Video game genres and intertextuality

Overview

Five common video game genres, sandbox game and simulation game.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

1. 1

   Name five common video game genres.

   Model answer

   Action-adventure, first-person shooter, role-playing game, simulation and sandbox.

2. 2

   What conventions define a first-person shooter?

   Model answer

   A weapon held at the bottom of the frame, a first-person camera, a crosshair, health and ammunition indicators, and progress measured through combat encounters.

3. 3

   What conventions define a role-playing game?

   Model answer

   A character customised and levelled up over time, statistics and equipment that improve, dialogue choices, quests to accept, and a large world explored across many hours.

4. 4

   Define a sandbox game.

   Model answer

   A sandbox game gives the player a set of tools and a persistent world with no compulsory objectives, so the player sets their own goals instead of completing the designer's.

5. 5

   What is a simulation game?

   Model answer

   A simulation game models a real activity or system such as running a household, a business or a sport, and its pleasure comes from managing that system convincingly.

6. 6

   Explain how genre helps a publisher sell a game.

   Model answer

   Naming the genre tells a buyer instantly what they will be doing, allows the game to be compared with successful titles, and directs marketing at players already known to buy that type.

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Six ways to work the same material.