a genre where the movie passes over a single night, usually envolving monsters. MJ's Thriller videoclip just enforced more that idea on me.
Same LOL
I figured it was a crime movie built like a horror movie.
Your subtitles are (highfalutinly) _exquisiteaux._
Y E S omg this comment should be pinned
@@thequietpart_ With zest, yes.
I went into this thinking it might be
"What's the point of genres?" *dislikes genres*
But I really like that it's
"What's the point of genres?" *analysis*
I don't know what your relationship with Polygon is these days, but the first sixty seconds of this video had me hooked in part because the intro is so sympatico with Simone's most recent video about the PNW in horror. Yet your take is different and so "you," and where the video goes is unique & though provoking. I LOVE THAT! Thank you for making this video : ) oh and happy Pride!!!
Thank you, Jenna, for putting into a cohesive argument why genres are simultaneously helpful and completely and totally arbitrary. As humans, we just love to sort things in neat boxes when the reality is that things are much messier, they overlap, they combine, they create new things, and the boxes were never a naturally occurring phenomenon to begin with but rather a post hoc arbitration imposed to try to simplify complexity... Oops wait I'm also accidentally talking about gender. But yes, genres are helpful when making the most basic, initial decisions on what to choose to engage with, but they stop being useful when we view them as rigid commandments on what a thing can/should be.
I feel like a great example of video game genre confusion is the struggle to describe Deus Ex when it first came out. We call it an "immersive sim" _now_ but that was applied retroactively after several other imitators popped up and people felt the need to group them together as a new, distinct thing. Back in the day there was a lot of "well it's _sort of_ an RPG", but the idea of RPGs at the time was either JRPGs like Final Fantasy 7 or CRPGs like Baldur's Gate so everyone knew it didn't really fit.
I haven’t even played a Silent Hill game and when she read that quote I immediately thought “uh Silent Hill” lol or in this case Silent Hill 2 apparently
I love what you said about artists becoming ungenre-able. It's definitely something I've noticed in myself. I don't really fit into the commentary or video essay niche; I do a bit of everything. The only overarching theme I cover is "social science," but that's such a broad term. Ideally, I want to be my own genre (if possible). Fantastic video as always, Jenna!
Also, totally agree with your "more genre markers" statement. I think we should all start doing that until it catches on and becomes the norm. I know I'm going to.
My personal most memorable example of genre expectations impacting my experiencing was Gone Home. Basically all I knew going in was that it had some queerness going on with the story, so I was totally willing to see it through, but had no idea what it'd be like. The game is dripping in horror vibes, but isn't remotely scary based on what's actually going on. But because I didn't have any expectations, and it *seemed* like I should be scared, I spent half the game getting increasingly tense. I then enjoyed Tacoma *way* more because I expected it to not be scary, even though it had a similar "this might be spooky" vibe.
Gone Home is such an interesting example for genre studies because of this horror-vibe but not horror-game, AND because it was such a target of dismissive genre labeling in the form of "walking simulators," which later became a legit genre.
That Filter > Size > Large bit really got me. Happy Pride month, everyone.
I loved that bit
Some people insist Smash is not a "real" fighting game. It definitely deviates in some significant ways from the conventions of the genre but the overall structure of play and the nature of competition surrounding it are the same. And even if those deviations don't fit the strict criteria for what you consider to be a fighting game, it was designed specifically as a response to fighting games that came before it and so it belongs in the conversation anyway, making me wonder what the point of making that distinction really is.
The stuff about distancing and being insecure about legitimacy that Jenna brought up applies in some ways here. I think the perception of Smash as a "party game" that it gets from it's presentation and the design choices intended to make it easier to pick up has made it offputting to the sort of people who are invested in the notion of fighting games as a super serious competetive scene.
And funnily enough, it did become genre defining because we have enough imitators around that we get to call them “Platform Fighters” but that took years of people still being insecure about the “party game” so much that many decided to just make it again but change it in ways they feel make it “legitimate” as a fighting game and competitive.
The attempts of distancing have only made it more legitimate as a fighting game, which is pretty funny.
I enjoy transitioning my genre.
I can't wait for 'Wakelikes' to become a thing. For now, it's just part of a genre I just call "Remedy games." What genre is Control? It's a third-person-shooter-metroidvania-science-fiction-action-remdedy-game of course!
first-hand experience: porno
stereotypes: opera
I found myself disagreeing with your conclusion but I couldn't figure out why for a while, but on Rewatch I think I have a better sense. I think I disagree with your assertion that horror is a style marker. I can only speak for myself, but I think 'Horror' is perceived and better suited to being a genre marker for 'Tone' rather than 'Style' or following on from your Vamp Survivors example I think what you're describing would be an 'Aesthetic' marker.
I think if someone plays and loves Silent Hill 2 for being a Horror game, and I were to say 'Oh you love horror games you should play alan wake 1" that would be bad recommendation, because tonally the games have very little in common. The have similar spooky aesthetics and set dressing, sure, but the emotional gameplay experiences, their tone and pacing, are vastly different. I think this is even more poignant with Vamp Survivors, if someone were to recommend it based on being a 'good horror game' they'd be wildly off the mark.
Sam Lake announced Alan Wake 2 as "Remedy's First Survival Horror Game" and I tend to agree with him, AW2 is actually much closer to SH2 than it is to AW1 in terms of tone, pacing and gamefeel.
Going off of a marker system of "Aesthetic-Tone-Gameplay", I'd describe the games as:
Vampire Survivors: Spooky Arcade Bullet Heaven
Silent Hill 2: Spooky Horror Survival
Alan Wake 1: Spooky Action 3rd Person Shooter (if we want to avoid the T word)
This is just my take though. I had a really strong 'Jenna I usually agree with you, but wth are you talking about??' reaction and I wanted to do my best to give a nuanced response.
On the topic of “a genre in how a game/movie/book is marketed will set expectation for the player/viewer/reader”…
I just watched a video the other day by Savy Writes Books where she reviewed a Coleen Hoover book. She argues that it is mis-marketed as a romance rather than erotica to the detriment of the reader, because there are things that are acceptable in a bdsm scene (which that specific book takes place in) that are uncomfortable or traumatizing outside of a scene (e.g. a typical romance book). I think this happened because erotica is a ‘lower tier’ and thus less appealing/marketable genre than romance.
In some ways, genres set ground rules to what is to be expected: horror can have grotesque themes, erotica has sex in it, so if you don’t want that stay away. But that conflicts with selling your product widely!
i feel like the genre discussion with video games can be interesting, and it seems mostly relevant at least when talking about the actual gameplay mechanics. the thing that absolutely boggles my mind is the way that genre is used in music criticism. SO MUCH critique of music boils down to just... describing what genre(s) it is. i've lost count of how many times i've been watching/reading a review of a song/album and realised that i'm just listening to someone list genres at me. what am i meant to get from that?! it makes me feel like a very lost alien sometimes.
You can’t go running around making new game genres anymore.
Because of Wake.
in the middle of a lot of nodding and sensible chuckling, "the alanwake of Alan Wake's release" caught me totally off-guard.
btw, as a non-binary Brazilian, I'm elated to tell you that in Portuguese genre and gender are literally the same word.
(also our leftist academics LOVE Derrida so this whole video is very close to my heart)
yoo a hamlet shout-out! so cool to see the works of smaller creators talked about in essays.
i recently went to see hamlet live, the first time i've seen the whole thing, and that genre joke got me so good, completely relatable even though im not really familiar with the genre-space of the time.
as a media scholar i find it so fascinating to talk about 'media' in terms of the works. as in a 'piece of media' as a catch-all for books, tv, film, games, etc. but then i am also philosophically aligned with the notion that anything containing something is a medium. in that way, works of arts are media of authored/produced experiences.
Great vid as always!
The Insert Credit podcast once made a distinction between the terms "Genre" and "Format" and i haven't been able to stop thinking about it because it's honestly ridiculous how much sense it makes. One being a signifier of tone/themes vs the other being a signifier of mechanics and how you interact with those themes
Great video! Gonna toss out all my genres and replace them with “a good time” or “not a good time”
This is one of the reasons why I love movies like EEAAO, Parasite or Save The Green Planet. They defy any attempt to neatly apply a single genre to them and instead evoke, at least in my opinion, a wild and welcome mix of emotions and moods. Life, for a lot of people, isn't like that - purely tragic, purely hilarious, purely romantic. It's often so multifaceted, diverse and many things at once. And I absolutely love when different forms of media manage to capture that.
i love being a over 6ft tall lady its such a good genre
"And the mommy suffix for fictional women over 6' tall who could break you in half" Too real.
It's funny, I definitely see Alan Wake as a survival horror game, but if I saw it as a movie I'd absolutely call it a thriller. Which I guess just goes to show how genre labels are specific to their medium!
Re the PS on separating gameplay genre from aesthetic genre: This 100% makes sense.
I feel like this should also be applied to the speculative-fiction genres. "Science Fiction" isn't a story genre, it's a group of setting conceits. I've seen sci-fi stories that were detective dramas, war stories, comedies, spy thrillers--in the last year. Just labelling something 'sci-fi' or 'fantasy' tells you little about what the actual guts of the plot will be, so having a second label for that is just sensible.
14:30 - wait, aren’t there are famously no draculas in Vampire Survivors? I mean I guess there’s the one on the title screen, and I guess that counts as “iconography”, but he’s pretty severely outnumbered by the ducks with astronaut helmets and the puddles of sentient milk.
I recently had the experience of defining categories for games I've played, so I got to decide how I personally wanted to define things like "horror". I intentionally left out horror-styling, as it seemed more useful to focus on the *experience* of something 'spooky or unnerving'. Thus Minecraft gets a horror tag and Vampire Survivors does not.
for the longest time i used to say i like pretty much all music except most modern country. In reality i should've just been saying, i dont like most of the popular modern country bc most of it was... a dude singing about drinking beer, driving tractors, and/or objectifying women.
I've since found Anthony Wilkerson, Horse Thieves, and Orville Peck. ❤ love me some sad country boy vibes.
My first thought for more accurate labels was the 2-axis political spectrum chart, then I thought about the Nutrition Facts box required on food: Playstyle, Tropes, Perspective. Those would shift over time, but give you an idea what you were in for
The genre of the art is not defined by the artist. The artist can try to work within the confines of a genre, but once it is out, it is out of the artist hands, and an artist can definitely not announce he has created a new one. Even Kojima did not create a new Strand-Like genre. That is something that can only happen organically, which is the reason most genre aren't called after the first game of its kind (e.g. Metroidvania, Roguelike etc.)
The the thing is that Alan Wake does touch on this.
Big agree with that last point. some of my favorite, most formative media has been discovered because I stepped out of my genre comfort zone.
this sums up perfectly how i feel about rhythm games, because on one hand you have a clearly defined game mechanic that you know will definitely be in the game, but there's no way i should be allowed to put osu, metal hellsinger, and hi-fi rush in the same genre and it makes it so hard to recommend rhythm games to people even if i know they'll love the game
Tbf I feel like there’s usually a clear distinction between traditional rhythm games (beat mania, guitar hero, osu, spin rhythm, overpass) and rhythm hybrid games (necrodancer, hifi rush, bpm, robobeat, hellsinger) - to me it feel like the latter is an emerging subgenre with its own conventions and rules (as well as ofc always including elements of another genre, sorta like how most modern rogulikes and “roguelike fps” or “roguelike deckbuilder”)
(Tho admittedly having said that I just remembered Rift of the Necrodancer, the upcoming Necrodancer spinoff that basically plays like a traditional rhythm game but with different note patterns presented as “enemies” with different “movement patterns” and with rhythm heaven and punch out inspired sequences - not sure how to describe that one)
(Uhm also speaking of Rhythm Heaven I totally forgor about it, I sorta feel like it’s its own category? Rhythm minigame collections? Which is mostly rhythm heaven, and like 3 indie games)
(Idk maybe I’ve just proved your point um anyway send post)
@@Arakus99 I definitely get the point you're making, atm I just don't think there's enough popular rhythm hybrid games for people to consider it a separate genre yet, especially people who don't often play rhythm games who will just lump all the games into the one genre
with the popularity of games like hi-fi rush and the cursed successor of rock band in fortnite now though i could definitely see a boom in new rhythm games coming out, and then there could be a distinction made between traditional rhythm games and hybrid ones (there's also the question of if 'rhythm game' is a genre or just a mechanic (or both) but I won't get into that because I don't want to write an essay in a youtube comment)
(also I had no idea about rift of the necrodancer so thank you for telling me about it)
Jenna, every genre is best preceded by the word "erotic."
Now I'm desperately trying to figure out how "camp" applies to videogame genres. What is a campy roguelite? What is a campy soulslike? What is a campy deckbuilding game?
Here's what I've landed on.
Gender is a set of norms to describe a person's identity, and camp is an exaggeration of the signifiers of that gender, to no end but the tautological end of being camp. Ultimately, camp is drawing attention to the performance inherent in expressing a specific gender, not to heighten the sense of the gender, but to heighten the sense of the performance.
If we translate Gender to Genre here, then:
Genre is a set of norms to describe a videogame's identity, and camp is an exaggeration of the gameplay signifiers of that genre, not to a specific end, except for the tautological end of being camp. Ultimately, camp is drawing attention to the specific gameplay mechanics inherent in the gameplay conventions of a specific genre, not to heighten the sense of the genre, but to heighten the sense of the gameplay mechanics.
So in this case, a "campy" game is one which is less concerned with being a good example of its genre, but instead with glazing the gameplay conventions inherent in the genre. Cookie Clicker to me is a good example of this. It takes the idle game to an absurd place, removing the sense of a meaningful goal or progression, in order to focus on revealing that the points are completely arbitrary, and that there is no end beyond investing time in the game. Orb of Creation takes this one step further by abstracting the systems that facilitate progression so that sense of attachment to your numbers is even less authentic.
When you first asked "What is a Thriller game?" Alan Wake actually was the first thing that came to mind for me. (Though maybe that's because youtube has linked it as an ad under the description and I unconsciously noticed?)
I think Thriller is a good genre description that's worth differentiating from horror. Not in the "horror is lowbrow" sense that you mentioned, though I know how prevalent that attitude is. I *like* horror games. Or at least I like the idea of them. I have anxiety so I have a whole wall of horror games in my steam library that I'm eternally too scared to ever play.
The difference, in my opinion, is what emotions the game is trying to focus on. For Horror games, the emotions are well, horror, and fear. For Thriller games the emotions are more along the lines of tense excitement, and dread. Obviously for many horror games, there's overlap, they're ticking all the boxes of both genres. BUT I also think reasonable to say "Nah this isn't a horror game, it's more of a thriller."
Having said that I haven't actually played much Alan Wake so I guess I'm arguing more that I can imagine a situation where it *could* be fair to say that. I think a lot of detective games could probably be called thrillers without being horror. But then we have a more direct genre to call those, and it's "Detective".
Hmm, this rambling comment was pretty pointless. I would delete it, but it's better for engagement if I don't so...blah.
Also "alan wake of the release of alan wake" fantastic pun
I think genres for any piece of art work similar to music theory. In that, at least in theory, they are something to be used either to help get over some slump in the creation process by giving you ideas based on what people before you did in similar situations, or completely after the piece is released to the world as people discuss what it is and why it works so well. They also parallel well in how, in practice, they are used to pigeon hole pieces of media into neat little boxes where people arbitrarily ascribe more or less value while pretending that it is objective.
ah this was great! appreciate the gendre-thoughts and also love the shirt
i'm fully onboard the three-part series of descriptors for genre as well
All this makes me think of is the TV Tropes page for Genre-Busting. In which people name plenty of games that fit fine into genres they just haven't heard of, or just do something different than most games in their genre do. My favorite example is The Stanley Parable, which isn't there anymore because I guess people have figured out that it's just a visual novel played in first-person.
yet another banger video!
also I want you to know that I clapped enthusiastically when you nailed that long sentence XD
and when it comes to media that is undefinable and cannot be fit neatly into a box, or genre, honorable mention to the Locked Tomb series. Nobody (at least that I know of) is doing it like Muir is.
oh man yeah Locked Tomb is really singular in its tone and how it handles the scifi-horror elements
Excellent video as always! I do, however, need to know where that shirt is from - it is extremely my style
I had a hard time focusing on the content because of the shirt. It's 🔥.
Yeah, we fashionistas need to know this stuff!
I really enjoyed this video! I wasn't really sure what to expect based on the thumbnail, but I loved the direction it went
3:43 Off the top of my head, Metal Gear Solid 3 was already a touchstone game with horror aesthetics that I wouldn't describe as a horror game outright. With its Tactical Espionage Action, I'd much sooner consider it a thriller.
"What a thrill."
Whoa fun shirt
Happy Pride Jenna, an absolute banger this one! 🎉Really felt seen by this one, super cool of you
no WAY i just saw you on the dftba website !! im so delighted for you !!
I'm halfway through Alan Wake (playing in the (alan)wake of the sequel's success), and the idea that this ain't horror is laughable. You don't name drop King and practically have a log lady for nothing! Great video; thanks for the exploration of genre's role and purpose.
Great video as always but that SHIRT IS AMAZING!!!!!!
JENNA I LOVE YOUR SHIRT and your video of course hehe
Wow. You encompassed my entire thoughts on this topic and put them is such a better way than I could. You're the best!
Damn, almost missed your new video in the feed, saw your short, was curious who is it and then saw your video, only then realized 😅
Jenna was speaking specifically about my experience with Alan Wake 1 -- as I tried to play it, hearing it was like Silent Hill 2 -- and was severely disappointed.
One of my favorite games of all time is, on the surface, one that I shouldn't like - Control is a horror-y third person shooter/action game, and I am MUCH more comfortable in the 100+ make-numbers-go-up JRPG realm. I can't even watch most campy horror movies. But the STORY and the CHARACTERS got me so good - and I'm trying to work up the courage to play Alan Wake next 😁
It took me a long time to figure out that I should spend less time dismissing things in certain categories or with certain review ratings, and more time actually reading the content of said reviews to see if the reviewer and I play games in a similar way or not. I can often be sold on a game by a 6/10 review because it's clear the reviewer liked the story but was put off by the gameplay loop - and I'm a stubborn cuss who loves a good story.
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead is so hard to read if you take it seriously but an absolute breeze when you realize it's a comedy.
absolutely LOVE the shirt. envious of the shirt even
As someone that tends to avoid horror games, because of that preconceived notion about jumpscares, if I heard Alan Wake described as horror, I probably wouldn’t have played it and enjoyed it as much as I did. But when people talked to me about how the resident evil 2 remake is a gateway to the horror genre, that was a way more appealing way of describing the game that made me buy it and check it out.
With that said, does anyone know if silent hill 1 and 2 have jumpscares?
Yes, but they are far and few between and they are definitely not the bread and butter of the Silent Hill franchise. They rely much more heavily on atmosphere and a sense of being chased.
This hits on a big frustration I have with film criticism. When big name critics like a horror movie, they (suddenly and very conveniently) call it a "thriller" to try to separate it from the horror label. But when its one they dont, even in the same series with the same tone, its all of a sudden a cheap "horror movie"?
You describing the genres made me go "that sounds like gender". The look on my face a mere 2 seconds later was priceless.
Fun essay, Jenna! Love the nod to the Pac NW
I'm not sure Alan Wake II being firmly survival horror is borne out of "thriller" not catching on. Through interviews it's clear they decided to try to make a different kind of game, and they intentionally put as many horror elements as they could in (that's how you do genre right? 😅). So in Alan Wake they unintentionally made a horror game, and then in Alan Wake II they intentionally did. I'm not sure they learned their lesson on horror, they still say Alan Wake wasn't a horror game and that it was an action game *instead*.
I wonder if the decision to focus on action and "thriller" was also partially borne of hesitancy, like maybe Remedy wasn't sure they could make a game that wasn't an action game, so they tried to reinforce that genre rather than risk failing to land with horror fans. I like that you pointed out the sightly awkward way Lake talks about genre, in press tours he's often trying to hammer home a specific genre as if that's the most important thing he can communicate, but it ends up not really communicating the experience of the game as well as reference to gameplay experience or specific influences could.
I do think we should take more care to talk about horror games (style) that aren't "survival horror" (gameplay)!
Also I love the synergy with Simone and Pat's recent videos in the first half!
The closed captioning was so good I had to watch again
I've seen it suggested to use the term 'genus' for gameplay genre and reserve 'genre' as the descriptor for a game's style and presentation. Keeping the two separate has the benefit of clarity and would let people tease apart things like limited inventory space and scarcity from Horror for example. Those being markers of genus rather than inherent to a game having spooky zombies and eldritch monstrosities.
Thank you for another great video, Jenna! I learned and laughed and blushed, haha. I love your writing in particular 🙂
i'm guessing i'm far from the first to comment this, but i misread the thumbnail and title as "genders are dumb but genders are also important" and i was like PREACH
This is a great video and I love the discussion of the importance of genre. I also love seeing how Alan Wake-uary made Jenna go a little crazy. 😂
Just got here by accident. Going to subscribe and stay for a while. Love how funny and intelligent your videos are!
See I would say that thriller is the transitional genre from which one passes through mystery and into horror. IN a mystery, the MC usually has control, reason, and competence at their command. In horror, you have a lack of control, irrationality, and often incompetence or disempowerment as benchmarks for the story. Thrillers are a mid-point between that spectrum, where reason, control, competence may be available but are not wholly capable of meeting the antagonizing forces unchallenged. Though I've never played Alan Wake, I've generally been of the opinion based on vibes that it was essentially a weird or supernatural mystery and not horror. Supernatural thriller might be more precise as to Lake's intent.
I think that Alan Wake 2 (which stands toe to toe with the best survival horror) makes the first game look like an action-spooky adventure in comparison.
Can't believe you didn't bring up the newest game genre: Strand-Type Games
2 minutes and i already want to compliment you omg i love ur content
This was great. I'm an archaeologist and so I pretty much live for chats about typology/taxonomy. ❤
Let's call these new double-marker genres Stoeber Markers. "What's this game's Stoeber marker?"
As someone who has played neither Alan Wake nor Silent Hill 2, But has listened to the soundtracks of both, I can confirm that they are both Horror games but totally different in all other respects.
The Lady D sequence made me laugh out loud, literally.
Your videos are always so insightful. Fantastic as always
thank you!
💓I love this video essay so much! It enlightened me. It inspired me to pause itself, so i could collect my thoughts in writing. My heart rate has arisen. I feel the blood of illumination coursing through my body
Meanwhile, I wanna make a drama film about long-distance relationships with light horror elements and market it as a romantic comedy (something that it will also be for the first, like, third of the movie) as a way of leading the audience into a false sense of security. The horror elements wouldn’t be extreme though, just enough to exemplify the themes of the mental strain that comes with long-distance relationships.
Loved your take here. Thanks for sharing. Assuming you watched Ahoy's video on Doom's genre? If not, check it out.
Pleasantly surprised this wasn't a "destroy genres! All categorization is fuzzy therefore it doesnt exist and all games are therefore like all other games" like I see so often (especially when someone gets pushback for trying to place something into a genre that it just doesn't belong in on some weird technicality. Like yes, I suppose Dark Souls could be considered a tween girl game because everyone is always laughing, you dress your character in different outfits in order to progress the game, and you have to save your favorite place from going dark. But you wouldnt suggest someone who wanted more Bratz to play it. Everyone gets so caught on the formal and material causes of genres that they completely miss that the final and efficient causes are just as much part of the classification)
i feel the need to complain about a huge amount of people misunderstanding and conflating "horror" with "survival horror". survival horror is a whole separate genre that's supposed to be about careful resource management and making meaningful, tough decisions in order to make it to the end. alan wake definitely isn't survival horror since resources are plentiful and the consequences are always short-term. it takes away your inventory constantly and punishes you for trying to conserve or manage it, it's more arcadey with its level structure and mechanics.
I'd say the Silent Hill series proves that horror games can be more than blood, gore and over reliance on jump scares.
"Now you've said that word 'implications' a couple of times. What implications?"
Was having a vert similar conversation about I Saw The TV Glow yesterday, it's marketing and a lot of touchstones are clearly in the horror genre, but the movie isn't really scary, neither with shock value or eerie creepiness imo, I'm still not sure how to sell it to people
It's A24, right? They are mainly an Art Horror/Arthouse film distributor, so it would be Arthouse with a bit of Art Horror.
@elk3407 it's still doesn't fit in with the other A24 horror movies (which don't get me wrong I like a lot)
It just doesn't aim to be particularly scary I think, the closest analogy I can think of is Gone Home being called "horror" when it came out
Im so sorry im not 30 seconds in. And i havent even played Alan’s wake. And my first thought for a thriller game was Alan wake…😶🌫️
as a crpg fan genre discussion is more common then a new release