Comment by vlunkr
4 hours ago
You have to consider that it’s easier to create a genre when there are fewer games in existence. On Atari you’d make a game called “basketball” and bam, new genre!
4 hours ago
You have to consider that it’s easier to create a genre when there are fewer games in existence. On Atari you’d make a game called “basketball” and bam, new genre!
That is why I specifically included "or reshape". Atari was first for many genres, but it didn't meaningfully define them, or to the extent it did they were significantly reshaped by future games. Super Mario Bros. was far from the first platformer but it, and future developments in the franchise, were so much better than everything that came before them that they became the face of the genre. We see Metroidvanias copying the Super Metroid / Castlevania formula for three decades and counting. None of those copies, not even the wildly successful ones like Hollow Knight, reshaped the genre such that future games were made in their image. And so it goes for most genres. It is certainly possible to reshape a genre in the modern era; Stardew Valley did it, for example. But it is rare for new games to pull off a concept so well that everyone after them copies their homework. Everyone is still copying the homework of the games from 20, 30 years ago.