Why Sticking to Genre Rules Matters in Video Games

Players expect certain things from certain genres. Here’s why.

Portal’s cake was a lie. Screenshot from Steam.

I’ll never forget the first time I played Portal. I was expecting a typical first-person shooter, full of running, gunning, and maybe explosions. With a bit of a mind-bending twist. You know, kind of like Half-Life 2. But instead, I got a mind-bending puzzle game that made me think in completely new ways. And I wasn’t the only one. The Portal gun changed first-person shooters forever. It was a fantastic experience, but it definitely wasn’t what I was expecting. And that’s because Portal, while technically a first-person shooter, broke many of the genre’s rules. Why is that interesting?

See, genres are like a kind of unspoken agreement between developers and players. They set expectations about what a game will be like. Just like baby ducks follow the first thing they see after hatching (usually their mama), players often form strong attachments to the first game they play in a specific genre. This “imprinting” shapes their expectations for future games in that genre.

In the animal world, imprinting is a powerful survival mechanism. Those baby ducks follow their mama because they instinctively know she’ll lead them to food and safety. Similarly, in the gaming world, players rely on genre conventions to…