theslitherydeee: These are always somewhat arbitrary. You have to do a little research for any game to get a proper feeling for it anyway.
timppu: Yeah. so many games are a bit of this and a bit of that, they'd end up using most of the genre tags in many games. If a strategy game has real-time world map but turn-based combat, or vice versa, then it would be a realtime turnbased strategy etc.
This always reminds me how to categorize e.g. System Shock and its sequel, System Shock 2. Are they both action-adventures? Or are they adventures at all as there is no point'n'click or parser interface at all, and not much of puzzles (some though)? Or is the second one an action-RPG because it has some RPG'ish features slapped on it, like improving sort of skills while you play etc., while in the original you "merely" can add hardware or software components to yourself which improve your abilities? Or are they both action-RGPs, or is that genre reserved only to Diablo-clones?
Similar is also Deus Ex vs Deus Ex: Invisible War. The latter stripped away the skills from the first game, but still otherwise it feels somewhat similar to the first game, you do get better in the game when you get upgrades (mods) to yourself etc., and you still have that "roleplaying" part where you can decide which faction you support and even the ending depends on some of your choices.
Yet, many people seem to consider the first game a RPG (at least action-RPG), but not the latter.
Also, what many of us old-skoolers think of (C)RPGs have features from some other genres as well, e.g. the combat is quite often (turn-based) tactical. We are just accustomed to the idea that "pure" CRPGs have tactical turn-based combat, and not e.g. action-based (like Gothic, Deus Ex etc.).
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Themken: Transparency in glassware shop, Something else here.
timppu: To be fair, it is not like they give such detailed explanations of genre tags (especially per game) in other stores either. Like "We marked this game Bullzidore also as a RPG because it has skills you can improve throughout the game. That is a bit like RPG, is it? No? Yes? Maybe?".
To answer the OP, a game will be categorized according to the marketing it has. Since gamers look for other games that are like the ones they have played, they will look for the same "type", and marketing people learnt this very early on (the halo effect) and so will invoke as many categories for their expensive new product as they can, legitimately or otherwise.
Further, if you recall that Gödel (Incompleteness theorem, 1931) demolished the Russell-Whitehead (
Principia Mathematica) attempt to create a mathematical language with which to categorize anything, this is because semeiotics are, by their nature, fractal. What I mean is, the boundary between two RPG games is fuzzy. (It's not like being pregnant; there are as many gradations of a category as one wants to identify: some RPG elements, role-playing a pre-drawn character, creating a bespoke avatar, etc., are all distinguishing features that may or may not be in a game that can legitimately call itself an RPG.)
So, the criterion for a game to be listed within a category is simply the publisher wishes it to be advertised that way.
As always, though, YMMD.
