• Journal of Digital Contents Society
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• v.19 no.8
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• pp.1443-1451
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• 2018

The genre of digital games is not a fixed and invariable system, but a generative system of revisions and changes. The purpose of this study is to define a concept of alternative genre for digital games. The alternative genre of digital games should be presented in combinations of various genre elements and reflected the genre awareness of the user. In this context, user tags of the game transform the classical genre concept into a family resemblance based categorization and establish a user-driven bottom-up genre system. User tags as the form of alternative genre can spread the 'small' genre through multiplicity of genre elements and strengthen the communicative function of the genre.