Quote
How to kill a genre
Killing a genre is fun and profitable. First, create the most addictive, polished example of a well established game genre. Since you are tapping the vein of a well established population of genre addicts, your title will sell millions of copies and make you quite a bit of cash. Retailers will adore your game as a proven, low risk product. Gamers and magazines will rabidly promote your game to all their fellow fiends. The shelf life of your game will last years. Your game will become the standard.

At a certain point you will saturate the market of that particular genre. Here is the fun part. Every game from this point forward will be compared to your game and most will fail to offer much value beyond what you've provided. While your game is on the market, all newcomers will be commercial failures because they couldn't push their way to become the new king-of-the-genre.

Publishers will take note and stop funding games in that genre. Why throw money at failures? Eventually, your game will become old and stop selling as strongly. Retailers may even drop it. There will be sporadic attempts to reignite the genre, but your game's massive legacy will overshadow all that follow. The publishers move on. The developers move on. The gamers are left with their fan sites and chat rooms. Amen, the genre is dead.

My list of genre killers who did their job too well:
Myst Adventure games
StarCraft Science Fiction RTS
Warcraft Fantasy RTS
Diablo Action RPGs
Civilization Historical TBS games
Masters of Orion Science Fiction TBS games
HoMM and Master of Magic Fantasy TBS games


Quelle : http://www.gamedev.net/reference/design/features/genreaddict/page4.asp
Es handelt sich dabei um einen mehrteiligen Artikel. Das Zitat stammt aus Teil 4.


When you find a big kettle of crazy, it's best not to stir it.
--Dilbert cartoon

"Interplay.some zombiefied unlife thing going on there" - skavenhorde at RPGWatch