Stop. Just bloody well stop.

[jofadda]

This isnt a roguelike. Stop calling it one, if you MUST liken it to rogue, call it a "roguelite". The term roguelike actually means something, it is specific to a blend of tactics and rpg on a tile based interface that happens to have permadeath and procedural generation.

This only contains permadeath and procedural generation. This is not a roguelike and I'd appreciate it if you stopped bastardising the genre.

[Yaridovich]

First, you should probably research the game before talking, because this IS a roguelike. Roguelikes do not need to be strictly "tactics and RPG". Roguelike refers to the mechanics used, not to the type of game it is. Besides, the whole "you're bastardising the genre" argument is absolutely nonsensical

Second, the dev isn't even reading the forums anymore so you're late anyway.

[jofadda]

Originally posted by Yaridovich:

First, you should probably research the game before talking, because this IS a roguelike. Roguelikes do not need to be strictly "tactics and RPG". Roguelike refers to the mechanics used, not to the type of game it is. Besides, the whole "you're bastardising the genre" argument is absolutely nonsensical

Second, the dev isn't even reading the forums anymore so you're late anyway.

It's not a roguelike. It does not play like rogue, nor like any of the genres founding games. Hell minesweeper and tetris are more "roguelikes" than this. They arent "roguelikes" either.

Also the term roguelike has a game based namesake "Rogue". This is not like rogue, nor like any actual roguelike ergo this is not a roguelike

[Yaridovich]

Nobody asked you to be a flagbearer for roguelike games. What you think is utterly irrelevant and you're ranting to the wind since, again, the devs for this game aren't here anymore.

[iciz]

Unfortunately, the term "rogue-like" as it is wildly used today, no longer means what it originally did. So you're both kind of correct in your own way and this is why it has become such a controversial term, at least among members of the original rogue-like community.

"rogue-like" originally meant a literal clone of the game Rogue that modified and expanded upon it's mechanics. However, I believe the release of Spelunky and Binding of Isaac lead to the widespread misuse of the definition. These games were inspired by rogue-likes, but not actual rogue-likes, but that important distinction was lost and people just started calling them rogue-likes too. Naturally, other developers started copying these popular "rogue-likes" and it became an unstoppable trend.

People tried to fight this perceived misuse of the term by coming up with new terms like "rogue-like-like" and "rogue-lite" which only exacerbated the situation and created even more confusion. I think this is fundamentally due to the continued use of the word "rogue" in all the terms.

A perfect example of the issue here can be made if you look at early first-person shooters: Most were called Wolfenstein or Doom clones because most of them copied or at least looked like those games. However, we eventually just started calling them "first-person shooters" because they had evolved past those games and were nothing like them anymore. Just imagine all the arguments we would be having today if we still called FPS games "Doom clones" about how most of these games aren't really like Doom, etc. etc.

Language evolves over time and meanings change. So I'm afraid it's too late to ask people to stop "misusing" the term because it doesn't mean what it once did to most people anymore. However, I do think it's time for a better term to replace it. Just like the term FPS replaced "Doom clone". The best replacement term I've seen so far is "run-based" because it seems to concisely encapsulate the concepts of replayability, procedural content and perma-death very well.

So maybe you can start kindly asking people to refer to their games as "run-based" instead? But as Yaridovich has already pointed out, the developer for this game is long gone. So no real point in ranting about it here. Too late to change this game's title anyway.

[jofadda]

Originally posted by iciz:

Unfortunately, the term "rogue-like" as it is wildly used today, no longer means what it originally did. So you're both kind of correct in your own way and this is why it has become such a controversial term, at least among members of the original rogue-like community.

"rogue-like" originally meant a literal clone of the game Rogue that modified and expanded upon it's mechanics. However, I believe the release of Spelunky and Binding of Isaac lead to the widespread misuse of the definition. These games were inspired by rogue-likes, but not actual rogue-likes, but that important distinction was lost and people just started calling them rogue-likes too. Naturally, other developers started copying these popular "rogue-likes" and it became an unstoppable trend.

People tried to fight this perceived misuse of the term by coming up with new terms like "rogue-like-like" and "rogue-lite" which only exacerbated the situation and created even more confusion. I think this is fundamentally due to the continued use of the word "rogue" in all the terms.

A perfect example of the issue here can be made if you look at early first-person shooters: Most were called Wolfenstein or Doom clones because most of them copied or at least looked like those games. However, we eventually just started calling them "first-person shooters" because they had evolved past those games and were nothing like them anymore. Just imagine all the arguments we would be having today if we still called FPS games "Doom clones" about how most of these games aren't really like Doom, etc. etc.

Language evolves over time and meanings change. So I'm afraid it's too late to ask people to stop "misusing" the term because it doesn't mean what it once did to most people anymore. However, I do think it's time for a better term to replace it. Just like the term FPS replaced "Doom clone". The best replacement term I've seen so far is "run-based" because it seems to concisely encapsulate the concepts of replayability, procedural content and perma-death very well.

So maybe you can start kindly asking people to refer to their games as "run-based" instead? But as Yaridovich has already pointed out, the developer for this game is long gone. So no real point in ranting about it here. Too late to change this game's title anyway.

You're not quite right there, Edward Mcmillen himself never called Isaac a roguelike, and went on record stating it wasnt one. There's also the fact that the term roguelite originated with the game rogue legacy(we literally have the google search metrics in graph form to prove this, as it was wholly unused until rogue legacy came out). However I do agree the term is misused and wholly bastardized.

[iciz]

Originally posted by jofadda(roguelikesarelikerogue):

You're not quite right there, Edward Mcmillen himself never called Isaac a roguelike, and went on record stating it wasnt one. There's also the fact that the term roguelite originated with the game rogue legacy(we literally have the google search metrics in graph form to prove this, as it was wholly unused until rogue legacy came out). However I do agree the term is misused and wholly bastardized.

I never said the creators of those games claimed they were rogue-likes. I was talking about the communities around them misusing the label because of the perceived inspiration. I think this was simply due to not having a better way to describe this new kind of genre at the time -- again, very similar to the use of "Doom clone" in the 90's -- So they simply stole/repurposed "rogue-like".

Not exactly sure what relevance the origin of the term "rogue-lite" has to what I was saying though. It's still a terrible term in any case.