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PSA/Rant/Vent : The gross misuse of the term "Roguelike"

A topic by Lumios created Aug 10, 2022 Views: 921 Replies: 11

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I wanted to open this discussion thread because of a Steam comment. In a nutshell, the person was calling a bunch of people dumb (including me) for suggesting to nerf a weapon that is a bit too strong (You be the judge of that, that is not really the point) and this individual was angry at the fact that the game was a quote-on-quote "Roguelike" and that it was dumb to nerf items in a game dependent on RNG. That comment was seething of "The game's hard, plz make it no harder", anyway that part did not piss me off because I had my dose of toxic people online, what really made me fuming was that he called the game a "Roguelike" and I had to mentally restrain myself just to not cause a scene because this nonsense has been going on for so long this is driving me crazy.

Further noting that I do not know whether naming the game and linking to the conversation would break Itch.io's community rules against advertising. Therefore, I decided not to link the conversation since I am not too active here and am unaware whether that could be breaking the rules. If that is not against the guidelines I am perfectly willing to link the conversation/game.

Regardless, I decided to comment on here and not Steam for several reasons: First off, the person who made that game first published it there; Secondly, this is an issue specifically affecting the indie game scene. Therefore, Itch.io, which grew wildly in popularity for indie game developers, was a much better place to discuss it than Steam; Thirdly, I think Steam's community forums are less active than those of Itch.io, but that could be a misconception on my part.

This nonsense has been getting on my nerves for as long as I cared about the genre and I know I am not alone in this. I find solace in knowing that there are plenty of fans of Roguelikes (Some of which grew up playing Rogue) that have likewise been annoyed at this disinformation. I first got introduced to the Roguelike genre through Pokemon Mystery Dungeon. A story-focused Pokemon game Roguelite (Missing permadeath, but does everything else like Rogue). While I have not grown up with Rogue, I still grew up with a Roguelite I did enjoy a ton as a kid and this is sad to me that other than Chunsoft, there are no gaming company interested in making these, including both AAA and indie.

And I should note that I am not against experimentation, Crypt of the Necrodancer is a fantastic game and is very faithful to Rogue, both concerning its gameplay and dungeon crawling. On the other end of the spectrum, we have got the most blatant bastardization of the genre via Slayerlikes. A Slayerlike is a game inspired by Slay the Spire, a permadeath, linear, choose-your-path, strategy, deckbuilding RPG. Slay the Spire itself claims to be "Roguelike", in fact, I saw an interview with the developers on YouTube, which I will paraphrase, who have stated they wanted to combine the Rogue genre with the Deckbuilding genre. They did an awful job at it.

So, how does that connect to my initial issue? The game I am talking about also happens to be a Slayerlike with the gimmick of an inventory management system inspired by Resident Evil. I will say this much, this game does have dungeon-crawling elements that did not exist in Slay the Spire, so I did not think much about it, I just tolerated that misconception and I do think the game itself is really good, almost addicting. So at the time, I thought to myself "Whatever who cares".

A lie travels far, unfortunately. It seems that every game nowadays is thought of as a "Roguelike", all it takes is for that game to have randomized elements and a permadeath mechanic and ta-daa, we got you the next Roguelike! If we go by that logic then Terraria is a Roguelike, Minecraft is a Roguelike, Diablo is a Roguelike, Don't Starve is a Roguelike, this is just silly.

What is more baffling, in my opinion, is that Cuphead was labeled incorrectly too, by gaming journalists who called it a Soulslike. How comes everyone thinks everything is a damn Roguelike nowadays, but gamers have no patience for a different breed of idiots who compare games like Cuphead to Dark Souls?

/End of the rant

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VanillaPuddingProductions2 years ago(+2)

I don't really know what the games and items in question are, but I think if people really want to misuse terms there's no point in arguing with them and letting them any real estate in your thoughts. Definitions in terms of video game genres are extremely malleable anyway.

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Lumios2 years ago (1 edit)

You are not wrong, but that isn't nearly as cut and dry as this. Language is socially constructed, that is true, but that is not necessarily what I think really makes this misconception this particularly egregious, but rather what makes it particularly egregious is multi-faceted.

Firstly, there was this video on YouTube titled "How NOT to make an indie game" which goes over an indie dev's journey into programming his own Roguelike in Unity. There is a point in the video where the developer says "My game is a mess, I have to start over" which is fair seeing that the game really had no direction, and I do not think the developer himself knew what he was doing. So, his solution was to get inspiration from other games on Steam, specifically "Roguelikes" and because of that, instead of a Roguelike, the developer made what I would best describe as a top-down arena-shooter. In the original beta tech demo for his game, his game might have been messy, but it was much closer to be a Roguelike with the grid-based movement and effect tiles (trap tiles) and the fact that we lost an authentic Roguelike experience for yet another clone of The Binding Of Isaac made me very mad that day.

In a nutshell, the developer was developing a Roguelike, but because it did not pan out the way he intended to, he got inspired by games he found on Steam to make another quote-on-quote "Roguelike", wrongfully thinking he was still developing a Roguelike and that misconception came from a spread-out misinformation that still gets perpetuated to this day.

Secondly, this asinine problem makes it harder for me (and other people like me) to find games that I like, thankfully the Dungeon-Crawler tag still works and that is the only way I can still find Roguelikes on gaming sites such as Steam, Itch and Gamejolt. Otherwise, I come across clones of Slay The Spire and clones of The Binding Of Isaac, the latter of which I have never been into anyway because, other than The Legend Of Zelda, action RPGs are really not my favorite genre.

Nevertheless, while language is subjective, it needs to serve its purpose. I can not imagine how a conversation between a fan of Rogue and a fan of Isaac would go like when the term that even link these 2 games together have different definitions, the other of which is wrong and so general that half of games ever released could be interpreted as "Roguelike" just by having the 2 features from Rogue. To add onto that, I am positive that some arcade games had a permadeath mechanic, and in addition to that possibly randomly generated levels too, this is beyond silly.

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VanillaPuddingProductions2 years ago

I see what you mean now. Well.. maybe he just fell into an influencer's spiel and ended up doing something that everyone else is doing. That's a pretty common thing in the world nowadays. People simply don't like being challenged and admit they're wrong about things, and that's entirely normal for better or worse.

It sounds to me like that person just wanted to be right and agree with what the Youtube video said. Even if a bunch of people were to tell them what the fuck was wrong, he'd still bunker down and call them all names rather than argue and accept he was wrong. It sucks that a game from a genre you like didn't come to pass, but maybe the dev just wasn't enjoying what he was making and a Binding clone is something he likes to do best. My own game was going to be a Zelda-like ARPG before I gave up on finding assets for it and settled with a platformer, which then also went through a cycle of rebuilding from scratch. Devs do what devs think it's best, and sometimes the world agrees. Sometimes, it doesn't.

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Midnight Spire Games2 years ago

In a nutshell, the developer was developing a Roguelike, but because it did not pan out the way he intended to, he got inspired by games he found on Steam to make another quote-on-quote "Roguelike", wrongfully thinking he was still developing a Roguelike and that misconception came from a spread-out misinformation that still gets perpetuated to this day.

You are saying that you expected an authentic traditional roguelike experience from a developer who, by your own account, doesn't even know what a roguelike is.

What seems to have happened here is that the developer did not like what they were making, so they made something else instead. You seem to be suggesting that the reason this happened is that language is insufficiently prescriptivist, and not that the developer just saw something they liked better and changed their mind.

Secondly, this asinine problem makes it harder for me (and other people like me) to find games that I like, thankfully the Dungeon-Crawler tag still works and that is the only way I can still find Roguelikes on gaming sites such as Steam, Itch and Gamejolt.

I don't see why that would be the case. Not all dungeon crawlers are roguelikes, not even close; and roguelites are probably almost as apt to be labeled dungeon crawlers as roguelikes are, given that dungeon crawling is typically considered a theme, not a genre.

I decided to try this out for myself. Both The Binding of Isaac and Slay the Spire, which you keep bringing up as undesirable, are tagged "dungeon crawler" on Steam; in fact, when I browse the dungeon crawler tag on Steam, both of those games are prominently displayed in the banner at the top of the page. Glancing over the actual recommendations, I see a handful of traditional roguelikes, as is expected, but I mostly see other genres. If I were actually looking for roguelikes in this list, I would probably be disappointed. The roguelike list is, as you say, a mix of roguelikes and roguelites, but it looks more promising than the dungeon crawlers.

Filtering my own Steam library for dungeon crawlers, I see JRPGs, action RPGs, first-person shooters, arcade games, puzzle games, board games, a platformer, and more. Few of these are what I would actually want to see when searching for dungeon crawlers.

If you still find the dungeon crawler tag a reasonable and effective filter for roguelikes in spite of all that, then why do you find the roguelike tag so unusable? I sympathize with your difficulty in finding what you want, but most highly specific sub-subgenres do not have a commonly agreed-upon label at all, let alone one as precisely defined (if frequently misapplied) as "roguelike." All anyone has to meet their specific tastes is an approximation, which then has to be sifted by hand. It isn't just roguelikes.

By the way, I know of folks who would take umbrage at grouping traditional roguelikes in with dungeon crawlers. To them, dungeon crawler is a term with a very specific, long-established meaning (which does not include Rogue) that has been diluted into uselessness, making it difficult to find the true dungeon crawlers amongst all the mislabeled pretenders.

Nevertheless, while language is subjective, it needs to serve its purpose. I can not imagine how a conversation between a fan of Rogue and a fan of Isaac would go like when the term that even link these 2 games together have different definitions, the other of which is wrong

Why can you not imagine it? I would think that they would discuss the games themselves, rather than being confused and deadlocked over a label. I can't remember ever having that problem.

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Lumios2 years ago (1 edit)

You are saying that you expected an authentic traditional roguelike experience from a developer who, by your own account doesn't even know what a roguelike is. What seems to have happened here is that the developer did not like what they were making, so they made something else instead. You seem to be suggesting that the reason this happened is that language is insufficiently prescriptivist, and not that the developer just saw something they liked better and changed their mind.

He did have a general idea of what could be construed as a Roguelike because the game he was creating at the time ticked most of the boxes for what a Roguelike should be like. The issue was that his game was directionless, he added features, then removed them, then added other features that did not really fit the game... The best way I can put it is that he designed it the same way I designed my first game ever and that game is not online, I am not proud of it.

And, I am certain it was caused by a term that was not prescriptive enough because ideas, opinions and ways of working are socially constructed and inspired. The person who made Pokemon created his game based on his childhood. Chain chomps from Super Mario Bros were born from a childhood trauma. When you find two artists online with a similar artstyle that is because one was inspired by the other. Inherently, everything you do, think and believe in were influenced by other people who, likewise, had their opinions influenced by other people or events.

Another point I would like to add is that if he had changed his mind he would have noted it directly in the video. If I made something I did not like no matter what I would tell people "I do not like making games of this genre, I will try to build something else that is more of my style", but in the video he still calls his finished product a Roguelike. So, the original idea was to make a Roguelike, his final idea was still to make a Roguelike, he did not have a change of mind in this regard. The only change of mind, maybe, was that he dropped the puzzle aspect of his game which is something he mentioned early in the video, but something that he did not follow through.

I don't see why that would be the case. Not all dungeon crawlers are roguelikes, not even close; and roguelites are probably almost as apt to be labeled dungeon crawlers as roguelikes are, given that dungeon crawling is typically considered a theme, not a genre. I decided to try this out for myself. Both The Binding of Isaac and Slay the Spire, which you keep bringing up as undesirable, are tagged "dungeon crawler" on Steam; in fact, when I browse the dungeon crawler tag on Steam, both of those games are prominently displayed in the banner at the top of the page. Glancing over the actual recommendations, I see a handful of traditional roguelikes, as is expected, but I mostly see other genres. If I were actually looking for roguelikes in this list, I would probably be disappointed. The roguelike list is, as you say, a mix of roguelikes and roguelites, but it looks more promising than the dungeon crawlers

I hardly use the tags directly when searching for games on Steam, I use the search bar which leads me to games tagged "Dungeon-Crawler" or "Roguelike", similarly to how any other social media site works. I should have been less vague when describing my issue, sorry. I found 4 Roguelikes that I would have otherwise not found, using "Dungeon Crawler" as a search word, but admittedly it is not that much better I have to dig deep just to find what I want with either keyword. I still believe that Dungeon-Crawler was marginally better, however, I don't know how much tags differ from the search bar, but I will try to use them more often if that means I have a higher chance to find what I want.

For the record, Slay The Spire is not really undesirable. I am somewhat intrigued by the game itself, but it is annoying to see it show up whenever I am searching for something else.

By the way, I know of folks who would take umbrage at grouping traditional roguelikes in with dungeon crawlers. To them, dungeon crawler is a term with a very specific, long-established meaning (which does not include Rogue) that has been diluted into uselessness, making it difficult to find the true dungeon crawlers amongst all the mislabeled pretenders.

Why would they? Didn't you say it was a theme, not a genre? A game that is not a Roguelike that I consider (To an extent) a Dungeon-Crawler is Zelda since you do exactly that, you crawl through dungeons, find the chests, find the keys and open doors, and I say 'to an extent' because that is only applicable to the dungeon themselves. Zelda has always been an action RPG/adventure game at heart, therefore, I would not call it a Dungeon-Crawler, I would call it an adventure game to remain as accurate as possible.

I am actually curious now, what do these people consider a game to be a dungeon-crawler? Perhaps it is something I'd like to play too.

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Midnight Spire Games2 years ago (3 edits)

Another point I would like to add is that if he had changed his mind he would have noted it directly in the video. If I made something I did not like no matter what I would tell people "I do not like making games of this genre, I will try to build something else that is more of my style", but in the video he still calls his finished product a Roguelike. So, the original idea was to make a Roguelike, his final idea was still to make a Roguelike, he did not have a change of mind in this regard. The only change of mind, maybe, was that he dropped the puzzle aspect of his game which is something he mentioned early in the video, but something that he did not follow through.

You still seem to be saying that this person just picked an arbitrary label that they didn't really understand, then worked backwards to arrive at a product that they thought fit the label. That doesn't make sense to me. Something about roguelikes evidently piqued their interest, but if they were really committed to making a turn-based, tile-based RPG, they would have. They wouldn't have scrapped that design and made a twin-stick shooter instead, just because they saw that some of those are labeled "roguelike." I can't see how tighter application of that label by other developers would have prevented any genre drift by this one. They might have just gone further afield for inspiration before finding something they liked. Games create genres, not the other way around; genres are just a shorthand in how we talk about games.

Moreover, the developer could very well have made such a change without ever seeing those other games. Did you know that Diablo 1 was originally a turn-based game? It evolved into real-time combat later in development. This despite that Blizzard North explicitly cited Rogue itself as an inspiration for Diablo.

Why would they? Didn't you say it was a theme, not a genre?

To me it is. Sometimes it's useful to loosely indicate a genre, but it can really be any sort of game.

I am actually curious now, what do these people consider a game to be a dungeon-crawler? Perhaps it is something I'd like to play too.

Sure. Here you go. This is a very strict definition that largely limits the term to only the most traditional Wizardry and Dungeon Master descendants. By this definition, Might and Magic III is a dungeon crawler, but Might and Magic VI is not.

I don't really agree with the lines drawn there, but it goes to show how subjective genre labels can be.

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No Time To PlayModerator2 years ago(+1)

I only have one thing to say about this, and I said it two years ago already: genres evolve and so does language. Let people be.

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Afloof.devModerator2 years ago

it was dumb to nerf items in a game dependent on RNG.

This is insane, RNG is still something you design for. Any game where you have a chance to get the best weapon from the first enemy is flawed.

he called the game a “Roguelike” and I had to mentally restrain myself

I’d advice to not be so attached to projects. People from the internet are from different cultures and backgrounds, so they may have a different perspective of genres. Just let it be and you keep doing you.

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DarkBloodbane2 years ago(+1)

Seems like your focus is your rant about how people interpret Roguelike genre, therefore you don't need to quote or link anything from that person here.

First of all, genres are hard to define clearly and strictly for couple reasons. Therefore we have people misinterpret genres including developers.

Second, Roguelike has the word like in it, making it even more vague.

From my experience, I've read some developers labelling their games as metroidvanias however after I've played them or from watching video, I can say that those aren't metroidvanias. Some of those games are even using top-down view instead of platformer in fact. But that's my opinion and I have no right to deny those developers.

Same goes with Roguelike and other genres, we will see and hear more people misinterpret those genres . Despite this confusion, at least I could guess what feature I'd get from games claiming to be in those genres.

Last but not least, I agree with your last point. I don't like people branding some challenging games as Soulslike just because they are hard. It's just silly.

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Lumios2 years ago

"Some of those games are even using top-down view instead of platformer in fact. But that's my opinion and I have no right to deny those developers."

That is not just your opinion, this is what a metroidvania should play like, but as the person below you mentioned, some developers will incorrectly label their game on purpose because it attracts attention to their game, but not always it could also be an accident or a misunderstanding of the genre.

You should not necessarily dismiss the game or the developer because of a mistake, but if the mistake is flagrant then I think many will agree with you and ask the developer to rectify this issue. At least the metroidvania genre is pretty well defined among players, so that should not be too big of an issue to address.

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hechelion2 years ago(+1)

I personally no longer give importance to the TAG that appears in the games. These TAGs are supposed to help consumers by describing game mechanics, but today they are used more as a form of promotion, "metroidvanias" are in fashion, let's put that label on our platform game, surely someone will buy it.
Other times, the creators believe that the game does meet the definition of the "TAG" used, but for other people it does not. As already stated, many TAGs do not have clear lines.

For example:
For me, a roguelike should be a turn-based game, this was a basic mechanic of the original Rogue, but many people today associate the term more with "The Binding of Isaac". Removing just one mechanic (turn-base) is reason enough to say the game is no longer a roguelike? For some yes, for others no, the problem is that there is no written rule that defines what is considered within a certain TAG.

Another example:
For me, a "bullet hell" is a subgenre of shmups, but there are platform games where you have to dodge massive shooting patterns. If I'm looking for a bullet hell, I want a shmups, not a platform game. But that game does have bullet hell mechanics. For me, that tag confuses me, it's not what I expect from it, but it's well used by the game developers. As long as there is no set of clear rules to apply the TAG, you have to rely on the good will of each developer and their common sense and unfortunately, we already know that common sense is the least common of the senses.

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