Games, like most other forms of media, may be categorized into genres based on gameplay, atmosphere, and various other factors. In fact, games are often much easier to classify by genre than films, music, or books. Due to gaming's relatively short history, technical limitations, and the commercial pressures currently affecting the North American and Japanese markets, electronic games are ensconced in a period of extreme formalism. Recently, video games have begun to explode in popularity, a rise which coincides with an increase in production value, and thus, development cost. As gamers come to expect talented voice acting, enormous, meticulously-constructed worlds and Hollywood-quality sound effects, production costs rise, and owing to the tremendous investment required by publishers (who want to maximize profits), most choose to make games based upon "tried-and-true" ideas, borrowing heavily from previous games and concepts.
This is most evident in the fact that publishers' tend to establish "franchises", which often recycle the same characters, situations, conflicts, gameplay mechanics, and themes for any number of sequels. Therefore, though many games may combine genres, very few exist outside the paradigm of previously established genres, with notable exceptions.
The most common genres in use today include:
* platformer
* adventure
* role-playing game (RPG)
o MMORPG
o MMOSG
* sports
* racing
* action
o fighting
* shooting
o first person shooter (FPS)
o third person shooter
* puzzle
* simulation
* strategy game
o turn-based
o real-time
Most games nowadays are a combination of two or more genres (e.g action/RPG). There are also number of genres, which are mostly unpopular today, that were hybrid forms of other media, such as books or movies; the most familiar being interactive fiction and interactive movies...