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        1.  

          serious games

          2 posts, latest post: pak21, Nov 9, 2009
          Link to discussion
          1. imserious
            Nov 9, 2009
            imserious says:

            I would suggest that there are three main subcategories of videogames: - entertainment games (games for entertainment) - advergames (games to develop a brand or market a product) - serious games (games for learning)

            some would add "persuasive games" to this list, as in cause-oriented games, and "games for health", like Wii health and sports games.

            Once this layer is inserted, pretty much everything else falls out the same way.

            1. pak21 Freebase Experts
              Nov 9, 2009
              pak21 says:

              You can model this kind of relationship by the phylogeny pattern used by Media Genre, which is included by Video Game Genre. It's not extensively filled in at the moment, but please feel free to do so.

          Discussion is posted in:

          • close Video Games

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        2.  

          Non-unique Platform

          also posted to
          • Video Game Version
          5 posts, latest post: tfmorris, Oct 27, 2009
          Link to discussion
          1. drakecaiman Top Contributor Freebase Experts
            Oct 22, 2009
            drakecaiman says:

            I've run into quite a few instances where a version of a game runs on a multiple number of consoles through means other than backwards compatibility. This includes the King Games (which has binaries for both Xbox and Xbox 360 on the same disc) and the PSOne Classics releases on the Playstation Store (which can run on both PS3 and PSP). Does anyone have objections to making the Platform property non-unique for Video Game Version?

            1. pak21 Freebase Experts
              Oct 23, 2009
              pak21 says:

              I think I'd model that as two separate versions: they could have different developers, different peripheral support etc and find a different way of modelling the fact they were released as one package rather than saying it's one version for two platforms.

              Possibly best to take this to the data-modeling list as this is a schema breaking change?

            2. tfmorris Top Contributor Freebase Experts
              Oct 23, 2009
              tfmorris says:

              If you're going to do what Phil suggests, a good model to look at might be the other types of media releases (video, music) where they model the contents separately from the packaging. Even if both binaries are on the same disc instead of separated discs, it's effectively a packaging strategy.

            3. drakecaiman Top Contributor Freebase Experts
              Oct 26, 2009
              drakecaiman says:

              I agree that the packaging should be modeled, especially for stuff like collection tracking. I can't think of any instance where multiple versions on the same disc had different developer's, but I'm sure it could happen.

              It doesn't address the problem with modeling PSOne Classics, where it's the same file that runs on both systems, though. Are they really two versions if it's the same file?

            4. tfmorris Top Contributor Freebase Experts
              Oct 27, 2009
              tfmorris says:

              I'm quickly getting out of my depth here, but does PSOne Classics depend on software emulation? If it's the same binary which is now available via download instead of pre-packaged in a retail cartridge, I think it's one piece of contents with two different release vehicles (think Hulu vs DVD in the video world). If it's not the same binary, for example if it's the result of a binary-to-binary translation process, then you've got different content as well as different release packages.

              For software emulation, there may also be functional/feature differences depending on the version of the software emulator. A certain game may not play at all to start with, then may play only in certain modes or with certain peripheral support in a later emulator version, then play with full functionality after that, and finally play at improved frame rate. Capturing this emulator version vs. game version compatibilty matrix is probably beyond what you want to try and model unless you really need it.

          Discussion is posted in:

          • close Video Game Version
          • close Video Games

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        3.  

          ESRB Rating

          24 posts, latest post: drakecaiman, Oct 27, 2009
          Link to discussion
          1. hds
            Aug 24, 2007
            hds says:

            Good point, a rating should be linked to a board not a country - Im just not thinking complex enough. (-:

            1. vtalwar Metaweb Staff
              Aug 25, 2007
              vtalwar says:

              Alright, I've come up with something on sandbox, modeled after the film ratings types:

              Rating: http://sandbox.freebase.com/view/schema/user/vtalwar/default_domain/video_game_rating
              Rating system: http://sandbox.freebase.com/view/schema/user/vtalwar/default_domain/content_rating_system

              Some examples:

              ESRB
              ESRB's Teen rating

              Please let me know what you gamers think :) This is the first time I've done any real modeling...

            2. vtalwar Metaweb Staff
              Aug 29, 2007
              vtalwar says:

              These have probably been wiped away by the refresh. Because of the present lack of a community interested in the cvg domain (at least I think there is...if I'm wrong, please butt in!), I'll hold off recreating until there's some more activity.

            3. drakecaiman Top Contributor Freebase Experts
              Nov 5, 2007
              drakecaiman says:

              When the rating related types get recreated, perhaps they should be attached to versions of a game rather than the main game article itself, especially now that there's a region attached to each version.

            4. vtalwar Metaweb Staff
              Nov 6, 2007
              vtalwar says:

              Sorry for the delay in recreating the types! I will try to get to doing that tomorrow. I have yet to investigate the Computer Game Version type in detail but it seems like one would have to make a new instance of this type for every {Region,Platform} combination there is for a given game?

            5. vtalwar Metaweb Staff
              Nov 10, 2007
              vtalwar says:

              Is it frequent that the same game is rated different on different platforms? I don't know any such game off the top of my head, but I bet they exist or you wouldn't suggest that ratings be attached to versions instead of the main game. If it's an anomaly maybe ratings can be attached to version ALSO instead of only to the versions.

              Here is the revived set of types on sandbox, accessible through this game:
              http://sandbox.freebase.com/view/guid/9202a8c04000641f800000000008f68d

            6. drakecaiman Top Contributor Freebase Experts
              Nov 18, 2007
              drakecaiman says:

              I was think more along the lines the since different regions have different rating systems, the versions would carry the rating field, since each version will be region based as well, but I can see how it would make more since to attach all ratings to the main field.

              One instance, though, where I can think of attaching two different ratings to different versions of the game is, of course, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. There are basically two versions of the game out on consoles; one with "Hot Coffee" and one without. Those early versions would have to be marked as AO for the ESRB rating and M for the later versions.

            7. drakecaiman Top Contributor Freebase Experts
              Jul 8, 2009
              drakecaiman says:

              Bump.

              Don't know if there has been anymore talk about this or if vtalwar still has the types he worked on somewhere. Seems like something that should be added, especially if Computer Game Version gets changed to a Standard type.

              I remember trying to model this a while back here with a few examples in my Computer Game Release type. I would make a possible suggestion of making the evaluation non-unique and adding a date for times when games are re-rated.

            8. vtalwar Metaweb Staff
              Jul 16, 2009
              vtalwar says:

              I don't still have those types around, unfortunately. I had attempted to model content rating systems (boards) as well, but I REALLY like the addition of content descriptors. One can easily add the ratings board as a property to your rating CVT, though, and at that point it's got even more than my original type did.

            9. drakecaiman Top Contributor Freebase Experts
              Jul 16, 2009
              drakecaiman says:

              OK, I have a few examples in the sandbox. Here are the types:

              • Computer Game Rating System models the ratings boards for different countries.
              • Computer Game Rating represents the actual age range-based rating, like Teen or Mature for the ESRB and A or Z for CERO.
              • Computer Game Content Descriptor is for the phrases that detail the actual content of the game (Strong Language, Comic Mischief).
              • Computer Game Evaluation is the compound type that is attached to a version of a game.
              This version of San Andreas probably best illustrates the use of Computer Game Evaluation. Unfortunately, it's pretty hard to edit ratings while Computer Game Version is still a CVT, so it will have to wait 'til after the re-factoring. I'd love to hear any suggestions for these types.
            10. drakecaiman Top Contributor Freebase Experts
              Jul 16, 2009
              drakecaiman says:

              Sorry, the San Andreas example is here.

            11. typelibrarian
              Jul 16, 2009
              typelibrarian says:

              I think this is a good model. I (of course!) have a few thoughts, though:

              I think the incoming links from Computer Game Evaluation should be reciprocated on Computer Game Rating and Computer Game Content Descriptor so you can see a list of games with a given rating/descriptor.

              The Computer Game Evaluation CVT could have a property for rating system,  so that you could tell that the two ratings on San Andreas are from the same system, although it would be a bit of a denormalization since the rating system is already explicitly linked to the rating. (Actually, now that I look at the model, it isn't explicitly linked: the property "Rating System" on Computer Game Rating should be unique.)

              And on Computer Game Rating, we have a choice: use "integer range" for Age Range, or create two properties for high and low values. Creating two properties has the advantage that you can make them disambiguators so that the ranges show up in a table view on the Rating System Topic: http://www.sandbox-freebase.com/view/en/entertainment_software_rating_board

            12. jeff Metaweb Staff
              Jul 16, 2009
              jeff says:

              Oops. Forgot who I was logged in as. That last post is from me.

            13. drakecaiman Top Contributor Freebase Experts
              Jul 17, 2009
              drakecaiman says:

              Agreed on the reciprocation. Added links to the sandbox, though it still looks weird 'cause CGV is a CVT.

              Rating System definitely should be unique, something I'll have to do right this time when I remake the types. I am kind of weary of making a redundant connection to the rating system, though it wouldn't be the first (Content Descriptor also has a connection to it's rating system).

              Age Range is an interesting problem. Looking back, there is only one instance I can find of a rating system using ratings with both a low and high age value, the defunct ELSPA system. Even then it can be modeled in the same matter of other boards (with low-end-only age values). I would vote to keep Age Range as an integer range though to preserve the connection between the two number and to properly model the rare exception.

            14. drakecaiman Top Contributor Freebase Experts
              Oct 19, 2009
              drakecaiman says:

              K, time to finish this up.

              • Video Game Rating System
              • Video Game Rating
              • Video Game Content Descriptor
              • Video Game Evaluation

              Changes from the previous update: - Rating System is unique on VG Rating and Content Descriptor - Return links added on Evaluation for Rating and Content Descriptor

              I'll add these types to the commons in the next couple of days unless some objections come up.

            15. jeff Metaweb Staff
              Oct 19, 2009
              jeff says:

              I think these look good. Please don't forget to add descriptions to each type before moving them to the Commons!

            16. drakecaiman Top Contributor Freebase Experts
              Oct 21, 2009
              drakecaiman says:

              Types updated and ready for move.

              I don't know if there's an behind-the-scenes way to do it, but if there's an easier way to move these types other than recreating them, let me know.

            17. pak21 Freebase Experts
              Oct 21, 2009
              pak21 says:

              I've added the PEGI ratings in.

              One very minor point: the documentation for the age range on Video Game Rating should specify it is in years.

              A more serious problem I see here is the data entry one: if I want to link a game version to the ESRB "Violence" content descriptor, currently I'm offered a choice of three options by Suggest, Violence, Violence and Violence with no way of knowing which is the right one, and this problem is only going to get worse as we add more rating systems. Would making Video Game Content Descriptor/Rating system a disambiguating property help? I can still see us ending up with the wrong content descriptors being attached to things though.

              As for moving types, it certainly can be done. Jeff will be able to point you in the right direction.

            18. jeff Metaweb Staff
              Oct 21, 2009
              jeff says:

              I believe that disambiguators are being displayed in the autocomplete flyout now, so making "Rating system" property a disambiguator should should with that.

              I'll create a task in JIRA to move the types (you can do it yourself if you ever need to do it again -- just assign it to "Freebase Commons and Schema", and we'll move them for you.

            19. drakecaiman Top Contributor Freebase Experts
              Oct 26, 2009
              drakecaiman says:

              Am I able to do the type moves myself? Is there more to it than:

              1. assigning the new key (/cvg/video_game_rating, etc.)
              2. changing the domain property on the type
              3. deleting the old key?

              I just realized I have enough access to do all these things, but I'll gladly sit on my hands if you're afraid I might break something.

            20. pak21 Freebase Experts
              Oct 26, 2009
              pak21 says:

              I believe that will lead to breakage due to things like views which need to be kept synced with the types.

            21. cheunger Metaweb Staff
              Oct 26, 2009
              cheunger says:

              pak21 is correct, there is a bit more involved with promoting types, such as removing the base type included type from the type instances and changing permissions of the type and properties.

            22. cheunger Metaweb Staff
              Oct 26, 2009
              cheunger says:

              pak21 is correct, there is a bit more involved with promoting types, such as removing the base type included type from the type instances and changing permissions of the type and properties.

            23. drakecaiman Top Contributor Freebase Experts
              Oct 27, 2009
              drakecaiman says:

              K. Sitting on hands.

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        4.  

          Virtual Console is a distribution system, not a platform

          also posted to
          • Virtual Console,
          • Wii,
          • Lode Runner
          2 posts, latest post: pak21, Oct 15, 2009
          Link to discussion
          1. pak21 Freebase Experts
            Oct 13, 2009
            pak21 says:

            The Virtual Console is really a distribution system, not a gaming platform itself. I propose changing every video game version which currently has its platform set to "Virtual Console" to be "Wii" and setting the distributed through property to "Virtual Console". In some cases, this will result in some merges with existing game versions, and there's also Lode Runner which I think is just wrong to say distributed via WiiWare.

            I've done this on Sandbox already; see eg Super Mario RPG and Ogre Battle there. If there are no objections, I'll do the same here later this week.

            1. pak21 Freebase Experts
              Oct 15, 2009
              pak21 says:

              Done, and Lode Runner manually fixed up. I'll try and remember to remove the Video Game Platform type from Virtual Console when the merges have gone through.

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          • close Virtual Console
          • close Wii
          • close Video Games
          • close Lode Runner

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        5.  

          Musical Song is more like a track

          also posted to
          • Musical Game Song
          6 posts, latest post: jeff, Oct 2, 2009
          Link to discussion
          1. alecf Metaweb Staff
            Aug 23, 2009
            alecf says:

            So I've been curating a LOT of musical game songs, (we're up to 755!) and added "composers" to more than 700 of them... but I've found that very often, the game songs are more like tracks, in that the performer of the track is often different than the original composer/lyricist, or the song is credited towards someone specific like "John Lennon and Paul McCartney" but on albums by The Beatles. In fact some games even have "cover" versions of tracks ("Tom Sawyer as made famous by Rush") or even more confusing, songs that have no original composer, like La Bamba, but are covered by specific bands in Rock Band, like Los Lobos.

            I'd like to get accurate information in, and I'm willing to do the gardening, for one of these two ideas:

            1) add a field 'performed by' to the Musical Game Song Relationship CVT

            2) Change the included type from /music/song to /music/track so that we can use the "Recorded By" property there

            I lean towards 2) because its slightly less denormalized and in fact there are often specific album tracks that appear in games.

            On top of this, I'd like to get the release date added to the CVT - I can get lots of release dates in.

            1. jeff Metaweb Staff
              Aug 31, 2009
              jeff says:

              I like #2 as well.  Adding a release date seems like a reasonable thing to do as well.

            2. alecf Metaweb Staff
              Sep 11, 2009
              alecf says:

              so this seems fairly uncontroversial - anything else we need to do to add /music/track as a included type to musical_game_song and adding a "release date" to musical_game_song_relationship

            3. jeff Metaweb Staff
              Sep 11, 2009
              jeff says:

              Changing the expected type is a breaky schema change, so it should be run past the developers and data-modelers email lists. Beyond that, there are 1204 musical game songs that will have to be converted to the appropriate tracks (and because lots of them are in multiple games, it may require linking to multiple new tracks). Will new tracks be created for these, or will there be an attempt to reconcile them to existing tracks?

            4. alecf Metaweb Staff
              Oct 2, 2009
              alecf says:

              I'll propose the schema change, but can we get release date added to musical_game_song_relationship? I have hundreds of release dates to add as soon as this is added.

            5. jeff Metaweb Staff
              Oct 2, 2009
              jeff says:

              I've added the property.

          Discussion is posted in:

          • close Video Games
          • close Musical Game Song

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        6.  

          One more duplicated game genre

          also posted to
          • Simulation,
          • Simulation
          4 posts, latest post: lukeschubert, Sep 10, 2009
          Link to discussion
          1. pak21 Freebase Experts
            Sep 9, 2009
            pak21 says:

            We have both these marked as video game genres. I propose moving all games to simulation.

            1. lukeschubert Freebase Experts
              Sep 10, 2009
              lukeschubert says:

              +1

              Do you think we'll need to keep doing this, i.e. that people will keep adding games to the other simulation topic?

            2. pak21 Freebase Experts
              Sep 10, 2009
              pak21 says:

              Once the "other" topic is detyped, people should be automatically pointed to the one still typed as a genre, so I don't think we'll get too many coming across. We can always move them if they do :-)

            3. lukeschubert Freebase Experts
              Sep 10, 2009
              lukeschubert says:

              Good point.

          Discussion is posted in:

          • close Simulation
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          • close Video Games

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        7.  

          Duplicated RPG video game genre

          also posted to
          • Role-playing game,
          • Role-playing game
          3 posts, latest post: pak21, Sep 9, 2009
          Link to discussion
          1. pak21 Freebase Experts
            Sep 7, 2009
            pak21 says:

            This is another pair of video game genres which are very much the same thing. I propose moving all video games from role-playing game to role-playing game unless anyone objects.

            1. lukeschubert Freebase Experts
              Sep 8, 2009
              lukeschubert says:

              +1

            2. pak21 Freebase Experts
              Sep 9, 2009
              pak21 says:

              Done!

          Discussion is posted in:

          • close Role-playing game
          • close Role-playing game
          • close Video Games

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        8.  

          Unofficial conversions

          2 posts, latest post: robert, Sep 7, 2009
          Link to discussion
          1. pak21 Freebase Experts
            Sep 7, 2009
            pak21 says:

            Towards and after the end of the ZX Spectrum's commercial life, there were a number of "unofficial" conversions done of games, for example Prince of Persia and Wizard of Wor. Any views of whether these should be modelled as Video Game Versions linked to the original game, or as a Video Game in their own right linked to the original by Adapted Work/Adaptation?

            1. robert Metaweb Staff
              Sep 7, 2009
              robert says:

              I think if they are just conversions then they should be modeled as such. Over time, I think there will be an increasing number of "amateur" game works, both originals and conversions.

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        9.  

          Which is the computer game genre?

          also posted to
          • Sports,
          • Sports game,
          • Video Game Genre
          4 posts, latest post: pak21, Sep 7, 2009
          Link to discussion
          1. pak21 Freebase Experts
            Aug 30, 2009
            pak21 says:

            Both Sports and Sports game are typed as computer game genres. This is silly. Which would should we keep as the genre? I'd tend to go for "Sports game", in which case it would somehow be nice to note that Sports games related to Sport in some way. Any thoughts?

            1. drakecaiman Top Contributor Freebase Experts
              Aug 30, 2009
              drakecaiman says:

              I would vote Sports game.

            2. pak21 Freebase Experts
              Sep 2, 2009
              pak21 says:

              OK, unless there are any objections, I'll move the Video Game Genre data from Sports to Sports games on Friday.

            3. pak21 Freebase Experts
              Sep 7, 2009
              pak21 says:

              Done!

          Discussion is posted in:

          • close Sports
          • close Sports game
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        10.  

          Computer game type name confusing

          10 posts, latest post: robert, Aug 17, 2009
          Link to discussion
          1. robert Metaweb Staff
            Aug 14, 2009
            robert says:

            I was recently forwarded an email by a potential freebase API user (a company), where they didn't think Freebase had games for the sony playstation 3.  The type name "computer game" that appears on the topic page seemed to cause the confusion, since playstation games are often thought of as "video games".

            I'm wondering if we should change this type name to "Computer/Video game".  Of course by doing so, we would probably have to update the other types in this domain that start with "Computer game".

            A simplifying alternative would be to simply use "Video game" or "Videogame"

            What do all of you think?

            1. vtalwar Metaweb Staff
              Aug 14, 2009
              vtalwar says:

              I'm happy with "Video Game". Should the base also be renamed to "Computer and Video Games"?

            2. pak21 Freebase Experts
              Aug 15, 2009
              pak21 says:

              Happy with either "Video game" or "Video Game" (insert broken record comment about lack of standardisation between "Foo Bar" and "Foo bar" for type names in Freebase here). The common usage seems very much to be that "computer games" are a subset of "video games" (see eg Wikipedia), so I don't think we need the ugly "Computer/Video game X" everywhere.

              Although my personal suspicion would be that if you can't work out there are PS3 games on Freebase, you're going to have trouble using the API...

              I'm away for the next week, so please don't wait for any more input on this from me before making any changes here.

            3. drakecaiman Top Contributor Freebase Experts
              Aug 15, 2009
              drakecaiman says:

              What about "Electronic Games"? It's shorter, and it leaves the door open in case we want to include other types like pinball machines and such.

              Then again, I don't know if that fixes the whole computer/video game confusion issue for people…

            4. robert Metaweb Staff
              Aug 16, 2009
              robert says:

              I think "Electronic games" would have a very different schema than video games.  Not to mention that there is already a pinball machine type:http://www.freebase.com/view/base/pinball/pinball_machine

              Unless I hear a strong counterargument, I will update the display name for all types in this commons starting with "Computer game" to "Video game".  I'll also see if it's possible to create secondary keys (eg: /cvg/videogame) for each of these as well.

              1. vtalwar Metaweb Staff
                Aug 16, 2009
                vtalwar says:

                The cvg commons at least is internally consistent about capitalization, so it should be "Video Game", not "Video game".

            5. robert Metaweb Staff
              Aug 16, 2009
              robert says:

              And yes, I think we should also rename the commons.  I'll chat with Kirrily about that.

            6. robert Metaweb Staff
              Aug 16, 2009
              robert says:

              I made the changes to the types.  I'm waiting to hear back from Kirrily (skud) about changing the commons name from Computer Games to Video Games.

            7. vtalwar Metaweb Staff
              Aug 17, 2009
              vtalwar says:

              I just noticed that the automatically generated views are still named "Computer Game *". I'll run through the ones part of the base and fix them.

            8. robert Metaweb Staff
              Aug 17, 2009
              robert says:

              I just updated the commons name to "Video Games" as well as the description which appears on the commons homepage.

          Discussion is posted in:

          • close Video Games

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        11.  

          Generalize

          also posted to
          • Soundtrack,
          • Music,
          • Film,
          • TV,
          • Media Common
          3 posts, latest post: gmackenz, Aug 11, 2009
          Link to discussion
          1. drakecaiman Top Contributor Freebase Experts
            Aug 8, 2009
            drakecaiman says:

            Would it be possibly to generalize Soundtrack so it doesn't expect a Film. There are soundtracks for TV shows and anime, and I could deprecate the Anime OVA Soundtrack type.

            1. jeff Metaweb Staff
              Aug 11, 2009
              jeff says:

              That is a bit odd. The description explicitly says that a soundtrack is for either a film or tv show, but the property is only for film. It seems to me that the options are:

              1. add a "TV show" property to soundtrack
              2. create separate types for Film soundtrack and TV soundtrack
              3. completely generalize the soundtrack type, and create a new type "Media with soundtrack" that will link to it (instead of Film)
              I don't especially like #3 (for one, there's a Musical Soundtrack type with slightly different semantics than the film one). On the other hand, we do seem to be missing a video game soundtrack type.
            2. gmackenz Metaweb Staff
              Aug 11, 2009
              gmackenz says:

              Yup, 3, generic soundtrack with enumerated soundtrack types would be my favorite, or 1.

              TV/Film/Game/Boardgame/Advertisements...

          Discussion is posted in:

          • close Soundtrack
          • close Music
          • close Film
          • close TV
          • close Video Games
          • close Media Common

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        12.  

          Input Method applies only to Musical Games?

          also posted to
          • Input Method,
          • Computer
          30 posts, latest post: alecf, Jul 27, 2009
          Link to discussion
          1. pak21 Freebase Experts
            Jun 8, 2009
            pak21 says:

            Just wondering if there's any reason that Input Method applies only to Musical Games, not to Computer Games in general - modelling (eg) which games could use the Dreamcast's "Fishing Rod" accessory seems moderately "important" to me.

            1. drakecaiman Top Contributor Freebase Experts
              Jun 30, 2009
              drakecaiman says:

              I agree. Input Method can easily to other games. I wonder if it might be necessary to introduce a new type (Computer Game Peripheral?) for specific models of peripheral (GunCon, Ion Drums, etc.) and reserve Input Method for general categories (microphone, controller, etc.) Thoughts?

            2. vtalwar Metaweb Staff
              Jun 30, 2009
              vtalwar says:

              Actually, there's a type called Computer Peripheral, which is one of pak21's types. It was even recently promoted to the Computers commons. Since consoles are computers, the Dreamcast itself can definitely be linked to the Fishing Rod peripheral. I'm fully in support of adding Input Methods property to the base Computer Game type. I also like the idea of generalizing the property to class of input method rather than a particular peripheral (see the bottom-most fielf in the infobox for http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock_Band_(video_game) ), and defaulting to the peripheral itself when there's some proprietary thing going on, like the EyeToy.

            3. tfmorris Top Contributor Freebase Experts
              Jul 1, 2009
              tfmorris says:

              Can I suggest that a different name than Input Method be chosen?  

              This already has a pretty specific meaning in computer land (ways of entering ideographic characters using a western keyboard).

            4. robert Metaweb Staff
              Jul 1, 2009
              robert says:

              It could be very specific like "gaming input device".  Clinical, but accurate.

            5. pak21 Freebase Experts
              Jul 1, 2009
              pak21 says:

              So a plan (as I understand it):

              •  Computer Game Version acquires a new "input devices" property (or some similar name), which links to a list of Input Method topics (Input Method is possibly renamed along the way).
              • Input Method is used for generic things like joystick or guitar controller.
              • Input Method gets a new "instances" property (or some similar name) which links to a list of specific Computer Peripherals which provide that Input Method.
              • Unique input devices, like the EyeToy, would be typed as both an input method and a peripheral.
              If so, that sounds like a very good plan to me :-)
            6. vtalwar Metaweb Staff
              Jul 1, 2009
              vtalwar says:

              I think Computer Games should also acquire this new property. As for naming, wikipedia uses "Game Controllers" to refer to the subset of Input Devices specific to gaming, but I'm not sure you'd call the EyeToy a Game Controller. I also think Input Devices can be a subset of Computer Peripherals. Based on this and a few other things I didn't think through carefully enough the first time around, can I amend pak21's list and suggest that we

              1. Rename Input Method to Input Device
              2. Move Input Device to /computer
              3. Have Input Device inlude Computer Peripheral
              4. Computer Game and  Computer Game Version acquire a new "Input Devices Supported" property (or some similar name), which links to a list of Input Device topics
              5. Peripheral is used for things like printer, scanner
              6. Input Device is used for input Peripherals like mouse or joystick or guitar controller
              7. Peripheral gets a new "instances" property which links to topics of type Peripheral, creating a phylogeny pattern
              8. Unique input devices, like the EyeToy, would both be an Input Device and  an "instance" of the webcam Input Device
              Maybe this is overthinking it a bit, but I see no reason why we shouldn't generalize from Musical Games to Computer Games to Computers.
            7. pak21 Freebase Experts
              Jul 1, 2009
              pak21 says:

              That's also good (in fact, better than version 1).

            8. drakecaiman Top Contributor Freebase Experts
              Jul 1, 2009
              drakecaiman says:

              Generalizing to Computers sound like a good idea. Do we what to create a way to relate peripherals to specific consoles, possibly by adding the Computer type to the relevant Computer Game Platform topics?

            9. vtalwar Metaweb Staff
              Jul 1, 2009
              vtalwar says:

              Good idea. In fact, is there any reason Computer shouldn't be an included type of Computer Game Platform?

            10. drakecaiman Top Contributor Freebase Experts
              Jul 1, 2009
              drakecaiman says:

              I was thinking about that. The only problem I see is with topics like Microsoft Windows where the platform is not a computer itself, but an operating system.

            11. vtalwar Metaweb Staff
              Jul 1, 2009
              vtalwar says:

              Ahhh ok, that makes sense. I filed a bug against myself for the changelist I posted above:

                https://bugs.freebase.com/browse/DA-849

               Stay tuned!

            12. vtalwar Metaweb Staff
              Jul 1, 2009
              vtalwar says:

              Follow the links from http://www.sandbox-freebase.com/edit/topic/en/time_crisis_4 to explore the types I've set up. I didn't move the Input Device type to the Computers domain yet since that's a bit of a chore, but the schema modifications are complete:

               http://www.sandbox-freebase.com/type/schema/cvg/computer_videogame

               http://www.sandbox-freebase.com/type/schema/cvg/game_version

               http://www.sandbox-freebase.com/type/schema/computer/computer_peripheral

            13. vtalwar Metaweb Staff
              Jul 1, 2009
              vtalwar says:

              Also see:

              http://www.sandbox-freebase.com/view/en/eyetoy

              http://www.sandbox-freebase.com/view/guid/9202a8c04000641f8000000005c8191a

            14. drakecaiman Top Contributor Freebase Experts
              Jul 2, 2009
              drakecaiman says:

              Maybe we can cut out the Input Device type altogether and just use Computer Peripheral, since I can now think of a few devices that are supported by games and aren't input devices, like the Game Boy Printer, the Rumble Pak and Rock Band Stage Kit.

            15. vtalwar Metaweb Staff
              Jul 2, 2009
              vtalwar says:

              Good call, I think we could use some pruning. There's little left to be done, then. These changes can go live right away without affecting much:

              1. Rename Input Method to Input Device
              2. Move Input Device to /computer [postponed]
              3. Have Input Device inlude Computer Peripheral
              4. Computer Game and  Computer Game Version acquire a new "Peripherals Supported" property (or some similar name), which links to a list of Computer Peripheral topics
              5. Peripheral is used for things like printer, scanner
              6. Input Device is used for input Peripherals like mouse or joystick or guitar controller
              7. Peripheral gets a new "instances" property which links to topics of type Peripheral, creating a phylogeny pattern
              8. Unique input devices, like the EyeToy, would both be an Input Device and  an "instance" of the webcam Input Device
            16. pak21 Freebase Experts
              Jul 3, 2009
              pak21 says:

              If we're doing this, it would presuambly make sense to at least deprecate the "Games Using This" property which currently exists on Input Method, which would make Input Method (de facto) a propertyless type.

              At this point, should we be considering the complete removal of the Input Method type? It seems to me that could then just be handled by the phylogeny pattern:Gun Con 3 is an instance of Gun Con is an instance of Light gun is an instance of Input Device, or is that taking things too far?

            17. vtalwar Metaweb Staff
              Jul 6, 2009
              vtalwar says:

              Ok, I had a slight hiccup while doing this on OTG. I realized Computer Peripheral includes Consumer Product, which means it can't be treated as a phylogeny. I asked Jeff and Bryan for some help with this and they suggested the following:

              • Make a phylogenetic Computer Peripheral Class type (w/ the usual instances and instance of properties)
              • Link the most specific and relevant Computer Peripheral Classes to their Computer Peripheral+Consumer Product instances via a separate property called Products
              This is closer to drakecaiman's original suggestion of keeping Input Method for general classes of input.

              The Input Method type can indeed be removed but I'll save that for last, at least until the data is migrated.
            18. vtalwar Metaweb Staff
              Jul 6, 2009
              vtalwar says:

              Also, for Computer Game and Computer Game Version, there will be two properties:

              • Peripherals Supported
              • Peripheral Classes Supported
              How does this sound to everyone?
            19. vtalwar Metaweb Staff
              Jul 6, 2009
              vtalwar says:

              Ok, here are some links detailing the latest round of changes:

              Peripherals

              Peripheral Classes

              A game w/ a peripheral

              A game w/ a peripheral class

              View for Peripheral Classes that are instances of Game Controllers (ignore the key, it's wrong)

            20. jeff Metaweb Staff
              Jul 7, 2009
              jeff says:

              Did sandbox get refreshed since you posted these? I don't see anything new on these.

            21. vtalwar Metaweb Staff
              Jul 7, 2009
              vtalwar says:

              Darn, yes it did. I'll recreate the stuff a bit later tonight.

            22. vtalwar Metaweb Staff
              Jul 10, 2009
              vtalwar says:

              Sorry for the delay. The types are live on sandbox again:

              •  create Computer Peripheral Class
                • add Instances property -> Computer Peripheral Class
                • and Instance of property -> Computer Peripheral Class
                • add Products property -> Computer Peripheral
              • Computer Peripheral:
                • hide Instances property
                • hide Instance of property
                • reciprocate incoming Products property as Peripheral Class
              • Computer Game + Computer Game Version:
                • add Peripherals Supported property -> Computer Peripheral
                • add Peripheral Classes Supported property -> Computer Peripheral Class
              Forza Motorsport 2 supports the Xbox 360 wireless racing controller peripheral.
              Rock Band supports the Guitar Controller peripheral class.
            23. pak21 Freebase Experts
              Jul 10, 2009
              pak21 says:

              As a very small point, the other properties on these types have only the first word capitialised, whereas the new properties have every word capitialised; it would be good to be consistent.

              Should we also be hiding the input method property on Musical Game?

            24. jeff Metaweb Staff
              Jul 10, 2009
              jeff says:

              Computer Game Version doesn't have a property for Computer Peripheral Class.

              Should Peripheral and Peripheral Class reciprocate the incoming properties from Game and Game Version?  (E.g., to answer the question: I bought this dance pad, now what else can I do with it?)

              Otherwise, looks good.

            25. vtalwar Metaweb Staff
              Jul 11, 2009
              vtalwar says:

              I didn't create those properties yet because I meant to ask whether or not the updated Computer Game Version type would include Computer Game or not, but I completely forgot. I was thinking about the reciprocation issue but I don't know how much of a pattern it is to reciprocate across domains in that fashion. That is, we'd be linking a very general /computers/computer_peripheral type to the  /cvg/computer_videogames that support it. Is that ok?

            26. jeff Metaweb Staff
              Jul 13, 2009
              jeff says:

              Yes, that's just fine (reciprocation across commonses is pretty common). I had forgotten that the types were in different commons, actually. 

            27. vtalwar Metaweb Staff
              Jul 14, 2009
              vtalwar says:

              Took a while, but I've finally gotten everything live on Freebase.

              Here's the topic for Guitar Controller highlighting the reciprocal links:

                Guitar Controller

              I've hidden the "Games Using This" property on Input Method and its reverse for now until it can be migrated to the appropriate properties on Computer Peripheral. Please feel free to poke around the types and add data and let me know if anything is lacking, but I did try to be as complete as possible regarding the feedback in this thread.

            28. pak21 Freebase Experts
              Jul 15, 2009
              pak21 says:

              Final last bits of tidyup: I edited the descriptions for the now deprecated properties to make it clear they're deprecated, and have copied all the Input Method data to Computer Peripheral (Class) as appropriate. I think that's it, and we've done it without quite needing the longest discussion thread in Freebase history :-)

            29. alecf Metaweb Staff
              Jul 27, 2009
              alecf says:

              I just added "Drum Controller" and cotyped "Microphone" though I'm now regretting that - I wish I had made it "USB Microphone" or something. I also just imported another 80+ musical game topics... 

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        13.  

          Wrong Wikipedia Article

          also posted to
          • Art Style
          2 posts, latest post: pak21, Jul 20, 2009
          Link to discussion
          1. drakecaiman Top Contributor Freebase Experts
            Jul 20, 2009
            drakecaiman says:

            The article has changed from pointing to the overview of the series to a specific title (Rotohex). Is there a way to fix this?

            1. pak21 Freebase Experts
              Jul 20, 2009
              pak21 says:

              Post a comment and wait for someone with rights to edit the Wikipedia namespace to deal with it is I believe the only way :-)

              For anyone with appropriate rights:

              • Please make this article have the Wikipedia ID 19531205
              • The current ID here (19958035) should be moved to /en/art_style_rotohex.
              • And more than that if you fancy fixing up the other games in the series!

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        14.  

          Computer Game Version from CVT to Standard

          also posted to
          • Video Game Version
          11 posts, latest post: cheunger, Jul 16, 2009
          Link to discussion
          1. drakecaiman Top Contributor Freebase Experts
            Jul 2, 2009
            drakecaiman says:

            It seems like it might be beneficial to change the display type of Computer Game Version from Combined to Standard, for a few reasons:

            • Computer Game Version topics can be co-typed with "Consumer product" and "Software" when appropriate.
            • The number of properties being proposed for Computer Game Version is quickly growing (Peripherals supported, Distributed through, etc.) and I can think of many more than can apply to a version and not the whole game, content (ESRB, CERO) ratings, for one.
            • There are a few properties that exist for Computer Game that can have different content for different versions (platform exclusive characters come to mind.)
            I know that this was suggested briefly in a thread on the mailing list, but I haven't heard much about it since. Any thoughts?
            1. jeff Metaweb Staff
              Jul 2, 2009
              jeff says:

              I think it makes sense; it would bring the Computer Game/Release model more into line with the Book/Book Edition and Album/Release models.

            2. pak21 Freebase Experts
              Jul 3, 2009
              pak21 says:

              I've no problem with moving Computer Game Version from a CVT to a normal topic (one other advantage would be that we could lose the slightly hacky "Version specific name" field from Computer Game Version), but I think that potential co-typing with Software could open a fairly large can of worms. We've essentially got two parallel sets of types for modelling some of this, one in /cvg and one in /computer: compare Compare Game Developer and Software Developer, release dates on both Computer Game (Version) and Software, and Computer Game Platform and Operating System are also very similar. How are we going to handle the almost-but-not-quite duplicated data this could produce?

            3. drakecaiman Top Contributor Freebase Experts
              Jul 3, 2009
              drakecaiman says:

              You're right, there is quite a bit of overlap. I was just throwing out some possibilities. Personally, I'm not as worried about co-typing with "Software" as I am with "Consumer product".

            4. drakecaiman Top Contributor Freebase Experts
              Jul 8, 2009
              drakecaiman says:

              If this does go through, I think the to-do list would look something like this:

              • Migrate Version-Specific Name to Name
              • Change Computer Game Version from CVT to Standard
              • Deprecate Version-Specific Name
              • Delete Version-Specific Name
              Would there be any other preparation besides setting up the name?
            5. pak21 Freebase Experts
              Jul 8, 2009
              pak21 says:

              I'm not sure that deleting Version-Specific name is necessary; that will cause queries to fail and I don't really see the need if it's hidden, but I'll bow to those with greater expertise on this one.

              Other than that, will "we" need to cotype every current instance of Computer Game Version as a topic? If so, I suspect that's probably best done internally by someone at Metaweb.

            6. jeff Metaweb Staff
              Jul 8, 2009
              jeff says:

              Hiding "version specific name" and changing the property hint to say that it's deprecated is a solution that's been used before.

              Co-typing as /common/topic can be done by Metaweb; just create a JIRA task when you're ready and assign it to "Freebase Commons and Schema."

              I can't think of any other tasks for this. It's a pretty big change, so I'd recommend running it past the developers and data-modelers lists, especially since we're deprecating a field. (I wouldn't expect changing something to a standard type to break anything, but you never know what people will try.)

            7. drakecaiman Top Contributor Freebase Experts
              Jul 9, 2009
              drakecaiman says:

              So:

              • Migrate Version-Specific Name to Name
              • Change Computer Game Version from CVT to Standard
              • Co-type all Computer Game Version instances to "/common/topic"
              • Deprecate Version-Specific Name
              I'll run it by the lists to see if anything comes up.
            8. vtalwar Metaweb Staff
              Jul 9, 2009
              vtalwar says:

              +5

            9. jeff Metaweb Staff
              Jul 10, 2009
              jeff says:

              One additional step:

              • For all instances where there is no version-specific name, copy Name of the parent program to Name
            10. cheunger Metaweb Staff
              Jul 16, 2009
              cheunger says:

              Jira tasked: DA-871

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          • close Video Game Version

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        15.  

          Virtual Console vs. Wii

          11 posts, latest post: drakecaiman, Jul 8, 2009
          Link to discussion
          1. drakecaiman Top Contributor Freebase Experts
            May 20, 2008
            drakecaiman says:

            Virtual Console is typed as Computer Game Platform. Should this be used as the platform VC releases or should we stick with just Wii. Furthermore, should WiiWare be typed as Computer Game Platform and used in the same regard?

            1. robert Metaweb Staff
              May 22, 2008
              robert says:

              This is an interesting problem.  You certainly wouldn't want people to have to add Virtual Console to hundreds of old games.

              Assuming that VC is fully compatible with old platforms, we may need to have a property such as "compatible with" that asserts VC is compatible with other consoles.  When somebody queries freebase, then, they would be able to see what directly supported platforms as well as what compatible platforms the software would run on.

              And WiiWare seems more like a distribution channel/brand.  I'm not sure it's really a platform. 

            2. gmackenz Metaweb Staff
              May 22, 2008
              gmackenz says:

              Definitely a distribution channel. The platform is the Wii. Wiiware is a delivery mechanism to allow on e to purchase/download to play on the Wii.

            3. drakecaiman Top Contributor Freebase Experts
              May 22, 2008
              drakecaiman says:

              I would probably make the  platform Wii, since that's the system that the data is tailored for. I think stuff like Virtual Console would be best described as a distribution mechanism. Perhaps a property for that would be advisable.

              As for WiiWare, I would agree. Xbox Live Arcade is listed as a platform, though, and should be changed if WiiWare is also not a platform.

            4. gmackenz Metaweb Staff
              May 22, 2008
              gmackenz says:

              Looks like before you remove/move the WiiWare and Xbox Live Arcade, some sort of reworking of the version property needs to happen.

              And furthermore, is the Frogger available as an Xbox Live Arcade game really the same Frogger that is an Arcade game or an adaptation of a later console version? Galaga...Is it the same software just adapted to run on a new console/emulation?

            5. drakecaiman Top Contributor Freebase Experts
              May 22, 2008
              drakecaiman says:

              Both games are different from their respective originals, so they could be considered different games.

              It really brings another problem into focus: do enhanced versions of a game count as separate topics or versions of the same game? Is Resident Evil for Gamecube a different topic from Resident Evil for Playstation?

            6. drakecaiman Top Contributor Freebase Experts
              Jun 26, 2009
              drakecaiman says:

              Thought I'd make a suggestion about this:

              1. A new type, something along the lines of Computer Game Distribution Channel/Method/etc., for services like Steam, XBox Live, WiiWare, etc. 
              2. A new property for Computer Game Version, "Distributed through"
              3. Removing the Computer Game Platform from Virtual Console and the like and using Computer Game Distribution Channel, instead.
              I think this would be a better representation of these topics than the current Computer Game Platform model (which I suspect is due to importing from Wikipedia.)
            7. vtalwar Metaweb Staff
              Jun 26, 2009
              vtalwar says:

              +1

            8. drakecaiman Top Contributor Freebase Experts
              Jul 3, 2009
              drakecaiman says:

              Just to give everyone a heads up, I've begun modeling a type for distribution systems (mailing list thread here) and have a prototype up in the sandbox:

              http://www.sandbox-freebase.com/view/cvg/computer_game_distribution_system

              Let me know if you have any suggestions. I'll probably move it over this weekend. 

            9. jeff Metaweb Staff
              Jul 6, 2009
              jeff says:

              I'm not sure that currency is the right expected type for the Payment System property, since the Currency type seems to be designed for official currencies of countries and the like. A new type ("CG Distribution Currency" or something) would allow you to reciprocate the link, so it would be easy to see all the places you can use your Nintendo Points. Just a thought.  You could also reciprocate the property on the Computer Game Platform type, I think.  But this basically looks good to me.

            10. drakecaiman Top Contributor Freebase Experts
              Jul 8, 2009
              drakecaiman says:

              Yeah, I had a hard time decided whether or not I should use Currency, but due to precedence (albeit from a single topic) and the fact that Wikipedia models Nintendo and Microsoft points like other currency, I ultimately went will the standard type.

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        16.  

          Genre vs subject

          also posted to
          • Video Game,
          • Video Game Genre,
          • Film genre,
          • Film subject
          5 posts, latest post: drakecaiman, Jul 2, 2009
          Link to discussion
          1. pak21 Freebase Experts
            Jun 15, 2009
            pak21 says:

            Do we have any thoughts on where the distinction between a "genre" and a "subject" occurs? Some things are easy ("Sports game" is a genre), some things currently typed as genres I think almost certainly aren't (say, Karate), but I'm really not sure where the line should be. Any thoughts?

            1. robert Metaweb Staff
              Jun 15, 2009
              robert says:

              I think this is a good question and affects all subject/genre pairs (books, films, for instance.)

              I agree that genres should be more lumpy and represent an actual phenomenon.  It's possible that "Karate fighting" could be a game genre were there enough of them.  Karate, however, is a subject.

              The real question is how to clean up what's already been done and guide data in the right direction.   Possibly we could create a "Typewriter"-style application where users can decide if something is a genre or subject and then update data appropriately.  Of course these operations could be pretty involved as maybe hundreds of links are moved from one property to another.

            2. drakecaiman Top Contributor Freebase Experts
              Jun 29, 2009
              drakecaiman says:

              The convention for video games seems to be that genre refers to the gameplay (shooter, strategy, role-playing, etc.)

            3. alexander Metaweb Staff
              Jun 29, 2009
              alexander says:

              I'm probably going overboard here, but a while ago I was thinking about a deeper schema for categorizing games at http://www.freebase.com/type/schema/base/adventures/adventure_game and created properties for Perspective (first person, third person, top-down, isometric, etc.), Graphics (text, 2D, 3D), and Theme/Subject (karate, pirates, urban planning, etc.). Not here yet is a way to talk about talk about the Temporal element (real time, turn-based, etc.). Genre would then be left for the usual small set of gameplay styles: strategy, shooter, puzzle, etc.

            4. drakecaiman Top Contributor Freebase Experts
              Jul 2, 2009
              drakecaiman says:

              I think there's value in including a way to model the perspective and graphic type of a game. The question is whether those should be a part of genre or made their own property/properties. The way I see it so far:

              • Limit genre to definitions of gameplay (RPG, RTS, etc.)
              • Limit subject to the themes, setting (sci-fi, high fantasy, western, etc.)
              • Make a new property (Computer Game Presentation) to include perspective and graphics type like those suggested by alexander
              Time-based elements seem like they can be grouped in the gameplay property. Whether it's as a single topic ("real-time strategy") or separate ones ("real-time" and "strategy") is up to debated.

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          • close Video Game Genre
          • close Film genre
          • close Film subject

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        17.  

          Remakes and Expansions

          6 posts, latest post: vtalwar, Jul 1, 2009
          Link to discussion
          1. drakecaiman Top Contributor Freebase Experts
            Jun 30, 2009
            drakecaiman says:

            I've seen a bit of inconsistency in this, so I thought I'd pose the question.

            Seems like the practice from Wikipedia is to make remakes a version of the main game. There are some weird cases were a remake has its own page due to its current status on Wikipedia (like Twin Snakes for Metal Gear Solid) or an old import (like the DS remake of Final Fantasy III.)

            Another weird (and MGS-related) problem is same-system re-releases, like Substance for MGS2 and Subsistence for MGS3. Should they be typed broken off and typed as Computer Game Expansion like Integral is for MGS?

            Any thought? 

            1. pak21 Freebase Experts
              Jul 1, 2009
              pak21 says:

              I think it's a judgement call, based on how similar the remake/rerelease is to the original. I'd say Arkanoid Plus! is a version of Arkanoid, but Towering Adventure is different enough from Rainbow Islands to be a game in its own right, and there are probably some difficult cases somewhere in the middle.

            2. vtalwar Metaweb Staff
              Jul 1, 2009
              vtalwar says:

              That's a really good question... It seems that MGS2:Substance was released both for PC and the XBox, and if we created them as separate versions of MGS2, there'd be no way of connecting the two except by giving them the same version-specific name. If MGS2: Substance was its own Computer Game topic, it could have its own two versions, but it is debatable whether the versions even need to be connected like that. On the other hand, if it IS a topic rather than a CVT, at least we could explicitly capture Substance as being a remake of the original game. That could make a nice type+view...

              I don't know if Computer Game Expansion makes sense; I think it has a pretty clear definition as being add-on content,and even when standalone, I don't know of any expansions that include the entire original game.

            3. drakecaiman Top Contributor Freebase Experts
              Jul 1, 2009
              drakecaiman says:

              I think that tying in remakes as versions is probably best for a comment of reasons, primarily for narrative reasons. It would group together releases that share the same story, fixing instances like MGS2's "Previous in narrative" property.

            4. vtalwar Metaweb Staff
              Jul 1, 2009
              vtalwar says:

              That's fair. One thing I forgot about was the Adaptation type, which I believe is being used to model remakes. For those remakes you mentioned that have their own topics and aren't computer game versions, this type could be attached.

            5. vtalwar Metaweb Staff
              Jul 1, 2009
              vtalwar says:

              See this as an example of film remakes:

              http://www.freebase.com/view/user/vtalwar/default_domain/views/films_adapted_from_films

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        18.  

          Renaming Prequel

          also posted to
          • Video Game,
          • Film,
          • Film
          6 posts, latest post: drakecaiman, Jun 22, 2009
          Link to discussion
          1. drakecaiman Top Contributor Freebase Experts
            May 26, 2009
            drakecaiman says:

            This is just a matter of semantics and not that big of a deal, but has there been any talk about changing properties that use the name "prequel" to something else? It should refer to works that are published after a work, but occur earlier in the narrative.

            1. jeff Metaweb Staff
              May 27, 2009
              jeff says:

              I agree with this -- I used "next in series" when I added this pattern to the Written Work type, and I think a similar nomenclature would work for films and computer games.

            2. tfmorris Top Contributor Freebase Experts
              May 29, 2009
              tfmorris says:

              I presume that this is intended to capture the order in the narrative as opposed to the order that they were written/published in, but that's not clear (at least to me) from the description for the property in Written Work.

            3. jeff Metaweb Staff
              May 29, 2009
              jeff says:

              I've updated it a bit; I don't want to be too prescriptive, because there are some series (Naria, for example) in which the order of the books doesn't necessarily follow the internal chronology, but it should be clearer now.

            4. drakecaiman Top Contributor Freebase Experts
              May 30, 2009
              drakecaiman says:

              I wonder if it would be better to name properties like this "previous/next in narrative" or "previous/next in chronology" to make it less ambiguous. Referring to series could suggest that it should follow series numbers (xxx 1, xxx 2, etc.), even when the narrative might not follow the same order.

            5. drakecaiman Top Contributor Freebase Experts
              Jun 22, 2009
              drakecaiman says:

              Updated the Computer Game property names of prequel/sequel as next/previous in narrative. Don't know if I should change the actual property ids or leave them as is, though.

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        19.  

          Documentation

          also posted to
          • Video Game
          3 posts, latest post: pak21, Jun 8, 2009
          Link to discussion
          1. pak21 Freebase Experts
            May 27, 2009
            pak21 says:

            I've added some potential documentation for all the Computer Game properties on sandbox. I'll move them over here unless there are any objections before Friday.

            1. pak21 Freebase Experts
              May 31, 2009
              pak21 says:

              That documentation got blown away in a sandbox refresh I didn't expect... I've put them here anyway. Please let me know of any errors/omissions/suggested improvements etc.

            2. pak21 Freebase Experts
              Jun 8, 2009
              pak21 says:

              OK, I think there is now documentation for every type and every property in /cvg. Let me know if I've missed any, and feel very free to make suggestions for improvement.

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        20.  

          Downloadable Songs

          also posted to
          • Musical Game Song
          15 posts, latest post: typelibrarian, May 11, 2009
          Link to discussion
          1. anne8 Metaweb Staff
            Mar 23, 2009
            anne8 says:

            Hi,

            Can we have a property to distinguish musical games that are downloadable? Maybe a boolean property?

            Testify is a downloadable song according to this list in Wikipedia.

             

            Thanks,

            Anne

            1. alecf Metaweb Staff
              Apr 4, 2009
              alecf says:

              I second that emotion. I think we need a CVT with:

              • release date
              • platforms
              • whether or not it is the original, or a "made famous by"- i.e. "is this a cover?"

              Because I'd sure like to see stuff like:

              • timeline of game song releases by a band
              • "original" songs for rock band 2 (i.e. not covers)
            2. vtalwar Metaweb Staff
              Apr 7, 2009
              vtalwar says:

              I'm far from an expert in this subdomain but I'll do what I can to make everyone happy.

              Anne: Is it possible that some songs are only downloadable for certain platforms? Currently songs are linked directly to the game topic, so that would be difficult to model.

              Alec: Just to be clearm, are you suggesting replacing the link between a song and a musical game with a CVT containing those properties?

            3. anne8 Metaweb Staff
              Apr 8, 2009
              anne8 says:

              Hi Vishal,

              Yes, some songs are only downloadable for certain platforms. Here's what I've researched so far.

              Rock Band series - Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and Wii
              Guitar Hero World Tour - Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and Wii
              Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock - Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3
              Guitar Hero II - Xbox 360

              Thanks,
              Anne

            4. jeff Metaweb Staff
              Apr 16, 2009
              jeff says:

              Seems I'm taking over this task (DA-688).  If downloadable songs are sometimes only available for certain platforms, the next question we have to ask is: Do the non-downloadable songs vary from platform to platform?

            5. anne8 Metaweb Staff
              Apr 20, 2009
              anne8 says:

              I think the non-downloadable songs are the same for all platforms except for 5 songs in Rock Band I which are only available in the Wii version.

              http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_songs_in_Rock_Band

            6. jeff Metaweb Staff
              Apr 20, 2009
              jeff says:

              Oy. Looks like song should maybe be a property of Version, rather than Game: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_songs_in_Rock_Band#European_version. 

            7. alecf Metaweb Staff
              Apr 21, 2009
              alecf says:

              Keep in mind there is also "Musical Game" which just keeps track of songs in a game...independent of whether or not its downloadable..

            8. jeff Metaweb Staff
              Apr 21, 2009
              jeff says:

              Right -- I've taken this thread to be about the refactoring of that type. Although, as you probably noticed, my last comment implies that "musical game" as implemented doesn't  work for Rock Band (which has different songs in different releases).

              Since versions are handled as a CVT, there's not an easy way to do this.  If we made Version into a standard type (and there was some discussion about this on the data-modeling email list recently), we could either a) make "songs" be a property (or "musical game" a co-type on) Computer Game Version, or b) keep the "songs" property at the Game level, turn it into a CVT, and include the release as a property of the CVT. But that's a big "if".

            9. jeff Metaweb Staff
              May 1, 2009
              jeff says:

              OK, maybe I'm making this more complicated than it needs to be, and we don't need to try to stick the song data directly on the Release object.  What if we had two properties on Musical Game instead: the existing one for songs that come with the game, and a second one for songs that can be downloaded?  No refactoring required, and also no boolean.

              See http://www.sandbox-freebase.com/view/en/rock_band_2 for a stab at this on sandbox.

            10. alecf Metaweb Staff
              May 5, 2009
              alecf says:

              Personally I actually don't like two properties, because what *I* am usually looking for is "what game lets me play Fortunate Son"? And then I can find out later, "oh it's a download" or what have you. So I'd personally lean towards making "Songs" be the CVT and have a boolean for "downloadable"

              But Maybe anne8 had different goals... anne8?

            11. anne8 Metaweb Staff
              May 6, 2009
              anne8 says:

              The schema looks okay, but maybe it would be simpler to include a Boolean property instead?

            12. jeff Metaweb Staff
              May 6, 2009
              jeff says:

              Here's a new attempt: http://www.sandbox-freebase.com/view/en/rock_band_2#/cvg/musical_game, with just one property and a boolean. (The properties are called "new style"; I haven't hidden the old-style properties, so that they're available for comparison).  I like this approach -- it allows us to show some complexity, like "Roam" is native to the Wii verson of Rock Band 2, but only available for download for Xbox and PS2. 

              I've left off the release date value this time, since I think it might be confusing -- for those songs that come with the game, it would be the same as the release date of the game; if the song is not released simultaneously to all platforms, it would require separate instances of the song, which might be annoying. (Or it might be what people want, I dunno.) It's easy enough to add it if folks want it.

            13. anne8 Metaweb Staff
              May 11, 2009
              anne8 says:

              I'm not really an expert but I think that's better.

            14. typelibrarian
              May 11, 2009
              typelibrarian says:

              Hooray!  We have consensus.  I've uploaded the CVT type, and created a task to have the existing songs migrated (DA-753). The CVT won't be available for use until after the migration.

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        21.  

          Denormalised properties

          also posted to
          • Video Game,
          • Video Game Version
          1 post, latest post: pak21, Apr 8, 2009
          Link to discussion
          1. pak21 Freebase Experts
            Apr 8, 2009
            pak21 says:

            Just in case anyone isn't following the data-modeling list, I asked what I thought was a relatively innocent question there about the denormalised data produced by the computer game and computer game version schemas, and the discussion has moved into possibly changing the schemas.

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        22.  

          Game Subject/theme/?

          4 posts, latest post: cheunger, Apr 8, 2009
          Link to discussion
          1. alecf Metaweb Staff
            Apr 4, 2009
            alecf says:

            Similar to Book subject, Film Subject, etc, it would be nice to have a looser way of specifying a "subject" or at least an area.

            In particular I'm interested in games that are about or at least in the universe of, or influenced by, Alice in Wonderland.

            1. vtalwar Metaweb Staff
              Apr 7, 2009
              vtalwar says:

              Game Subject sounds like an appropriate parallel to make. I'll create the type after this post.

              You can use the Work of Fiction type to model universe/setting for games where that would apply.

            2. vtalwar Metaweb Staff
              Apr 8, 2009
              vtalwar says:

              Hi Alec,

               Try this out for size: http://www.freebase.com/type/schema/cvg/computer_game_subject

            3. cheunger Metaweb Staff
              Apr 8, 2009
              cheunger says:

              Also, since the person included type has been removed from the influence type, you could type alice in wonderland as an influence node and then add the computer games that were influenced by alice in wonderland.

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        23.  

          Version specific release date?

          also posted to
          • Video Game Version,
          • Video Game
          3 posts, latest post: drakecaiman, Feb 18, 2009
          Link to discussion
          1. pak21 Freebase Experts
            Feb 17, 2009
            pak21 says:

            For some of the stuff I'm working on (particularly ZX Spectrum games) I think it would be nice if /cvg/computer_game_version included a release date field of its own; this would let us show the differences between when (say) a game was released in the arcades and when it got converted to home computers.

            Consider also (say) Okami, released in 2006 on the PS2 but 2008 on the Wii.

            Any views?

            1. vtalwar Metaweb Staff
              Feb 18, 2009
              vtalwar says:

              I completely agree. Another related modeling issue that should be considered is that of different release dates for different regions. Currently the Computer Game Version type has a Regions property which allows for just a list of regions that version was released in. The only solution I can think of is if we consider every region-specific release as a different version. This is not as denormalized as data here normally is, since Platform would be copied across, say, the PS2 version releases for the regions JA, NA, EU, and AUS. It also means you can't easily ask for the release date of the PS2 version since there is no "THE PS2 version". For now I will go ahead and add Release Date to Game Version but if you have any ideas about this issue, please follow up.

            2. drakecaiman Top Contributor Freebase Experts
              Feb 18, 2009
              drakecaiman says:

              I've been working on a "Computer Game Release" type that works kind of like the album/release model for Musical Albums. The differences between different versions can be drastic, so I've been trying to make a type from a collector's point of view that takes these differences into account. Tell me what you guys think.

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        24.  

          Canceled

          also posted to
          • Video Game
          8 posts, latest post: drakecaiman, Feb 18, 2009
          Link to discussion
          1. drakecaiman Top Contributor Freebase Experts
            Feb 6, 2009
            drakecaiman says:

            I don't know if this would be better as a property or a seperate type, but I think there should be some way of identifying a game as canceled.

            1. vtalwar Metaweb Staff
              Feb 6, 2009
              vtalwar says:

              I've been using a draft trype of my own which was supposed to parallel the Deceased Person type:

               http://www.freebase.com/type/schema/user/vtalwar/default_domain/cancelled_game

              Please let me know if this is adequate for now.

            2. drakecaiman Top Contributor Freebase Experts
              Feb 6, 2009
              drakecaiman says:

              Pretty much what I was thinking. The only other addition I could think of is maybe a "Reason for Cancellation" property.

            3. vtalwar Metaweb Staff
              Feb 10, 2009
              vtalwar says:

              I was thinking of that too, but I wasn't sure how best to model that. Should it be a string or should there be a type "Reason for Cancellation". I don't know enough about cancelled games to know if the reasons are common and finite or quite varied. Any ideas?

            4. drakecaiman Top Contributor Freebase Experts
              Feb 11, 2009
              drakecaiman says:

              I would think that a string would suffice, since reasons can be so varied. Maybe we could do a "Cancellation Reason" type (off the top of my head, I can think of finances, controversy and quality) and a string property for a detailed description of the reasons.

            5. drakecaiman Top Contributor Freebase Experts
              Feb 14, 2009
              drakecaiman says:

              Thinking back, I think maybe "Unreleased Game" would be a better and more general type name then canceled.

            6. vtalwar Metaweb Staff
              Feb 17, 2009
              vtalwar says:

              Good point. How about:

              •  Unreleased Game
                • Date Announced [/type/datetime]
                • Reason for no release [/type/text]
            7. drakecaiman Top Contributor Freebase Experts
              Feb 18, 2009
              drakecaiman says:

              Is this including the property of "unreleased game" or replacing?

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        25.  

          Episodic Games?

          2 posts, latest post: vtalwar, Feb 13, 2009
          Link to discussion
          1. drakecaiman Top Contributor Freebase Experts
            Feb 13, 2009
            drakecaiman says:

            Is there a practice in place for episodic games and their episodes? I would think that each episode would be typed as a computer game and the overall game typed as a series, but I can't find a consistent practice.

            1. vtalwar Metaweb Staff
              Feb 13, 2009
              vtalwar says:

              That sounds like a perfectly good way to model it. The Penny Arcade game-related topics might break this, however. For example, Penny Arcade Adventures is apparently a series of episodic series, the first being Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness, which is currently typed as a game rather than a series...

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        26.  

          Playable?

          also posted to
          • Video Game Performance
          5 posts, latest post: vtalwar, Dec 31, 2008
          Link to discussion
          1. drakecaiman Top Contributor Freebase Experts
            Dec 30, 2008
            drakecaiman says:

            I suggest adding a boolean property for whether or not the character is controllable by the player at some point in the game.

            1. vtalwar Metaweb Staff
              Dec 30, 2008
              vtalwar says:

              That is a pretty important distinction, at least in relevant genres. How does "Playable" sound as the property name?

              Perhaps this should also be linked to on the modeling list?

              Vishal

            2. jeff Metaweb Staff
              Dec 31, 2008
              jeff says:

              Playable sounds like a good name to me.

            3. drakecaiman Top Contributor Freebase Experts
              Dec 31, 2008
              drakecaiman says:

              …and me.

            4. vtalwar Metaweb Staff
              Dec 31, 2008
              vtalwar says:

              Done!

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        27.  

          Game Influences

          5 posts, latest post: tadhg, Oct 30, 2008
          Link to discussion
          1. vtalwar Metaweb Staff
            Oct 15, 2008
            vtalwar says:

            Games are very often influenced by other games, and I'd like to capture this with an "Influenced/Influenced by" pair of reciprocal properties. Any objections or suggestions?

            1. vtalwar Metaweb Staff
              Oct 19, 2008
              vtalwar says:

              I've gona head and added these properties, since I didn't hear any naysayers ( or even yeasayers for that matter).

            2. skud Metaweb Staff
              Oct 21, 2008
              skud says:

              You might like to also post questions like this on the data-modeling mailing list, if you want to reach a wider audience.

            3. vtalwar Metaweb Staff
              Oct 25, 2008
              vtalwar says:

              Good point, I'll start doing that from now on.

            4. tadhg Metaweb Staff
              Oct 30, 2008
              tadhg says:

              On a related point, I just asked the Data Modeling list whether or not we should make Influence Node more abstract (i.e. to not include Person as a type), and if we end up removing that included type from it, we could simply use that type for games influencing or influenced by other games (or things), rather than adding those properties to the game type.

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        28.  

          'Computer games' should be 'Computer Games'

          3 posts, latest post: cheunger, Oct 16, 2008
          Link to discussion
          1. stu
            Mar 6, 2007
            stu says:

            Need to capitalize the word Games in this domain type.

            1. vtalwar Metaweb Staff
              Oct 15, 2008
              vtalwar says:

              There are a bunch of cases like this now. Is anyone against me fixing all of them?

            2. cheunger Metaweb Staff
              Oct 16, 2008
              cheunger says:

              +1 from me.  As you're updating the display name, there shouldn't be any issues programatically, unless someone is using the display name instead of the id, which they shouldn't anyways...

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        29.  

          Units

          also posted to
          • Video Game
          2 posts, latest post: vtalwar, Oct 10, 2008
          Link to discussion
          1. Oct 10, 2008
            supermidget says:
            Units available in strategy games...
            1. vtalwar Metaweb Staff
              Oct 10, 2008
              vtalwar says:

              This property is specific enough to strategy games that Strategy Game and Strategy Game Unit types are probably in order. If you create these in your own domain for now (on sandbox.freebase.com), then you could add Units as a property of the Strategy Game type. That property would have an expected type of Strategy Game Unit. From there, you could augment both types with any other properties you want, such as a property that specifies whether the game is turn-based or real-time. Hope this helps, and if you need help getting started, I can create the types for you in my domain.

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        30.  

          Savegames path

          also posted to
          • Video Game,
          • Video Game Version
          2 posts, latest post: skud, Sep 16, 2008
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          1. Sep 16, 2008
            shomoa says:

            The path where saved games are put.

            It would be meaningful only to video games run within operative systems (not console neither arcade games so).

            1. skud Metaweb Staff
              Sep 16, 2008
              skud says:
              It would also vary from platform to platform, perhaps even version to version of that platform.

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        31.  

          Platform?

          also posted to
          • Input Method
          1 post, latest post: theorbtwo, Aug 22, 2008
          Link to discussion
          1. Aug 22, 2008
            theorbtwo says:
            There seems to be no way of assocating an input method with a platoform that uses it -- that is, Wii Remote is in no way connected to Wii.

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        32.  

          Game Platform and Computing Platform

          5 posts, latest post: andresj, Jun 27, 2008
          Link to discussion
          1. Jun 27, 2008
            andresj says:

            I see that there's some duplication between those two types (and also some other types--for example, I just added all Computer Games into Software).

            I just don't know how to fix this. There is a Linux Game Platform, and a Linux Computing Platform. I was thinking of just adding all Game Platforms into Computing Platform, but maybe that would cause duplication?

            1. Jun 27, 2008
              andresj says:

              Yeah. There are two Linux objects. One is a Game Platform, Software, Topic, etc. The other is an Operating System, Computing System, etc. The second one should be assimilated into the first one because the first one has a short URL (the other one uses a large ID). This could happen with other platforms, too, although I haven't checked just yet. How can one fix this?

            2. jeff Metaweb Staff
              Jun 27, 2008
              jeff says:

              If they're really just duplicate topics, you can flag them to be merged by clicking the little arrow button that appears next to the "edit" button to the right of the the topic's title.

            3. Jun 27, 2008
              andresj says:

              This specific problem is addressed here: .

            4. Jun 27, 2008
              andresj says:

              What! The website errased the URL! Oh well. It's freebase.com /discuss/threads/en/linux

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        33.  

          New Property for Computer Game Performance

          3 posts, latest post: drakecaiman, May 22, 2008
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          1. drakecaiman Top Contributor Freebase Experts
            May 20, 2008
            drakecaiman says:

            I think it might be useful to add a "Playable" property to the Computer Game Performance to distinguish between characters that merely appear in the game and those who can be controlled by the character.

            1. robert Metaweb Staff
              May 22, 2008
              robert says:

              How common is this, do you think?  It certainly could be added, but there is a tradeoff between complexity and completeness. 

            2. drakecaiman Top Contributor Freebase Experts
              May 22, 2008
              drakecaiman says:

              I can think of a few examples.

              Fighting games can sometimes have characters that are encounterable, but not playable. The most recent example I can think of is Ridley, Meta Ridley, Master Hand, and Crazy Hand in Super Smash Bros Brawl. Sometimes boss characters (like Geese in Fatal Fury) will be unplayable, though they might become playable in a later installment of a series.

              Some character are known to make non-playable, cameo appearances, like Link and Samus in Super Mario RPG, or Mario in Punch Out.

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        34.  

          DS vs. DS Lite

          3 posts, latest post: drakecaiman, May 22, 2008
          Link to discussion
          1. drakecaiman Top Contributor Freebase Experts
            May 20, 2008
            drakecaiman says:

            Typing DS Lite as a Computer Game Platform seems kind of confusing, as there are no technical differences between it and the original DS. Should this really be a platform, or should we consider a new type for console revisions?

            1. robert Metaweb Staff
              May 22, 2008
              robert says:

              There are two approaches to this I think:

              1. Don't treat DS Lite as a distinct game platform.  Instead, assert that the platform is DS.  That is, if all games that work on DS work on DS lite, then this is probably the right answer

              2. If not all titles are compatible, then keep DS Lite and for all games that are compatible, add this to their platform property.

              Also, to support option 2, we could better possibly create a relationship between DS and DS Lite.  This could be called "similiar platform". 

              Do you know of other examples of this kind of problem? 

            2. drakecaiman Top Contributor Freebase Experts
              May 22, 2008
              drakecaiman says:

              The DS Lite is just a newer form factor for the DS. There should be no difference in compatibility as far as software goes. It's pretty much the relationship between the Game Boy and the Game Boy Pocket and Game Boy Light; different form, but runs the same software. Another example would be the Sega Genesis and the Sega Nomad.

              From these examples alone, I could see the virtue in somehow identifying the different hardware revisions of a given system. There are also multiple incarnations of the NES, Super NES and Genesis. From a collector's standpoint, it would be useful to distinguish between these separate hardware designs. Perhaps another type is in order?

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        35.  

          'Soundtrack' Property

          5 posts, latest post: drakecaiman, Mar 27, 2008
          Link to discussion
          1. drakecaiman Top Contributor Freebase Experts
            Mar 25, 2008
            drakecaiman says:

            Would it be possible to add a Soundtrack property to provide a link to songs found in a computer game? This would be very useful for rhythm games (Dance Dance Revolution, Rock Band, etc.) and games with licensed music (Madden, Tony Hawk, etc.)

            1. jeff Metaweb Staff
              Mar 25, 2008
              jeff says:

              Take a look at the "musical game" type linked in the previous post. I think that has what you're looking for.

            2. drakecaiman Top Contributor Freebase Experts
              Mar 25, 2008
              drakecaiman says:

              I figured there was one for the Musical Game type. I guess I'm thinking it should be part of the main Computer Game type to accommodate the games that have licensed songs but aren't music games. Of course it could also be extended to original songs in more traditional games, as well (Final Fantasy series, Super Smash Bros soundtracks, etc.)

            3. vtalwar Metaweb Staff
              Mar 27, 2008
              vtalwar says:

              That makes a lot of sense. There's tons of games that aren't "musical games" in the same sense as Guitar Hero or DDR. I guess the real question is whether the property should be a link to a soundtrack or a list of songs like the Musical Game type has.

            4. drakecaiman Top Contributor Freebase Experts
              Mar 27, 2008
              drakecaiman says:

              I think that a list of songs makes more sense, primarily because I can think of a couple of instances where songs in the game aren't on a released soundtrack. That way, the true list of songs can be kept as well as a link to a released album, if need be.

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        36.  

          Using Computer Game Version

          3 posts, latest post: drakecaiman, Mar 22, 2008
          Link to discussion
          1. drakecaiman Top Contributor Freebase Experts
            Oct 10, 2007
            drakecaiman says:

            I would love to use date from Freebase to write a program to manage my video game collection. To that end I would want to use the Computer Game Version type for it's platform-specific approach. One thing I'd like added, though is a sort of "region" field for Computer Game Version, as there can be major differences between the same game in different territories. Also, if the rating types are used. You could attach them to a game version instead of having multiple ratings attached to the main article. What do you think?

            1. robert Metaweb Staff
              Oct 16, 2007
              robert says:

              Duncan -- sorry for the delay. I added a "Regions" property (that expects the type "Computer Game Region") in the Versions type.

            2. drakecaiman Top Contributor Freebase Experts
              Mar 22, 2008
              drakecaiman says:

              The region property looks good. I was wondering if it was possibly to expand the Computer Game Version type to the same level of the main Computer Game type. The Computer Game type works for general information about a game but for a collector, there are so many nuances between version that it would make sense for each version to maybe have its own page. This would also be nice for Collector's/Limited Edition of games, where the extras can be detailed in that version's page. Would that be possible?

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        37.  

          Musical game

          3 posts, latest post: alecf, Nov 14, 2007
          Link to discussion
          1. alecf Metaweb Staff
            Nov 13, 2007
            alecf says:

            Hey, I have a type in my domain, Musical Game that is for games like Guitar Hero, Rock Band, etc.. I've got a 45 games co-typed and have songs entered on a bunch of them. Anyone interested in including it in this domain?

            1. vtalwar Metaweb Staff
              Nov 14, 2007
              vtalwar says:

              Looks good to me! Another interesting property is the kind of "input method" (as wpedia calls it) used to interact with the game (such as guitar, bongos, dance pad, etc).

            2. alecf Metaweb Staff
              Nov 14, 2007
              alecf says:

              Oh, nice. I like that.. though I wonder if "input method" is unique to Musical Game or it might make sense at the video game level? I'll add it to Musical Game now and we can always move it later...

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        38.  

          Computer Mod

          2 posts, latest post: aseem, Aug 23, 2007
          Link to discussion
          1. Aug 23, 2007
            pjbringer says:

            Should a type be created for computer game mods, or should they be tagged as computer games of their own?

            1. aseem Metaweb Staff
              Aug 23, 2007
              aseem says:

              I think so, mainly because
              - they are an additional part of a game
              - cannot usually be used without the original game (as opposed to derivatives which only need the engine, e.g. Blue Shift for HL2)
              - but are not core components of the original game.

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        39.  

          ESRB Rating

          4 posts, latest post: vtalwar, Aug 23, 2007
          Link to discussion
          1. jfry Metaweb Staff
            Jul 23, 2007
            jfry says:

            I'd suggest an ESRB Rating property for games, probably as an enumerated list.

            1. hds
              Aug 6, 2007
              hds says:

              Probably a property that can contain Country & Code. In fact a Computer Game Rating type wouldn't be a bad idea since different countries have different rating systems - not to mention the fact that each country asigns codes individually.

            2. vtalwar Metaweb Staff
              Aug 23, 2007
              vtalwar says:

              This is a really good idea and is something we should readily be able to get right out of Wikipedia. I disagree that countries be tied to these ratings in any way; rather, ratings boards (there seems to only be a handful of them) are responsible for the ratings given, but I'm not sure what domain a Ratings Board type would fit in, since in some cases they rate more than just video games. Ideally all this would be modeled in a way that shows off the controversies often linked to game content and the resulting ratings.

              As for how the ratings themselves would be modeled, I think a ratings type is definitely necessary. One question is whether these should innately be tied to a particular ratings board (via some property) or whether that board should be supplied through a cvt. I'm leaning towards the former, so I'll try some of this out on sandbox :)

            3. vtalwar Metaweb Staff
              Aug 23, 2007
              vtalwar says:

              I just now noticed the Film rating-related types we've got. I guess the answer is to create parallel types for Video Game ratings.

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        40.  

          moderator

          1 post, latest post: vtalwar, Jun 27, 2007
          Link to discussion
          1. vtalwar Metaweb Staff
            Jun 27, 2007
            vtalwar says:

            can i become one? :-)

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        41.  

          Console machines

          1 post, latest post: alecf, Jun 18, 2007
          Link to discussion
          1. alecf Metaweb Staff
            Jun 18, 2007
            alecf says:

            Is there any interest in a "Game Console" or some other game hardware type? There's lots of technical information out there about the various generations of consoles, and it would be cool to see a historical archive of gaming systems...would probably have "Game Platform" as an included type..

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        42.  

          Just added 8400 games

          1 post, latest post: robert, May 7, 2007
          Link to discussion
          1. robert Metaweb Staff
            May 7, 2007
            robert says:

            250 game genres, 1100 game designers among other data from Wikipedia infoboxes. Please take a look!

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        43.  

          Game addition

          2 posts, latest post: patrick, Apr 23, 2007
          Link to discussion
          1. Apr 21, 2007
            jschell says:

            Can I suggest that Computer Game have a Sequels link?

            1. patrick Top Contributor
              Apr 23, 2007
              patrick says:

              Computer game now has a prequel and a sequel link.

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        44.  

          Also

          2 posts, latest post: robert, Apr 23, 2007
          Link to discussion
          1. Apr 22, 2007
            jschell says:

            So yeah, work computer, XP I think. IE6. All the computers around here do the same thing, I haven't tried it at home.

            Separate issue; do you think you can modify the Character input so that we can put in characters without voice actors?
            Characters like Mario, Link, Samus- old school characters- don't necessarily have voices, but just inputing the character doesn't
            save.

            1. robert Metaweb Staff
              Apr 23, 2007
              robert says:

              IE6 could be the problem. We've just got that one working, so it may have a couple quirks. I'll have our QA team look into it.

              Also -- I have a feeling that the character without the voice actor problem is also related to IE6, since it appears to work fine on Firefox. I'll have that looked at as well.

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        45.  

          Work Computer

          1 post, latest post: jschell, Apr 22, 2007
          Link to discussion
          1. Apr 22, 2007
            jschell says:

            It's IE 6.0

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        46.  

          Finally

          2 posts, latest post: robert, Apr 22, 2007
          Link to discussion
          1. Apr 22, 2007
            jschell says:

            Generally speaking, anything I add into Character in 'Characters' is showing up (tried Mario in SM2)

            1. robert Metaweb Staff
              Apr 22, 2007
              robert says:

              Wow. I can't reconstruct it. What browser/computer/OS are you using?

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        47.  

          Backward

          1 post, latest post: jschell, Apr 22, 2007
          Link to discussion
          1. Apr 22, 2007
            jschell says:

            In that second case I put Shapiro in the wrong category, maybe that's it? Putting a person in as a character is causing them to
            get added in my topics? I tried it with Rod Stewart as a character in Final Fantasy and he got added to my CTs.

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        48.  

          Half-Life

          1 post, latest post: jschell, Apr 22, 2007
          Link to discussion
          1. Apr 22, 2007
            jschell says:

            From Freebase home page

            1. Searched for "half-life" and selected Half-Life (already typed Computer Game)
            2. Double clicked Character and wrote Michael shapiro; clicked on resulting voice actor in autosearch
            3. Typed "barney cal" and selected Barney Calhoun from resulting autosearch

            Result: Michael Shapiro showed up in my Created Topics

            Hope that helps

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        49.  

          50 cent tick

          1 post, latest post: jschell, Apr 22, 2007
          Link to discussion
          1. Apr 22, 2007
            jschell says:

            From the Freebase home page.

            1.Searched for "50 cent bulletproof"
            2.Selected "50 Cent: Bulletproof"
            3.Double clicked and added type "Computer Game," then saved
            4.Double clicked Character and added Character "50 cent"; typed '50 cent' and clicked on the first autosearch for
            said Musical Artist
            5.Selected Voice Actor and repeated previous step
            6.Clicked save

            Result: 50 Cent showed up in my Created Topics

            Additional Info: So far this has been a sixty percent bug out of around ten attempts

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        50.  

          Is that bug...

          2 posts, latest post: robert, Apr 21, 2007
          Link to discussion
          1. Apr 21, 2007
            jschell says:

            When you say 'hit enter before autocomplete,' I'm assuming you mean on the keyboard?
            Because I was selecting the autocomplete subject with the mouse, then selecting save.
            Otherwise, if you mean clicking on the autocomplete subject before the rest of the autocomplete is finished I'll have to remember
            to give the system more time. Thanks.

            1. robert Metaweb Staff
              Apr 21, 2007
              robert says:

              I've only seen the problem via keyboard. It seems possible that you may have encountered another bug.

              Could you give a step by step account? It would help to detect and fix it. Thank you so much!

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        51.  

          And/Or

          2 posts, latest post: robert, Apr 21, 2007
          Link to discussion
          1. Apr 21, 2007
            jschell says:

            Could use a Game Collections type like Film's got to bunch together series. Final Fantasy Series, Mario, GTA, Dragon Quest, Contra
            etc. and so on.

            1. robert Metaweb Staff
              Apr 21, 2007
              robert says:

              I just added both prequel/sequel and game series.

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        52.  

          Don't know...

          2 posts, latest post: robert, Apr 21, 2007
          Link to discussion
          1. Apr 21, 2007
            jschell says:

            I entered God of War as a new Computer Game, with Kratos as its character, then God of War II. Added Mario Bros.
            Added GTA: San Andreas as a Comp Game, with Carl Johnson as a character played by Young Maylay.
            The result was God of War, God of War II, Kratos, Mario Bros., and Young Maylay all wound up in my domain as topics I'd created,
            each with a blank page even though I'd picked existing topics from the list.
            Of course I just tested it with Blasto, adding Capt. Blasto and Phil Hartman (had to create Capt. Blasto,) and Phil didn't show up.
            So I'm not sure what's going on.
            I also had an issue adding D+D to the RPG type; wound up creating a Dungeons amp; amp Dragons topic... ?

            1. robert Metaweb Staff
              Apr 21, 2007
              robert says:

              The ampersand problem is also a known bug and will be rolled out in a week or so with a bunch of other fixes. Sorry for the inconvenience!

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        53.  

          FYI

          2 posts, latest post: robert, Apr 21, 2007
          Link to discussion
          1. Apr 21, 2007
            jschell says:

            Just added GTA Vice City as a game, inputed Tommy Vercetti as the character, and Ray Liotta as the voice. (Tommy was already
            in the database, just clicked the auto-search.) Now I've got Tommy Vercetti in my created Topics. Hope that helps

            1. robert Metaweb Staff
              Apr 21, 2007
              robert says:

              Given how prolific you are, I'm assuming you are a fast typist. We have a known bug (currently being fixed) that if you hit enter before autocomplete happens, a new topic is created. Others have noticed this as well.

              Try slowing down a bit for the time being to see if that helps until we get the fix rolled out. I apologize for the inconvenience.

              I'm very happy you're so into this and I look forward to any more feedback you have.

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        54.  

          Type error

          2 posts, latest post: robert, Apr 21, 2007
          Link to discussion
          1. Apr 21, 2007
            jschell says:

            I've been adding the computer game type to a couple of games, and it seems that when I add a character to the game they
            wind up getting created in my types. What's up with that?

            1. robert Metaweb Staff
              Apr 21, 2007
              robert says:

              I can't imagine why that's happening. Could you point to a place where it's happened? It will help me diagnose it.

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        55.  

          Question for the Administrators

          3 posts, latest post: patrick, Apr 11, 2007
          Link to discussion
          1. Apr 3, 2007
            jschell says:

            Do administrators get flagged when a post goes up in their domain? Or do you have to scan around?
            I'm just wondering if it's better to leave specific posts in the type I'm talking about or up in the hierarchy?

            1. patrick Top Contributor
              Apr 11, 2007
              patrick says:

              We have an internal tool staff can use to see recent edits to a specific domain or to any domain. That said, it's still in development and not everyone uses it regularly.

            2. patrick Top Contributor
              Apr 11, 2007
              patrick says:

              Sorry, I meant posts, not edits.

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