Game Design Meetup #2 — Defining Genre

The second meetup was a panel on genre, with Ricky Abu Siddek and Millie Kempff co-hosting and Per Hallros, Nicole Jansson and Jad Tawbi on the panel. We worked through what a genre actually is, its challenges and affordances, how to design for a genre's market, how to push past it creatively, and which systems to prioritize once you've picked one.

Three things stuck with me afterward. Chasing something unique for players doesn't always land, but trial and error with real feedback is how you find what does. Committing to a genre feels like a constraint, but it also hands you a solid foundation of core systems to build past. And the market right now is full of games mixing genres to create emotional impact no single genre could manage alone.