[game_preservation] Descriptive terms for Video Games

[Rowan Kaiser]

Agreed, which goes back to my initial suggestion: sort by platform/year of
release/publisher. If you want to add genre as a searchable term, go for it,
but those three things are both objective and useful.

Rowan

On Thu, Jun 16, 2011 at 2:33 PM, Henry Lowood <lowood at stanford.edu> wrote:


>  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> 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 which was eventually merged into gamedex.com.  Through the

>> magic of 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)            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 94305-6004650-723-4602; lowood at stanford.edu; http://www.stanford.edu/~lowood

>

>

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