If ‘Dead Space’ is a big success, it might not be because there are millions of ‘fans of the genre’ who couldn’t wait to go out and play a B-grade release that recycles the ideas of its predecessors.

Somewhere out there is a mythical being, the consummate ‘Fan of the Genre’. As legend goes, this creature will purchase and play anything in his chosen sub-category. This could mean importing every grid-based, anime-inspired JRPG in existence, or playing a constant stream of first-person shooters in which he dutifully commits an endless streak of murders across all of time and space. Presumably there is even a rare breed who has raced his way through the complete decade-long oeuvre of the tireless Need for Speed team.

Also, Sasquatch is on this person’s friends list (Gamertag: BigHairy69), and he knows a guy that ate Pop Rocks and drank a bottle of Mountain Dew Halo 3 Game Fuel™, causing his head to explode the moment before his gamer score cracked ten million.

Which is to say, I’m fairly certain this category of person does not exist in a meaningful way. There are probably isolated cases, just as there are probably isolated cases of amnesia. But like that condition’s overuse in fiction, I have serious doubts about whether the behavior implied by the term ‘fan of the genre’ is common enough to justify the idea’s prevalence.

This is a phrase that runs rampant in reviews, to the point where it’s become a subject of in-jokes on certain podcasts and forums that talk extensively about games. Nor is this is a phenomenon isolated to one medium. The same tendency happens with people who discuss movies, books, or any other form of entertainment that can be said to have definable genres. And across the board the term is used as a euphemism more than anything — an excuse for reviewers to courteously defend lazy creative works falling into the disreputable category of ‘passable’. But habitually painting the mediocre as worth the time and money of  genre fans does a disservice to all of us.

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To be more specific — as well as to avoid immediate backlash — let me clarify. There are no doubt fans of every genre. Some people enjoy role-playing games more than sports games. I’m much more partial to action games than to driving games myself. Similarly, I love a good gangster movie, but usually can’t be bothered with historical epics, and like rock music with smart lyrics more than bass-pounding instrumental house music. There are also people who enjoy those opposing genres, and with equal enthusiasm. But in the world of reviewing, especially with video games, the phrase ‘fans of the genre’ is all too often succeeded by a sentiment resembling “…will find something to like here, but it won’t change any minds,” or preceded by, “Nothing groundbreaking, but there are a few new elements to appeal to…” you got it, fans of the genre. That’s essentially the same as saying, “Normal people, don’t bother playing this. But if your standards are low, and you’re hard up for a game that’s just like the last one you played only slightly worse, have at it!”

Getting to the root of general behavior is tricky without a massive survey of who actually buys which games, but the implication seems to be that there are ‘racing people’ who will at least consider every racing game released, ‘RPG nerds’ who will do the same, some form of twitching blob who will play any Geometry Wars clone spit onto their hard drive, and so on. Probably, there are a few of those. Most likely though, they are the minority, and the vast number of game buyers, like moviegoers or music collectors, hop from genre to genre for whatever looks most interesting to them. The success of a massively long-running series may not be due to people buying every single Tony Hawk or Burnout game, for example, but because the appeal of those games is wide enough that at some point, everyone’s going to try at least one of them. Then if they like it, maybe come back every few years for another taste. Alternately, individuals may not be fans of an entire genre so much as a specific series within that genre, so they will buy and play the new Final Fantasy every few years, but having received the required dose, ignore any other fantasy RPGs in between.

Games writer and blogger Mitch Krpata tackled a similar issue in a series of posts to his site, Insult Swordfighting, called A New Taxonomy of Gamers. Though his exploration was much more extensive than mine, my favorite deduction was his breakdown of what he called Skill Players vs Tourist Gamers. According to him:

There are two fundamental reasons people play games. They’re not mutually exclusive, but they are separate. Some people play to master a game — to perfect its mechanics, to explore every inch of the game world. Some play to “see the sights” — to hit the high points and not get too caught up in the minutiae. Let’s call these groups “Skill Players” and “Tourists.”

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“Tourists” is more euphemistic, but I think it carries the right connotations. Imagine somebody visiting France for the first time. They want to see the Eiffel Tower, Sacre Coeur, and the Louvre. They don’t speak the language or know the streets, and they don’t much care. As long as they can get where they’re going, they’re not interested in experiencing what a native might call the “real” Paris. And when the trip is done, they probably won’t be heading back to France any time soon to find some hidden gem of a crêperie. Instead, the tourist wants to go to China to see the Great Wall. The Tourist gamer is the same way: “beating” a game is more about checking off the big moments than earning a 100% completion rate.

Though the analogy might not be perfect (I like to think of myself as a hipper brand of tourist, who’d want to experience at least some of the hidden gems of ‘real’ Paris as well as see the famous sights), the premise is right on. Most gamers aren’t defined by loyalty to a certain category, but want to see cool stuff of all kinds. They won’t subject themselves to Just Cause or Juiced 2: Hot Import Nights just because they’ve liked similar games. In fact, that’s all the more reason to skip those titles. These B-level imitations are essentially the equivalent of tourist traps: less-worthy distractions that survive by catching their share of wayward travelers. These are the game buyers who either aren’t informed enough about their better options, aren’t discriminating enough to just drive past, or have too much time to kill until the next better stop.

Extending the tourist metaphor further: you might also discover a place you love and want to visit again fairly regularly, but not to the exclusion of all other trips. Like playing every installment of Grand Theft Auto, or my annual trips to Las Vegas and San Francisco, I keep going back because I love the experiences I’ve had with them — how else could they sell millions of people a Madden game every year? But that doesn’t mean from now on I’ll play every open-world crime game, or exclusively visit cities with legalized gambling and beautiful bridges.

After all, truly great games are never said to be for ‘fans of a genre’, they’re called masterpieces or must-plays, and without qualifiers. They define genres, create new ones, or transcend existing ones. The genesis of an amazing game like Bioshock came when its team redefined a genre with their ideas in System Shock, and later refined them for a broader console audience. Resident Evil invented the survival horror genre, and really, what other zombie-killing games did we need? That is, until someone like Dead Rising came along to take it somewhere new and different by making it open-world and mission-based — not to mention finally allowing us to impale the undead on an excavator and twirl their blood-splattering corpses in the air. That’s significant progress. That’s something we hadn’t seen before.

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Which brings us to Dead Space. The first fall game it feels like everyone is playing until we wait for our respective Fallout 3s, LittleBigPlanets, or Gears of War 2s. Seemingly the perfect, generally well-reviewed game to bridge the few weeks until the heavy-hitters start showing up. EA is to be commended for several reasons here. Not often do they create an original property and support it this heavily. With any luck, this will be at least successful enough to encourage similar risks in the future. There are several things about the game that deserve praise, too; the high-quality visuals and sound provide a suitably creepy atmosphere, and the elegance of their holographic interface is amazing. However, when it comes down to spending sixty dollars and a dozen hours, some spooky sounds in my surround speakers aren’t enough, and I can’t bring myself to play a game for its interface.

My earlier examples of truly great games were not accidental, because really, what is Dead Space but a Resident Evil game set in an outer-space Rapture from Bioshock? Oh, right, instead of having to aim for the deformed, tentacle-waving head every time, in this game, you have to aim at specific waving tentacles. And instead of being underwater and occasionally having to wade through it, you’re in space and occasionally get to jump through it.

Granted, I haven’t played this game. Maybe I’ll try a demo or borrow a copy and change my tune entirely. But that’s not the point. The point is that this is one of the best-reviewed games of the month so far, and I have no interest in it whatsoever — because from all indications, I’ve already played its better cousins. This is a game built with a ‘fan of the genre’ in mind, and I am not that person. I loved RE4 and Bioshock, so why would I bother with a less thought-provoking, non-bar-raising rehash of their ideas? I also loved Braid and Penny Arcade Adventures. Does that mean a turn-based RPG with time-rewinding abilities and a sense of humor would be a sure download? No, it means the opposite. My tourist sensibilities mean I want to see something new and different, or at the very least something on the level of what has previously impressed me. Once you’ve been to a strip club, the Hooters by the mall doesn’t do much for you any more, and there are better places to get hot wings.

So can we admit that if Dead Space is a big success, it might not be because there are millions of ‘fans of the genre’ who couldn’t wait to go out and play a B-grade release that recycles the ideas of its predecessors? Could we admit to ourselves that maybe gamers are more like tourists, and some of them either haven’t played Bioshock or Resident Evil 4 and were swayed by good marketing, or just had nothing better to play this week? I’m no ‘fan of the genre’ myself, so I’ll be saving my money for the next real Resident Evil game this spring, and waiting for the next truly original idea from EA coming out in a few weeks. That’s progress. That’s something I haven’t seen before.