Making a game and wanted to ask people here a question...

[ExtraWildGames]

Do you, as people of the general public, and as a gamer, really care about "buzzword" design tropes for games? My point being when someone says "this game is a soulslike." I don't really like this one-note sorta offhand denotion of a game. Do you care if an up and coming game is a "Soulslike" or "DMC style" action game? Do those keywords in articles, and sometimes even steam pages themselves, entice you to play the game more?

 

[Pifanjr]

Those aren't buzzwords, those are names of (sub)genres. And yes, I care about some (sub)genres more than others and using the genre name is useful in determining whether I should take a closer look at a game.

 

[Alm]

I think there are a lot of tailored-gameplay (easily pigeonholed) games that are very good. More creative game types would be very welcome too.

 

[BeardyHat]

The only one that really gets me is "like XCOM". Seems to me that any game that is turn based strategy gets called "like XCOM", which is massively misleading, as there is nothing like XCOM.

 

[Zimbaly]

I think buzzwords just give people a heads up how it may play or feel.
Kinda like back in the day, this game is like final fantasy or this is like final fight or like eswat or this is like ghouls and ghosts.

I think it's way over done now and honestly I don't care anymore cause so many times they say it's like one game and in reality it's more it's own game.

 

[Brian Boru]

Welcome to the forum

Soulslike

Those shorthand sub-genre descriptions work for me, eg Souls-like will make me skip immediately whereas Civ-like will make me take a closer look.

I'm in favor of XYZ-like descriptions, and I occasionally use sites dedicated to that, such as:
Games Finder
Quantic Foundry
Recommendation Engine
Steam Recommender
SteamPeek
TasteDive