I’m not sure if I want to go into the full thing because people tend to get defensive about their preconceived notions and make a big, heated argument about it. But I will say this: game genres are defined by gameplay, not by content, by visuals, or by similarities with other games people assume to be in that genre.

As simply as I can put it— and hopefully not opening up a huge can of worms— I define a role-playing game as a game in which your character(s) play one of several roles meaning “classes”— each with their own stats and abilities that play differently and often support each other. You can have one character who can choose one or more classes, more characters that each have their own classes, or more characters that can can choose their own classes. That makes D&D, Pokémon, Kingdom Hearts, Final Fantasy XIII, and honestly a bunch of multiplayer shooters RPGs. That does not make Zelda or the first Dragon Quest/Dragon Warrior RPGs.

So the biggest problem with humans and categorizations is they are hugely assumptive, seeing surface-level things and defining it by those, and by outward similarities with other items that they already assume to be of that category. Because of this, what a lot of people do is confuse the adventure genre— games that use exploration, puzzle-solving, and key items in order to progress— and role-playing games, which almost always are adventure games as well. D&D? Both RPG and adventure. Final Fantasy XIII? RPG but not adventure. Zelda? Adventure but not RPG. But in most cases, RPGs are also adventures. So a lot of people think games with common adventure elements are RPGs.

I know a lot of what I’m saying is going to fly over peoples’ heads and they’ll go crazy in the comments. Let’s see how long I can ignore them for the sake of my own sanity…