Writing about the “Action RPG” genre is incredibly irritating because it can mean different things to different people, but the way I see it: Diablo 4 and similar games like Path Of Exile are “ARPGs.” What does “Action RPG” mean? But Zelda games are “Action RPGs,” which is a completely different genre that you can also shorten to “ARPG” if you feel like it. To summarize: ARPG and ARPG are two different things and both are action games. I see? Great.
It’s because of this confusion that I’m not entirely furious when Diablo boss Rod Ferguson recently suggested that we call games like Diablo “like Diablo.” I just find it very comical that he’s the one saying it in a bold act of admittedly very inconsequential linguistic colonialism that carries with it the unspoken connotation that something is “like the game I’m making, but a bit crap.”
“It seems like the ‘ARPG’ genre is starting to mean a lot of different things” – Ferguson wrote on X – thank you for the place, GamesRadar. “Like ‘Souls-like’ and ‘Rogue-like’, I wonder if we could standardize ‘Diablo-like’ for ARPGs based on the Diablo formula…”
This caused a bit of a stir in the comments, but it’s Da Musk Zone – everything from saying you like waffles to acknowledging the existence of trans people is currently causing a stir. However, one point of contention that I have some sympathy for is that Ferguson’s suggestion actually places the Diablo series in an ancestor role that also assumes a certain level of quality. A game that many feel doesn’t deserve it, even if the original games were undoubtedly pioneers of what we might call a genre.
Anyway, as usual, the one who has to step in to tidy up is this mess, these aged thugs, and I say this: if it’s an RPG that offers action similar to what you’d find in an action game, it’s ” Action RPG” (ARPG for short). But! If it is an action game with RPG elements like those found in role-playing games, there is “ARPG”, also known as “Action RPG”. Note, however, that none of these describe Diablo, which has demons within it – and is therefore a Clone of Doom.
