[game_preservation] Descriptive terms for Video Games

[Henry Lowood]

All,

While the discussion has been great, not all of it is germane to the 
original question of how to catalog items in a collection.   There is a 
difference between a level of description that allows collection users 
to find (and discover) items and a perhaps more detailed level that 
addresses conceptual points such as genre, game mechanics, etc. One way 
to think of this is the difference between a library catalog and a 
scholarly bibliography (and there are different kinds of bibliographies, 
with whole books devoted to the techniques of description pertaining to 
them).  I guess my point is that genre is a fluid, debatable concept and 
fertile field for discussion and difference of opinion, but I'm not sure 
if a library or museum cataloger necessarily wants to spend a lot of 
time figuring out exactly which genre applies to a given item.  In the 
Stanford Libraries' catalog, with millions of items, I wouldn't be 
surprised if only a few thousand items have genre descriptors--which is 
not to say that genre is unimportant for fiction, just that it is 
usually not a necessary piece of information to describe a particular 
book for the purposes of a catalog.

Henry

On 6/15/2011 7:20 PM, Rowan Kaiser wrote:

> What we need is a Pandora for video games.

>

>

> Rowan

>

> On Wed, Jun 15, 2011 at 7:17 PM, Jim Leonard <trixter at oldskool.org 

> <mailto:trixter at oldskool.org>> wrote:

>

>     On 6/15/2011 7:55 AM, Jan Baart wrote:

>

>         - Action-Adventure might stick out as a hybrid between often

>         used terms

>         Action and Adventure. You might notice we have no Action main

>         genre as

>         we think it is entirely useless label. Almost every game

>         contains action

>         elements and there's absolutely no way to properly define what

>         constitutes an "Action game". E.g. the "Action" definition at

>         MobyGames

>         fits sports games perfectly as well. As a rough definition for

>         Action-Adventure you might consider something like this:

>         "Action-Adventures are all games mixing adventure game

>         elements like

>         exploration, story and puzzles with the physical challenges of

>         an action

>         game without either type dominating". That definition has its

>         problems

>         for sure, but it still gives you a good idea of what it

>         encompasses.

>         - Arcade might be controversial too but I don't think going

>         into detail

>         here helps, let us just say it encompasses, among others, ball

>         & paddle

>         games and maze games.

>

>

>     I'm going to abstain from the majority of this conversation

>     because I think you're falling into a comfort trap that will not

>     serve you well in the long run.  I would like to point out,

>     though, that your statement "Almost every game contains action

>     elements" is illustrative of why your system is disingenuous --

>     simply because most games *you have been exposed to* have action

>     elements doesn't mean you should assume the only ones worth

>     categorizing do.  To illustrate this, how would your system

>     classify Tetris?  As Puzzle and nothing else?  If so, how would I

>     use your system to look up puzzle games that specifically do not

>     have realtime/action elements, such as traditional checkers?  If

>     not, how would I use your system to look up Tetris?

>

>         *Jim Leonard

>

>         *> In other words, I blame the MobyGames framework for not being

>         fully-featured enough, but I still think the concept is sound

>         and true. *

>         *

>         Jim, please note that I did not mean to critisize the system

>         itself, but

>         rather the implementation. I love having a well thought of

>         multi-layered

>         approach to classifying a game in place and your work in that

>         regard was

>         certainly pioneering (as was MobyGames as a whole).

>

>

>     No offense taken -- I was blaming the implementation as well, I

>     was confirming your thoughts.  I'm allowed to point out my own

>     failures :-)

>

>

>     > I just think there

>     > is a need for a traditional genre taxonomy on top of that.

>

>     I disagree, so that's where I'll leave that.  I can voice

>     dissension, but I can't change your mind.

>

>

>         And I maintain the stance that you can classify every single game

>         into one of them, with two exceptions:

>

>

>     Whoa, stop right there.  Read what you just wrote.  Do you not see

>     a flaw in a classification system that allows exceptions?

>

>

>         - Games that feature distinct levels with completely different

>         gameplay.

>         You had a lot of these on the old computer platforms. You

>         know, three

>         levels, one a racing level, the next a platforming one and a

>         puzzle in

>         between. You can never place those in a taxonomy other than

>         giving these

>         mixes their own "genre". C'est la vie.

>

>

>     Taxonomies are fine-grained, but not by overloading the top order

>     of the classification -- you'd have 500 classifications, which

>     removes your ability to put things in related groups.  For

>     example, check out the Wombat:  It's an animal, but that's not

>     enough.  It's a mammal, but that's not enough.  Go further, and

>     it's a marsupial, but still not enough.  The scientific

>     classification has the order Diprotodontia and suborder

>     Vombatiformes, and now we finally have an idea of where it belongs

>     (with koalas).

>

>     By forcing a single arbitrary "social" classification onto a game,

>     you will always have exceptions that don't fit a single

>     classification.

>

>

>         - Games that do actually define their own granular genre but

>         that no one

>         followed up on, resulting in a genre with so few entries that

>         it is

>         probably not worth having its own granular genre. These do

>         indeed end up

>         in catch-all kind of classifiers, but where's the problem with

>         that really?

>

>

>     I believe every game is worth describing correctly, regardless of

>     how few peers it has.

>

>

>         I can only speak for myself but this is not the reason why I

>         try to have

>         a "single label" system. My reason is usability of the

>         database itself.

>         I want to provide users an easy way to find similar games. Be

>         it because

>         they liked the initial game or because they are researching a

>         certain

>         type of game. For this purpose, it IS the best way, in my

>         humble opinion

>         of course. Again, I'm all for a multi-layer and tag based

>         approach, but

>         I think it should be an alternative method, not the only one.

>

>

>     Ah, then let me divulge what MobyGames "Game Groups" were SUPPOSED

>     to be:  They were supposed to be groups of attributes, not simple

>     lists of arbitrary games.  Meaning, an "Ultima-like games" game

>     group was SUPPOSED to be a group of

>     adventure+roleplaying+top-down+turn-based+medieval fantasy, so

>     that every game like Ultima would pop up automatically, generated

>     by the database, even as new games were added (or removed!) over

>     the years. For reasons I won't go into in a public forum, we did

>     not implement it that way, but that was the original idea.

>

>     My point is to design the system properly and then deal with the

>     implementation and usage later.  Don't cripple the classification

>     system just to meet an arbitrary user interface goal.

>

>

>         They might not make

>         sense objectively, but they're there and established, we have

>         to live

>         with that.

>

>

>     I disagree, which is what I was trying to prove with MobyGames.

>

>     For an example of the slippery slope this leads to:  There was a

>     game site that tried to compete with gamespot and mobygames in the

>     early 2000s called www.pcgame.com <http://www.pcgame.com> which

>     was eventually merged into gamedex.com <http://gamedex.com>.

>      Through the magic of archive.org <http://archive.org>, you can

>     check what their "cats" page looked like:

>

>     http://web.archive.org/web/20030605150611/http://www.gamedex.com/cats/

>

>     I sincerely hope this isn't what you're aiming for.

>

>     -- 

>     Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org <mailto: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/

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>

>

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-- 
Henry Lowood
Curator for History of Science&  Technology Collections;
   Film&  Media Collections
HRG, Green Library, 557 Escondido Mall
Stanford University Libraries, Stanford CA 94305-6004
650-723-4602; lowood at stanford.edu; http://www.stanford.edu/~lowood

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