Developing a Video Game Metadata Schema for the Seattle Interactive Media Museum

As interest in video games increases, so does the need for intelligent access to them. However, traditional organizational systems and standards fall short. In order to fill this gap, we are collaborating with the Seattle Interactive Media Museum to develop a formal metadata schema for video games. In the paper, we describe how the schema was established from a user-centered design approach and introduce the core elements from our schema. We also discuss the challenges we encountered as we were conducting a domain analysis and cataloging real-world examples of video games. Inconsistent, vague, and subjective sources of information for title, genre, release date, feature, region, language, developer and publisher information confirm the importance of developing a standardized description model for video games

The Style of Tetris is…Possibly Tetris?: Creative Professionals’ Description of Video Game Visual Styles

Despite the increasing importance of video games in both cultural and commercial aspects, typically they can only be accessed and browsed through limited metadata such as platform or genre. We explore visual styles of games as a complementary approach for providing access to games. In particular, we aimed to test and evaluate the existing visual style taxonomy developed in prior research with video game professionals and creatives. User data were collected from video game art and design students at the DigiPen Institute of Technology to gain insight into the relevance of the existing taxonomy to a professional audience. Using a think-aloud card sort method, we observed their thought process for describing and categorizing visual styles of video games, and also collected candidate terms for revising the taxonomy. The results of this research will inform ongoing metadata work in the field to develop a standard for cataloging video games and interactive media, and will be useful to information systems that sort and classify games for users and cultural preservation

Understanding appeals of video games for readers’ advisory and recommendation

Information for original publication: Lee, Jin Ha et al. Understanding Appeals of Video Games for Readers' Advisory and Recommendation. Reference & User Services Quarterly, [S.l.], v. 57, n. 2, p. 127-139, dec. 2017. ISSN 1094-9054. Available at: . doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.5860/rusq.57.2.6529.Despite their increasing popularity and inclusion in library collections, video games are rarely suggested in library advisory or recommendation services. In this work, we use the concept of appeals from existing literature in readers' advisory and media studies to understand what attracts people to play certain games. Based on 1,257 survey responses, we identify sixteen different appeals of video games and elaborate how these appeals are expressed in users' terms. We envision these appeals can serve as an additional access point for video games and will be particularly useful for recommendation and advisory services. In addition, we also examined the correlation between appeals and common game genres. The relationships between appeals and genres observed from our data support our argument that appeals can serve as a complementary access point to result in more diversified sets of recommendations across genres. In our future work, we plan to further investigate individual appeals such as mood and narrative across multiple types of media

MediaScape: towards a video, music, and sound metacreation

We present a new media work, MediaScape, which is an initial foray into a fully interdisciplinary metacreativity. This paper defines metacreation, and we present examples of metacreative art within the fields of music, sound art, the history of generative narrative, and discuss the potential of the “open-documentary” as an immediate goal of metacreative video. Lastly, we describe MediaScape in detail, and present some future directions

‘It’s a-me, Mario!’ Exploring dynamic changes and similarities in the composition of early Nintendo video game music

As with films, a thoughtfully composed video game soundtrack has the ability to dramatically enhance and elevate the experience for the audience or player. This article explores the potential issues and difficulties of composing for video game systems by studying the sound-producing hardware and music for two popular systems from one manufacturer. By comparing two of Nintendo’s Super Mario titles, which appeared on both 8-bit and 16-bit systems, through an analysis of the technology, audio, visual (audiovisual), music, and gameplay elements, it is shown that the musical composition was affected by the limitations of processing power. The discussion shows how the composer, Koji Kondo, overcame the issues of limited computing power by using layers of repetition while applying various functions of music for film to enhance player immersion. Kondo composed theme music that has become engrained in popular culture and is synonymous with one of Nintendo’s flagship franchises (Greening, 2014). By attempting to understand the method or approach behind the composition for earlier systems, it is possible to investigate and discuss the evolution of video game music while acknowledging and contributing to the study of music for games. A musical analysis of the Castle and Underwater themes on each system allows for a direct comparison of the compositional approach, while an audiovisual analysis reveals the presence of existing cinematic tropes and identifies potential influences on the creation of effective musical soundtracks for video games. Applying audiovisual theory to games will require the use of existing literature from Lissa (1965), Gorbman (1987), Chion (1994) and Tagg (2004), along with the work of Collins (2005; 2007a; 2007b; 2008a; 2008b), which adapts and applies audiovisual analysis to video games

Enabling Embodied Analogies in Intelligent Music Systems

The present methodology is aimed at cross-modal machine learning and uses multidisciplinary tools and methods drawn from a broad range of areas and disciplines, including music, systematic musicology, dance, motion capture, human-computer interaction, computational linguistics and audio signal processing. Main tasks include: (1) adapting wisdom-of-the-crowd approaches to embodiment in music and dance performance to create a dataset of music and music lyrics that covers a variety of emotions, (2) applying audio/language-informed machine learning techniques to that dataset to identify automatically the emotional content of the music and the lyrics, and (3) integrating motion capture data from a Vicon system and dancers performing on that music.Comment: 4 page

Videogames as digital audiovisual performance

Video games are an ideal medium for creating a live-cinema experience because of their potential for cinematic narrative and open structure. "Performing digital media' as opposed to 'performing with digital media' or using digital media in performance, means to play the media like a musical instrument as much as possible. This is to be able to control and finely nuance the audiovisual and kinetic data stream through live manipulation and interaction on stage. This is, in a sense, to grant the performance an immediacy that belies remediation. This paper looks at recent instances in which the media itself is being performed and a similar audiovisual contract to that of cinema is being entered to by an audience. Thus, the performance or live event itself becomes a product of media technologies yet is indistinctly unified with them

Preserving and Disseminating Emerging Forms of Digital Scholarship in Academic and Research Libraries: The EDS Report

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