No, the original point was "Indie 3d platformer, puzzles with voxel based digital clay". The discussion has evolved since then. There's no reason to go back to Spike's first post in this thread, especially when you yourself feel that that's already solved, because it has evolved since then as well (although there's nothing wrong with going back to Spike's first point if you feel there's more to say about it).
@Spike: vague descriptors are great, too.
Action,
mystery (I think most would call this "puzzle"),
horror and so on are fine and dandy. In fact they are helpfully vague, in that they describe the feel of the game without putting it into a well-defined box -- specific expectations aren't created; staples aren't necessarily included by developers through a feeling of obligation to the "genre".
On the other hand a gamer will often ask, "Yeah, but what kind of game
is it?" And the answer might be something like FPS, RTS (two well-defined descriptors), or roguelike or RPG (two terrible descriptors for two different reasons -- one because it's effectively the same "GTA clone" thing as before, but now it's "Rogue clone", and the other because it connects too many mechanics that aren't related to each other, confining the developer as the label comes with so many expectations).
The very reason certain genres are so clear-cut is that they are connections of well-known descriptors (first-person, shooter, real-time, strategy, turn-based, massively-multiplayer-online...).
Rock Paper Shotgun tends to avoid using the RPG genre name for the same reason, referring to some games as "swords-and-conversations" and others as "guns-and-conversations".
well the answer is obvious, the majority of a game is to be measured by the fastest possible gameplay lenght.
Sure, except the more important question was: if it's no longer a game because there isn't enough playing, but playing still exists in it, then what is it?
