I’m currently writing a small piece on genre and computer games. I’m taking elements of Kenneth Burke’s ideas about audience desire and linking those to the social construction of speech and speech genres via Mikhail Bakhtin. I like your point that innovation need not be the main goal of all games. Like curling up with a good mystery novel, sometimes you just want to play a shooter and blow stuff up. My interest in this topic is to examine those games that blur genres, to offer some theoretical explanation about how that occurs in language and how games are similar constructs, and, possibly, offer suggestions on how we might categorize these new types of games.

I’ve only just begun to read your work so it’s possible you’ve spoken on this topic in other writings. If so, I would appreciate a point in that direction, and, if not, what are your thoughts on these new cross genre games like Bioshock or the Half-Life series? Do we need new names for game genres? Has the gaming community even formally decided on a set of genres? There seems to be quite a few different lists out there.

It seems to me that this area could use some more discussion and clarification, perhaps a new way of thinking about game genres is needed.