this post was submitted on 24 Jan 2024
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As someone who is VERY aware of the over-specificitty of The Berlin Interpretation:
Generally speaking, nobody is saying a roguelike is worse. Just like DOOM is not worse than Operation Flashpoint because it is not a milsim. It just has to do with having criteria to indicate what games people might like if they liked others. And while there are a lot of borderline cases*, generally speaking, roguelikes and roguelites are very much built differently. Roguelites are very much built around "failure is progress" in the sense that, quite often, you actually need to fail a few times to unlock the endgame.
So when people are saying a game is "the wrong genre"... it can get annoying. It isn't saying that Hades is worse than Stoneshard** but more that they are very different kinds of games.
*: For example, Tales of Maj'Eyal is NOT a roguelike. Maybe you don't care about the aesthetics (I sure don't) but stuff like the transmog bag and the unlockable classes and "races" very much disqualify it. But there is a reason it is one of the most loved games among the "roguelike" crowd. It is one of the best modernizations of the formula to ever be made.
**: Which also would not qualify. Which is stupid
Mmm yeah, The Berlin Interpretation is way too specific, things like the graphics/grid etc. If some game fits more than half the factors, perhaps that should be considered 'like' enough? But I do understand why people can get anal about some games being categorised as Roguelike when they are infact not very similar at all.
I think it boils down to genre being misused in general, there's games with large open spaces called Open World, when they are not really, games that are called MMO when they are not. RPG games that are not actually RPG etc etc etc. Rogue fans just made a bigger deal out of it.
Well, a lot of that boils down to actually "putting in the effort" to have sane-ish distinctions (the bar is low). You'll see similar arguments from the milsim crowd, for example. Same with a lot of flight sims where there are generally pretty well understood criteria for the different subtypes (even if it is a mess to find a way to refer to stuff like "Lock-On" that is not "arcadey"...). This isn't "Well, it has a level up animation so I guess it is an RPG". This is "It meets criteria X, Y, and Z so it is a roguelike. It meets only x and y, so it is a roguelike. Why do you keep bringing up Operation Flashpoint?"
Contrast that with something like FPSes where you can vaguely distinguish the different eras but there is a lot more bleedover to the point of (fucking stupid and borderline offensive name aside...) not actually being sure if DOOM 2016 is a "boomer shooter" because of the design decisions... even though DOOM is the gold standard for both 2016 and stuff like Dusk (actually Quake was, but DOOM markets better).
Like, I assume most of the crowd are too young to remember but there were actually REALLY big arguments over "MMO" back in the day. Maybe we all remember the question of "So... is Destiny an MMO?". But there were a LOT of arguments over Guild Wars 1. Because it looked like an MMO and it even progressed like an MMO but... it was Diablo 2 with a fancy skin for the IRC chat room between instances. And a lot of people (kind of rightfully...) blame Guild Wars 1 for the mess that has resulted in "Diablo 4 is my favorite MMO".
Which, getting back to Roguelikes/lites... as long as you listen to WHY something is not a roguelike, it is a really good distinction. If the reason involves progression mechanics then you almost immediately know if you care. And if it becomes one about aesthetics, you know nobody, not even the person bringing it up, really cares.
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Thanks guys, enjoyed your discussion.