Ok, so, what are the popular genres in gaming?  What are the popular genres outside of gaming?  How much do they overlap?

I think that gaming -- as a media -- affects what works and is popular and what doesn't.

Unlike movies, books, and most other artforms, gaming is very improvisational and generally doesn't permit re-writing. This means that genres that rely on coordination (lots of comedy and much crime-fiction) between characters and between characters and the world are problematic.

Gaming is also limited by the participant's understanding of technical subject matter. Medical and police dramas would be a lot less interesting if instead of seeing something that kind of looked legit, you got obvious gobbledy gook and dice rolls.

To be clear: people game out stuff they have no idea about *all the time* -- but procedurals (medical or police) are *interesting* (in part) because they provide a glimpse into those worlds.

A medical drama run by a doctor, or a cop game run by a cop might be able to do that... but since most groups don't have those things, I think they're not likely to be wide-spread successful.

Likewise, watching "House" (an American medical drama that's not terribly realistic in many ways) is interesting because the characters are brilliant. If that was simulated with dice rolls or some other pure mechanic ("I rolled a six. I cure him with some magnificent diagnosis.") a lot of the interest would be removed.

Finally, despite what we hear from some quarters, gaming isn't mostly-railroaded so fiction genres with serious conventions that must-be-obeyed (much romance) don't tend to work so well.

Cheers,
-E.