I have an idea for a game called Growing Pains (working title - not based on the TV show) that's been bouncing around in my head. I would like to use Chad Underkoffler's Prose Descriptive Qualities system for it because I think it would be a great fit, and my goal is to create an RPG that would have the structure and mechanical interplay of any of the traditional war-gaming evolved adventure RPG's but actually have no (or very little) combat.
I want to create a game where players revisit growing up. Challenges of school, parents, teachers, friends, peers, first love, ambitions, discovery, all of these things can be explored in the game. Social climbing and the pursuit of personal freedoms would be a big part of the "leveling up" or character evolution process. Non-combat genres have been explored only barely in RPG's and it may be that creating an engaging and evolving RPG that can maintain the attention of an audience for longer than a casual play without combat is something that just can't be done in the world of RPG's as we know it ... but I'd like to give it a try.
Maybe not a genre as such, but how many games are there where you don't necessarily play as something human/-oid? What about games where you play as bacteria? Perhaps the "new" genres would then be defined as: playing a bacteria in the middle ages, the 1700 century, the 90's, and so on.