Game Genre Debate: Why Defining Genres Is So Hard

I’ve been writing about videogames professionally for over three years, and writing for most of my life before that—so trust me when I say that nothing makes me curse the English language more than having to pin down a genre. It’s a necessary evil, sure. Telling someone a game is a strategy title rather than an RPG can save them a refund request. But the headaches I get arguing over whether Deadlock is a MOBA or a hero shooter (it’s a MOBA, by the way) make me wonder if any of this is worth it.

Turns out, the same confusion lives inside game studios. In a recent interview, Dune: Awakening director Joel Bylos finally declared—for now—that his game is not an MMO. Bylos has worked on actual MMOs like The Secret World and the survival-MMO hybrid Conan: Exiles, so he’s got credibility. His reasoning: the endgame progression in Awakening is mostly crafting-based, not item-level treadmill. He admitted the game is hard to describe because it does something slightly new, and people have very set notions of what a genre is. Fair enough.

But genre labels aren’t always settled by developers. Take Crimson Desert. At a preview event, Pearl Abyss insisted it isn’t an RPG. Yet here at PC Gamer, staff members—myself included—argue the opposite. I’m on team “it’s at least an action RPG,” because no pure action game has a stronghold management system. The disagreement just proves my point: definitions are a nightmare.

I’d love to give up the written word and just resort to panicked screaming. I’d be out of a job, sure, but at least I wouldn’t have to debate the difference between roguelike and roguelite ever again.

What are Dune: Awakening and Dune: Awakening Solari?

dune awakening solari

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