First discussion here, and it's a pretty pointless one. I recently started playing Nova Drift because it was described in several places on its steam page as a Roguelite, which is my favorite game genre. After a few hours I found that my favorite aspect of the genre is missing: permanent upgrades and stat-increasing progression. After asking around on steam forums and on their discord to see if this was a part of the game or why it was called roguelite instead of just roguelike I met with much backlash from the community, one common retort being "who cares what you call it, just play the game" which confused me. It's a really fun game even if it isn't a roguelite, so I can kind of see where they are coming from, but at what point does mislabeling a game become problematic? I am interested in some non-combative discussion on this topic if anyone else cares to throw in their two cents.

3 years ago

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Is having the correct genre important?

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Yes, a game should be as accurately described as possible
No, the game itself is what is important, not how people want to describe it
Potato

I do not like the term "rogue-lite".

That is all.

3 years ago
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3 years ago*
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Sadly it seems the game tags are trolled,. they aren't fully controlled by the devs.
So, yeah, platformers might get mislabeled as metrroidvanias,
roguelikes may get mislabeled as roguelites, and the list goes on.

if you use the tags to search and wishlist games it helps having them be accurate.
But always doublecheck reviews / videos about the game before actually buying it.
If it turns out to be a mislabel, you can always refund if you got the game through steam itself.

3 years ago
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I read this as ''people should label the game as correctly as possible when describing it to others/creating reviews'' not as ''a game must always fit a certain mold''. And as such I strongly agree agree, game labels should as accurately as possible describe the game because we use these labels to make our decisions on whether to buy/play or not.
I also strongly agree with the other point of view, games does not have to fit a certain mold perfectly, games with other genres mixed into them are often much better just because of the mix. And I think there might be where your questions rub others the wrong way, the difference in how you word your questions can confuse others as to what it is you are asking - a can of worms best not opened.

3 years ago
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I voted for the first choice in the poll. Tags/genres attached to a game should be fairly accurate. For example, having the visual novel genre to a game when in reality it's actually a FPS shooter would likely throw off most people........ I don't think you're in the wrong for asking and noticing that btw

3 years ago
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The thing I hate the most about games categories is how RPG doesn't mean anything today. Having experience points, hit points and stats is not role-playing at all, not even close. "RPG elements" should mean having the possibility to make moral decisions, taking different paths based on your character personality and being able to interpret your role in different ways. Not being able to add +1 to your ship's speed when your raise a level in a shoot'em up...

3 years ago
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Agreed, just taking one mechanic from a genre and calling the entire game part of that genre is a bit misleading and is the main source of the confusion today

3 years ago
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Exactly. When I was young, we used to say "roll-play" when people playing tabletop pen&paper RPGs were only interested in dices and stats rather than using their imagination to tell a story and "roleplay" their characters. Because dices and stats are only there to support what is the real soul of a RPG, this is not what a RPG is really about.

3 years ago
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"Who cares what you call it, just play the game," is a stupid response; not everyone likes the same kinds of games, and while genres are a lot more flexible than they used to be, and not everything will fit neatly into super-specific categories, there's a big difference between fitting something into a slightly different subsubsubgenre and calling a game something it absolutely isn't (as in your case). People generally don't care, though, and that's why Steam tags have been a joke as long as I've had an account. What I usually do is read up on the game and watch some gameplay to decide for myself what it is, and that usually serves me pretty well.

3 years ago
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