Post by GoodGuyGames in Game and Post not appearing anywhere after publishing

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Thanks again for your great post buddy :)

Well tags are very important and sadly I'm not using them correctly. But your explanation makes the problem (and the solution) easier to understand.

I place both rogue-like/lite tags because as you said, most people don't differentiate between the two and often search one instead for the other.

Main tags don't offer that much variety to choose from (and that's reasonable), but I thought Strategy was the best fitting. I think checking Blue Prince's tags is a good idea if I want that game's player base to follow my game too.

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redonihunter15 days ago

Yes, there is two aspects. What a tag means and what people think it means ;-)

Both on Steam and Itch, the people chosing the tags are not reliable on the meaning of words. You would need curators for that. So ~~tags~~ genres mentioned on professional articles about a game might be more accurate.

Skimming such articles, Blue Prince seems to be a mystery puzzle rogue-lite. Bordering on deck-building, without being one. Of course the 3d immersion is missing from your game.

For strategy one might read the wiki article about it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategy_game

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategy_video_game#Subgenres

Having strategical thinking involved is not enough. It would be like calling a game point & click, because you can point at things and click them. Or calling a game a visual novel, because there is things to see and things to read.

But I have not played your game. Nor the inspiration for your game. Chess is a strategy game. The strategy game. You command units. Strategy is the skill used by a commander. A game with a single acting entity feels wrong to be named a strategy game. Yet I even found an article mentioning "strategy" to describe Blue Prince. I disagree ;-)

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GoodGuyGames15 days ago

I read some of the articles you mentioned, and although I'm not an expert, I don't like that restricted definition of a Strategy game. Its not like FPS or Sports category which are self explanatory, but rather can be applied to almost any game, so defining it is difficult.

Anyway, from now on, I have to think twice before choosing my games' tags!

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redonihunter15 days ago(+1)

Meaning of words can change. A roguelike game today is practically nothing like the game Rogue. What it now means is doing a "run" that is random in the way you can improve your character and generally that the game is very difficult and there is no save scumming. But that does not mean every difficult game or every game wihtout save games or every game that has things like game sessions fits the definition.

The strategy genre is a bit different what it describes. The kernel of it for me is commanding units. In every game where you have to manage resources, you need to plan how to effectively use those resources. But that does not make them strategy games. Strategy games give the player the feeling of being a strategist. Rpg games, adventures and rogue-likes do not do that. If resource management is a key element, I would tag such as management, not as strategy. Even if you would come up with "strategies" how to use the resources.

https://itch.io/games/tag-management

Management

Games where you have to manage resources in order to complete objectives.

Yet still people tagged that Prince game with strategy. Who knows what the word means in 10 years for games. But then again, the term strategy is used for games maybe as long as there is the game of chess.

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