Presentation draft

The use of genre in games.

Making the arguement that games have two genres

In games there are two genres at play. Genre in story-telling terms and genre in gameplay terms.
On one hand you have Genres such as world war 2, Space, Fantasy. The genre here effects all the signifiers in the game, that tell the player what kind of world and what kind of rules they can expect in the game.
The gameplay genre is how the player interacts with the game, first person, role-playing, strategy. This also has signs and signifiers
These two genres can be mixed and matched, for example you can have a fantasy role playing game, or a fantasy real time strategy. The genres form the story world and the narrative the player experiences.
The "Narrative" genre is the one that shapes the game world entirely. The art design, the plot, the characters. Basically the narrative genre acts the same way for the game as genre would in a film. World War 2, Science Fiction, Fantasy etc. This is the genre thats important to look at from a designers point of view as it will convey the story to the player.
The Gameplay genre is basically how the player interacts with the world and has its own signs and signifiers seperate from those of the narrative genre. These are the genres that the game is typically going to be identified by. First person shooting, real time strategy etc.
Despite the gameplay genre being how the player interacts with the narrative genre I contend that gameplay genres are interchangable and dont have a strong effect on the coherence of the game world.