Is the Role Playing really a genre?

[lestatdark]

"What makes a Turn Based Role Playing Game different from a Strategy game from a gameplay aspect. Remember this: Strategy games do NOT have to be part of the RTS, TBS, or SRPG genres. They also don't have to be mission based. They do not have to be linear either. What makes a Strategy game imo, is the Combat more specifically the Micromanagement. Both of these features are present in Turn Based Role Playing games. To prove my point even further that Strategy games don't need to be mission based or linear, I will note two very famous, recent innovations in the RTS sub-genre. These two games are Pikmin and Little King Story. There is a lot of debate which genre these games would fit into, but from a taxonomical point of view, it would seem that they would fit into the strategy genre. They might even be different enough to creat a sub genre. Little King Story and Pikmin are both Quest and Exploration based rather than Mission based, and they have both aspects that I mentioned. So I think it is safe to say that Turn Based Role Playing games should fit into the strategy macrogenre, as a sub-genre."

"So to conclude, I find the Role-Playing Genre more of a collaboration of Genres held together by an extra level of customization, as well as the ideal of a large focus in the Story."

I'm sorry for not having clarified in which part of your post I'd agreed. In these classifications you are correct, except for the part to consider Turn Based a sub-genre of the Strategy genre.
I don't agree with that kind of classificiation, since I believe it to be you trying to look for minute similarities to have them fit into your categorization.

You make one mistake. You assume the taxonomy in which to use for your categorization is based on the Linnaen Taxonomy (the biology taxonomy) in which his life work, the Systema Naturae, is solely based on similar characteristics as you go down Kingdom, phylum, etc.
Nowadays there's one major current in taxonomy that's countering almost every presupost of the Linnaen Taxonomy, and that is Cladistics.

They study the genetical similarities between species and their evolution along the phylogenetic trees. The main distinction between the two of them is that while the Linnaen (you) is based almost exclusevly on characteristics shown on the surface by most living organisms, Cladistics (me) go into the core (DNA, RNA, Mitochondrial DNA) of each living animal, and try to see the % of genome similarty between species.

Having studied exhaustely both types of taxonomy, one thing I learned is that the Linnaen classification made a quite big list of mistakes, like considering plants and fungi phylus of the same kingdom, plantae, when in reality, they belong to different kingdoms all together, due to extreme genetical and functional differences between them. He then later considered fungi to be part of a different realm, when he divided his taxonomy into five, absolute in his terms, realms, Animalia, Plantae, Fungi, Protista and Monera, another huge mistake.
While the three first realms are pratically non-mutable, the Protista and Monera realms are one of the biggest failures of the Linnane taxonomy, especially the Monera.

The Monera kindgom, by Linnaen, is comprised entirely of Bacteria, in which to him, the surface characteristics, and the basic functions are the same for all bacteria and that is completely wrong.
Phylogenetics have determined that there are actually three more kingdoms in the realm of microorganisms, and those are Bacteria, Archae e Eukaryota, due to extreme genetical differences between all of them. Even nowadays, with the surge of chemotaxonomy, even more kingdoms are being split due to differences in Enzyme production, DNA sequencing, genotype of different DNA-hybridization, Mitochondrion DNA differentiation in animals, all these can fit into different types of Haplotypes that then are estimated and jackkniffed into future realms.
Also, extrapolating off the biological realm, there are dozens of literary taxonomies for different types of situations, such as Keith Pavitt's economical taxonomy, safety taxonomies like CREAM (Cognitive Reliability Error Analysis Method) and CIRAS (Confidential Incident Railway Analysis System), Levi-Strauss folk taxonomy, numerical phenetics, and so on.

So you see, when you try to imply taxonomy as a true and unique method to classify games using exclusevily the parameters in which you have learned (and i'm very curious what are those and where did you learn them), you have to thread very carefully. You just don't go looking at the surface of things and looking for minute similarities to tack on the genres that you see fit, in that basis, you're doing the same exact error Linnaeus did in 1735. You can continue to do so, and i'll refute you once again.

Also, as another user said in another post, using biological classifications is moot when it comes to inorganic things, which have a multitude of more different variations, specifications and functionality. A living being is ultimately defined by his DNA, that's why cladistics and chemotaxonomy are the most correct ways of classification of living organisms. But seeing that you're extrapolating into the realm of the inorganic, you have to consider that "Things" are defined by an extraordinary multitude of parameters, and you'll do a big fallacie if you only consider small and minute similarites to fit into your parameters.

As you see, considering Taxonomy as an exact and unique science to classify things isn't quite right. While it is the science of classificiation per se, as it's defined by it's greek name, it does not imply that it's correct and that it's usable in all kind of scenarios as I pointed out.