Fading Line Between Genres in Games

Remember a few years back back we can just point to a game and say "this is an RPG" and "that is an FPS". Nowadays everything is also something else and plenty of games have combined elements from multiple genres that genre lines in games are really blurred.


As an example of this, I once had an argument with one of my friend about whether Fallout 3 is an RPG or not. He was saying that Fallout 3 is an FPS but of course we all know that Fallout 3 is an RPG. But it's not really my friend's fault for seeing Fallout 3 as an FPS as game genre really is quite obscure nowadays. Not only older genres gets combined and hybridized every day but new genres springs up frequently or even games that are hard to define like Proteus, Minecraft or Terraria.

Yes, there are still games that you can clearly define from just a glance but most games nowadays are a combination of multiple classic genres crammed into one package. It's not a bad thing mind you as this creates plenty of interesting combinations but it does get hard to classify them. Even MMOs are getting more variety as there are instanced-based MMOs, sandbox MMO, MMOFPS, MMORTS and plenty others.

It's really interesting to see how genre lines really fade and in turn lets us see plenty of various combinations that might be unimaginable a few years ago. Trying to classify them might be much much harder but in the end, it's better to have fresh new combinations or new genres that re fun to play even if they're hard to classify rather than having the same old thing over and over again. What do you guys think? does the fading genre lines makes things confusing or does it really opens up to new horizons?