Chairman Yang said:
Who cares if Deus Ex falls into an arbitrary genre classification? Seriously, what does it matter? Deus Ex is Deus Ex. Screw trying to fit it into one moronic definition of RPG or another.
Riposte, I'm picking on you because you're the last post I saw on the topic. Why do you care at all about the meaningless semantics you're posting? What possible bearing does the debate have on the quality of the game, or whether you'll play it? If the developers suddenly declared the game was an FPS and not an RPG at all, but nothing actually changed, would you care?
Because clarity is extremely useful, and more importantly is naturally desired by serious thinkers. Thus arguments about meaning are inevitable, even in videogames, and disdain for them only help obscure issues. Semantics have come to be considered an evil thing for only very poor reasons(mainly people will declare something "lolsemantics" as an out). Also there is nothing arbitrary about my genre classifications, which I haven't even specified at this point and I am not interested in dwelling on here. Most arguments about genres are in reaction to actual arbitrary classifications(which sums up the current use of "RPG" very well).
"Meaningless semantics" lol. Now that's some real lolsemantics.
EDIT: Here is another answer: The problem with calling something a genre or subgenre it is not is that it basically corrodes the genre. You see genres are nothing more than collection of similar things. Videogame genres are groups of games which play similar to each other. Grouping Fallout 3 with Fallout 2 removes meaning from Fallout 2's genre. (May it be WRPG, Turn based strategy, etc - specific names don't matter as much as the individual contents of the genre.)
EDIT: And another follow-up: You may think having no genres is the obvious solution then, but genres are the basis of criticism(sometimes even when you don't realize it). You could try to compare your "level of fun" or something in reaction to game on an universal scale, but your end result would be inaccurate, illogical, and arbitrary. You'd be trying to throw random feelings out without understanding them. However when comparing games of the same genre you are able to better measure their improvements and flaws. In written form your opinion would actually have substance and would be sensible through logic. I would also say the further apart two genres are, the less comparable their games are. It is basically impossible to draw any solid comparisons between Civilization 5 and Devil May Cry 3(and you'd have to be an enthusiast in both to even write anything worthwhile!). That kind of cross-genre comparison would only be conclusive if one game was incredibly bad and the other extremely good. (Meaning: GotYs are wastes of time.)
