As with all entertainment media (even literary works and comic books), a number of genres have evolved over the decades since those first 8-bit arcade games. See Ted Stahl’s 2005 piece (https://web.archive.org/web/20201106232636/https://www.thocp.net/software/games/reference/genres.htm) for a more-or-less complete list (he doesn’t include sandbox or open world genres, for instance).. And many games, as he notes, are hybrids, a mix of genres. Then too, there are those who find ways to play that seem to be different than the designers envisioned … such as playing a sports simulation game as though it were a RPG (see My Adventures As A Different Kind Of RPG Wizard (https://kotaku.com/my-adventures-as-a-different-kind-of-rpg-wizard-1687859385) for an example). In gamer jargon, this is known as “switching genres.

But, confusingly, the term has also been used in terms of game franchises that offer several different types of games based on a singular set of characters or storylines. Consider the Nintendo Mario franchise, as but one example, which offers not only the familiar arcade and platform games but also a lengthy list of puzzle games, racing games, sports games (baseball, tennis, golf, soccer, etc.), role-playing games and educational games. Mario may be the ultimate “switching genres” series, the producers looking to bring new customers into the Mario universe who do not play the original platform game.

So here are some questions to consider; use one as the starting point for your discussion this week:

Do you think it possible to “switch genres” in video games? In other words, how feasible is it to consider playing a sports game as an RPG? How feasible is it to play a strategy game as a puzzle game? What may be lost, and what may be gained by doing so?
Speaking of RPG, have you ever been so heavily invested in a game character that you felt bad when he/she failed or felt good when he/she succeeded? How connected are you to RPG characters that you create? Might this be an appeal in switching genres?
Is “switching genres” (in the industry sense) a way to make older or series games popular? For instance, could sports game producers design and market their games in different ways to attract players who don’t like sports games? If so, might this alienate the core fans of the original game; what other problems might there be for such commercial genre switching?