I found another blog post discussing video game canon. Here. I found it interesting, as does the author that real time strategy is not included in the games. Among computer gamers real time strategy is a very popular genre with such titles as warcraft, starcraft, and age of empires. It is also a very distinct genre but the canonizer classifies warcraft as rpg because it is set in a fantasy world and tells a story. But the game play is definitely real time strategy and i think it is important to not ignore this distinction.
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The best question asked in the article is definitely “This brings up two important questions that need to be asked, is it important, in the making of a canon to include genre creation or defining a genre? The next question that has to be asked then if this is the case, are certain genres more important than others, and how do we decided either way?”
Thats a tough question for anyone to answer. As you notice from the article, there are 42 different genre’s and only 10 games listed on the video game canon. One might say that these 10 games which only span about 8 or 9 genres, could have led to the creation of games in other genres. Which is why they are the 10 most important games. But then comes the question, were all these games created before other genres were introduced?
I think the best way of creating a video game canon is to separate it into genres and then list the top 5 most important games to that genre that should be preserved. That way no genre is left out or considered less “important” than any other genre. Just because a majority of video gamers may play Warcraft and RPG games, doesn’t mean that sports games aren’t just as important. One could argue that a majority of people play Warcraft because that is the best video game out there and therefore should be put on the canon list. But it’s important to realize that not everyone enjoys playing RPG games. For example, my canon list would include more sports games because I prefer them over RPG games. The only way to not be biased seems to be to create a video game canon for each genre.