Key Takeaways
- Diablo franchise manager Rod Fergusson recently tweeted about that Action RPGs should be called “Diablo-likes”.
- Although Diablo is the biggest ARPG, that idea has been met with nothing but ridicule.
- Beyond these terms having to be coined naturally, it seems that Diablo 4’s launch and reception have played a part in the hate.
Diablo general manager Rod Fergusson has come under fire after tweeting that he thinks Action RPGs should be called “Diablo-likes” in the same vein as Metroidvanias and Roguelikes.
Although the practice has died out somewhat in recent generations, one of the most interesting facets of gaming is the coining of genres. While we all know about RPGs, Life-Sims, and the abstractly named Action Adventures, the real fun begins when you get to genres based on specific games such as Metroidvanias, Roguelikes, Soulslikes, and even GTA Clones.
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Over the years, gamers have come up with a bunch of interesting ways to categorise the games they play, and they’re usually based on genre-defining titles. You could argue, then, that Diablo, one of the most famous Action RPGs (or ARPG if you’re cool) of all time, is worthy of its own subgenre for games just like it. As Rod Fergusson has learned recently, you probably shouldn’t bother.
Action RPG Fans Really Don’t Like The Idea Of A “Diablo-Like”
As reported by GamesRadar+, Diablo general manager Rod Fergusson took to Twitter last week to randomly share his thoughts on the ARPG genre. Fergusson pointed out that the term Action RPG is “starting to mean a lot of different things” and that he thinks that the term “Diablo-like” could be normalised and used to refer to similar games as we do for Soulslikes.
Although Fergusson does have a point considering how beloved Diablo is and how it stands as one of the most well-known games in the ARPG genre, it’s a little late and far too forced to try and get that phrase trending. Even Diablo fans seem to agree with that, as Fergusson was instantly ratio’d for the suggestion.
“Diablo-like” would mean that the game is below mid.
As of the time of writing, the original tweet only has 734 likes, with a bunch of the top comments making fun of the idea getting far more attention than that. Some of the top comments include, “How do you normalize “Diablo-like” if no one likes Diablo 4?”, “In the future when a game has a horrible launch OR horrible expansion launch, it will be called “Diablo-like”, and, simply, “I don’t think so”.
Fergusson’s tweet was likely just a harmless musing, but it’s one that Action RPG fans have made clear they don’t agree with. While Diablo might remain one of the biggest games of the genre, it looks like we won’t be using the term “Diablo-like” any time soon.
