Making Sense of Genre: The Logic of Video Game Genre Organization

Abstract

Despite the importance that the dimension of genre holds in media studies, its very definition in the field of video games is still a matter without consensus. This study intends to outline the logic that lies within the constitution of videoludic genres, understanding them as formal devices configured as per the different thought functions stated by Piaget’s cognitive psychology theory. This project will propose a formalist approach from a cybersemiotic perspective. It seeks to establish a cardinal set of relations to understand the compatibilities and incompatibilities traceable in the syntactic functional order of the different video game genres. Furthermore, a corpus of 43 genres is used to prove the solidity of this theoretical approach, oriented to establish foundations for a praxis of the human–machine ludic relation in fields such as game design and media studies, with the performative character of function as a guiding principle.