[game_preservation] Descriptive terms for Video Games

[Rowan Kaiser]

I suppose the question I have to ask is: how are you expecting to use such a
taxonomy? Will there be a physical/linear need for such system, or is this
something which can be searched in a non-linear fashion?

If it's the former - yikes. I'd probably do it in some combination of date
and platform. Genre is too much of a mess.

If it's the latter, I agree that MobyGames provides a decent starting point
in concept, with multiple aspects to several different categories. I might
even take it a step further towards the suggested tag cloud idea, but I'm
not sure how well that would work in practice.


Rowan

On Fri, Jun 10, 2011 at 2:11 AM, Andrew Armstrong <andrew at aarmstrong.org>wrote:


> I'd echo that MobyGames got it right even if you don't choose the same

> wording (be it "Category" "Genre" or whatever); the in-game descriptions of

> gameplay along with the more traditional story genres are both good to use.

> If a catalogue system can accept them why not?

>

> After all, while many researchers might have a field of gameplay type

> ("Strategy", "RPG", "Action"...) to look at, they also might cross reference

> a specific story/setting genre ("World War 2", "Present Day", "Fantasy");

> combining both is powerful.

>

> The problem is having both means lots of categories so it takes a while to

> make sure every game fits. Wikipedia, Home of the Underdogs, and other sites

> have issues - Mobygames and GiantBomb a bit less so (although possibly miss

> some slightly newer definitions and categories; I need to start compiling a

> megalist of them or something).

>

> Andrew

>

>

> On 10/06/2011 02:53, Jim Leonard wrote:

>

>> On 6/9/2011 5:46 PM, Alex Handy wrote:

>>

>>> Something like the strategy genre could then be refined into

>>> sub-categories: turn-based, real-time, fast-paced, plodding, tactical,

>>> multi-tasking, etc...

>>>

>>> Perhaps another idea would be to refine the tags used in existing online

>>> game listings. Giant Bomb and Moby Games sort of have tag clouds....

>>> kinda.... http://www.giantbomb.com/

>>>

>>

>> Actually, MobyGames was going for categorization; it was my hope that

>> games could be described by their taxonomy (adventure, turn-based,

>> bird's-eye view, etc. could be used not only to show Ultima but other

>> Ultima-like games).  It was never meant to be a tag cloud.

>>

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