I am not equivocating tabletop RPGs with video game RPGs. Obviously this is a video game forum. In the context of video game RPGs, what the OP is referring to, my list qualifies. Sure you could say that no video game that has ever been made is good enough to be worthy of the title of RPG, but that isn't what this discussion is about. The first major video game RPGs were Ultima and Wizardry, since the time of their publication the styles of gameplay found in these early games are to date catagorized as RPGs.

That is quite different from what you said in your first post . Also since when has gaming been exclusively an art? Is Hide and Seek an art? Is tic tac toe an art? Some games 'can' be art, but that doesn't mean that gaming as a whole is one. You still didn't answer my questions here btw. There is only one science for classifying things and that is Taxonomy.

It still is refined everyday, like any other science, but the basics still stand. If you are going to bother classifying anything at all, then at least make it a standard. What is the point otherwise?

How is it any different from my first post? I said that today, video game genre boundaries are being crossed over by different games from different genres. It is still true, yet, to imply a pre-determined type of classification for video games is to dwelve on those boundaries with care.

Oh and taxonomy being the only one science to classify things...trust me, you don't want to go there. It's the most incoherent one, and it changes based on superfluous nuances that are added with each new taxonomy convention. You tell that to a PhD and he'll laugh at you, so you better do some proper research before you claim things like that.

Ultima and Wizardry had one characteristic that can be called an rpg is that the character you played was generic enough that it left their background to your imagination. In a sense Oblivion was very much like so in that the character you play has no name, no background story, which is all left to the player. If you go to the tesnexus forums you will see that most people there have invested enough time into Oblivion to create a very unique character that fits them only.

If there is a true RPG today, I would say it is MMOs, since the characters you play are unique to each player.

In your first post, as well as others, you said you agreed with the method I went, just not with what I thought were core aspects of some genres and games. In the post I just quoted previously, you mentioned how the basis of my method is absurd. So which is it? You fully disagree or partially? Also taxonomy includes any form of classification. Any method that accurately classifies something is using taxonomy. Like you said, there are many methods you can use, all of which would be considered taxonomy. Now biological taxonomy in the instance where you you categorize by Kingdom, Phylum, etc may have its ups and down, yet the science as a whole seems to be accurate enough to be taught in High School as well as many classes of Colleges. If it was as muddled up as you say, why teach it? You make it sound as crude as alchemy, when in reality it is quite valid.

Also, I think you are misunderstanding my posts. I created(actually I doubt I'm the first one to use this method) a method to categorize video games. In such method RPGs are not a genre, but a collaboration of genre's. There is one thing that all methods must utilize though. The focus towards Gameplay exclusively in order to determine a genre. Now, I started this thread with a question, and I chose to answer it using my method and my ideas of what the core Gameplay of some of the macro genres are. I opened it up for debate, as well as other peoples methods. You argued against my basis for the Strategy genre, yet when I asked what YOU thought the basis of the strategy genre was, and how Chrono Trigger differed from it, you still didn't answer. I opened the thread up for discussion. I didn't make my method absolute. One thing is certain though, games are classified by the type of gameplay they have. Everything else isn't necessary to have a game, and therefore are necessary for classification. If you wanted to classify it by those other aspects as well, you may, yet you would have to be quite specific in the basic description Btw this is a direct response to this:

"consider one scientific term to categorize games, just because you (and by you, i mean the OP) feels like it."

@OP So what you're saying is all games are action games? and then are subgenres of that?

No. There are 6 macro genres of which have sub genres. Then there are genres that don't fit in any of the macrogenres.

The 6 macro genres are: Action, Action-Adventure, Adventure, Strategy, Racing and Simulation. Examples of genres that don't fit into any of them are Rythm and Sport games. Actually they might be able to go under Simulation.

Some sub-genres of them are.

Action- 2d & 3d Platformer(Super Mario World, Super Mario Galaxy) , 2d & 3d Fighter( Street Fighter, Tekken), Hack N Slash(God of War, Ninja Gaiden), 2d & 3d Shooter(Contra, Call of Duty) , Linear Role Playing games(Kindom Hearts, Crisis Core Final Fantasy VII), etc.

Action-Adventure - Survival Horror(Silent Hill, Resident Evil), Traditional Action-Adventure(Zelda, Ico, Oblivion), 2D Sidescrolling( Metroidvania, Odin Sphere, Muramasa) and others that don't have a name but would make a different sub-genre from these.

Strategy - Grid Turn Based Strategy and SRPGs(Fire Emblem, Advanced Wars), Turn Based Role Playing games(Final Fantasy Dragon Quest), Real Time Strategy(Warcraft),  Not named( Little King Story, Pikmin), and probably others that aren't named.

Racing - This one I'm going to be a little iffy on. I'm not a big racing fan. Racing Simulation(Grand Turismo, Forza), Arcade Racer(Need for Speed), Kart racer( Mario Kart, Crash Team Racing), and probably others I don't know of.

Simulation - There isn't really any sub-genre. You classify a simulating game based on what it is simulating. Also some may consider Racing Simulations part of the Simulation genre, depending on whether they are playing for recreation or practice as a simulator.

Adventure- Point & Click(Broken Sword, Myst), Can't think of anything else that would be listed under adventure. Anybody can help if they want.

Other- Everything else.

Yeah that is basically my categorizing system. It goes from general to specific for anybody who wants it that way. The only problem is that the "core gameplay element" of each major genre as well as sub genre can be debated.

Edit: I use to list Role Playing Games as a different genre, but after thinking, which sparked this thread, Role Playing isn't a genre.

You have to admidt that your macro genres, although gained through a scientific manner, are useless for a customer and for a game designer.

"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.

Actually, I didn't use any scientific manner to get them. They are common knowledgable genres. There was a thing called Action-Adventure, Action, Adventure, Strategy, Simulation far before I was even born. Apparently I'm not the only person who uses this category. Look under the tab of "Video Game Genres". Find anything similar. Also the macro genres don't work on a specific matter, but that is what the sub-genres are for. You start with a general question for example: Do I want to play a game that is completely combat focused or not? Let's say the answer is yes. Then you choose the action genre. Then you ask what type of style you want to play, and you find the sub-genre that is fitting. Most video game publishers use wierd genre's anyway. I've read "Zombie sword killing game" as a genre before. Even then, that has very little to do with the discussion at hand. "Is the Role Playing game really an exclusive genre that is contiguous?"