Should pinball have it's own game genre?

[MJF]

Kind of weird seeing the generic "action" genre used for every pinball game. Shouldn't pinball really be a game genre onto itself?

[Rlad]

I've made Pinball a genre in my own build so, yes i'd agree.

[viritys]

One of the more difficult topics. Personally, I hate action as a genre because it feels more like a variable than a genre ie it indicates that a game requires a reaction in real-time. There's RPGs and there's Action RPGs, or strategy games and RTS's. Action is a differentiator in whether you need to be quick while playing. As it is, people will add them as separate genres, "action; strategy" for example. The end result is that when you sort by action, you'll get everything from pinball sim to 70's Space Invaders to Starcraft to modern Tomb Raiders (Action; Adventure, also connecting Tomb Raiders to text adventures as both are now labeled "adventures":) so there's not much connecting said games, making the genre quite useless as a filter up until LB introduced the quick filters; now you can drill down to what you're looking for more easily so it has its uses.

Personally, I use "Series" for more specific genres like pinball or, say, chess, light gun, various sports etc. I got about 50 different types for these and it works ie I get the ability to sort and find something specific. It's not optimal tho because I also use series for what it's designed for ie to group the series of games (Worms, Grand Theft Auto, Castlevania etc) and themes (WWII, AD&D, Horror etc). It works, but I'm sure my arrangement would not reach universal acceptance  

I would be ecstatic to get an overhaul to Custom Fields. Today they are cumbersome to use because there's no pulldown to existing entries so you can't pick and choose. If they worked as well as the fixed fields, thet would be optimal for stuff like "subgenre" like Pinball.

One fun benefit from having a subgenre is that you can more easily stumble upon stranger combinations. Looking at my pinballs, I can find foe example an action RPG (like Rollers of the Realm) and multiple platformers (like Yoku's Island Express).