{"id":167145,"date":"2023-03-31T08:00:33","date_gmt":"2023-03-31T13:00:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blizzardwatch.com\/?p=167145"},"modified":"2023-03-31T01:30:39","modified_gmt":"2023-03-31T06:30:39","slug":"games-think-genre-defining","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blizzardwatch.com\/2023\/03\/31\/games-think-genre-defining\/","title":{"rendered":"What games do you think of as &#8220;genre defining&#8221;?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I think it&#8217;s fair to say that\u00a0<em>Diablo 2<\/em> defined the Action Role Playing Game genre\u00a0 in a way no other game in that genre can claim. There have been three other <em>Diablo<\/em> games, with a fourth on the way, but no matter how good any of them are (I personally prefer <em>Diablo 3<\/em> to\u00a0<em>D2,\u00a0<\/em>and I&#8217;ll likely prefer\u00a0<em>Diablo 4<\/em> over it as well) none can claim the sheer iconic status of\u00a0<em>D2<\/em>. It&#8217;s the game that many discovered the whole genre through, the one that many games followed and imitated and even more were designed in reaction to it. When a game is so influential that people design theirs to deliberately\u00a0<em>not\u00a0<\/em>emulate it, it is in my opinion a genre defining game.<\/p>\n<p>Similarly, games like\u00a0<em>Metroid Prime<\/em> or\u00a0<em>Castlevania<\/em> or even\u00a0<em>Dark Souls<\/em> and\/or\u00a0<em>Bloodborne<\/em> have a pretty good claim to defining their genre, because their genre is named after them &#8212; a Metroidvania or Soulsborne game is literally one that is inspired by and in imitation of the games that the names derived from. Likewise, I think the original\u00a0<em>Baldur&#8217;s Gate<\/em> and its sequel\u00a0<em>BG2<\/em> have spawned a host of descendants to this day &#8212; games like <em>Pillars of Eternity, Tyranny, Pathfinder Kingmaker,\u00a0<\/em>and more wouldn&#8217;t exist without those two games paving the way for them, and in a way it&#8217;s come full circle with Larian, the makers of\u00a0<em>BG <\/em>clones\u00a0<em>Divity: Original Sin\u00a0<\/em>and its sequel now working on <em>Baldur&#8217;s Gate 3<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>So now I turn to you &#8212; are there games you think of as so important to their genre that they have an influence that defines said genre? How would you define that &#8212; is it enough for people to name a category of games after that game? Do you need to see games deliberately copy, or deliberately\u00a0<em>not<\/em> copy it? is it simple community reaction? If everyone mentions a game when you bring up a kind of game you like, is that what it takes? The comments await your insight.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I think it&#8217;s fair to say that\u00a0Diablo 2 defined the Action Role Playing Game genre\u00a0 in a way no other game in that genre can claim. There have been three other Diablo games, with a fourth on the way, but no matter how good any of them are (I personally prefer Diablo 3 to\u00a0D2,\u00a0and I&#8217;ll&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":86655,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[75927,24,66854],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[47240,47232,9315,17922,10740,8180,11213,8296,13531,37326,24302],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blizzardwatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167145"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blizzardwatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blizzardwatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blizzardwatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blizzardwatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=167145"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blizzardwatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167145\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":167178,"href":"https:\/\/blizzardwatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167145\/revisions\/167178"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blizzardwatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/86655"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blizzardwatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=167145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blizzardwatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=167145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blizzardwatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=167145"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blizzardwatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=167145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}