next »

[gimymblert]

I use to comlained that space shooter like freespace 2 where dead, they came back full force, adventure game thrive in their niche if you look hard enough and that's discounting the sucess of double fine's kickstarter andhow telltale evolve the genre, if and hypertext game also thrive through accessible tools, christine love and 999 reput visual novel on the map and even the ultimate hardcore genre and impossible to sell rogue like have contaminated mainstream indie scene to saturation ... we are back to a golden age ... but what genre haven't got the necromancy spell? What would you want to rise that is sorely missing?

[Boreal]

I'd hardly say that Berlin roguelikes have come back recently.  Most of the new stuff claiming to be "roguelike" is really just saying it has some form of procedural level generation.

Now, 3D platformers are pretty dead.  A Hat in Time is the only notable example I can think of right now.

[unsilentwill]

The one that jumps to mind is Arcade/Over-the-Top Sports. The last one I recall was a bad Kickstarter from Mutant League Football or something? NFL Blitz has become a shell of its former self, maybe Super Mario Strikers if that counts. So much potential here.

[Sik]

For the record, I know somebody who would be interested on that, since he wanted to make sports games.

Anyway, back on topic: of the big genres I'd say beat'em-ups, as in the Final Fight and Street of Rage kind, I know there are a few new games but so far the genre is still quite dead. Having to cope with multiple screen ratios (in a genre that relied on the screen limits heavily) probably isn't helping.

Also somebody get me up to date with this: what's the status of driving games? As in those that you race against the clock and nothing else (think OutRun), not against some opponents.

[Praying Mantis]

Top-down shooters. Not so much 'revive' as 'make mainstream', because TDS's have always existed in the form of flash games. Recent examples that come to mind are Hotline Miami and Running With Rifles. I'd like to see a popular, well made TDS multiplayer game, that would be cool.

[valrus]

I agree on Arcade Sports; there are certainly examples of it (and don't forget the current low-fi silly local multiplayer genre, like Sports Friends) but there's a ton of potential there.  Over-the-top arcade sports + a team manager campaign mode could be an infinite harvest of goodtimes.

I think there are still a lot of lineages, in various "genres", that haven't borne much fruit recently, or are just emptier than one would expect:

• For its enormous popularity over decades, there are surprisingly few games that descend from X-COM.
• The Starflight/Star Control lineage is surprisingly empty too.
• "Exploratory shooters", I'd call them, rather than scrolling shmups or arena shooters.  Games like, say, Desert Strike, which are shooters at heart but have an important exploratory element.
• There's not really that much in the Cannon Fodder/Syndicate vein of RTS.  (Also rather "exploratory" when it comes to that, if you compare them to other RTS lineages.)

I think there are a ton of games from the 80s and 90s that could use a spiritual successor or two, but many don't exactly fit into "genres".  A lot of games started from the idea "We're going to make a new game about X" and then found mechanics to fit it, rather than start with a standard set of mechanics and add a different theme or a new twist. 

(I would rather make a successor to a game that's never been cloned, rather than a game that had dozens of clones and then faded out.  But from a business perspective, yeah, it helps with that Kickstarter if there's a cohort of genre fans that are eagerly awaiting any new game in their favorite genre.)

[Mittens]

6DOF is a dead genre I would be happy to see alive again

[JWK5]

Whatever the hell genre you'd classify Ogre Battle (not Tactics Ogre) and Dragon Force as. They sort of but not quite RTS and they are sort of but not quite RPGs, but they are insanely enjoyable. Whatever they are there is not enough of them and I want more.

[s0]

I'd hardly say that Berlin roguelikes have come back recently.  Most of the new stuff claiming to be "roguelike" is really just saying it has some form of procedural level generation.

wat

traditional roguelikes never went away. tome4, brogue, cataclysm DDA, infra arcana and sproggiwood (commercial!) are examples of recent ones. dungeon crawl stone soup is still being updated, ADOM made a comeback after being dead for years and various nethack and angband variants are still being developed, same as ever. 7drl has lots of entrants too. just go to roguebasin and check out recent releases on the frontpage.  i think its safe to say that the roguelike "scene" is a lot more active now than it was during the years when i got into roguelikes (mid 00s), probably thanks to the success of "roguelike-likes" or watever theyre called.

[Cobralad]

hey
how about reviving "games that not suck" genre

[s0]

"man, back when i was [however many years ago I was too young to know better] videogames were way better!"

[SirNiko]

I haven't seen much in the way of isometric puzzle platformers lately (eg, Head over Heels, Solstice, Monster Max, Equinox).

Solstice was my favorite from the genre. I played Head over Heels and Monster Max more recently, and still enjoyed them, so I don't think it's just nostalgia.

[gimymblert]

Mario 64 is a dead genre, only one entry

[Dracon85]

Ogre battle was awesome, it was like a basic RTS that went into a turn based battle mode. I mean you had resources and recruited troops to hold certain areas, but the true battles took place in a sort of RPG like encounter. I also miss games with real in depth dungeons, like Lufia or that Japanese game Wizardry Online (was published here for about a year). Dungeons should have puzzles and last a bit rather than be something a player blows through to farm items.

So yeah dead genres... I guess those odd combo genres and good dungeon based games. On a whole I just feel a lot of games seem kind of stagnant. The big publishers/devs are using the same things that have been proven to work rather than exploring new things or even going far back into the early days of gaming; you know when things were challenging, but fun because of the challenge.

[Sik]

6DOF is a dead genre I would be happy to see alive again

I think the problem with these are the controls - not that they were implemented badly, but rather that human brains just plain suck at moving around in a fully 3D space (even in real life the areas we move around are arranged like a 2D map). You pretty much need warping to move around or many players will get lost, but that kind of defeats the point unless there's something else to do (e.g. battles against other ships, in which case your exact location in absolute coordinates is not important).

Although it'd be interesting to see a game that's made around warping around (and don't say Sentinel, in that game you can't even move =P it's one of those games that can't be shoehorned into any genre).

[valrus]

"man, back when i was [however many years ago I was too young to know better] videogames were way better!"

Like many great Christmas gifts, this quote will keep on giving for years to come.

[gimymblert]

6DOF is a dead genre I would be happy to see alive again

I think the problem with these are the controls - not that they were implemented badly, but rather that human brains just plain suck at moving around in a fully 3D space (even in real life the areas we move around are arranged like a 2D map). You pretty much need warping to move around or many players will get lost, but that kind of defeats the point unless there's something else to do (e.g. battles against other ships, in which case your exact location in absolute coordinates is not important).

Although it'd be interesting to see a game that's made around warping around (and don't say Sentinel, in that game you can't even move =P it's one of those games that can't be shoehorned into any genre).

I would say this is rationalization, there was good reason as to why previous dead genre where dead, it just happen it wasn't as true as we just stop making them for conjunctural reason. Worse is that many modern genre should not even exist based on rationalization ... the fuck is idle game or dayz or goat simulator, we can rationalize them a posteriori though

[gunswordfist]

Hack n slash (think dmc and not dynasty warriors). i guess you could say the golden era was the ps2/xbox gen but even back then it barely had any worthy titles. the same goes for what i consider a subgenre for it, 3d action platformers (think prince of persia sands of time)

[s0]

not a "genre" per se but i think tightly structured nonlinear hub levels need to make a comeback. not everything has to be a sprawling open world.

[gunswordfist]

like the ones in mario 64 and crash team racing?