A linear method works fine, when you are only comparing one factor. The only necessary factor that is, Gameplay. I could get into Story and Graphics, yet that would make conflictions, and unnecessary ones at that. Also, I'm just making a basis for genres, I agree that I might have gone of skew, but everything has to start from somewhere. Also, like you said for everything it has to be changed a little to be fitting. For example: If you look at Mathematical Taxonomies, they work at the base like that found in Biology, but they don't work exactly the same. Also, games may not have a genetic lineage, but they do have an evolutionary one. Games have ancestors that sprouted 1 or 2 of them. Then they sprouted 1 or 2 more. And the cycle goes on. Also my idea with strategy was the idea that strategy games focus on micromanagement, which is also a major game play aspect in Turn Based Role Playing Games. It may not be the only one, but it is a major one. Then I made the point that other games that are considered "Strategy" have additional game play aspects as well, that doesn't mean that the core of the game play isn't focused around this "micromanagement" though. There is very little of me trying to make games fit in. It is more of finding the defining game play element, and relating it to the appropriate macro-genre.

You're doing a wrong assumption and you'll continue to do so, even if I taught you the fundamentals of taxonomy beyond the levels of what you know. The fallacies in your reasoning are so blatant that there was actually no need to debate them, I indulged in this debate, hoping to shed some light on the flaws of your reasoning, but I see that you are so held on onto them, it makes no difference to you if you're right or if you're wrong.

Then I just ask you this, as I asked you in the earlier posts I made. You consider Turn Based RPG's to be strategy games due to the micromanagement. Seeing that nowadays FPS games have a heavily based level up system that takes up for most of it's gameplay, which involves skill micromanagement, character development and customization, do you consider FPS to be strategy games too? This question will prove the fallacies of your reasoning, as you have tried to avoid it for the duration of this thread, since i'm going with your same categorization and using your reasoning skills as well.

Oh, and one more thing, you probably learned taxonomy on school. A shame that you're using basic knowledge to categorize something that it's clearly out of your scope. If you're interested to learn more about taxonomy I can indulge you even further, not in this thread since it will take longer than a measly post since i've done a 10 page essay on biological and microbiological categorization in my last year.

@OP

I don't understand how you can claim that's a taxonomy, since your genres are not mutually exclusive. You have Action-Adventures as well as Action and Adventure games. I'm not sure why a simulation is not an action game, and so on.

Plus, a cladistic approach can't work because that requires the concept of "common ancestor", and there's no such thing as a clear ancestry in gaming, cinematography or literature, since there's contamination of genres.

Frankly, it seems like you're willing to build on sand.

From my experience, the FPS' games that do have micromanagement are limited, and even then the micromanagement isn't a core aspect of the gameplay. In any Final Fantasy game you definately wouldn't be able to progress without adding equipement or  leveling. In a FPS you will do find without it. Even then, you still didn't answer my question. What is the basis of Strategy games then?

Despite my knowledge of Taxonomy, my classification system still stands. Please argue toward or against the system and not it's relevance with taxonomy. Let's just drop that term for now. I didn't really mention it at all in the OP, and said I use a method similar to it in a later post. Then it just sprouted to me trying to justify it as being exclusively in common with Taxonomy. I would love for you, if you wish to, to explain it more in detail through a PM if you want. I hate having the wrong or not enough information, and would love to be educated past where I am currently. Also, you are correct. I have learned about it both in Middle School and now in both Biology and Chemistry classes.

@WereKitten Instead of 1 common ancestor they have multiple, which I noted in the macro-genres. Even then, you could argue that most Taxonomies that aren't relevant to Biology are not truly taxonomies. What about mathematical ones? They don't share a common ancestry. All you really need is a Macro and  Micro structure.

Actually in nowaday terms, FPS are so intrinsically developed over a leveling up system and a character customization options, that it's almost necessary to use different skills and inventory to actually be succesful in the game. You can argue that it's not at the same level as a Final Fantasy game, which is completely true, yet you will have a hard time, say, in a COD game, if you don't upgrade to better weapons and perks on the online aspect of the game, which covers for more than 80% of it's game span.

Strategy games are much more than the micromanagement. In a strategy game you can span your entire actions as a whole, you cannot succeed in a strategy game if you don't use the entirety of the actions that are available to you, and if you don't plan ahead strategies that encompass not only your units, but also the enemy units, and in here comes the micromanagement area per se, the need to constantly upgrade your units, to gather as much resources as you can, to outsmart you opponents.
In a RPG game, it all comes down to character development, which doesn't exist or isn't even remotely a part of the strategy genre. You can develop your character in the parameters that you want them to develop, some RPG gives you more options than the others, yet the core in all RPG's is that basic function.
Also, the micromanagement part in it, is extremely low. Other than the need to upgrade your equipment and skills, you don't have to do resource management, since the need to accumulate the necessary means, AKA gold, can be off-set with good character development. This is most proeminent in western RPG's, in the fact that you can develop your character and evolve your inventory solely from what you get off the field.

Both core gameplays in Strategy genre and RPG genre are completely different and don't fit together, that's why I still stand by that RPG's are not a Strategy oriented genre, and even if they do have some similarities, the only RPG games that come remotely close to the core gaming of Strategy, are games like Fire Emblem and Shining Force, which forego most of their character development in detriment of a more linear and unit based mentality, as, once again, you'll need all your units to actually succeed in those games.

I shall not make any further references to taxonomy, and i'm sorry I got so deep into it, it's just that science rubs my ego and sometimes I can't stop talking about it. I will be glad to teach anything that I can in the future.

How about define what Role PLaying is before running off to the difference in roleplaying games. You classify Fallout and Oblivion as exploration RPGs and not substantially different from Action RPG. So I present this

A role-playing game is a game in which the participants assume the roles of characters and collaboratively create stories. Participants determine the actions of their characters based on their characterization, and the actions succeed or fail according to a formal system of rules and guidelines.Within the rules, they may improvise freely; their choices shape the direction and outcome of the games.

 1. First bold is pretty standard for a majority of games. Such a statement then can't be applied to gaming since it would also mean that GTA, Gradius, DMC, MGS, Ninja Gaiden then become an RPG. 

 2. Second bold is interesting indeed. Since most CRPG don't all allow any kind of player collabertaion, but since it is in computers we do need to be more lenient.

3. Third & fourth bold is by far the most important element to an RPG. The "actions they choose based on their characterization" working within the rules to "improvise freely; their choices shape and direction and outcome of the game"

That is Roleplaying Games. A majority of RPG that you(OP) listed are by far not RPG in the most important sense of all. Role Playing and I refer to Role Playing as in improve acting than I refer to games. Have any of you when younger pretended to be a Rockstar, Marine, Cowboy, space man, super hero? When doing so you change your behaviour and make decisions based on the role. The difference when you apply a game is that now you success or failure is formalized into a set of rules. Some rules obviously cut down on ability.

This is why the OP find it hard to distinguish what really makes an RPG and RPG. Often citing rather shallow/shadows of what defines a RolePlaying game. Listing upgradable equipment or some form of advancement as RPG. Where as the defining element is participation from the player to create stories based on a characterized role. Games like Zelda, Metroid, FF, CC:CB have nothing of the sort in regards to colaberation in the stories they create and instead end up following a precrafted story.

Where as the supposed "exploration" RPG of Fallout or Oblivion were overlooked when in fact that Fallout 1-3 does infact allow player participation to create stories. Everything after the begining and until the end is ultimatly the players choices based on the type of characterization or gameplay the player wants to experience. If Zeek the murderer wants to kill everyone in every town in Washington Wasteland. Well he can.

So infact there are a handful of RPG that are on the computer side of RPG(computer as in CPU). Many have the same elements of these RPG, but are in fact not RPG at all.

Alright, now the thread is going into the direction I originally wanted it too. :)

Character Customization is something both of you guys really focused on. You also made it clear that the Character Customization is neither linear nor direct like you would fine in the "upgrade" system in Action-Adventures. I also notice the difference between Strategy games and Turn Based Role-Playing games in that aspect, yet I can't help to find that these "Turn Based Role Playing games" have nowhere to belong, if as I suggested the rest of the genre is ditched toward genres. There is the case in which .jayderyu came up with the idea that an RPG should at least have a base freedom in which how you play, of which I agree.

So this is a little "refinement" toward my OP.


There is a Role Playing Genre opposed to my earlier "not being" one.

Turn Based Role Playing Games for the most part(meaning there are exceptions) are neither part of the Strategy nor Role Playing Genre, but a "hybrid" of the two. What is more prominent could only be decided from individual games.

Two defining areas that describe this "RPG" genre are:

1. a "cause and effect" system on the world. What you defines the world you play in, not only your specific character or party.


2. Character Customization. How you fight is based on how you progress your character, as well as some instances of environmental factors(a strategy game trait that is brought over.)

A features that is important, but not defining:

Micromanagement

Most games label as "Role Playing" fall into other genre's "more" as I said.

Overall, Role Playing games are a group of "hybrids" that share those two(or one still not set in stone) defining characteristics. They do change on a game- to- game basis though, and for the most part seem to be "hybrids" opposed to an actual exclusive genre. This is found in other macro-genres, but never to the extent that it is in RPGs.

Also, while a game may have these defining factors, if that isn't the focus, it shouldn't be categorized as a Role Playing Game. This works for both generally accepted RPGs like Kingdom Hearts, as well as non-rpgs with these elements, like Bioshock.

And to Finalize it, the reason this genre has gotten to this condition is due to one company(a few others to a lesser extent aswell), Square Enix. They just want to label almost every game they make as Role-Playing and in the process combine and mesh elements from multiple games.
Alright I'm half joking here, but it makes somewhat of sense.

Edit:
I shall not make any further references to taxonomy, and i'm sorry I got so deep into it, it's just that science rubs my ego and sometimes I can't stop talking about it. I will be glad to teach anything that I can in the future.

I'm the same way with some sciences. Of course, being in high school, I am not at the level of a specialized expertise that you would be in this case, but I do find myself to have to be exactly detailed with some subjects that I find myself to pride the most.(Linguistics, Astronomy and Physics are probably the ones I find interest in the most.)

My point was that the cladistic approach in biology maps to a one-parent superset-subset taxonomy exactly because there's a single common ancestor for every couple of items.

You can have taxonomies with multiple inheritance, but it goes against what you seemed to want by what you were saying earlier. Thus you can't really follow biology in its cladistic approach.

If you allow multiple inheritance then everything is different, and frankly more appropriate.

Going back to the original theme of the thread: no, RPG as meant today is not a genre. It's basically a label that has been slapped on anything that allowed customization and stat/skill progress of human-like figures.

You could say it's a trait that you can apply to adventure-based games (and you get e.g. the most traditional RPGs), to action-based games (you get e.g.dungeon crawlers ) etc. But basically I think the same can be said of all your proposed "macro-genres".

Genres are pretty dumb anyway. Most every game ever made is and action game and an adventure game. Anything that has stuff performing actions, or at least actions you might see in an action movie (sword fights, car chases, or just jumping really high) is arguably and action game. An adventure game would be anything that has an adventure in it, basically any game with a story.

Turn based RPGs are most certainly strategy games, the battles are all about strategies over other aspects like reflexes or some kind of skill. Today's RPGs aren't really RPGs at all from the old standard. A role playing game is a game wherein you play a role and have considerable control over that character's actions and how those actions affect the story. In that way something like Infamous is much more of an RPG than Final Fantasy VII. FF7 always ends the same way, no matter how you play your roles.

Anyway, genres are stupid. In movies, westerns are a genre. Why don't other historical periods have their own genres? Though I think movie genres are a bit more subjective than game genres.

Very interesting perspective. So you are arguing the a video game RPG should be defined not as a gameplay genre, but in terms of the perspective of the player. I can totally see that. So would you consider Persona 4 an RPG then? The main character that you play does not speak unless you choose what he says, you name the character, etc. But you do not get to change his appearance (though I think he is meant to look generic on purpose)