Universal Videogame List - www.uvlist.net

Since there seems to be no effort by anyone else, I'll start this myself. I'll update this when anything new seems to be agreed on or seems sensible enough without farther discussion. The initial descriptions are based on how I personally understand them or how I see their current state to be.

UPDATE: Types were pushed to the wiki; I'm leaving genres and the other flags be for now.

# TYPES #
Action ... self-explanatory, any cases of action or violence. (personally I'd prefer it's also used when any of the sub-genres are used so all action games can be found with single search rather than iterating through all.)
- Beat 'em up ... the examples are enough one sided. games where you tromp about beating up throngs of baddies. And this is _beating up_, not slapping them aside or shooting them full of bullets. A.k.a. hack & slash games.
- Fighting ... 1vs1, 2vs2 and probably larger, but these are arena fights or possibly more complex beat 'em up games where fights take longer and use wider variety of moves. Usually the "versus" games where fighting is done in small-ish arenas.
- Maze ... Pac-Man and Gauntlet are best examples, I think. But this is used in cases where it definitely doesn't belong, so obviously it NEEDS BETTER DESCRIPTION!
- Platformer ... Obviously requires that the game requires jumping from and to platforms. Side-scrolling games with gravity tend to get this regardless, but _I_ can ignore that. For 3D games this really should require this _platform_ hopping.
- Shoot 'em up ... similar to beat 'em up, except instead of beating things up you fill them with lead as fast and as much as you can. Should be obvious as such.
Simulation ... self-explanatory most of the time. More trouble with games not being marked as simulation when they are rather than those being marked that aren't.
- Flight ... I personally only add this to real air-/spacecraft games, it probably should be added to non-real as well. Oddly enough I recall removing this from _submarine_ games, which definitely are not flight simulators. Arcade-ish "flight sims" probably shouldn't get this, nor the simulation part.
- Management/Economic ... should be obvious now in most cases. Under-used, IMO.
- Racing / Driving ... obvious enough. Possibly under-used in non-sport driving cases.
- Strategy ... obvious, but used in some completely un-strategic games for some odd reason.
Board game ... anything based on a board game or that simulates an imaginary board game. Should be obvious.
- Casino / Cards ... too much emphasis on the Casino part, otherwise obvious. Card and other gambling games.
- Pinball ... too obvious. Has no cases of wrong or lack of usage as far as I know.
Adventure ... too much of a game type negator rather than additional type.
Edutainment ... obvious in most cases.
Gun shooting ... obvious.
Music / Dance ... obvious.
Puzzle / Tetris ... obvious, under-used in hybrid games even when the puzzles are more complex than in some stand-alone puzzle games.
Role-play ... obvious, but abused simply because it's used to describe various game components more than game type.
Sport ... obvious.
Trivia / Quiz ... obvious, except in hybrid games.
Turn-based ... obvious. As an afterthought, it doesn't work alone as well as it should have. Hybrid real-time/turn-based games suffer.

# GENRES #
Fantasy ... obvious (I would think), but obviously it isn't.
Horror ... obvious most of the time. Seems to be used as an excuse to not include fantasy genre even when it contains "fantastic" horror elements, same problem with Sci-Fi, but rarer.
Historical ... obvious, real-world history based. Mixed with other genres may become something quite different.
Humorous ... content, obvious.
Manga ... graphical style, should mix with cartoon when going towards super deformed.
Cartoon ... graphical style, markedly highly unrealistic at the extreme end. Close to western comic style in the lesser.
Erotic ... obvious
Science Fiction ... anything unrealistic but from pseudo-scientific approach.
Tie-In ... mostly obvious. Current wide-spread assumption is that this is only for follow-ups or for "game versions". I would think it correct for any game that "Ties in" with other products, which, as you can see if you read it carefully, doesn't say anything about order.

# FLAGS #
Freeware ... game can be obtained and played free of charge. Other than that, it's all in the EULA. Is NOT the same as Public Domain (quite rare in game industry). NOT "free" Demos.
Shareware ... almost the same as freeware except you're allowed to share and re-distribute the game (without chargin for it, usually) - usually these games have some content locked out from un-registered versions but otherwise function without limitations.
FOSS ... at least game source code is available under some FOSS license. Other content (graphics, sounds, music, game story, etc.) might not be under this, but is commonly under the same license. See? It's Free (think freeware for now) Open-Source (source code is available for modification) Software (not game content, just the software part - you must realize graphics, sound and such are NOT software, right?). This isn't really what you'll find elsewhere, but it is safer and slightly broader description and shouldn't cause any conflicts except from some lawyer types, which we can ignore since we won't get in any real trouble for it. The freeware part is the most glaring error, but should be close enough to the real thing that people understand.

And the rest are more or less obvious again. We should probably re-start the perspective thread to solidify their definitions as well.

Currently most demanding areas for working are fantasy, cartoon, adventure, puzzle and possibly tie-in. And maze, but people don't seem to pay much mind to it.