Game Genres, pt. 3: The Gamester's Types of Video Games (1983)

Continued from part two.

After reviewing two different game manufacturers' systems of "game genres" used for marketing and selling their titles, here is a player's-eye analysis of different arcade game types. The author takes an almost phenomenological approach: he classifies each game type by the interface through which he experiences the game. Delineating titles by these distinct interface designs, shared among games of a common genre, happens to tend to classify games by their affordances given the player to navigate virtual spaces. Each interface is built around those affordances of navigation and action. This probably wasn't Kordestani's intent with the system, but I see it as a side effect that correlates with my own studies of cyberkinaesthetics.

The Gamester's "Types of Video Games"

The Gamester's Guide to Arcade Video Games (Paul Kordestani, TAB Books Inc., 1983)

Paul Kordestani's The Gamester's Guide to Arcade Video Games (1983) is a hard-to-find, early guide to winning arcade game strategies. Many early texts about digital games are focused on tips and tricks to impress the other players at the arcade or maybe get ahead at tournaments. Kordestani is billed as a business consultant and arcade game enthusiast and founder of GAMESTER, Inc., "an arcade game player's support group."

The book's publisher, TAB Books, is better known for publishing guidebooks on all manner of technical subjects: electronics, lasers, robotics, and computers (I've owned TAB books on all these topics). TAB's other book on video games (that I know of), How to Repair Video Games (1978), is much like the other tinkering and repair guides they publish. Kordestani's Gamester's Guide is unusual as it is a different type of technical guide that describes gameplay and techniques more than electronics design or computer architecture.

Part I of this book consists of general information about games gleaned from Kordestani's "17 months of research and writing" (pg. vii). As the title implies, this book focuses on video arcade games, and there is information on game cabinet styles, general functionality, popularity, terminology, history, and even controversies. Chapter 3 is where Kordestani describes his "Types of Video Games," a sort of game taxonomy based on control methods and movement affordances. This is an unusual take on the concept of game genre, but is one that ignores in-game representation and focuses mostly on the human-computer interface through which the game is controlled. Each game type is classified by letter.

• Type A: One-Lever Maze Games ("lever" is Kordestani's term for joystick. These games focus on movement in a 2-D plane, especially maze games like Pac-Man and similar games like Q*bert.)
• Type B: Lever Plus Action Button Games (these games focus on movement through an environment in a 2-D plane with the addition of one button for taking an action like jumping (Donkey Kong) and punching (Popeye). It is unknown how Kordestani would classify more maze-like games that have an action button (like Wizard of Wor and Mr. Do!)
• Type C: Upward-Shooting Games (Space Invaders started this genre that encompasses (in 1983) what Kordestani estimates to be "approximately one-third of all video games" (pg. 15). The player controls a vertically-shooting base that is restricted to movement along the horizontal axis near the bottom of the screen. Some examples have an additional button for some limited power effect (presumably, like Phoenix and its Force Field button).)
• Variations of Type C (upward-shooting games where the player's base may move vertically in a restricted area at the bottom of the screen, like Centipede)
• Type D: Automatically Sideways-Moving Games (side-scrolling games with an auto-scrolling framing device (also called "Authoritarian" by Dominic Arsenault and his team in "The Game FAVR: A Framework for the Analysis of Visual Representation in Video Games" (2015)). Examples include Moon Patrol and Scramble.)
• Type E: Total Maneuvering Games (rightly called "the most challenging control boards" and Kordestani incorrectly asserts that "Asteroids was the original of this type" (pg. 19). Maybe he never played Computer Space or Space Wars before. This type of game is a momentum-based multidirectional shooter. The controls allow the player to rotate their avatar right and left, thrust forward, shoot, and often include an additional action like shield or hyperspace.)
• Variations of Type E (side-scrolling but freely moving games like Defender and its sequel, Stargate.)
• Type F: Three-Dimensional Games (first-person games showing a perspectival view of a 3-D environment, like Red Baron and Battlezone. This category is not classified by its interface, though Kordestani notes that the controllers in the example games (one 4-way joystick in Red Baron, two 2-way joysticks in Battlezone) are "substantial" and "much larger than the usual control levers" (pg. 20). These "substantial" joysticks contribute to the experience that the player is controlling a military aircraft or armored fighting vehicle.)
• Miscellaneous Games (games that don't quite fit into the other categories, like Missile Command and Tempest)

It does not appear that Kordestani's "types" influenced any other genre system. Kordestani doesn't even use the system in the book's Part II, playing techniques for 41 different games that were prevalent in 1983-era arcades. However, it does stand out for classifying games by interface rather than representation (eschewing milieu categories like "science fiction" or "horror").