Yes, key parts of it may be pulled mostly intact from previous games, but the entire picture, all the game mechanics together, can take some time to fully grasp. That is, learning the rules of the game (the mechanics) and mastering them. A game that mixes elements of different genres involves a lot of new learning. You would think this would make the games boring, but I still find hybrid games to be a lot of fun.Ī big part of the fun in playing a new game comes from learning. Almost every day you will see an announcement of a new game that takes multiple elements from the previous distinct genres and makes a new game out of it. While it is true there has always been a little mixing between genres through the years, at no time before has it been as common as it is today. Half-Life 2 was a Shooter through and through, as Doom was before it. For many years games were very distinct in which genre they were. This process over time, just like in film and music, guided the creation of new games into genres. Game designers would have a lot of fun playing a good game, see flaws in the game design, and then want to make their own incarnation to correct those flaws. It was no surprise then that games developed into genres, a process called “genrefication”. It helps us relate things to one another. We humans like to classify and categorize things into nice boxes.
