Game genres, what do you want to develop?

I actually found the poll part to be a bit silly as I ended up checking off almost all of them. lol. Instead, I'll just describe what makes me interested/disinterested for each genre:

RTS - interested: I'm a big fan of Starcraft and Age of Empires. If I had any ideas that I felt could push the genre, I probably wouldn't think twice. The idea of building a game that is easy to play, but near impossible to master is one of my favorites.

Tactical - interested: I've never played the example you gave, but I feel like the genre is lacking and less developed than others. Being a part of developing a "new" genre sounds exciting.

Simulation - not interested: The repetition in these games kills me. I would probably be fine developing such a game, but when developing it is more fun than playing, there is something wrong.

Adventure - interested: We need more of these! Better AI technologies would really bring them to life, and I have a big interest in developing such tech.

FPS - interested: As long as the game includes novel features, I'm in. Action-oriented games are always fun to play with friends, and can be played at parties, as everyone isn't so serious about winning. I would not, however, be ok with working on anyother cookie-cutter shooter.

Pet Monster Collector - interested: Other than being a fan of Pokemon when I was younger, I don't think I have any particular reason for this sounding interesting

Racing - not interested: I feel like many racing games are restricting themselves by attempting to be as realistic as possible. Aside from that, there isn't much else you can do other than steer and adjust speed. Mario Kart is probably the best counter-example to my reasoning, but even then, it doesn't sound all that fun to develop.

Browser-based Game - not interested: Many browser based games have a terrible reputation within hardcore gaming circles. Being a hardcore gamer, I feel like I would be demoting myself by working on a project like this. It's almost all personal bias, but one of my more concrete reasons is that you have less to work with (for example, you have to assume that graphics capability is severely limited compared to making a stand-alone game).

Action Adventure - interested: If it has a good story, memorable characters, and solid mechanics, I couldn't pass it up, as it sounds like something I would want to play.

Player made content - interested: This one is difficult, as a big part of PMC games is the community. Regardless of the quality, if you can't attract players, the game is doomed to fail. I would approach any PMC project with caution, but simple mechanics that give rise to complex behaviors in players is always fun. Another plus is that the technicals of developing such a game are much easier than what it would have been to generate the end result (all of that PMC content!).

JRPG - interested: I like well thought-out stories in games. They make me feel like I'm in the world. If I would play it, I would make it.

WRPG - interested: With this genre, it seems that developers are trying out new ideas more freely than in other genres (this is most likely to deal with all of the customization options that players have). As a life-long tinkerer, this sounds really exciting to work on.

MMO - interested: Players act completely different when playing online games than single player games. The mechanics are different, and I feel that most MMO genres are very poorly explored (come on, can't we get past dice-roll-esque combat now?) If I had the chance to work on an MMO with new game mechanics, I would be thrilled to work on it.

Interactive Story - interested: The genre is poorly explored, and I think this could be the future of gaming. I'm always interested in participating in something that can be the next big hit.

After writing this, I noticed that most of the reasons distilled down to a few key points:
- If I would play it, I am interested in developing it.
- New technology is almost always interesting to work on.
- Poorly explored genres have room to grow, and therefore you have room to innovate. Innovation is fun.

For me, its story and depth of play. If there is an interesting, well-told, and involving story, and the gameplay isn't a stock repetitive rehash, but actually adds depth via some sort of customization, adaptive, progressive, incrementally elaborate mechanic, then I'm usually interested. For me though, its usually the JRPGs and WRPGs that hit those points the most for me, so I tend to lean towards them. I would say some of the best RPGs actually merge the concepts from both JRPG and WRPG to make a well rounded experience.

I love FPS games because they are the best for engaging the player.

Player-made content games are cool as well, but you need a lot of players for that to work - of course Minecraft has millions of players, so there's pretty much everything going - somebody made the Death Star, some other people made the Hyrule world, etc.

A well-done WRPG will also get my vote - I must have over 150 hours invested in my main Oblivion character, plus 200+ on alt characters (haven't properly started Skyrim yet). However, I don't enjoy JRPG games so much, perhaps I just like the control you get in Oblivion and that kind of game.

I also like RTS, especially Age of Empires.

I definitely agree with w00tf0rfr00t on "If i would play it, I would develop it", which reflects my current projects - a 3D FP(arcade)S involving zombies, and a 2D magic shooting game.

By the way, you missed out the Puzzle genre.

You don't have sports in your list. Not that that in any way represents what I would choose. I just noticed it was missing.

I like to make games that are new takes on a genre, or which involve a lot of genre blending. This stems mostly from my frustration with stagnant copy cat games.
My favorite rts games are things like majesty and wb3 which never achieved mainstream popularity. Most RTS games are more like WC and SC and C&C which I am not a huge fan of. I also prefer complicated games.
My favorite browser games are things like Warring Factions and SpaceFed as opposed to Travian or OGame and their numerous clones.
These feelings extend to games of pretty much all genres. I do like some mainstream games also, but they tend to feel shallow and easily solved to me. And their stories are not very interesting.

By the way, you missed out the Puzzle genre.

I wasn't really sure how to categorize that. Of the puzzle games I've played, most of them are speedpuzzle minigames (stuff like tetris, bejeweled...) which might as well be time management games. Of the non speed-driven ones, half are something like Jewels of the Oracle, which is almost an adventure game except its just puzzle after puzzle with no story between them, and the other half are like solitaire, which is probably its own genre but a near neighbor of classic board games like chess, checkers, mancala, go, etc. And then the ones I don't play, like sudoku and crosswords and jigsaws, make the puzzle category even more of a disparate mess.

[quote name='hupsilardee' timestamp='1335452927' post='4935097']
By the way, you missed out the Puzzle genre.

And then the ones I don't play, like sudoku and crosswords and jigsaws, make the puzzle category even more of a disparate mess.
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Perhaps we need a Disparate Mess category I'm sure we would fit several games in that one!

As far as my own preferences go, yes it's strongly related to whether I want to play the game, but I'd rather go deeper than just saying that. For one things, there are games I have enjoyed playing that I wouldn't want to make, because I think something else would be a lot better investment of my time and energy. For another thing, as a reader and a writer I'm quite choosy about story. I don't really like games that don't have much story, and I don't really like games that have a story totally focused on war, and I don't like games that have a story that's too dark and gritty/horrific/tragic, or games that have a story that's very little kiddish and doesn't make much sense or have much to say that's meaningful to an adult player like me. I do like mystery, romance, the less-violent side of survival, fantasy as long as it isn't high or urban, and sci-fi as long as it isn't all about war, post-apocalyptic dystopia, or corruption. I'm a bit picky about art and the way it creates immersiveness, so I have no interest in text-based games and little interest in browser-based games. And on top of that there are some standard gameplay tropes I'm really sick of, such as classes in any kind of rpg or mmo - If I read a game description and it brags about number of classes, it has lost me right there.

So what would I be _really_ interested in making?
- An MMO with no classes and lots of crafting and sim play to balance out the combat-focus, would probably be my first choice. If anyone's seen me mention something about a "starfish-shaped mmo", that's this.
- If I take the impracticality of developing a large game like an mmo into consideration, my favorite "small" games are time management games which also happen to be pet or plant collecting/breeding games. (Really tempting to turn it back into a "big" game by adding tactical or card game combat as a use for the collected/bred pets, though.)
- In a very close third place would be some sort of interactive romance story rpadventure or rpsim game. (Again back to being "big" games in terms of how much work they are to produce, as I learned first hand through failing to develop Gimmie Those Wings or Xenallure into anything playable; though the biggest lesson I learned from that is that I should not try to be the leader of a game development team because I suck at being a leader.)

I'm not really sure why I'm not interested in making an RTS or the related genre of tower defense. One of my favorite games of the past few years, Plants vs. Zombie, is a tower defense game. I particularly enjoyed Warcraft 2, and have enjoyed other RTSes. Why do I not want to make something similar? I'm only guessing but I think it's because the RTS/tower defense genre seems to have "war all the time" as its basic gameplay concept, and I just find that offputting. I might be find with a game that alternated between a RTS or tower defense campaign and non-combat sandboxy or sim play where the player got to creatively build stuff up. But I dunno, I just like RTS play better if it is split into speed-driven time management sim play and turn-based tactical combat. Combining the two just seems to lose some of the nicest parts of both, imho.

Space Sims. I've been addicted to the sci-fi genre since a kid, and hours spent navigating the tunnels of Descent, or dodging capital ships in Escape Velocity, are fond memories.

Space Sims. I've been addicted to the sci-fi genre since a kid, and hours spent navigating the tunnels of Descent, or dodging capital ships in Escape Velocity, are fond memories.

I'd probably consider that a subset of flying/driving sims, but ok, I agree that even though they are both called sim it's an utterly different genre than things like farming sims. My uncle has a pilot's license and he always loved those sims where you fly a WWII plane and such.

What I really want is to combine many genres in one game/universe. Honestly I think that's the future of gaming. Since what I think draws me to games the most is deep, complex multiplayer interaction, (hype alert) Dust 514 coming out really got me thinking of all the possibilities in combining game genres. I mean when you have the entire universe at your disposal there's pretty much nothing you can't include and integrate. For example Dust is a shooter integrated with Eve the space combat game, but what if you integrated a city building/management sim to manage the planets, and some sort of pve exploration/adventure to explore new planets? What if the Facebook users playing Farmville were actually managing farms on the planets in Eve to produce resources for the Eve players? CCP has demonstrated that something like this is easily possible, and that's the kind of thing I want to develop in general. Even if those ideas aren't all practical and would take a lot of work, that's what I want to do most. I'm more in the field for the passion and the drive to create something

But in the absence of that I kinda want to make an action based space combat console game, just because that is what sounds fun to me at the moment lol

Can remakes be a category? Because I'm always looking at past games and thinking up how to change them and create a new gameplay mechanic and story with them.

You have real-time strategy and tactical, but no turn based grand strategy such as Civilization, Master of Orion, Master of Magic. I still probably play Master of Orion 2 more than most newer games.

Right now my two main projects are major hybrids they are a Puzzle/User Created Content/WRPG, and a Simulation/FPS/Action-Adventure/WRPG. I'm trying to focus more on what the designs do well, instead of doing everything.

Checked adventure amongst a couple others because I love those games. Of course you could say every game is a form of adventure since it's unknown to you until you play it, but some games just excel at it (the first few tomb raiders come to mind)

You forgot to add a category for puzzle games such as Biosys (survival/adventure/puzzle).

I definitely can see PMC's becoming big in the near future, especially with improvements in procedural generation and computing power/storage. Imagine a Minecraft-like server with thousands of players, with all the social dynamics naturally fitting into place (like players would pay others to protect their village from monsters and griefers, etc...). But it will probably require a big human-computer interface overhaul to become really good.

Still waiting on the neural interface. This is gonna be cool.

You forgot to add a category for puzzle games such as Biosys (survival/adventure/puzzle).

I haven't played that, but doesn't that go in the adventure category, since it is a point and click? I don't think of survival as a gameplay genre (which is what the poll is), I think of it as more of a trope genre like horror, sci-fi, fantasy, comedy, etc.

Can remakes be a category? Because I'm always looking at past games and thinking up how to change them and create a new gameplay mechanic and story with them.

Although I don't think it fits into the poll because its not a genre, I think it would be very interesting to discuss the appeal of making a remake vs. a non-remake.

Jump and Runs! Like Commander Keen.

[quote name='Bacterius' timestamp='1335745687' post='4935942']
You forgot to add a category for puzzle games such as Biosys (survival/adventure/puzzle).

I haven't played that, but doesn't that go in the adventure category, since it is a point and click? I don't think of survival as a gameplay genre (which is what the poll is), I think of it as more of a trope genre like horror, sci-fi, fantasy, comedy, etc.
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It's not really adventure since it's pretty much always the same places you visit. It's a fairly small, closed world, the main emphasis is on problem solving (going back and forth), so I'm not sure where it would fit into the poll. I suppose you could class it into Adventure but I don't think it's accurate. I just feel the poll is missing a couple choices but it's not a big deal, 99% of all game genres are represented already.

Adventure and Interactive Story games--my all time favorite being Grim Fandango (hence my Avatar image). Creating a game that combines a great story, great art, cool characters, and complex puzzles together is something I've always wanted to do.