Is "Open World" considered a genre? You can have many different types of open world games.

MOBA

No. Open world is just non linear as in not a set path. You can have open world racing games, open world platform games, whichever. A game being open world doesn't change its genre. Some might argue this but to me it shouldn't. 

The problem is that these geners are not ad cut and dry as they used to be. Last gen it was clearly FPS, but I don't feel that is the case now. By FPS one might think CoD or Battlefield clones. This would be the correct way of thinking.

However then you have games like Fallout that are shooter/RPG games that can also be played in 3rd person and are open world?

Speaking of open world games, I feel like this hits the closest to home. However we are faced with the same problem where many of them play very differently due to sub geners. Witcher 3 is an open world RPG and plays nothing like the Ubi Soft titles such as Assassin's Creed and Far Cry (also FPS), or even Sony's Infamous Second Son. I will go as far to say that it is currently the most oversaturated subgener however.

Not to say that games cannot stand out in this category though. Given the general nature of open world games, it is still possible to make a lot of gameplay variety by mixing other geners. Breath of the Wild comea to mind, which to me is the best open world game out to date alongside Witcher 3. However they still have elements that play and feel differently that the games that are oversaturating the market.

Even a new IP like Horizon Zero Dawn can make a name for itself, unlike many FPS during its oversaturated period.

I think that overall this question has no weight, at least not like it used to. Very few games are straight up FPS, Open World, or RPG anymore. Almost all of them are mixing things up, so it is a really tough call to make.

It is for this reason that I vote none, as games these days do not assosiate with label's like they used to.

Don't worry about it too much, as people have completely abandoned the idea of "genre" from the very start.  These threads always go that route.  Perspective, for example, isn't a genre.

FPS easily because it has the most generic checklist of how to make a game that should hypothetically be popular to enough people. Put a sci-fi or WW2 aesthetic and polish the aiming mechanics and, BAM. 

The over saturation probably stems from it being a more obvious group of decisions. When you're making an open world game, an RPG, whatever- there are a lot of roads you can go down. with FPS games these days they tend to stay in a few pretty consistent subsets (WW1/2, future-istic, terrorists/counterterrorists, etc.)

Games where you kill stuff.

I think you answered your own question at the beginning though- a Fallout wouldn't really be an FPS because it's not strictly in first person and very arguably it's more of a role playing / open world game. well, maybe not Fallout 4, but historically.

There are a lot of FPS clones out there in terms of CoD, Battlefield, Titanfall (maybe more original than a lot of the others but still), Destiny, Siege, whatever else. 'Clone' might be a hard term to use because some have their own identity to some degree, their own creative characteristics. But in the end the mechanics are fairly similar for the most part

I definitely think FPS has been the msot inflated genre in the last decade, if not longer. the problem is an EA or Activision get a formula that they know is safe with FPS's and just rinse and repeat. Maybe the only other genre I would consider as bad would be sports, with carbon copies of the same game every year.

I do agree with your sentiments about the Open World genre and Breath of the Wild. by definition an 'open world' concept is quite vague and simply means a big explorable world. Based on that, you'd naturally expect every 'open world' game to be extremely unique and different from others. TO have its own flavor and life. But we don't see that happening. Far Cry and Assasin's Creed SHOULD feel very different but end up looking like just different paintjobs with a replacement of maybe a bow and arrow for a gun, and every Infamous game starts to feel the same.

We need more developers in all genres doing what Horizon and BoTW did this year in the open world genre- stamp their own creativeness and refuse to copy what came before them. Maybe some small elements in combat or map exploration- but overall devs should feel pressured into making new stuff. Horizon with its visuals and art design, Zelda with its extremely ambitious physics engine and emphasis on exploring nature- more of this please.

I fear that a genre like FPS is hard to savethough, especially when we seem to be in a market where multiplayer driven FPS games are huge. It limits what you can do because in the end you have to have two teams sitting on one side or another of a relatively small box/map

It was a discussion about opinions. For me anyways.

I prefer to not get so hung up on a term that ya miss what they meant. I think that when most people mention FPS, they don't mean fallout 4 or deus ex. They're talking about mainly cod or battlefield or battlefront. Personally, i've grown tired of classic FPS but I like playing games like deus ex. 

I kinda agree with your take on oversaturated but I don't think fighting games are oversaturated. To me, they're just missing the mark or unable to catch the interest of consumers. They probably need to be innovative or add in elements from other genres. Some of the more successful ones do that from what I understand.

Fully agree. I'm chipping away at Breath of the wild as I want to explore every last bit of Hyrule. However I'm doing this whilst in the back of my mind I know I have Witcher 3, Just Cause 3, Mad Max, GTAV, Horizon Zero Dawn and soon to be Xenoblade Chronicles 2 in my backlog.