Cross Genres: Are They Even Worth It?

[V_Sama]

Are people who do cross genre games actually coming up with something new or are they just being lazy? If someone were to make a sports/sim game, would that show creativity or desperation? Should we just stick to one style of game and just be as original as possible, or should we try to bring in a broader audience by appealing to two or more demographics with cross genre games?

I'm asking these questions because I'm very tempted to begin on a few cross genres of my own. I just don't want to get down to the wire, finish it up and find out that no one would dare bother to play it.

[JoKa]

I think you're asking the wrong question. Why do people play games? Because they want to have fun. Can you deliver fun? If yes, no one will care about your approach (maybe some people who always discuss cloning and stuff, but who cares :) ).

The only problem: if your game falls into a massively cloned genre with high quality standards, it will be hard to compete.

[V_Sama]

Here's one of the concepts: It's a highschool (American) football game and high school sim. You build up your school's team as the coach, play as the players, check up on their grades and even help them out at home. You play a full season and try to get them to the championship.

The other can be summed up like this "Guilty Gear" meets "Baseball Stars 2". If the pitcher gives the batter "Chin Music" he can choose to fight him, and it will switch to a traditional 2D fighter with 2 out of 3 falls. If the batter wins, he takes his base. Other times come when the runner is tagged out. He can choose to battle or not. You play until the ninth inning or until your opponent has no more players on their team that can compete.

Would something like that be interesting to you?

[JoKa]

I'm not qualified to answer this because I don't know anything about similar games and as a citizen of Germany I have no relation to foot/-baseball anyway ;)

[jhofmann]

Combining genres is the best way to be called "innovative." (whatever that means) If you get lucky with it - and you only have to be lucky once - you may get a huge hit by coming up with something with a really fresh and unique feel. But it has to be well-concieved, or it will just feel like two unrelated games glued together.

Your first example could work well because the two gameplay modes are complementary: helping out the student characters means you win more games - winning more games can unlock special events for the characters.

The second one isn't as interesting because it acts to defeat the sport: why play if you can fight? Or, alternatively, why fight if you can play? Since you are intoducing two different scenes(the baseball view and the fight view), the action stops for one when you go to the other.

On that note - "brawling sports" were done decades ago, in various ways. The most successful one was arguably Speedball 2, and fighting in that game is mostly for stealing the ball; it only tangentally hurts the other players. Mutant League Football is also sometimes cited, but I don't have experience with that one - I gather that it is based on gratuitous violence, though.

[Qitsune]

There is more to cross genres than just sports, just look at the whole Grand Theft auto franchise. Not so many years ago, you had games where you drove cars and games where you ran around shooting people and those were completely diferent games. Now there are many FPS where ou can ride or drive vehicles. We human beings do many many different things and widening the scope of games is a way to make them more entertaining and more life-like.

[cliffski]

If you are even thinking in terms of genre, then you are vastly limiting your originality and creativity. What genre was the Sims when it came out? or Bridge Builder? or Tower of Goo? or Katamari?
Original games are designed by people saying "this would be a cool thing you can make a game around" rather than "I shall combine game X and Y using genres A and B."

[Nikos Beck]

I prefer the football concept. There is an MTV reality show "Two-a-Days" which follows a highschool football team around. I think helping out kids with their grades is tangential to the game, it augments the game. It's a game I'd like to see. I'm not an american football fan so I might not pick up a pure sports game but if the bullet points on the box hint at the sim aspect, I'd be inclined to try a demo. It sounds interesting.

I guess a key feature is that in a football game you need to decide on plays based on what the other team will do. you could highlight their best players and try to pick plays to box them in. Is there something similar for the kids themselves. Maybe you need to make a playbook for their after-school activities. The team captain is also on the debating team and track team, can you make a play to sort out his schedule. Two players have a crush on the same girl, can you make a play that will make everyone happy. Do you throw a party or a school event to resolve things? There's probably a lot more than play-by-plays that you can use to tie the parts of the game together.