Genre, Values, and Community

This week in class, we talked about genre and its various aspects, but perhaps one of the most intriguing thoughts I have about the idea of genre is its propensity for communicating values and creating community in many different ways.

During class, one of the most important details about genre that we discussed is that it’s “interesting beyond classification because it allows artists and audiences to cooperate in celebrating or understanding their shared values.” At first glance, it would seem odd to arrive at that conclusion, since we as human beings have a tendency to categorize things to easily understand/organize them — and sometimes the finer details can get lost when doing so. However, as we know, genres are never really pure — they pull in elements and influences from other works, whether it be literature, film, music, or any other form of media.

These elements and influences can take various forms — aesthetics, history, artistic techniques, and even lived experiences. However, values, such as things like courage, patience, respect, perseverance, and many more are also things that genres draw from and exemplify, whether narratively, mechanically, or both. In our closer look at genres with the example of roguelikes, we could see through mechanics of permadeath, procedural generation, and increasingly difficult combat, values like perseverance, improvement, and adaptation were very much so demonstrated. As someone who didn’t have much experience with them, even after my first time playing Dead Cells, I found myself eager to continue to test my skills and improve them, and even to experiment with different weapons to make more progress than I had before each run.

The way that genre creates community through these shared values and ideals is also very important. I remember growing up and being introduced to video games by my cousins — specifically anime fighting games like the Naruto: Ultimate Ninja series, the Dragon Ball Z: Budokai and Tenkaichi series, and even the Sonic, Mario, and Pokemon series (my cousins also introduced me to anime as well, partially through these games). These games and the other media related to them have been part of creating massive communities worldwide, that share important values like some that I mentioned with the example of Dead Cells — perseverance and courage — and even others like self-belief, friendship, and healthy competition (much like the roguelike debate that took place last class 😂).

In discussion, the question of why certain genres explode in popularity and why creators of games choose to create works that are hybrids of genre was raised. When we think about these games and the ways that they incorporate elements of other genres, it becomes a bit more clear as to why that is the case — as human beings, we are multi-dimensional, and even genres themselves are multi-faceted. Some genres and their standout elements are better at communicating certain values or ideas, and creating games at the intersection of multiple genres has the potential to tell certain stories, express different perspectives, or even teach certain lessons. The games we’ve played so far in this course all do an remarkable job of focusing on a specific genre, or amalgamating several to provide commentary on games themselves, and life at large.

It’s very easy to see genre as just another means of helping us easily categorize things, but in reality, it can also serve a vehicle for creating points of connection and community through the values contained within them.