[game_preservation] Descriptive terms for Video Games

[Jim Leonard]

On 6/14/2011 1:34 PM, Jan Baart wrote:

> Try doing the same for StarFox and you'll end up with

> Comanche, Battlefield 1942, Falcon 4.0, LEGO Star Wars, Spyro the Dragon

> and Tribes 2, partly due to their tagging and partly due to the fact

> that apparently you can't filter for two "non-sport" tags at the same

> time. Though none of the tags that StarFox has make it apparent in any

> way that this is actually an "on rails" type of game anyways, so there's

> no way filtering using the tags it has would ever "get rid" of games

> that are not on rails, thus never resulting in a selection of actually

> similar games.


This isn't a failure of tagging systems or classifications; this is a 
failure of MobyGames.  Specifically:

- No way to check unlimited number of tags (you stop at Action - 
3rd-person - Flight)
- No gameplay element tag for "on rails"

I blame myself for not being responsible enough with the taxonomy before 
I left MobyGames.  Despite this, the MobyGames community somewhat 
self-corrected for this by creating a "Rail Shooters" game group: 
http://www.mobygames.com/game-group/rail-shooters

In other words, I blame the MobyGames framework for not being 
fully-featured enough, but I still think the concept is sound and true.


> Again, this does not mean that we shouldn't pursue approaches like

> multi-category tags (setting, perspective, concepts, ...). I'm all for

> it. But in my opinion there are good reasons not to abandon a

> traditional genre taxonomy. Which is why at our database website we use

> both. We have tags (not visible yet but they're there) but we also have

> an editorially tagged genre. One per game. This might seem outdated, but

> in the end it serves our users.


The problem with this is that there are some games that are equally two 
or more genres.  Your single genre is therefore subjective.  I maintain 
that the goal of any taxonomy is to be objective, so that there is no 
debate or confusion what makes up a game.

Brian and I tried to do this with MobyGames, with partial success.  What 
we found was that users who are used to classifying something a certain 
way, incorrectly or not, are very stubborn and defensive when it's 
pointed out they are "doing it wrong", especially if they're 
volunteering their time and think of themselves as subject matter 
experts.  For example, I had a very drawn-out fight with members of the 
MobyGames community over their belief that "Survival Horror" should be a 
main genre classification, and that 
"action/adventure/third-person/shooter/horror" was somehow not concise 
or encompassing enough.

One of the battles that I lost was over "role-playing game" as a main 
genre classification.  By definition, all role-playing games are 
adventures.  But the community that was fighting with me was stuck in 
the mindset that "adventure" meant something like The Longest Journey or 
Secret of Monkey Island and felt that RPGs were distinct enough to 
warrant their own main genre.  I caved after a lengthy debate to avoid 
alienating our userbase.


> Sorry for the long and controversial read. I'm sure a lot of you

> probably won't agree with a lot of what I said but there you go ;)


I certainly don't :-)  I think that some people are uncomfortable with a 
game not being able to fall into a single genre, so they create many 
"meta-genres" to give a game a single label, even if it's not the best 
way to classify something.

The most concerning trend along these lines, in my opinion, is when I 
ask what type of game something is that someone is trying to tell me and 
they call it an "Indie" game.  "Indie" tells me nothing, and is not a 
genre, yet this is already quite prevalent in commercial media.
-- 
Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org)            http://www.oldskool.org/
Check out some trippy MindCandy at        http://www.mindcandydvd.com/
A child borne of the home computer wars:  http://trixter.oldskool.org/