Pretty as a pixel

Abstract

Despite the increase in interest in video games across commercial and academic areas, organizational systems for classifying them remain inadequate, particularly in describing the visual styles of video games. Because video games are by and large a visual medium, the ability to describe their visual "look" coherently and consistently greatly contributes to their discovery through classification. A set of controlled terms would be instrumental in complementing game recommendation engines and search applications in digital libraries to meet users' content-related information needs. In our study we examine the academic and usergenerated content about video games' visual styles in order to extract potentially useful controlled vocabulary terms. These terms are then organized into facets and arranged into a classified schedule. In this poster, we discuss the challenges in our controlled vocabulary term definitions and their application.

Art in an algorithm: A taxonomy for describing video game visual styles

“…Specifically, students found terms in the Artistic Technique facet difficult to understand and apply, primarily due to their lack of background knowledge in various techniques used for producing the look of certain artistic styles. In our previous study (Donovan, Cho, Magnifico, & Lee, ), we foresaw that possibility with terms like ray tracing and rasterized . Indeed, these terms and several others were not well‐known to the students, despite the students' deep familiarity with video games.…”

“…Despite the wide variety of information needs, there are relatively few standard video game descriptors that can be used to search and discover video games. Searchable metadata in catalogs and repositories are generally limited to basic information access points such as title, platform (i.e., console or format), publisher, and genre (Donovan, Cho, Magnifico, & Lee, ; Lee, Hong, Cho, & Kim, ; Lee, Clarke, & Perti, ). These descriptors are inadequate in capturing a video game's plot, topic, theme, characters, musical elements, and visual styles.…”

“…Of noticeable absence in OCLC WorldCat and LCSH video game metadata are descriptions related to visual style. As defined in Donovan, Cho, Magnifico, and Lee (), visual style is used to describe a video game's “cohesive and unifying visual aesthetic” in accordance with a set of terms found in a controlled vocabulary. The desire for, and potential significance of, systematically describing visual style is evident in academic investigations and in online forums (see the question and comments in: “Is there a taxonomy of names of video game art graphical styles?” (2016), and the extended discussion of the issue in Jones ()).…”

“…A lack of development in visual information metadata impedes the development of multimedia information systems. The objective of our study is to develop, test, and refine a prototype controlled vocabulary for describing video games' visual style s. This current project builds upon previous research (Donovan, Cho, Magnifico, & Lee, ; Lee, Clarke, & Perti, ). We intend the controlled vocabulary to be used for identifying, describing, and collocating video games that share the same visual style .…”

Improving Visual Style Classification in Digital Games Using Intercoder Reliability Assessment

“…The artistic technique explains the application of computer graphic tools to produce the look and feel of the intended artistic style of the game visual, which is generally created through modelling and rendering according to the technology at that time (Donovan et al, 2013). Examples of artistic techniques that are typically applied in modern digital games include rotoscoped, cel-shaded, ray-traced, and rasterised.…”