We started planning our Best & Worst of 2008 Awards this week, and as I've been gathering lists of nominees and categories, I've been noticing just how difficult it has become to define some games in terms of a single genre. This isn't something new, as over the years, I've found that it's becoming increasingly difficult to do so. But this year, it seems even tougher.

Consider Mirror's Edge. What is it? It's not a first-person shooter, that's for sure. The best way to describe it is as a first-person parkour game. But that's not an established genre. Would it be a platformer then? In some ways it does feel like a platformer, but in others, it's more like an adventure game -- or maybe even an action game. I've encountered similar problems with other games, such as Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts (platformer or action game?), Condemned 2 (first-person shooter or horror game), and Fable 2 (RPG or adventure game?), but those are just a few off the top of my head.

As I find myself trying to group things by genre, I can't help but feel that the majority of games don't perfectly fit the description of any one genre anymore. As games advance, the individual genres are blurring. Games like Quantum of Solace utilize both first-person and third-person perspectives, and titles like Prince of Persia mix elements of the action, platformer and adventure genres. We're moving past the days when we could accurately say, "This is a platformer, and that is an RPG." Games have become more complex than that.

I wonder, do we need to reexamine our primary genres? For example, do we really need an action and adventure genre? Further, if we have an adventure genre, do we really need the RPG genre anymore? After all, aren't all games definitionally "role-playing" games? And how important is it that we make a distinction between a first-person game and third-person game? Personally, I think the distinction is important with those two perspectives -- at least for the foreseeable future.

If you look at the movie industry, you'll find that genres are broader than the typical video game genres. You have genres like drama, action, comedy, sci-fi and horror. Is that the model our industry needs to follow? For instance, should we classify Too Human as a sci-fi game, rather than an RPG?

I don't think adopting the film industry's approach is the exact way to go, as video games function quite differently than movies do. But I do think some kind of change wouldn't hurt. Simply, it's becoming too difficult to consistently define games in terms of a single genre.