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THE CONFUSING QUEST OF VIDEOGAME CLASSIFICATION A PLATFORM ANALYSIS OF MOBYGAMES’ VIDEOGAME CLASSIFICATION SYSTEM Master Thesis New Media & Digital Culture Student: Max Otten (3995216) Supervisors: Dr. Jasper van Vught, Dr. René Glas Word Count: 10312 Citation Style: Chicago Abstract Videogame preservation and therefore videogame documentation have been getting increased attention over the past few years. Mobygames, a database dedicated to collecting and presenting information about videogames has become an active and well-known player in this area. Mobygames’ platform and navigational structure is heavily reliant on a classification system with the ability to filter games based on their genre. Clarke et al. have shown how classification systems are used to make sense of the medium that is classified, by imposing characteristics upon the medium that are familiar to the user. Classifications within media usually consist of genres, which are often socially constructed. Genres and genre ideals are made up of intertextual characteristics related to the medium and differ per individual or group. Classification systems on databases such as Mobygames are shaped by the structure of the database, its technological design, the knowledge production by users and the active governance on the platform. In this thesis, I researched Mobygames’ classification system based on a platform analysis method coined by José van Dijck. My analysis shows that videogame classification on Mobygames frames videogames as messy, as the classification system itself is also messy and sometimes very difficult to understand and use. Ideas about the classification system and thus the games on the platform are shaped by a pre-defined genre glossary that is used throughout the website. Because of the ways in which Mobygames is structured, such as the technological design, the user activity and the governing policies, the ideas of the pre-defined genres are strengthened within these individual games. Games are put together in too broad or too specific categories. Games are therefore sometimes overgeneralized or oversimplified and based purely on their supposed genre. Furthermore, some games lose their visibility on the platform due to their niche character. Concluding, classifying games is a difficult exercise and the platform’s features contribute to continuing to perceive videogames as messy and comprehensive media products. Keywords: videogames, Mobygames, videogame genres, videogame classification, platform politics, knowledge production, platform governance 2 Table of Contents 1. Abstract 2 2. Introduction 4 3. Theoretical Framework 5 Videogame Genre and Classification 5 Platforms & Databases 7 4. Method 9 Platform Analysis 9 Corpus selection & research structure 12 5. Analysis 12 Genre in the Eye of the Beholder 12 Technological Videogame Categorization 14 Governing Videogame Categorization 15 6. Conclusion & discussion 17 7. Bibliography 19 8. Appendix: platform analysis of Mobygames 21 3 Introduction In 2014, excavators came across a stunning discovery of 700.000 unsold Atari videogames, most famously including (allegedly) the worst videogame of all time, E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial.1 The dump site, long rumoured to be an urban legend, was found and dug up as part of a documentary on Atari.2 In the end, only about 1300 cartridges were discovered by the excavators. Some were used for curation and some others were sold off at an auction to build a museum on the memorable videogame history site. This story of the 700.000 buried videogames and the efforts of the excavators to recover them is an intriguing story, but also an important symbol. The effort, the time, the money that went into the recovery of these digital artefacts shows us that there is a need in this world to preserve videogames and their virtual worlds. To preserve these new mediums that have become such a pervasive part of our society. Cultural institutions such as universities, museums and libraries have begun to collect, display and archive videogames.3 The Dutch Sound and Vision institute has, for example, begun to form its policy surrounding the preservation of digital artefacts.4 In ‘Before It’s Too Late’, the apt named paper by Henry Lowood et al. on videogame preservation, the scholars argue that videogames have become a pervasive digital medium throughout our society and are in dire need of protection.5 Preserving games has become a challenge over the last couple of years as different from film, videogames are not recorded just on a disk or a tape. They are not just images but rather are series of computerised code, processes and protocols that may be used to manipulate the imagery that is seen in a playful manner.6 Videogames are often pieces of software that are hardware-dependant, which makes them difficult to preserve.7 The different forms of video game preservation that Lowood proposes are doable but take up lots of time.8 One of the most doable and least time-consuming preservation methods is the documentation technique. This method focuses on collecting information about videogames in the form of physical boxes, texts, video’s, credits, titles, game manuals and metadata and is not focused on archiving the game itself. This is much easier and less time-consuming than, for example, emulating and migrating all individual games. Besides cultural institutions such as the Dutch Sound and Vision Institute, individual efforts to preserve games have increased over the last couple of years. One of those efforts, shaped in the form of an online database, is Mobygames. Mobygames’ mission statement is the following: “Mobygames is the working name of an extremely ambitious project: To meticulously catalogue all relevant information - credits, screenshots, formats, and release info - about electronic games (computer, console, and arcade) on a game-by-game basis, and then offer up that information through flexible queries and "data mining". In layman's terms, it's a huge game database.”9 As the statement reads, it is Mobygames’ intention to store all videogame information. When thinking about the documentation and storing of videogame information, more specifically about the collecting and processing of videogame information in a database, several questions arise about the classification system on the website. The classification system plays a big role in how certain games are collected and stored but also in how they are displayed. Mobygames intends to offer up all relevant videogame information in the form of a database, available to navigate and to retrieve information from in the form of queries. Classification systems, such as the use of genre to tag games, can impact the navigational routes used by different people. For example, the use of genres in databases such as Mobygames shapes the way in which users, researchers, government workers or journalists retrieve information from that site. Classification systems can shape the ways in which games are viewed and stored. Some games might fall outside of the scope of predefined 1 Andrew Reinhard, “Excavating Atari: Where the Media was the Archaeology,” Journal of Contemporary Archaeology 2, no. 1. (2015): 86-87. 2 Atari: Game Over, directed by Zak Penn, Fuel Entertainment USA, 2014, Netflix. 3 Devin Monnens, Andrew Armstrong et al., “Before It's Too Late: A Digital Game Preservation White Paper,” American Journal of Play. (2009): 139. 4 Jesse de Vos, “Preserving Interactives: Preserving Audio-Visual Materials in a Post-Broadcasting Paradigm,” VU University. (2016): 7. 5 Ibid., 140. 6 Nicolas Esposito, “A short and simple definition of what a videogame is”, DIGRA Conference. (2005): 2. 7 Jerome P. McDonough, Robert Olendorf et al., “Preserving Virtual Worlds Final Report”. (2010): 13. 8 Ibid. 9 Blue Flame Labs, “Design Goals and Manifesto,” Mobygames.com. https://www.Mobygames.com/info/faq1#a1 (accessed July 12 2019). 4 categories; some games might be grouped together with games that aren’t similar at all (for some people). For example, Clarke et al. found in their article that both Grand Theft Auto and Super Mario Bros. were classified as action games while perhaps most people would not put them together in the same category.10 The classification system on a database not only changes the ways in which we traverse a database like Mobygames but also shapes our perspective on games and frames that perspective. Mobygames makes it feel like it is an objective website focused purely on archiving and documenting video game information. However, the database itself and its technology, users, content, governance and ownership shapes the ways in which documentation here takes place. It is shaped by thought up rules (such as an expansive glossary for game genres), opaque governing (not being able to dissect who governs the website and approves changes) and user interaction (discussions about game genres). In this research, I intend to carry out a platform analysis with which I will try to analyse the ways in which all technical and social forces on the website shape the classification system of games on Mobygames. I will start of by delving deeply into theory on videogame genres and videogame classification systems through literature of Clearwater and Clarke et al., explaining how social constructions shape genres and therefore change our perceptions of videogames. I will also highlight the importance of classification systems for databases and the ways in which classification systems shape videogame perception. I will furthermore explain how I believe that a database like Mobygames can be analysed as a platform and how user interaction and platform governance impact the ways in which games on the platform are perceived. I will use José van Dijck’s platform analysis method in which she discerns six categories (technology, content, users/usage, business models, governance and ownership) to fully dissect a platform. This will give me the tools to answer the following research question: How does Mobygames’ classification system frame videogames? Theoretical Framework 1. Videogame genres and classification methods The classification of genres for videogames is a widely-used tool that assists people in a variety of ways.11 Clarke et al.

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