“What Am I Fighting For?”: Creating a Controlled Vocabulary for Video Game Plot Metadata

Abstract

A video game’s plot is one of its defining features, and prior research confirms the importance of plot metadata to users through persona analysis, interviews, and surveys. However, existing organizational systems, including library catalogs, game-related websites, and traditional plot classification systems, do not adequately describe the plot information of video games, in other words, what the game is really about. We attempt to address the issue by creating a controlled vocabulary based on a domain analysis involving a review of relevant literature and existing data structures. The controlled vocabulary is constructed in a pair structure for maximizing flexibility and extensibility. Adopting this controlled vocabulary for describing plot information of games will allow for useful search and collocation of video games.