Basic Game Genres and Why RPGs Aren’t Role-Playing Games

Introduction

About 15 years ago, I was writing my thesis, and as part of it, I created a game that used a competency model to assess a person’s potential as an entrepreneur. I also run tabletop role-playing games and have experience developing RPGs. And for the past 4 years, I’ve been pondering why the experiences from tabletop RPGs and video game RPGs are so different that they essentially have nothing in common. I went through many theories and at some point applied the competency model to game genres, after which I found an answer that satisfied me and put my mind at ease. Now I want to share my thoughts with you.

Warning: This article is intended for game developers and is not recommended for players to read.

Here’s the plan:

  1. First, we’ll briefly get acquainted with the competency model, how it emerged, and how it’s used.
  2. Then we’ll examine the basic genres of computer games: their definition, history, representatives, and key subgenres, plus some interesting facts to give your brain a break while reading.
  3. Then we’ll make a small detour into analog game genres that either don’t exist in computer adaptations or have specific adaptation nuances.
  4. We’ll return to basic genres and see how their combinations cover virtually all computer games.
  5. And finally, we’ll figure out what RPGs really are.

Let’s dive in.

What is a Competency Model?

A competency model is a personnel management tool that describes what knowledge, skills, abilities, and personal qualities a person needs to function successfully in a specific professional role. Essentially, it’s a document outlining “what you need to know and how you need to be” to effectively handle professional tasks in a specific organization.

Historical Context

The idea of competencies emerged in the 1970s as an alternative to the traditional approach to evaluating workers. Previously, companies mainly relied on diplomas, experience, and IQ tests. But these indicators didn’t always explain why one person achieved outstanding results while another with a similar resume didn’t.

The key figure in developing this concept was David McClelland, an American psychologist from Harvard. In 1973, he published the article “Testing for Competence Rather Than for Intelligence,” where he proposed evaluating employees not by abstract intelligence levels, but by specific behavioral characteristics linked to job success.

In the 1980s, business schools and consulting companies (like McBer & Company, later part of Hay Group) picked up the idea. The first corporate competency models began appearing, describing qualities expected from managers: leadership, results orientation, teamwork ability. Gradually, the model became a standard HR practice, for example, in developing grade systems.

The Essence of the Competency Model

Competency in this context isn’t just qualification, but a complex of characteristics including:

  • Knowledge — theoretical foundations and information
  • Skills and abilities — what a person can do in practice
  • Behavioral manifestations — how exactly they act in work situations
  • Personal qualities, values, motives, and attitudes that underlie behavior

Thus, competency answers the question: “What distinguishes a successful employee in this role?” Or, in our case: “What distinguishes a successful player in this genre?”

The model introduces scales, starting from binary ones that record the presence of positive or negative indicators, to multi-level scales with any number of levels. For us, the competency level correlates with game difficulty.

Action — The First Genre

When it comes to action games, everyone knows what we’re talking about.

Action is a genre where:

  1. The player controls a character (this could be anything from a bacterium to a starship to a dot on the screen).
  2. Gameplay requires physical activity from the character: moving, shooting, jumping, fighting.
  3. Effective play requires high reaction speed from the player.

The last point is key. As you’ll see later, each basic genre has a parameter or set of parameters it “tests” in a person, i.e., requires for effective play. Or competencies, since we’re viewing genres through the lens of the competency model. In action’s case, it’s reaction speed. Essentially, even the simplest reaction test is already an action genre game.

Genre History

Action was the first genre on computers:

  • Tennis for Two (1958)
  • Spacewar! (1961) And it hasn’t gone anywhere since.

1970s:

  • Arcade machines brought action to the masses: Pong (1972), Space Invaders (1978), and Asteroids (1979).
  • They set the rhythm for the decade: short sessions, increasing difficulty, instant reaction, high cost of error.

1980s:

  • Birth of platformers: Donkey Kong (1981) and Super Mario Bros. (1985).
  • Scrolling shooters appear: Gradius (1985), R-Type (1987).
  • First beat ’em ups: Double Dragon.
  • Action becomes synonymous with video games for mass audiences.

1990s technological leap leads to subgenre explosion:

  • DOOM (1993) and Quake (1996) lay the foundation for 3D shooters.
  • Tekken (1994) and Mortal Kombat (1992) establish the fighting game genre.
  • Gran Turismo (1997) and Need for Speed III (1998) make racing mainstream.
  • Tomb Raider (1996) combines action with adventure and shows that action games can be cinematic.

2000s:

  • Giant series appear: Halo (2001), Call of Duty (2003), God of War (2005), Assassin’s Creed (2007).
  • Action becomes the main AAA genre — massive, expensive, spectacular.

2010s:

  • Action becomes the foundation for global esports: CS:GO (2012), Dota 2 (2013), League of Legends (2009).
  • Numerous GaaS with battle royales standing out: PUBG (2017), Fortnite (2017), Apex Legends (2019).
  • Interactive narrative flourishes in action games: Uncharted (2011 and 2016), The Last of Us (2013 and 2020), Hades (2020).
  • Mass appearance of lootboxes even in paid projects. Though significant decline in the next decade. Notable examples: Overwatch (2016) and Star Wars: Battlefront II (2017).

2020s:

  • Soulslikes become mainstream after Elden Ring (2022), with more games released in the genre each year.
  • Simultaneously, largely thanks to COVID, party games become popular: Fall Guys (2020), Stumble Guys (2021).

Subgenres and Notable Representatives

Today action is one of the most massive and recognizable genres, largely thanks to its subgenres:

  • MOBA — League of Legends (2009), Dota 2 (2013)
  • Shooters — Counter-Strike (2000), Call of Duty (2003), Fortnite (2017)
  • Platformers — Super Mario Bros. (1985), Super Meat Boy (2010)
  • Racing — Mario Kart (1992), Forza (2005)
  • Fighting games — Mortal Kombat (1992), Tekken (1994)
  • Beat ’em ups and arcades — Battle City (1985), Streets of Rage (1991)

Interesting Facts

  • Action has the lowest entry barrier for young players. Everything is clear and works immediately: press button — jump, react in time — win.
  • Action is the most diverse genre as it easily mixes with others. About 40% of all gaming subgenres are action-based.
  • Hardcore audiences prefer action to other genres. Action games most often require extreme concentration, reflexes, and technical mastery from players.
  • Esports is almost entirely built on action. Even RTS like StarCraft is essentially a mix of strategy and action, where reaction is no less important than plans and calculations.

Strategy — The Smartest Genre

Key competencies: planning and mathematical thinking.

Genre characteristics:

  1. Presence of obvious and limited resources that can be counted.
  2. Need to make decisions about proper resource distribution for maximum benefit.
  3. Player makes more than one decision per game, and these decisions have cumulative effect.

In summary: strategy is a genre where the player manages limited resources to achieve victory through planning and calculations.

Genre History

It all started with Go and chess, but that’s ancient history from which tabletop wargames like Kriegsspiel (19th century) later grew, created for training officers.

First text strategies:

  • The Sumerian Game (1964)
  • The Oregon Trail (1971) — by the way, it’s included in the World Video Game Hall of Fame.

By the late 80s, games began appearing that would define the genre for years:

  • Populous (1989) by our beloved storyteller Peter Molyneux — foundation of the god simulator subgenre.
  • SimCity (1989) by Will Wright — beginning of city-building simulators.
  • King’s Bounty (1990) by Jon Van Caneghem — precursor to Heroes of Might and Magic.
  • Railroad Tycoon (1990) by Sid Meier — first economic simulator (tycoon).
  • Civilization (1991) by Sid Meier — brought strategy to turn-based form with global scale.
  • Dune II (1992) — defined the look of RTS. Warcraft: Orcs & Humans (1994) and Command & Conquer (1995) only strengthened the subgenre’s position. Everyone says RTS is dead now — but it’s not. They’ve just become less popular and stopped resembling their ancestors.
  • X-COM: UFO Defense (1994) — laid the foundation for turn-based tactics.

In the 2000s, the genre peaked: Warcraft III (2002), Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War (2004), Civilization IV (2005), Heroes of Might and Magic V (2006).

Today — decline. The genre hasn’t become niche, but has ceded the pedestal to action games.

Some consider MOBA (DotA) a strategy subgenre. But if RTS is 50% strategy and 50% action, then MOBA is more like 5% strategy and 95% action.

(If you have a different viewpoint — I invite you to argue with evidence in my chat https://t.me/GameGestaltChat_En)

Subgenres and Notable Representatives

  • Tactical strategies — XCOM (2012), Into the Breach (2018)
  • Grand strategies — Total War (2000), Europa Universalis (2000)
  • City-building strategies — SimCity (1989), Cities: Skylines (2015)
  • Economic strategies — Factorio (2016), Jurassic World Evolution 2 (2021)
  • Real-time strategies (RTS) — StarCraft (1998), Age of Empires (1997)
  • Strategic tactical hybrids — Fire Emblem (1990), Final Fantasy Tactics (1997)
  • 4X (eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, eXterminate) — Master of Orion (1993), Endless Legend (2014)

Though today the market is dominated by:

  • “Travians” — named after the first successful representative Travian (2004), aka MMORTS.
  • Strategies without direct combat control — Clash of Clans (2012)
  • Card strategies — Hearthstone (2014), Clash Royale (2016)

Interesting Facts

  • X-COM: UFO Defense (1994) emerged accidentally. MicroProse developers initially made an economic strategy about trading, but tested tactical battles in parallel. In the end, the publisher liked battles with aliens more, and the game completely changed concept.
  • In StarCraft II, they conducted AI experiments. In 2019, Google DeepMind presented AlphaStar — a neural network that learned to beat professional players in real-time by analyzing millions of matches.
  • SimCity (1989) grew from a mistake. Will Wright tried to make a game about airplanes, but the map editor turned out more interesting than the game itself. Thus the city simulator idea was born.

Adventure — The Most Accessible Genre

Adventure is a genre where the player explores the world and advances through the story.

Key competencies: attention, memory, and empathy.

Characteristics:

  1. Focus on story and characters — player influence on the plot is optional.
  2. Challenges (if any) focus on attention and memory, not reaction or precision.
  3. Optional — exploring space and interacting with it to progress forward.

Genre History

You’ve probably already guessed we’re going through genres chronologically. Like strategies, adventures originated in text games: Colossal Cave Adventure (1976), Zork (1977). Then — slow but steady development.

1980s:

  • First graphic adventures, rise of point-and-click: King’s Quest, Maniac Mansion.
  • Appearance of action-adventures: Castle Wolfenstein, The Legend of Zelda; and their offshoots: stealth (Metal Gear), horror (Sweet Home).
  • Metroidvanias make you memorize maps and find paths: Metroid, Castlevania.
  • Visual novels come to PC and consoles: The Portopia Serial Murder Case, Snatcher.

1990s:

  • Puzzles mix with adventures: Myst, The Neverhood.
  • New technologies enable open worlds: Herc’s Adventures, Grand Theft Auto.

2000s:

  • Graphically, adventure becomes interactive cinema: Fahrenheit.
  • Action-adventures capture the single-player market.

2010s:

  • Walking simulators: Gone Home, Firewatch.
  • Interactive narrative flourishes: Heavy Rain, The Last of Us, Life Is Strange.

Subgenres and Notable Representatives

  • Point-and-click aka quest — genre classic with mouse control. Monkey Island (1990), Grim Fandango (1998), Deponia (2012)
  • Visual novels — text over images, sometimes choices and story branching. Phoenix Wright (2001), Steins;Gate (2009), Doki Doki Literature Club (2017)
  • Walking simulators — focus on atmosphere and narrative. The Stanley Parable (2013), Firewatch (2016), What Remains of Edith Finch (2017)
  • Interactive cinema — minimum gameplay, maximum story. Until Dawn (2015), Detroit: Become Human (2018), The Quarry (2022)
  • Stealth-adventures — sneaking and avoiding enemies. Metal Gear Solid (1998), Hitman (2000), Dishonored (2012)
  • Horror-adventures — atmosphere of fear without action focus. Amnesia (2010), SOMA (2015), Layers of Fear (2016)
  • Detective games — investigating crimes of varying age with different methods. Sherlock Holmes (2002), L.A. Noire (2011), Return of the Obra Dinn (2018)
  • Metroidvanias — exploring interconnected worlds with gradual zone unlocking. Ori and the Blind Forest (2015), Hollow Knight (2017), Darksiders 3 (2018)
  • Action-adventures — story with active gameplay. Tomb Raider (1996), Uncharted (2007), The Last of Us (2013)
  • Sandboxes with story — open world with narrative. The Witcher 3 (2015), Horizon Zero Dawn (2017), Red Dead Redemption 2 (2019)

Interesting Facts

  • You can’t die in Monkey Island. Developers decided death breaks the narrative.
  • Myst (1993) was the world’s best-selling game until The Sims (2002). And it was an adventure without text.
  • In classic Sierra games (like King’s Quest), you could accidentally die, kill NPCs, or throw away important items. The game didn’t warn you.
  • The genre spawned a separate profession — narrative designer.

Today you’ll hardly find classic 80s adventures, but every second game boasts its story. So the foundation of the adventure basic genre is stronger than ever.

Puzzle — The Most Female Genre

Puzzle is a genre where the player needs to find a solution to a problem. And the more complex the puzzle, the fewer possible solutions the problem typically has.

Key competencies: inductive and spatial thinking, attention.

Genre characteristics:

  1. Large number of levels or encounters per level built on one mechanic that gets more complex as you play.
  2. Often the mechanic comes down to pattern recognition or object manipulation according to certain rules.
  3. Each level (or encounter) is independent and has no long-term consequences.

Genre History

The first digital puzzles were inspired by tabletop and paper analogs: sudoku, chess, puzzles, Rubik’s Cube.

In the 1980s, the genre burst into the industry with trends toward minimalism, abstraction, simple rules with exponential complexity:

  • Sokoban (1982) — founder of the eponymous subgenre, which later gave us Helltaker.
  • Loco-Motion (1982) — still used as a mini-game in AAA.
  • Tetris (1985) — legend that spawned a subgenre with action.
  • Chain Shot! (1985) — ancestor of all “match-three” games.

In the 1990s:

  • I’ll repeat that puzzles merge with adventures: Myst (1993), The Neverhood (1996).
  • Co-op appears: already in Lemmings (1991).

And… history ends. In 2007, the last revolution comes out — Portal. After it, the genre evolves rather than changes radically. But bright experiments appear: The Witness (2016), Return of the Obra Dinn (2018), Baba Is You (2019). And mass hits: Angry Birds (2009), Cut the Rope (2010), Candy Crush Saga (2012), Puzzle & Dragons (2012), Gardenscapes (2016).

Subgenres and Notable Representatives

  • Abstract puzzles — logic and shapes without story. Lumines (2004), Threes! (2014), 2048 (2014)
  • Physics puzzles — managing objects considering gravity. World of Goo (2008), Crayon Physics Deluxe (2009), Bridge Constructor (2011)
  • Meta-puzzles — need to figure out the game’s rules themselves. Baba Is You (2021), The Talos Principle (2014), Outer Wilds (2020)
  • Detective puzzles — collecting clues, hypotheses, deduction. Her Story (2015), Case of the Golden Idol (2022), The Roottrees are Dead (2025)
  • HOPA / hidden object — find hidden objects on the level. Half of Big Fish Games in the 2010s. Even Gardenscapes was initially made in this.
  • Tile-matching — match-three, merge, etc. Open any mobile store.
  • Programming games — literally compose an algorithm or write code. Infinifactory (2015), Turing Complete (2021), Kaizen (2025)

Interesting Facts

  • The earliest mechanical puzzles are Chinese knots from the 13th century. Stone and copper puzzles have been known since the 3rd century BC, like the Greek square of 14 parts.
  • Problems from Sokoban, Candy Crush, 2048, Trainyard are computationally NP-hard. Formally solving them is difficult. That’s why Sokoban became an AI benchmark back in the 1980s.
  • Puzzles are very popular with female audiences, with up to 74% of surveyed female gamers playing them daily.
  • The Guardian wrote: in a chaotic world, puzzles give people order and calm.

Basic Genres of Analog Games

Besides the four computer game genres we’ve examined, the analog world also has:

5. Social — participants focus on interacting with each other to achieve common and/or personal goals, with communication as the main interaction. Key competencies: social skills, communication abilities, and understanding of social roles. Present but rare in computer adaptations, for example, Among Us.

6. Role-playing — classic ones are de facto a type of social, so we’ll talk about tabletop and LARP role-playing games where an event is modeled in a certain world and time, where players take on roles not typical for them in real life. Key competencies: same as social, plus creativity and ability to take someone else’s position. Expected that with AI development, first computer adaptations will appear in 3-5 years. Currently none exist.

7. Educational — allow learning skills in game form that can be used outside the game. So Go or chess aren’t educational games — a person good at them doesn’t gain skills for application outside these games. Key competencies: learning ability, memory. Some transfer well to digital format, like flight simulators or chess trainers. But relate more to educational activity than gaming.

8. Psychological — a form of working with a person’s thinking, attitudes, emotions, and feelings for self-knowledge and/or transformation. Key competencies: self-reflection. Haven’t found in computer adaptations and hope I won’t, as without an experienced specialist on hand, the result can seriously harm a person.

9. Gambling — games entirely or largely dependent on chance with material aspect in reward and/or punishment. Actually not games, as they don’t ensure safety. At least in my world, they aren’t games and shouldn’t be worked on. Key competencies: luck meaning both making right decisions and fortune. Many computer adaptations exist, but I won’t consider them.

And yes, analog action games are much more diverse and require a broader spectrum of competencies than computer ones. But we won’t examine them in detail either, as there’s no point digitizing them as they are.

Game Genre Scheme

We’ve examined each individual basic genre of computer games, now let’s move to their combinations and look at all genres that can exist within this model. In short — all entertainment ones.

The first four are the basic genres examined above:

  1. Adventure
  2. Strategy
  3. Action
  4. Puzzle

Combinations of Two Basic Genres

Small digression: talking about MOBA (DotA), I already mentioned that subgenres can have different ratios of basic genres, depending on how much key competencies are engaged. Keep this in mind while reading further to understand why seemingly completely different games are in the same field.

  1. Adventure + Action = simple action-adventures, story games in open and semi-open worlds, single-player shooters and platformers. Doom (1993), Driver (1999), Red Dead Redemption 2 (2019)
  2. Adventure + Strategy = adventures with progression, turn-based tactics, single-player campaigns of turn-based strategies. X-COM: UFO Defense (1994), Heroes of Might and Magic (1995), Disciples (1999), Disco Elysium (2019)
  3. Strategy + Action = real-time strategies, real-time tactics, MOBA (DotA). StarCraft (1998), Men of War (2004), Dota 2 (2013)
  4. Action + Puzzle = real-time puzzles, puzzle-platformers. Tetris (1985), Limbo (2010), Superhot (2016)
  5. Puzzle + Strategy = strategic puzzle, programming games. Human Resource Machine (2015), Into the Breach (2018)
  6. Adventure + Puzzle = classic quests, adventure puzzles. The Witness (2016).

Combinations of Three Basic Genres

  1. Adventure + Action + Puzzle = action-adventures, real-time adventure puzzles. The Legend of Zelda (1986), Tomb Raider (1996), Portal (2007)
  2. Adventure + Action + Strategy = single-player campaigns of real-time strategies, Diablo-likes, roguelikes. Diablo (1996), Warcraft III (2002), Hades (2020)
  3. Strategy + Action + Puzzle = tactical strategy, tower defense, some economic strategies. Door Kickers (2014), Plants vs. Zombies (2009), Factorio (2016)
  4. Adventure + Strategy + Puzzle = strategic RPGs, turn-based RPGs, some turn-based tactics. Warlords (1989), XCOM 2 (2016), Baldur’s Gate 3 (2023)

Combination of All Four Genres

  1. This is most modern blockbusters: action RPGs, action-adventures with progression, sandboxes with story and progression. Assassin’s Creed (from the second part in 2009), The Witcher 3 (2015), The Last of Us Part II (2020), Genshin Impact (2020)

Why? Obviously, the more different competencies required for a game, the more diverse gameplay can be made. On the other hand, more players will find at least something in the game that hooks them and they’ll like. So games oriented toward mass market, with tons of money invested, combine all genres, at least in the competency model base.

This schema isn’t dogma, but a tool for understanding game structure based on competencies. It allows a new look at familiar games and ways to deconstruct them, makes it more convenient to create personas and find references. But don’t show it to players — not everyone will understand, and many will get angry.

What is an RPG?

We’ve examined all basic genres of computer games and perhaps you noticed the absence of RPG among them, but presence of RPG in combinations. Why did this happen? There are two answers, let’s examine each.

Absence of RPG’s Irreducibility to Other Genres

Try to define RPG where the genre couldn’t be decomposed into adventure genres (including visual novels), action, and strategy. I believe you won’t succeed. RPG has a fundamental problem: as a game genre, it doesn’t have specific mechanics. Like the immersive sim subgenre, a player can classify a game as RPG only by feeling. Even if you try to collect necessary and sufficient systems for the RPG genre, problems arise:

  1. Progression system — show me any remotely complex game in any genre where it doesn’t exist. Doesn’t define the genre but is necessary for it.
  2. Dialogue system — plays no less a role in the adventure genre. Also doesn’t define the genre but is necessary.
  3. Role system — special actions that define a character and are unavailable to other characters. Could just as well be used in action, adventure, or strategy. There are many role-playing games without a role system, starting with Morrowind, which allows mastering absolutely everything. Turns out the supposedly main system doesn’t define the genre and isn’t necessary.
  4. Trading system — both action and strategy can have it. Can there be an RPG without trading? Can’t recall offhand. Let’s say: doesn’t define the genre but is necessary.
  5. Quest system — can now be in any genre too.
  6. Combat system — an excellent RPG is considered one you can complete without entering a single battle. So also doesn’t define the genre but is desirable.

What else? Only general feelings of freedom of action remain. But some sandbox gives more freedom of action.

RPG’s Place in Competency-Based Genres

Virtually all RPGs lie at the intersection of two basic genres: strategy and adventure, highlighted in gray in the illustration above. Where:

6. RPGs that may not have a combat system, like Disco Elysium. Essentially a visual novel with a progression system.

12. All RPGs focusing primarily on action, like Diablo, Mount & Blade, Hades.

14. Classic computer RPGs, from legendary Might and Magic, Baldur’s Gate, and Fallout to modern Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous, Baldur’s Gate 3, and Persona 5. And even something simpler like The Council.

15. Here are the genre kings, like The Witcher series, Mass Effect series, recent Cyberpunk 2077 and Kingdom Come: Deliverance, and even relatively old but dearly loved Gothic and Deus Ex.

So it turns out that:

  1. RPG is the quintessence of basic genres, perhaps why games of this genre are so engaging and popular, as we’ve already examined above, it’s precisely the intersection of genres that provides more opportunities in development, building activities, and attracting the widest possible audience.
  2. But RPGs are not role-playing games — they’re simply two different genres that for a complex of reasons received the same name.

Conclusion

I’ve also identified the following approaches to defining RPG:

  1. Scientific psychological — as we remember from the description of analog games, the role-playing game category includes absolutely any game with any characters controlled by the player, but on the other hand, no RPG satisfies creativity requirements, simply because a computer game cannot provide the infinite solution variants available to humans.
  2. Historical — RPG is everything similar to a D&D session. In this approach, half of strategies and adventures are RPGs.
  3. Journalistic — RPG is everything most of the audience agrees to accept as RPG. Could also be called the democratic approach, except direct voting doesn’t happen, and opinion leaders orient themselves to audience reaction.
  4. Analytical — what features are necessary and sufficient for RPG. But as we’ve examined above, identifying them doesn’t work.

In the end, one reliable method of definition remains: personal — RPG is what you personally consider RPG. It doesn’t matter if the first RPG set your standard for what genre games should be, or you derived it somehow differently. And leave others alone — they have their own criteria and their own equivalence range for RPG.

P.S. I invite everyone who disagrees with my thoughts and conclusions to an argumentative discussion in the Telegram chat https://t.me/GameGestaltChat_En

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