Empirical Evaluation of Metadata for Video Games and Interactive Media
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Empirical Evaluation of Metadata for Video Games and Interactive Media Jin Ha Lee Information School, University of Washington, Mary Gates Hall, Suite 370, Seattle, WA 98195. E-mail: [email protected] Rachel Ivy Clarke Information School, University of Washington, Mary Gates Hall, Suite 370, Seattle, WA 98195. E-mail: [email protected] Andrew Perti Seattle Interactive Media Museum, 305 Harrison Street, Seattle, WA 98109. E-mail: [email protected] Despite increasing interest in and acknowledgment of Introduction the significance of video games, current descriptive practices are not sufficiently robust to support search- Video games are of increasing importance to American ing, browsing, and other access behaviors from diverse society as objects of economic stimulus as well as cultural user groups. To address this issue, the Game Metadata heritage. Because of this increased interest in games for Research Group at the University of Washington consumer entertainment as well as historical, cultural, and Information School, in collaboration with the Seattle Interactive Media Museum, worked to create a standard- scientific study, many cultural heritage institutions have ized metadata schema. This metadata schema was established collections of video games and related media. empirically evaluated using multiple approaches— The Library of Congress collects, preserves, and offers collaborative review, schema testing, semi-structured access to two main types of video games: educational games user interview, and a large-scale survey. Reviewing and that support the Library’s initiatives and controversial games testing the schema revealed issues and challenges in sourcing the metadata for particular elements, determin- collected to support legislation related to sex and violence in ing the level of granularity for data description, and video games (Owens, 2012). In Great Britain, the National describing digitally distributed games. The findings Videogame Archive (NVA) focuses on collecting and pre- from user studies suggest that users value various serving hardware, original software, design documents, and subject and visual metadata, information about how marketing materials (Newman, 2009). Recently, the British games are related to each other, and data regarding game expansions/alterations such as additional content Library began collaborating with the NVA to archive video and networked features. The metadata schema was game-related websites, including screenshots and walk- extensively revised based on the evaluation results, and throughs of games (Crookes, 2012). This related informa- we present the new element definitions from the revised tion is valuable to scholars studying games in a social or schema in this article. This work will serve as a platform historical context. Other organizations, such as the Strong and catalyst for advances in the design and use of video game metadata. National Museum of Play in Rochester, New York, do not collect video games exclusively but recognize the impor- tance of sharing historical video game information. Their recent exhibit “Atari By Design: From Concept to Creation” used materials on loan from the library and archives at the International Center for the History of Electronic Games, which collects printed materials related to the history of Received April 9, 2014; revised May 27, 2014; accepted June 4, 2014 video games and the ways in which they affect how people © 2015 ASIS&T • Published online in Wiley Online Library learn, play, and connect. The exhibit placed design and (wileyonlinelibrary.com). DOI: 10.1002/asi.23357 development materials such as sketches and storyboards JOURNAL OF THE ASSOCIATION FOR INFORMATION SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY, ••(••):••–••, 2015 alongside original arcade game cabinets to let museum designed and whether the current version of the proposed visitors experience the entire process from ideation to metadata schema is capable of describing all games within gameplay. the video game domain. These and many other organizations collect, preserve, and circulate video games and interactive media, yet each institution has a unique way of describing them. Public and Relevant Work academic libraries shoehorn video games into their local Organization and Preservation of Video Games catalogs, using workarounds in metadata records to differ- entiate games from other media so that patrons might find In library and information science, a few projects share them more easily. In the Library of Congress, games are similar objectives of improved organization and preserva- cataloged in the Library’s moving images database using tion of video games and interactive media. The Preserving metadata designed for motion pictures and sound record- Virtual Worlds project was a collaborative research project ings; however, this solution is still in transition and raises conducted by the Rochester Institute of Technology, Stan- questions about challenges researchers might face in trying ford University, University of Maryland, and University of to find records for games in a database designed primarily Illinois at Urbana-Champaign as part of Preserving Creative for motion pictures that is only available on-site in the America, an initiative of the National Digital Information Library’s reading room. Additionally, current Library of Infrastructure and Preservation Program at the Library of Congress genre headings designed for literature and film are Congress (McDonough et al., 2010). This project focused on insufficient for video games; they do not adequately describe preserving older video games and software, and establishing games in a recognizable way for players or researchers best practices and strategies for game preservation. It laid (Owens, 2012). Archives that focus on hardware will also preliminary groundwork for basic metadata standards, and have metadata needs different from those of collections the final report specifically calls for future work in estab- focused on software or print materials. All organizations, lishing relationships and entities and states that the project regardless of focus, face the challenges of collecting, pre- barely scraped the surface for standardized ontologies serving, and offering access to digitally distributed games, in this domain (McDonough et al., 2010). Currently the games that have no physical component but exist only in project is in its second phase, focusing on determining sig- electronic bits accessed through download or streaming nificant properties for educational games. Our project from “the cloud.” Libraries, archives, and museums need a involves a wider range of games, from older games to recent common, shared metadata standard that covers all aspects of digitally downloadable games and game apps on tablets and video games—for players, researchers, and curators—that smartphones, as well as games for entertainment, and incor- can describe all types of video games, from historic arcade porates user behaviors and needs beyond preservation. The games in cabinets to game apps downloaded on smart- motivation for our project also stems from a very practical phones, in descriptive vocabulary terms that are relevant to problem: how best to organize and provide access to games and understandable to users. SIMM’s game collection. Thus, one of our future goals is to To address this issue, the GAMER (GAme MEtadata create a set of metadata records for a large and diverse game Research) Group at University of Washington Information collection. School, in partnership with the Seattle Interactive Media Stanford University Libraries and the National Institute of Museum (SIMM), has been working on a research project to Standards and Technology, funded by the National Software build a standardized metadata schema and controlled Reference Laboratory, have also launched a project on the vocabularies for video games since 2011. The objective of digital preservation of 15,000 software titles, including 1 our research is to create a robust, media-specific metadata games, in the Stanford University Libraries. Their goal is schema intended to describe a variety of games, from his- to preserve these titles for use by academic scholars for torical to contemporary, and to serve a variety of use cases to research purposes. Our project, however, targets a wider meet the needs of users of the SIMM or other similar cul- range of user personas, representing stakeholders beyond just tural heritage organizations. In particular, we seek to answer researchers (Lee, Tennis, Clarke, & Carpenter, 2013b). the following research questions: Twenty-four user interviews from earlier phases of this research investigated game information needs and search/ browse behaviors of real users such as players, parents of 1. What kinds of information about video games must be players, collectors, developers, and curators. The results provided to support users’ information-seeking activities from their perspective? directly informed the development of our initial metadata 2. Is the proposed metadata schema capable of describing a schema and encoding schemes. Stanford University Library, wide variety of games across different genres, formats, in partnership with the University of Santa Cruz, also recently platforms, and time periods? received funding from Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) to develop a metadata scheme for digital This article reports our efforts to evaluate how well the schema represents and reflects the information needs, 1http://library.stanford.edu/news/2013/03/stanford-libraries-preserves-