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[Duke 2.0]

What else are we supposed to call it... a DungeonKeeperLike?  A fantasy sim?  An RPG?  An RTS? 

What about "THE game", or "masterpiece". We don't have to compare DF to any other games. We don't have to find a genre for it. This game is unique. 

 Which would make it harder to explain. Not to mention these titles draw in people looking for stuff in said genres. I sure as hell found DF from looking for roguelikes. Not masterpiece games.

[Tormy]

What else are we supposed to call it... a DungeonKeeperLike?  A fantasy sim?  An RPG?  An RTS? 

What about "THE game", or "masterpiece". We don't have to compare DF to any other games. We don't have to find a genre for it. This game is unique. 

 Not to mention these titles draw in people looking for stuff in said genres.

Ah heh, I wasn't thinking about this from that perspective at all. Well, to me, DF is a fantasy strategy game.

[Muz]

I rather like DF being genreless. I think it fits more into RPG-city builder as such terms go. A great game invents its own genre, or broadens an existing one What I didn't like about the description was the part where they put in the negative bits that roguelikes tend to have.

[Jude]

"Sim" is the best genre description really. I also found it from a roguelike forum, but just because I found out about Shpongle on a Porcupine Tree forum and lots of people like both of them doesn't make Shpongle progressive rock.

[Earthquake Damage]

While I (mostly) agree with their list of features that define roguelikes, not all roguelikes bear all those features.  Incursion, for example, has creatures that occupy multiple tiles (e.g. adult dragons), but is clearly a roguelike game.

I'd take their list to mean "if it has most these features, it is 'like Rogue'" rather than "it absolutely must have every one of these features to be roguelike."  Any other interpretation becomes overly strict, possibly to the point of absurdity.  It could be argued, for instance, that no roguelike truly features permanent death because you can save scum (yes, that's metagame behavior, but it can be and is done), thereby invalidating all otherwise acceptable roguelikes.

On a slightly different note, do we really need some board of officials to define a genre?  Rather bureaucratic, isn't it?

[Tormy]

While I (mostly) agree with their list of features that define roguelikes, not all roguelikes bear all those features.  Incursion, for example, has creatures that occupy multiple tiles (e.g. adult dragons), but is clearly a roguelike game.

Incursion is one of the best roguelikes what I've ever seen. Hopefully the developer will work on the game in the future also. IIRC he plans to expand the game, so there will be generated? game worlds with lot of dungeons/towns/etc. to explore. Thast would be epic. 

[Neonivek]

Any other interpretation becomes overly strict, possibly to the point of absurdity

Read more closely. They don't refer to games that don't have those elements as "Exceptions" or "Stylistic differences" they refer to it as a "Violation"

[Blacken]

Their list refers to these as high-value factors. Something with a lot/all of them is certainly a roguelike. Something lacking in them may or may not be.

Why all the hair-shirting?

[Neonivek]

because a lot of their factors are not "High-value"

[subject name here]

You can feel free to ignore these guys and their list, there's not allot a bunch of genre elitists can do to force you to stop calling your game a roguelike, let it fade into the forgotten obscurity of the already forgotten, obscure and ultimately irrelevant Usenet.

[axus]

Yeah, defining "rogue-like" doesn't help much.  It certainly is useless to make a checklist and say a "rogue-like" must check every box, or it is not "rogue-like". 

It is very handy if it's used to measure a function of "how rogue-like" something is.  You can say game A is more like Rogue than game B, or even say that game C is "76% rogue-like".  The only way a game would reach 100% is if it was a re-coding of Rogue.  Nobody feels compelled to be more rogue-like, it's just a handy description of explaining the game to people who have played other Rogue-likes.

If you still don't think it's useful, come up with a list about "DF-like".  What does it take to be a "DF-like"?  Such a list isn't so important, but it's interesting.

[Tormy]

If you still don't think it's useful, come up with a list about "DF-like".  What does it take to be a "DF-like"?  Such a list isn't so important, but it's interesting.

DF-like? Hm.....I don't think that theres a game what can be compared to DF actually, gameplay wise. Correct me if I am wrong of course. 

[axus]

You might be able to say that WarCraft3 is 15% DF-like if you had such a list. 

[Tenebrais]

I would call Dwarf Fortress a genre all to itself. If pressed, I'd call it a Sandbox game; hardly anything gives you more freedom.

Hmm, a list of attributes that would make something Dwarf Fortress-like would be interesting to come up with. What could we have?

You've got running a settlement in real-time. That's probably most core of all.
You've got a generated world, rather than a pre-built map.
You could have many and various ways to lose.
You need to have freedom to construct damn near anything you can think of.
What else, I wonder...

[Lazer Bomb]

You can't win?

I would say RTS, because it is- Real Time Strategy. However, it misses the first of those words, and kinda twists the second. Most RTS's don't have pausing to give orders, setting DF apart. So, DF is a Time Strategy, or a Strategy. 

EDIT: by the way, that redefinition kinda sounds...bad. If you grab a bunch of random people in Berlin, tell them "Write down what is a Roguelike is" and take that and make it sound absolute (ADOM is a violation), then you get this, apparently.