Re: VideoGame proposal

Literary and film series did indeed come to mind when I was thinking this
through.

Aside from the similarities you've already cited, there's also the fact
that many book, game and film series don't start out as such.  As often as
not a series is born out of the initial work's success, so there's often
situations where the title of the initial individual work and of the series
is identical.  You'll find these two entries in Wikipedia, for example:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resident_Evil_(film)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resident_Evil_(film_series)

>From a taxonomic perspective having a "series"-like type makes
disambiguation in such situations easier, of course.

"Periodical" is, by contrast, a less fluid concept.  With perhaps some rare
exceptions, a journal or magazine only exists as the sum of its constituent
issues, and never as a physical object in itself.

FWIW I think Blog (the thing that contains blog posts) is an anachronism,
and for schema.org (like anything else where a definition ultimately rests
on the mode of production, rather than attributes of the thing itself) is
not a very useful type.  And even less useful, and more confusing, is
BlogPosting, which in every material respect is identical to Article (which
is the only such object of this type - sensibly IMO - that you'll find in
Open Graph).  Ironically, most WordPress schema.org plugins declare a blog
post to be an Article.  All of this to say that it makes sense that "blog"
and "periodical" don't play well together, as a blog is such an ill-defined
concept.



On Thu, Jun 12, 2014 at 1:48 PM, Dan Brickley <danbri@google.com> wrote:

> On 12 June 2014 21:38, Aaron Bradley <aaranged@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Revisions look good - I've a couple of further thoughts upon reviewing
> the
> > proposal again.
> >
> > 1.  Video game series
> >
> > The proposal lacks any mechanism for declaring a video game to be part
> of a
> > series.
>
> Richard Wallis and I met up in London a couple weeks back, and
> discussed amongst other things the scope of the periodicals proposal.
>
> We agreed that it was a bit of a stretch treating a blog as a
> periodical, but I wonder whether it might be a reasonable fit here. I
> don't think it does feel right, any more than blog, .... but anyway to
> recap the proposed definition ---
>
>
> https://www.w3.org/wiki/WebSchemas/Periodicals,_Articles_and_Multi-volume_Works#New_Type:_Periodical
>
> "A publication in any medium issued in successive parts bearing
> numerical or chronological designations and intended, such as a
> magazine, scholarly journal, or newspaper to continue indefinitely."
>
> Perhaps the analogy here is with books that appear in such series?
> this kind of a notion...
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novel_sequence#Contemporary_pressures_and_novel_sequences
>
> As Wikipedia notes,
>
> "Novel sequences, though, are now most common in genre fiction,
> particularly in science fiction and epic fantasy. The introduction of
> the preconstructed novel sequence is often attributed to E. E. Doc
> Smith, with his Lensman books. Such sequences, from contemporary
> authors, tend to be more clearly defined than earlier examples.
> Authors are now more likely to announce an overall series title, or
> write in round numbers such as 12 volumes. These characteristics are
> not those of the classical model forms, and become more like the
> 'franchises' of the film industry."
>
> ... perhaps they could've equally said, "... of the film and game
> industries" there?
>
> Dan
>
> > I think this is an important concept to address, as many video games -
> and
> > especially the most popular, mass-market video games - exist as series.
> > Individual video games belonging to that series continue to be release
> after
> > the introduction of the original title in that series, sometimes spanning
> > decades.
> >
> > For example, "Battlefield 3" is a video game in the series "Battlefield".
> > Without a distinction between a game and series to which it belong, a
> > publisher could declare this to be a VideoGame:
> > http://www.battlefield.com/battlefield3
> >
> > But without a video game series type for:
> > http://www.battlefield.com/
> > ... the publisher could only unhelpfully declare this as something like
> > WebPage, or ambiguously declare it to be a VideoGame - which it is not,
> > because while you can play "Battlefield 3" you can't play "Battlefield"
> (the
> > first game in the franchise was "Battlefield 1942").
> >
> > This is precisely how Freebase handles video games:
> > Battlefield 3 = "Video Game"
> > Battlefield = "Video Game Series"
> >
> > So...
> >
> > ----------
> >
> > Suggested added type:
> > Thing > Creative Work > Series > VideoGameSeries
> >
> > Properties from VideoGameSeries
> >
> > property:  videoGame
> > Expected type:  VideoGame
> > Description:  A game in a video game series.
> >
> > ----------
> >
> > Suggested added property for:
> > Thing > Creative Work > Game > VideoGame
> >
> > property:  partOfSeries
> > Expected type:  Series
> > Description [revision of existing]:  The series to which this video game,
> > episode or season belongs.
> >
> > ----------
> >
> > Note that it might appear as though the softwareVersion property could be
> > used to declare the specific version of a game, but it cannot for a
> couple
> > of reasons.
> >
> > "Battlefield 3" is a video game title in the video game series
> > "Battlefield", rather than a softwareVersion of the SoftwareApplication
> > "Battlefield".  The software in question here is "Battlefield 3", which
> can
> > have its own versions.
> >
> > As well, video games within a series often have their own names, and this
> > additional types and additional properties provide a way of binding the
> two.
> >
> > E.g.
> >
> > <div itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/VideoGame">
> > <h1 itemprop="name">Plants Vs. Zombies Garden Warfare</h1>
> > The latest <span itemprop="partOfSeries" itemscope
> > itemtype="http://schema.org/VideoGameSeries"><span
> itemprop="name">Plants
> > Vs. Zombies</span></span> game!
> > </div>
> >
> > 2.  Video game trailers
> >
> > As a more specific type of Series, VideoGameSeries would also be able to
> use
> > the series property "trailer".
> >
> > Video game trailers are among the most consumed and searched-for media
> > associated with video games.  While being able to use this for
> > VideoGameSeries would be good, it's actually a property far more useful
> for
> > VideoGame itself.  Just as TVEpisode has this as a property in addition
> to
> > TVSeries, so I think it should fall under VideoGame.
> >
> > ----------
> >
> > Suggested added property for:
> > Thing > Creative Work > Game > VideoGame
> >
> > property:  trailer
> > Expected type:  VideoObject
> > Description [revision of existing]:  The trailer of a movie, video game
> or
> > tv/radio series, season, or episode.
> >
> > Aaron Bradley
> > SEO Analyst, Electronic Arts
> >
> >
> >
> > On Thu, Jun 12, 2014 at 7:54 AM, Yuliya Tikhokhod <tilid@yandex-team.ru>
> > wrote:
> >>
> >> This is new version of proposal with some minor changes
> >> (statistic->characterAttribute) and additional examples
> >>
> >> 24.05.2014, 01:37, "Jeff Mixter" <jeffmixter@gmail.com>:
> >>
> >> I think that the changes help a lot.  The overall structure seems to be
> >> more lightweight and fit within the current schema.org paradigm.  It
> seems
> >> like one property that is missing is rating. If we do not want to get
> >> embroiled in picking and choosing properties that relate to specific
> >> standards, as I think Guha alluded to previously, I would suggest that
> you
> >> use the existing schema:contentRating property.  As is listed in the
> >> example, people can then list the rating system as well as the rating
> for
> >> example "ERSB T"
> >>
> >> I still think it would be interesting to find a lightweight way, using
> >> existing schema.org classes and properties, to connect users, the
> games they
> >> play and the servers/services that they use.  Again, I think this can
> >> probably be done with the existing schema.org vocabulary so it
> certainly
> >> does not need to be included in any proposal but it might be worthwhile
> >> drafting up as a sort of cookbook for describing video games.
> >>
> >> Jeff
> >>
> >>
> >> On Fri, May 23, 2014 at 12:20 PM, Guha <guha@google.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> If there is a very wide usage of a particular external standard, then of
> >> course, it makes sense for schema.org to refer to that standard. Note
> that I
> >> say 'wide usage' not 'consensus' (among vocabulary creators).
> >>
> >> The cost of bouncing webmasters between different namespaces is just too
> >> high.
> >>
> >> Guha
> >>
> >>
> >> On Fri, May 16, 2014 at 1:22 AM, martin.hepp@ebusiness-unibw.org
> >> <martin.hepp@ebusiness-unibw.org> wrote:
> >>
> >> Hi Aaraon:
> >>
> >> On 15 May 2014, at 21:24, Aaron Bradley <aaranged@gmail.com> wrote:
> >> > While I understand the rationale behind using productontology.org
> URIs I
> >> > come down squarely against relying upon them in any situation where
> the
> >> > class and/or properties in question are likely to be widely used by a
> large
> >> > number of webmasters.  I feel confident in saying that potential
> benefits of
> >> > employing productontology.org URIs for something like the proposed
> platform
> >> > property will ever remain potential because hardly anyone will employ
> it.
> >> > schema.org's better-than-anticipated success has been predicated not
> only
> >> > because it's easy to employ, but on the fact that it's
> self-contained.  IMO,
> >> > every time we punt to an external vocabulary we're shooting ourselves
> in the
> >> > foot:  I can't stress this enough (and I welcome Martin Hepp's input
> on
> >> > this, both because I know he's had something to say about this
> recently in
> >> > the context of his generic property/value pair proposal and, of
> course,
> >> > because of his experience with productontology.org).
> >> My point on mechanisms for externalizing or deferring consensus is as
> >> follows:
> >>
> >> 1. When there exists consensus in an external standard, it is better to
> >> refer to that standard than to incorporate it into schema.org - e.g.
> >> currency codes, GPC classes, most enumerations.
> >>
> >> 2. When site owners are not able to easily link their data to a more
> >> standardized representation, it is better to allow them publishing as
> much
> >> "lightweight" semantics as possible than making it too costly for them
> to
> >> publish any data.
> >>
> >> Video game is definitely a class that should be in schema.org, whereas
> for
> >> http://www.productontology.org/doc/Action_role-playing_game, I think an
> >> external mechanism is a better place.
> >>
> >> Martin
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> --
> >> Jeff Mixter
> >> jeffmixter@gmail.com
> >> 440-773-9079
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> --
> >> Юля Тихоход
> >>
> >>
> >
> >
>