Categorizing games questions

I’ve got a spreadsheet of my games to help keep track of what I’ve got, so if I’m in the mood for a platformer or something I can filter by category and pick one. They’re broken down into categories of:
Action
Action-1st Person
Action-3rd person
Action-Paltformer
Adventure
Puzzle
Racing
RPG-Action
RPG-Tactical
Strategy-City Builder
Strategy-Real Time
Strategy-Tower Defense
Strategy-Turn Based

Some of the categories are getting too big to be useful. I’m breaking out Turn Based into a separate 4X category.

It got me thinking, would you consider a Heroes of Might and Magic game a 4X?, How about Disciples 2?

I know in the grand scheme of things it doesn’t really matter. They have exploration, exploiting resources, expanding your area and exterminating your enemies. To me it makes sense to put them with the 4Xs, but I never really hear them discussed as a 4X.

Some games are just tough to classify - like the Total War series. Turn based strategy? Real time strategy? More time is spent in the battles than the turn based part and is the primary focus of the game. But, you can autoresolve and then the turn based aspect takes the front seat.

Total War… semi-historical strategy?

I dunno… genres have totally blurred. Maybe categorize by age instead? Release year? 3D or 2D? Have things categorized multiple ways?

I would put Total War in the spread sheet twice, once as an RTS and once as a TBS. It’s both, not even a “hybrid”.

HoMM is a 4X by definition, though I’d say it’s more “4X Lite” since there isn’t really any diplomacy, same with stuff like Conquest of Elysium; pure war game. But then, most folks play stuff like Age of Wonders 3 and Civ that way, so I’d still say 4X over all is where that would go.

Thanks guys. At least I now have 58 games out of the turn based category so it isn’t quite as bloated. It’s down to 141, although there are a lot marked done that I have no intention of playing again.

Too many games. Categories have to be generic enough, like strategy, to cover the weird cases.

In 10 years, the only games that ever broke my system were tank sims.

Do you have time left to actually play anything?

HISTORICAL WARGAME

This seems like a problem in need of a tagging system, not a categorization system. If you want to stick with Excel, just add columns for each discrete descriptor and mark all games that could be encompassed under it with a Y or a 1 or whatever. Then you can still use the Filter control to vanish games not possessing certain categories to elevate the ones that do.

Yeah, I do have some generic categories like Action and RPG.

Trust me, there is no shortage in the number of hours I have spent playing the games. The speadsheet exists to help me get over the analysis paralysis I sometimes get when picking a game to play. And it helps me track the $ I spend on games.

Even you sometimes play things outside this category! Your categories could be “histical wargame” and “other” :-).

That could help. I could also make my category column allow multiple selections too (I think). Same effect - just reduce the number of columns.

You forgot the all important Stressed-out Pacific Northwest Teen Girl Game category!

Patent pending! I’ll sue!

But as long as I’m here, I’ve found the best categorization for me seem to be Games What I Played Already and Games What I Ain’t Played Yet. But then sometimes I like to play a game again, so mostly I just use the first category.

I’d go with tagging too, because if its also about choosing what to play, you might want to tag concepts and feelings too; violent, peaceful, relaxing, creative, building, arcade, story, etc

No idea where Minecraft would fit in your list btw.

One tag that’s useful to me is “quick”. When I sit down and know I only have a half hour to play, I want a list of all my games that I can get into and out of in that time.

Exactly what I was going to say. A job for Access moreso than Excel. :)

I do have a column for that sort of thing. It’s useful.

I don’t have that in my spreadsheet, but I do have that category in my Steam client. Definitely useful too.