Action, Shooter, and Sports were the best-selling genres on all platforms but PC in 2014 because people crave competition and want to feel important.

Of all video game genres, people in my social network enjoy action, shooter, and sports games the most. Why are these genres so compelling to people?

Game enthusiasts gather to watch a strategy game competition.

There are lots of different genres of video games, just like there are lots of different genres of music and movies. When most people think of video games, they think of violent shooters like Call of Duty, but there are other genres of games out there: action, fighting, simulation, sports, and role-playing to name a few. Like in music and movies, different genres of video games sell more than others. The top three best-selling ones are action, shooter, and sports.

To see why, I sent a bunch of people on my social network a survey to see what their favorite genres were. I wanted to see whether action, shooter, and sports were also people’s favorites.  I got 59 responses, and the top three genres overall were indeed sports, action, and shooter.

I want to explore why these genres of video games have the highest sales, what makes them so compelling and enduring across major platforms, and why studios will continue to invest heavily in them. The one big exception to this finding is on the PC platform, where strategy, casual, and role-playing games dominate.

The Entertainment Software Association, a market research organization, found that 71% of all video game players are 18 years old or older. What is it about action, shooters, and sports games that make them so appealing to this wide demographic?

The action, shooter, and sports genres appeal to the part of the brain that craves competition, rewards, and the need to feel important to others. 

I posed this question to people on the street. They all have different answers, but those answers boil down to two core concepts: competitiveness and thrill. In other words, people over the age of 18 enjoy these genres because they all offer rewarding competitive experiences with other people.

I want to clarify that when I refer to an “action” game, I’m specifically talking about a type of game in which you control your character on screen that can perform offensive or defensive moves to overcome obstacles in the game and occasionally solve puzzles. This is different from shooters, in which the primary objective is shooting things. Both of these genres are inherently violent.

According to GamesIndustry.biz, a news and information site that covers the games industry, there’s in fact a psychological reason people gravitate towards this violence.

First of all, people want to feel competent. They want to feel as if there is some real challenge that they have been given and that, through perseverance and skill, they will be rewarded for the time they sank into overcoming the challenge.

Blood as a reward for fighting well

In action and shooter games, there are long-term and more immediate rewards. The immediate rewards give the player feedback as to how well the player performed by showing enemies stagger as they get hit or by showing larger sprays of blood for better hits, for example.

Longer-term rewards make the player feel more powerful by offering them a greater variety of increasingly powerful weapons, armor, and tools. A good action or shooter game will also increase the difficulty of the challenges to keep the player coming back for more.

A character creator in a shooter

Secondly, people want to feel like they have autonomy in the game world. Many action and shooter games give players the option to choose what weapons or team members they will take into battle and how they will approach a particular scenario. Some action games even let the player customize how their character looks on screen. All of these choices invest the player more in the game and make their play-through of the game seem unique and personal to them.

Finally, people want to feel like their actions are important in the game world. Most shooters and action games have stories that revolve around your character. Well-written games will make the player’s actions seem important to the other central characters in the game (by saving them, protecting them, helping them when they’re in need, etc.).

Shooters especially shine in this regard in online multiplayer matches. In many shooters, players are able to form teams with other players and try to beat the other team at some objective (like killing members of the other team the most times, capturing the most flags, protecting a special area in the environment, etc.). Players feel like they’re part of a team and making significant contributions to the team’s victory, much like in sports.

But on PC, these genres aren’t the best selling. What’s different about the PC that makes role-playing, casual, and strategy games much more successful on that platform?

The most popular genres on PC are different because the controller for the games is different and because developers don't stop making games for it.

Again, I posed the question to people on the street. In general, they think that the input method (i.e. the mouse and keyboard) lends itself better to role-playing and strategy games more than a standard controller on a console does.

Having played some of these strategy and role-playing games, I’m inclined to agree. These games demand precise mouse movements, and fast button presses on the mouse and keyboard. They also tend to use most of the keys on the keyboard, each of which acts as a shortcut for some frequently used command. Since there are so many buttons to press to play the game effectively, playing on a standard console controller is not preferred.

Since many of these games only receive PC versions as a result, and because game development never stops on PC like it does on consoles (no games are developed for the Playstation 2 anymore, for example), many online role-playing and strategy games have tight-knit, long-standing communities built around them.

World of Warcraft subscribers over time.

When expansions or sequels to these beloved games release, many within the community will want to buy them to keep up with the game and their friends. World of WarCraft, for instance, has seen its subscriber counts jump significantly every time an expansion is released for it. StarCraft, a strategy game, became a nationally televised sport in South Korea in 2002 and is still going strong today.

Technology drives what sorts of software and games are possible on those platforms. In turn, that software drives what becomes popular. With several new technologies on the horizon like virtual reality and wearable technology, there will come new and different ways of interacting with games. I’m excited to see what new genres these technologies will make possible, and I look forward to seeing what genres thrive on those platforms.