[hypertele-Xii]

Then you should've titled your article "What is it about roguelikes?", not attack the alleged misnaming of the genre which exists precisely to gatekeep a subculture that has a very clear origin point: Rogue. Another word for gatekeeping is curation. That's a good thing. We don't want a free-for-all no-rules anyone-can-call-their-game-whatever to draw attention to it.

I played Rogue around 1998. It was unique. When a game goes "I'm like Rogue", i.e. roguelike, I expect it to be like Rogue. I'm over ASCII art and like to play Civilization and Super Smash Bros, but none of these have anything to do with the naming of the genre that Rogue birthed. Cherry-picking gameplay elements, design mechanisms, or even feel from that genre does not automatically grant you right to start redefining a term that means something, even if you don't know what it means (and you clearly don't).

In summary, your original article would be received more positively by people like me if it said "let's invent a new name for a genre that covers some of the stuff about roguelikes and other games that fall within these parameters."

[zorbathut]

The argument I'm making here is that the genre has expanded to include a lot of stuff that isn't carbon-copies of Rogue, and that we should come up with a new name for that. If you want to then use the name "Roguelike" to mean "games identical to Rogue" then have at it.

[hypertele-Xii]

That sounds great, but it's not the genre that's misnamed; It's the games that aren't like Rogue that are miscategorized. What you've said is that the genre has a problem and should be renamed. It's not the genre's problem that some people can't categorize their games properly.