Thursday, July 24, 2025

Game Genres, pt. 16: Facet Analysis of Video Game Genres

Taxonomy of Virtual Spaces

This is a continuation of my long-running series examining game spatiality systems that may be related to but are distinctly different from game genres.

Today's post returns to actual game genres with a look at "Facet Analysis of Video Game Genres," a thorough study of different systems found on game websites and in scholarly publications that are used to categorize digital games by genre. This may include gameplay genres (platformer, racing game, shooter) and thematic genres (fantasy, crime, food). This informed the researchers' work to recategorize the various systems into one overarching system of game genres defined by 12 different facets.

"Facet Analysis of Video Game Genres" by Jin Ha Lee, Natascha Karlova, Rachel Ivy Clarke, Katherine Thornton, and Andrew Perti (2014)

The study was performed mostly by researchers at the University of Washington's GAMER Game Research Group and presented as part of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign's iConference 2014. GAMER was formerly the GAme MEtadata Research Group, and supporting researchers and archivists with tools for cataloguing and organizing digital games as cultural artifacts is one of the group's primary goals.


Facets and Foci

The thorough system outlined in the paper is based around 12 different facets or aspects by which one can differentiate a game. Within each facet, a game may fall under one or more foci that accurately describe the game:

Table 1: Video Game Genre Facets with Examples of Genre Labels Representing Each Facet


The above table, adapted from the paper, shows only a handful of possible examples of foci defined in this system. The facet of Style alone has 100 different variations. This is a robust system for defining and categorizing all manner of digital games with a singular system. Additionally, game can easily be organized using only the facets that a researcher is most interested in.

For my research, how well does this system categorize the spatial aesthetic qualities of digital games?


Facet Analysis and Spatiality

The concept of spatiality was not a primary concern for the GAMER Group researchers. Their work is based on existing methods for categorizing game genres, which do not tend to focus on spatiality. However, the facet of Presentation encompasses some of the graphic techniques used to project a virtual space to the screen and provides the best comparison.

Presentation and its related foci are described in the paper exactly as follows:

Presentation is defined as “the manner or style of game display” containing the following ten foci:
  • 2D: Representation of space in two dimensions. (e.g., A Boy and His Blob, Odin Sphere)
  • 3D: Representation of space in three dimensions. (e.g., God of War, Uncharted)
  • Isometric: Games that use isometric projection to render three-dimensional objects in two dimensions. (e.g., Final Fantasy Tactics, Age of Empires)
  • Static background: Games with a background display that does not move or change. (e.g., Peggle, Princess Maker)
  • Vertical scrolling: Games with a display that scrolls vertically where characters typically move from bottom to top. (e.g., 1942, Raiden)
  • Side scrolling: Games with a display that scrolls horizontally where characters typically move from left to right. (e.g., Muramasa, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night)
  • Grid-based: Games featuring a display that is made up of a series of intersecting vertical and horizontal axes. (e.g., Bejeweled, Tetris)
  • Video backdrop: Games based on interacting with a motion-video backdrop, either as scenery or an enemy (modified from mobygames.com). (e.g., Area 51, EyeToy Groove)
  • Text-based: Games that use text as the main display method.
  • Perspective manipulation: Games where characters are able to switch between multiple display methods (e.g., 2D to 3D or vice versa). (e.g., Super Paper Mario, Perspective)
Defining this facet presented another challenge: what is the nature of the relationship between the Presentation and Artistic style (see below) facets? After lengthy discussion and examination of extant terms and screenshots of game displays, we determined that it would be useful to separate the technical aspects from the artistic or aesthetic aspects of game display. Thus two different facets in our scheme describe the visual aspects of video games.

This is a mix of terms that can describe the spatiality of the gameworld (2D, 3D), frame mobility (scrolling, static background), and even a non-project method of spatiality (text-based). I'll show how each focus aligns with terminology in my taxonomy.

Comparing Presentation to Taxonomy of Virtual Spaces

  • 2D: Aligns with Gameworld Spatiality: Continuous, 2-D. There is not delineation in the Facet Analysis system between continuous and discrete (individual nodes in a network, like a chessboard) spatiality.
  • 3D: Aligns with Gameworld Spatiality: Continuous, 3-D
  • Isometric: The researchers' definition of this term, according to what is in the paper, is unclear. The examples given above (Final Fantasy Tactics, Age of Empires) are generally described as "isometric" (what my Taxonomy defines as an Axonometric Projection (further defined as dimetric in these cases)). However, the paper also refers to Mortal Kombat 3 as "isometric." Do the researchers define any 3-D objects rendered in a 2-D gameworld as "isometric?" In the case of MK3, the characters are based on photographs, the environment is rendered in 1-point perspective, and the background is multiple flat layers rendered in parallax to give an impression of depth. 
  • Static Background: Aligns with Frame Mobility: Fixed.
  • Vertical Scrolling: Aligns with Frame Mobility: Non-Fixed, Smooth-Scroll, Vertical Axis. There is no delineation between normal scrolling (like Ikari Warriors) and Auto-Scrolling (like Raiden).
  • Horizontal Scrolling: Aligns with Frame Mobility: Non-Fixed, Smooth-Scroll, Horizontal Axis.
  • Grid-Based: No real equivalency. 
  • Video Backdrop: No real equivalency. Defined with the Taxonomy by the projection method used in the video backdrop.
  • Text-Based: Aligns with the Non-Projection Method: Text Description.
  • Perspective Manipulation: Such games are defined by the different possible perspectives as options in my Taxonomy.


Comparing Artistic Style to Taxonomy of Virtual Spaces

    The Artistic Style facet compare the graphics used in a game to other forms of visual media (like manga or watercolors) and most don't really align with the concept of spatiality. The Artistic Style focus of Abstract would seem to align with my Taxonomy Non-Projection Method: Ambiguous, but the two concepts are different.

    The Abstract examples include Lumines and Dyad. While both games may commonly be referred to as "abstract," everything in the game is strictly representational. A square of light in Lumines is still recognizable as a square of light that aligns to the game's 2-D plane. A spinning cylinder of fog in Dyad is still recognizable as a cylinder rendered in a 3-D perspective. These may not represent anything found in the real world, but they are unambiguous and project specific objects that exist in the space of the gameworld.

    Ambiguous means that part of the game image is strictly non-representational: the player is not supposed to have a clear sense of space in this case. An example that I've referred to before is in the battle screens of Earthbound.


    EarthBound (Ape Inc., 1995 (originally Mother 2 in Japan, 1994))

    The background is completely ambigous: an ever-morphing, undulating fog of squiggly shapes with no sense of space. The Starman Jr. enemy is clearly rendered and represented, but the player has no sense of where they are in the gameworld. We don't know how far that "fog" goes behind the enemy, or if this is all just an effect meant to convey the mind-altering aspects of psychic combat. It is left as a mystery, which makes it ambiguous.





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    Game Genres, pt. 16: Facet Analysis of Video Game Genres

    Taxonomy of Virtual Spaces This is a continuation of my long-running series examining game spatiality systems that may be related to but are...