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Casually Explained: Video Game Genres

Casually Explained | February 4, 2026



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Comments

This post currently has 45 comments.

  14. @demonreturns4336

    February 4, 2026 at 7:29 am

    My guy got to RPGs but didnt even mention JRPGS

    And then what about cozy games like the stardew valleys

    And then are visual novel games genre where its mostly just about reading texts and unraveling a story

    And then of course horror games where you have your silent hills, and resident evils (games that are supposed to insight fear)

  15. @Sesbian-Lex-Gamer

    February 4, 2026 at 7:29 am

    Nice explain as someone who is RTS fan , Sc2 elitist , I do think Dota 2 is fun but yeah I'm glad you didn't mention much about league
    I hate that game and discrimitate the players ( I too myself have played it sometimes ) But hey everyone hates league , even myself or you or the players themself.

  19. @ryan2130

    February 4, 2026 at 7:29 am

    I think arcade or arcade style is the best genre. Instant action, minimal controls, minimal menus, etc.

    Think a game like Pac-Man, Contra, Galaga, etc.

  24. @JosephLachh

    February 4, 2026 at 7:29 am

    I'm looking foward to a new game called "Jitter" coming 2025, but I don't know what genre to tell people it is when I pitch it to my friends.

    What about indie games? I don't understand what an indie game is….I guess I have to look elsewhere.

  32. @niemand7811

    February 4, 2026 at 7:29 am

    1:01 already disagree. Smash is not a fighting game. Look at Street Fighter, especially SFII. There are older fighting games predating Street Fighter of course but their mechanics can barely make up what we got with Street fighter II.. Fighting games are all about depleting your opponents life bar a.k.a. k.o.-ing your opponent. Smash is a simplistic platform brawler but more so in a party game sense. In Smash you pile up percentage and the higher that is the higher your chance of shooting the opponent out. That's not a fighting game. There are boxing and wrestling games that fall under the category of fighting games but mostly we do consider them fighting games. Especially most wrestling games are not. And FGCs suck like black holes. FGCs are the reason why today most people abstain from fighting games. Despite what you claim about FGCs we know the reality is different. It is ALL online. Especially the mindset that has developed within the FGC and started to spread over the internet, certain ideas and ideals and whatever nonsense. No thanks.
    3:12 the biggest difference is between action RPGs and turn based RPGs. Of course multiplayer online RPGs are action RPGs. Can't think of them being turn based when half the players would fall asleep. Except for Baldur's Gate 3 which is turn based odd enough.
    4:02 down the shooter galore I would not consider "battle royal" a specific genre. Not a shooter specific genre anyway since you can have this battle royal bullshit in literally anything now with those battle passes. And the pay to win thing is another unfortunate idea that needs to die. Because rich kids always win.
    4:59 You pull "casual games" as a genre? And you do not even explain this nonsense? Wow. I realize this was five years ago. But have you become more educated on the subject ever since?

  34. @f3rn4n2x3str3ll4

    February 4, 2026 at 7:29 am

    I know this wasn't the point of the video but I wanted to touch upon an improvement that perhaps serves the field you've based your video off
    Regarding imprecision in categorizing videogames, we should try to learn from the fields that have already had to classify things very carefully in order for them to work, like "taxonomy" as applied to biology, or "normalization", as applied to databases, or neurology, to understand how we recall information. I can suggest these improvements:

    1. Imagine you are going to store something in boxes. Therefore, an object can only be in a single box. That's how physical reality works. This manner of classifying fits best if you want to classify by a single category, say, color. You get a single box for blue things, another for red things, another for yellow things. In this case, the CATEGORY on which you are classifying elements is on color, and the VALUE is the color itself. Applying it to videogames, you may choose the CATEGORY to be "Importance of quick reflexes in order to succeed", and the VALUES may be high or low. Why do we need to classify like this? Because we want to find it faster when we are looking for it. If we put everything in the same box, it takes longer to find. But if the boxes are roughly the same size, then we remember the VALUE of the object in a given CAT and avoid looking in other boxes.

    2. Now, in reality, you want to classify by many categories. Why? because to confront different situations you need a tool that has a specific characteristic (VALUE) in different CATEGORIES. Tonight you need a PLASTIC umbrella so it repels water, and you need a FANCY outfit to dazzle the invitees. So, what do you do? How do you accommodate this increase in complexity? Well, if you kept using boxes, you might put smaller boxes inside the ones you already had. But then, for every category, the number of boxes increases exponentially. So, it would be very hard to maintain so many boxes. And just navigating them would be cumbersome. Further, the order in which you selected the boxes may not be the same order that someone else thinks is best, which would make it hard for them to figure their way around. A better solution is to use the metaphor that tags lend themselves toward (Gmail uses this). You can freely tag your element with whichever tag/s you want, and when you are researching that tag, some system helps you find all of the elements with that tag. Now, you should be thorough when using tags. You should decide which are all the CATEGORIES you want to classify on, the VALUES that these categories can have, and assign at least one VALUE of each CATEGORY to each and all elements (games) you want to classify. And to help a system figure out if you have not forgotten to assign a VALUE of a given CATEGORY to a given element, perhaps the tags can hold the information of the category they belong to. So that some program goes through each of them and analyzes them. So, some of the tags would be {"category":"reliance on reaction", "value":"low"},{"category":"reliance on reaction", "value":"high"},{"category":"number of players", "value":"single"},{"category":"reliance on reaction", "value":"multi"}. I also think the values for all categories should be a decimal number. At least as a starting point. We can add more complexity as needed. A value of 6.78964 may not tell you how many players can play a game, but at least it tells you it is more multiplayer than a game with a 0.0000 in the same CATEGORY. The benefit of this approach is that you would give a value to all categories, and just by flipping a single value, you can solve a problem you though you could not with that game. For example: chess is not social enough? make it giant!

    That's it for now. I've written in more depth, and described several CATEGORIES and VALUES following this idea. I can share it if you'd like. Mainly, I'd invite you to stop thinking about classification in terms you have used before. Notice it is a lazy way of determining expectations. Don't depend too much on expectations. Try to see life anew and fresh at every moment. Why? Because if you pay enough attention to life, your creativity blossoms. Go on a spiritual path. I'm serious. It will teach you to see life as it is and to find profoundness where you couldn't have even imagined it was possible. When you see a 2D character jumping in platforms and shooting, don't immediately compare it to Megaman. When you do that, you destroy both your and the developer's creativity. Focus on the utility of that game in the capacity that it has to solve a specific problem. That is one category. Then try to find a different type of problem that that game can solve. That's another category. For example, you want to hone your reflexes. That is one category. You want to feel relaxed. That's another category. The difference can be subtle, but that's where the magic is. In other words, because a game requires precise reaction doesn't necessarily mean that it definitely has to put you in a stressed/upbeat state. It may relax you instead. Maybe you don't know how. But you should keep open to infinite possibilities in life. The problem with the current way of classifying video games is that we are trying to fit different CATEGORIES as the same one, and that's where the imprecise VALUES arise.

    I'll be even more blunt: almost all of the current terms used to refer to game "genres" are bad, mainly because

    1) they are not exclusive to each other. It is as if we were classifying all objects in the world by whether they are blue or square. First, there are more colors than blue; second, there are more CATEGORIES that are useful to us; third, something can be both blue and square. Similarly, a game can be an action car racing adventure. "Adventure" loosely refers to the fact that the length of the game is usually long and certain topics are touched upon in the text and ambiance. Or a game can be a roleplaying platformer that is not relying on action/reflexes. You may just not know one yet. You may not be able to fathom how it may be fun. But that's where the magic relies.

    2) Also, in the use of the terms we use to classify games, we rarely recognize the hierarchy some terms have in relationship to others, like how "action" is used to refer to all titles with a heavy reliance of reaction times. Many CATEGORIES can be nested within that one.

  45. @c.d.dailey8013

    February 4, 2026 at 7:29 am

    Wow. That is a nice overview to the genres. Personally I go for RPGs. If I get World of Warcraft and Pokemon, I am a happy camper. I even got into Dungeons and Dragons. This is my first RPG on tabletop. Sports games are simulations of real sports. Fighting games are simulations of wrestling. RPG video games are essentially simulations of tabletop RPGs. Picture what a stereotypical tabletop game is like. A group of people are gathered around a table. The table has a grid board with miniatures on it. It depicts some location, like a dungeon or forest. Each person has a character sheet and a set of fancy dice. One of the people runs the game and has a screen in front of them. That is the game master. Bonus points if that guy is Matt Mercer. The RPG video game is just like that, but on a computer. The screen mainly shows the character in a fantasy world. The interact does include a section on character information. It has things like gear, attributes, attacks etc. The player can pull up the window and reference it whenever they want. This video does point out things I like about the genre. I am a huge fan of the fantasy aspect and lore aspect. IMO Lord of the Rings is one of the greatest stories of all time. It is second only to Harry Potter.

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