A video game genre is a specific category of games related by similar gameplay characteristics. Video game genres are not usually defined by the setting or story of the game or its medium of play, but by the way the player interacts with the game.. For example, a first-person shooter is still a first-person shooter regardless of whether it takes place in a science fiction, western, fantasy, or military setting, so long as it features a camera mimicking the perspective of the protagonist (first-person) and gameplay centered around the use of ranged weaponry.

Genres may encompass a wide variety of games, leading to even more specific classifications called subgenres. For example, an action game can be classified into many subgenres such as platform games and fighting games. Some games, most notably browser and mobile games, are commonly classified into multiple genres..

The following is a list of most commonly defined video game genres, with short descriptions for individual genres and major subgenres.

Action

Action games emphasize physical challenges that require hand-eye coordination and motor skill to overcome. They center around the player, who is in control of most of the action. Most of the earliest video games were considered action games. Today, it is still a vast genre covering all games that involve physical challenges.

Action games are classified by many subgenres. Platform games and fighting games are among the best-known subgenres, while shooter games became and continue to be one of the dominant genres in video gaming since the 1990s.. Action games usually involve elements of twitch gameplay.

Platform games

Platform games, or platformers, have gameplay primarily centered around jumping and climbing to navigate the player's environment. They may have enemies or obstacles to avoid and fight or may just be pure jumping puzzles. Generally the playable characters in a platform game are able to jump many times their own height and the player is offered some control over their movement in midair as well as the height and distance of their jumps. Settings tend to be vertically exaggerated with much uneven terrain that the player can leap up to or fall off of.

Donkey Kong (1981) was one of the earliest and best-known platformers. The American gaming press classified it using the term climbing game at the time. Super Mario Bros. (1985), a platformer, was one of the best-selling games of all time, with more than 40 million copies sold.

Shooter games

In shooter games, or simply shooters, players use ranged weapons to participate in the action, which takes place at a distance. Most shooters involve violent gameplay. Lethal weaponry is used to damage opponents. However, some shooters, such as Splatoon, have non-violent objectives.

Since the 1990s, shooters, most notably first-person shooters, have become widely successful in video gaming, accounting for a large percentage of video game sales. Wolfenstein 3D, created by Id Software and released in 1992, was credited for pioneering gameplay and graphics elements incorporated by many other shooters.. Also developed by Id and published one year after Wolfenstein 3D's release, Doom is broadly considered to be one of the most influential games in video gaming history. Other successful shooter series include Half-Life, a widely acclaimed and commercially successful series noted for its influence on contemporary shooters, and the Call of Duty franchise, with more than 250 million sales across all its titles.

Shooters, aside from subgenre classifications, can be further classified by their perspective of play.

First-person shooters First-person shooters are played within the protagonist's perspective. They often include a heads-up display showing key information such as the current health of the protagonist.. In third-person shooters, the protagonist's body can be seen fully. The environment is rendered from a distance. Some shooters incorporate both perspectives.

Hero shooters Hero shooters are either first- or third-person multiplayer shooters that emphasize pre-designed "hero" characters, with each possessing distinctive abilities and/or weapons that are specific to them. Hero shooters strongly encourage teamwork between players on a team, guiding players to select effective combinations of hero characters and coordinate the use of hero abilities during a match. Outside of a match, players have the ability to customize the appearance of the heroes but with no other in-game effects. Hero shooters are inspired by the multiplayer online battle arena genre, and popular team-based shooters like Team Fortress 2. Examples of hero shooters include Overwatch, Paladins, Apex Legends, and Valorant.

Light gun shooters Light gun shooters are controlled with a gun-shaped controller. Light guns function via a light sensor, hence the name "light gun". The technology has been used as early as the 1920s for shooter games, although electronic video gaming did not exist at that time. A popular light gun shooter is Duck Hunt.

Shoot 'em ups

Shoot 'em ups pit players, who are usually piloting some form of flying vehicle, or flying by some other means, against large waves of opponents. The player is continuously moving and must attack and avoid opponent's attacks as well as obstacles..

Fighting games

Fighting games center around close-ranged combat, typically one-on-one fights or against a small number of equally powerful opponents, often involving violent and exaggerated unarmed attacks. Most fighting games feature a large number of playable characters and a competitive multiplayer mode. While most fighting games emphasize hand-to-hand combat, some fighting games such as Soulcalibur and Samurai Shodown center around combat with melee weapons. Many fighting games incorporate heavily emphasized attacks based on various martial arts systems. Fighting games were one of the dominant genres in video gaming until the late-1990s, where the genre saw a slight decline.

This decline was short-lived, for titles such as Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter, Tekken, and Super Smash Bros. dominate the fighter demographic of the modern era. Different sub-genre games are starting to become more popular. Super Smash Bros., and its deviation from the traditional fighting game rule set, gained a large following because of its "fun over form" party game development mentality.

Beat 'em up games

Beat 'em ups, or brawlers, are a related, but distinct genre to fighting games. While they both involve close-range combat, beat 'em ups put players against large waves of opponents as opposed to a few. Beat 'em ups often incorporate mechanics from other action genres, and multiplayer in beat 'em up games tends to be co-operative rather than competitive. Beat 'em ups saw a sudden decline in popularity in the early 1990s with the release of fighting games, but 3D beat 'em ups have kept the genre alive. Hack and slash is a sub-genre often used to refer to weapons based beat 'em ups.

Stealth games

These games tend to emphasize sneaking around and avoiding enemy notice over direct conflict, for example, the Metal Gear series, and the Sly Cooper series. In a Stealth game, players are usually still able to engage in loud, conspicuous combat, but are often punished for it. In other games, such as Dishonored, the player can obtain their goal with or without stealth, but stealth is encouraged as the player is at a disadvantage over many of their enemies. The inclusion of stealth as a mechanic in a game does not necessarily make it a Stealth Game. For example, Skyrim has an entire perk tree dedicated to "Sneaking" despite that most of the dungeons in the game can be completed using a hack-and-slash strategy.

The first stealth game was Manbiki Shounen (Shoplifting Boy), published in November 1979. The PET 2001 personal computer game was developed by Hiroshi Suzuki.

Hideo Kojima's Metal Gear was the first mainstream stealth game, with the player starting the game unarmed, and sold over a million copies in the United States. Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake evolved the stealth gameplay of its predecessor. Metal Gear and Metal Gear 2 are credited with pioneering stealth mechanics. Metal Gear Solid, which debuted at the 1996 Tokyo Game Show,Metal Gear Solid (Beta + Tech Demo – PSX) , Unseen64, April 11, 2008 was the first 3D stealth game, and is credited with popularizing the stealth game genre, as well as the hiding-behind-cover mechanic.Gears of War Review , GamesFirst

Survival games

Survival games start the player off with minimal resources, in a hostile, open-world environment, and require them to collect resources, craft tools, weapons, and shelter, in order to survive as long as possible. Many are set in procedurally generated environments, and are open-ended with no set goals. They may overlap with the survival horror genre, in which the player must survive within a supernatural setting, such as a zombie apocalypse.

Rhythm games

Rhythm game or rhythm action is a genre of music-themed action video game that challenges a player's sense of rhythm. The genre includes dance games such as Dance Dance Revolution and music-based games such as Rock Band and Guitar Hero. Games in the genre challenge the player to press buttons at precise times: the screen shows which button the player is required to press, and the game awards points both for accuracy and for synchronization with the beat.

PaRappa the Rapper has been deemed the first influential rhythm game; whose basic template formed the core of subsequent games in the genre. Other popular rhythm games include Dance Dance Revolution, Maimai, Project Diva, Cytus, Love Live: School Idol Festival, The Idolmaster, osu!, Taiko no Tatsujin, and Crypt of the Necrodancer.

Battle royale games

A battle royale game is a genre that blends the survival, exploration and scavenging elements of a survival game with last man standing gameplay. Battle royale games challenge a large number of players, starting with minimal equipment, to search for weapons and armor and eliminate other opponents, while trying to stay in safe playable area which shrinks as the time passes, with the winner being the last competitor in the game. Notable battle royale games include PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, Fortnite Battle Royale, Free Fire, Apex Legends, and Call of Duty: Warzone, each having received tens of millions of players within months of their releases.

Action-adventure

Although action-adventure games can divide into action or adventure games, they combine elements of their two component genres, typically featuring long-term obstacles that must be overcome using a tool or item as leverage, which is collected earlier, as well as many smaller obstacles almost constantly in the way, that require elements of action games to overcome. Action-adventure games tend to focus on exploration and usually involve item gathering, simple puzzle solving, and combat. "Action-adventure" has become a label which is sometimes attached to games which do not fit neatly into another well known genre. Because of their prevalence on video game consoles and the absence of typical adventure games, action-adventure games are often called "adventure games" by modern gamers.

One of the first action-adventure games was the Atari 2600 game Adventure (1980). It was directly inspired by the original text adventure, Colossal Cave Adventure. In the process of adapting a text game to a console with only a joystick for control, designer Warren Robinett created an action-adventure game by incorporating action arcade game elements.