The classifications unclassified!

"Life is a game. Think about it. As time passes, life's little problems pur down in chunks. Somehow, someway, you must conquer these hurdle, fitting them together, solving them so that they disappear and you move on. As you grow older, these challenges come at you faster and faster, until they become so difficult, they overwhelm you."

That was an excerpt from my mini project report titled - G.A.M.E - Game Application Meant for Everyone. Well, indeed, games have had advanced tremendously over the past decade. Gone are the days, when games were programmed by "geeks", sitting late at night coding in front of the green glowing screen, manipulating green glowing dots to make 'em look like "Dungeons and Dragons" (you should take a look at that game, amazing). Today, complex environments, vibrant sounds, realistic physics, and damn cool AI mark a game. Yup, I did forget to mention breathtaking visuals! But, they need another para for themselves =)

I mean this is a giant industry, complemented and being complemented by the graphics industry, sound industry, and amazing programming industry. Why the fascination towards games? well, in simple words, they encompass all that is computer science and engineering. AI, Physics (Simulation and Modeling), Algorithms, Time optimization, Space optimization.

The PC industry today is becoming faster, and better for essentially the sole purpose of gaming. (altho, faster video and audio extraction would be coming quite close). I would go out and say that GAMES are the sole reason why computers are being upgraded today! You don't essentially need the HT P4, or the Athlon 64FX processors with a gigabyte of RAM to run a word processor (u don't need that to run even ur VS 7.0 :p)! The 64KB RAM PC (predicted by Bill Gates) is finito. You need an nVidia card (now featuring SLI technology) and communication bandwidth of about 8GB/s transfer rates, and a Soundblaster Audigy ZS with 9.1 speakers to experience and run the programming mammoths that games have become today!

Well, unfortunately, gaming includes a LARGE amount of genres that games fall into today. I thought I will enlighten the people regarding the different genres currently available today. Yup, this has featured in some of the old digit magazines, but i do wonder how many of you would have actually gone thru it =D. Also, wanna put in some "bytes" for sig9 since he came up with the new node for "games" ;-)

Your first stop is the enumeration of the various genres. They are
[1] FPS: If you thought that was Frames Per Second, obviously this ain't the article u are looking for :p. That stands for First Person Shooter games. They generally fall under the category of Action/Adventure games, but since a plethora of new titles formed the line, they deem a category themselves.

They include all those games, where u see ur hand and a gun, and u see the world in the first person perspective. They are usually fast paced, and demand horrendous amounts of processing power these days. They include classic titles like "Wolf 3D" - the first 3d game ever! Long live John Carmack (God of game programming, yes he was one of those green screen coders), now co founder of iD Software, the makers of popular titles like Quake and Doom series.

[2] RTS: Real Time Systems??? Nopes, Real Time Strategy games. They are more complex games, as they don't just demand you to jump and start shooting whatever u see (like most of FPSs), they demand that you manage a LOT of resources, units, buildings, blah blah! Includes popular pieces like Age of Empires (Microsoft =0, yeah they also make games), Starcraft series.

[3] RPG: Not the cellular company. They stand for Role Playing Games. They come in the RTS, FPS flavour and demand that you take the role of someone and build your character (well, almost in the literal sense, hehe) Eg. Warcraft (RTS), Elder Scrolls series(First person)

[4] Arcade: Most of us are familiar with most of these. They are the more FUN games, with an extremely wide audience. Most of the elders (defined as 30 and above) are widely familiar with 'em and like 'em as well. ;-) Include classics like Pacman, some racing series, Digger (oh those wonderful times), Bomber man, and who can forget MARIO!!! These were initially the console built games, hehe

[5] Action/Adventure: They usually have a story line that the hero/ine you play have to uncover some secret, kill some buggers, and yada yada. Largely popular in the west and they were initially the games that popularized the whole game movement. Who can forget Legend of Zelda, some Disney classics and etc.

[6] MMORPG: What the??? yeah. they stand for Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games. Whoa. They are a cool brand, in the concept and became massively popular with the advent of broadband internet, (again fueled broadband internet as well). I hear that there is a Matrix MMORPG coming out soon :-" Can't wait.

[7] Other: Since, I am getting tired of typing, I will put all those other cateories, like Simulation, Racing, and the works here. Well, these are more computing intensive series, with almost realistic experience. Microsoft's Flight Simulator series have always been popular, and indeed so realistic that the US Navy have a customized version for training their pilots with these! If that ain't cool, well, STOP READING NOW! (that is if u have reached till 'ere)

[8] Sports: Oh yeah, actually these are one of the coolest genres featuring titles like FIFA, NASCAR (altho sim as well), Cricket, NBA, NHL, etc. They capture the playing of the sport quite well and bring it to you in front of your screen. EA takes this a step further giving you commentary from original commentators (Ally McCoist and John Motson for FIFA) and the game just swells =) (even literally in size =P)

So, there u have it, the different classifications of games! I am sure I must have missed something, but then, this is enough for ya as a 101. Shall come up with more aspects of gaming and game programming in the next few days!