Semiotics of video game genres

Martin Hollis, developer of Goldeneye, recently Tweeted: Accepted game genres are a bunch of things which don’t go together: world structure (platformer), camera angle (FPS), I don’t even (RPG) I went to tweet a reply, but one thing led to another, and it turned into this article. I think that the confused nature of video game genre terminology is because the genre names are largely indicative signs, not expressive signs. They are phrased in a way which seems to be denote function, structure or content, but they arise as codes to represent an artistic heritage tracing back to some original successful video game.