Re: Video Game Series (was VideoGame Proposal)

Thanks for the correction Dan Scott, that should have indeed been "
schema.org/VideoGameSeries" not just, um, "schema.org". :)

<div itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/VideoGame">
  <span itemprop="name">Battlefield Hardline</span>
  The latest <span itemprop="partOfSeries" itemscope itemtype="
http://schema.org/VideoGameSeries">
  <span itemprop="name">Battlefield</span></span> game from EA.
</div>

> I guess that's supposed to be itemtype="http://schema.org/VideoGameSeries",
but Series would work just as well for the markup. Also, "isPartOf" would
be perfectly appropriate for the property.

Sure - and I'd be reasonably happy with "Series" which, as you say, has a
scope of "CreativeWork".  And, yes, "isPartOf" would indeed be perfect here.

To make a long story short I had misinterpreted what you wrote as "use
'partOf' and 'isPartOf" *without* using "Series" - not the case, and my
apologies for not reading your lead-in more closely.

I see all your points, and I certainly believe you're trying to make
the vocabulary
work for entities found in the real world. :)

With that, again, I'm reasonably happy simply constituting a video game
series as a "Series" with other types of series.  The qualification comes
from the slight lack of specificity this causes.  If that specificity can
only be accomplished with...

<meta itemprop="seriesType" content="VideoGame">

... then I think it's potentially problematic.  Anything requiring
non-visible markup is should be a red flag in schema.org, since the
sponsors are so endlessly keen to limit this to situations where
the declaration requires a particular data format for machine consumption,
a la dates in ISO-8601 format.  What you suggest with the "seriesType"
itemprop certainly works fabulously, but raises that red flag.

On Thu, Oct 16, 2014 at 12:31 PM, Dan Scott <dan@coffeecode.net> wrote:

> Okay, I'll bite.
>
> On Thu, Oct 16, 2014 at 2:42 PM, Aaron Bradley <aaranged@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Starting a new thread as just to separate the issue of video game series
>> from the main VideoGame proposal thread, to avoid non-series issues that
>> are being raised from being buried in the series discussion.
>>
>> Thanks for your responses Yuliya - and your English is light years ahead
>> of my Russian!  And thanks to you, Dan and everyone else for weighing in so
>> quickly and comprehensively on the issue of video game series.  Again, I'm
>> passionate about this issue because series are critical entities in the
>> video game industry, and the lack of well-defined type for a video games
>> series in schema.org will critically blunt the effectiveness of the
>> much-needed VideoGame type.
>>
>
> Series are critical entities for most creative works, but that didn't stop
> the launch of Book or Movie, and it seems like those have been reasonably
> effective. Getting Series right is important. Rushing a VideoGameSeries
> type out that repeats or builds on some of the mistakes of TVSeries /
> RadioSeries would not be a good thing.
>
>
>> In any case, I appreciate the loop back to schema.org/Series as Dan,
>> Yuliya, and Vicki have discussed, and ultimately I think this is the most
>> fecund route to pursue.
>>
>> This would entail:
>> 1.  A new type, VideoGameSeries, which is a more specific type of Series.
>> 2.  A single new property for VideoGameSeries, videoGame, with the
>> expected value VideoGame.
>>
>
> Why would this property not simply be the existing
> http://schema.org/hasPart?
>
>
>> 3.  The types on which the existing property, partOfSeries (or the
>> re-engineered partOf), can be used would be extended to inclue VideoGame.
>>
>
> http://schema.org/isPartOf, please, which already has a range of
> CreativeWork and thus can handle the subtype Series (or a new
> VideoGameSeries) without needing to be changed.
>
>
>> <div itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/VideoGame">
>>   <span itemprop="name">Battlefield Hardline</span>
>>   The latest <span itemprop="partOfSeries" itemscope itemtype="
>> http://schema.org">
>>
>
> I guess that's supposed to be itemtype="http://schema.org/VideoGameSeries",
> but Series would work just as well for the markup. Also, "isPartOf" would
> be perfectly appropriate for the property.
>
>
>>   <span itemprop="name">Battlefield</span></span> game from EA.
>> </div>
>>
>> (Thad, with that and inheritance from CreativeWork and Series, I think
>> all your proposed properties would be handled covered aside from
>> seriesSpinOff.)
>>
>> As Yuliya has pointed out this results in some seemingly inappropriate
>> properties available to VideoGameSeries via inheritance from Series, but as
>> per Dan's exercise, they're not *wildly* inappropriate, and it's hardly
>> unknown in schema.org to have very specific item types where some
>> parental properties are not appropriate.
>>
>> @Karen Doyle - +1 to leveraging descriptions.  All in all I don't think
>> the issue of using Series properties for VideoGameSeries is intractable.
>>
>> > Every video game is effectively part of a series when it is launched;
>> market conditions usually determine whether that series gets more than a
>> one-off entry (e.g. "Mass Effect" went from being a one-off game to a
>> series only when "Mass Effect 2" is launched).
>> > Therefore, I would prefer your second option...
>>
>> @Dan Scott I think by pursuing this route we risk conflating processes
>> with things.  The sequence in which a video game is or becomes a video game
>> series doesn't change the fact that they are separate classes of things
>> (for the record I disagree that a video game becomes part of a series when
>> it is launched, as if no further titles are published that franchise isn't
>> a franchise, it's just a video game).
>>
>
> That seems like an over-simplification to me, but ultimately we're arguing
> about what reality is or isn't, which probably isn't going to be fruitful,
> so let's not.
>
>
>> A VideoGame can't tap the property isPartOf because the answer to "part
>> of what?" isn't VideoGame (just as "The Sopranos Season 2, Episode Six"
>> isn't part of the television show "The Sopranos" - precisely why
>> Series/TVSeries were required).
>>
>
> I'm not sure I follow. Do you mean that the answer isn't VideoGame because
> schema:isPartOf has a range of CreativeWork? I'm not sure if you feel the
> property schema:isPartOf isn't sufficient, or if the type VideoGame (or
> CreativeWork) isn't sufficient to reflect the relationships between the
> works.
>
>
>> I see your point about series and sequential vs. non-sequential, but I
>> don't think it's a major issue.  I think "Series" is a good-enough
>> designation for the, well, series "American Horror Story" even though the
>> sequence of seasons is only relevant in terms of production dates and not
>> in terms of the show's essence, as each season is self-contained (for those
>> of you not familiar with the show, check out the Wikipedia entry [1] which
>> indeed describes it as a series, and like a video game that only becomes a
>> series when more are made, it too only became a series once a second season
>> was produced - the subtitle "Murder House" added retroactively to the first
>> season!).
>>
>> > I'd love to advocate going with a multi-type entity approach to avoid
>> the need for spawning BookSeries, MovieSeries, ComicBookSeries,
>> ActionFigureSeries, etc types, as @typeof="VideoGame Series" would allow
>> producers to signify a strong expectation for the types of entities
>> contained in the series... but that would be incorrect because the series
>> is not also a video game.
>>
>> I'm conflicted too, but IMO I think we must ultimately make the
>> vocabulary work for entities found in the real world, even if they
>> inconviently deviate slightly from set types, causing the need to spawn
>> subtypes. :)  LocalBusiness has 27 main sub-types and a multitude of
>> sub-sub-types - but it's useful to be able to declare a hospital as a
>> Hospital.
>>
>
> Believe it or not, I too am trying to make the vocabulary work for
> entities found in the real world. There are multiple ways of doing so. Our
> task is to try and choose the way that works with the best ratio of
> satisfying publisher capabilities and consumer needs (which we used to try
> to capture in http://www.w3.org/wiki/WebSchemas/SchemaDotOrgProposals but
> not so much lately), and that means exploring those options.
>
> schema.org's process of evolving is evolving. The simplest possible way
> of handling Sports would have been to mint thousands of new types for
> Sports and Athlete positions, and that might have happened were it two or
> three years ago, but instead Role emerged as a more nuanced way of handling
> that flexibility. It may be the case that Series would benefit from a
> similar look, thus my wondering if a Series property with an enumeration,
> or even a simple Text value, that expresses the type of series (if any)
> would work to handle the broader use case.
>
> So here's a simple alternative that only adds one property to schema.org,
> "seriesType":
>
> <div itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/VideoGame">
>   <span itemprop="name">Battlefield Hardline</span>
>   The latest <span itemprop="isPartOf" itemscope itemtype="
> http://schema.org/Series">
>   <meta itemprop="seriesType" content="VideoGame">
>   <span itemprop="name">Battlefield</span></span> game from EA.
> </div>
>
> Flipped around to prioritize the series and list the parts, that would be:
>
> <div>The latest
>   <span itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Series">
>     <meta itemprop="seriesType" content="VideoGame" />
>     <span itemprop="name">Battlefield</span> game from EA is
>     <span itemprop="hasPart" itemscope itemtype="
> http://schema.org/VideoGame">
>       <span itemprop="name">Battlefield Hardline</span>
>     </span>
>   </span>
> </div>
>
> That's not so bad, right? Surely consumers could say "Give me all Series
> that have a seriesType of 'VideoGame'" for their underlying queries, in
> whatever sort of store they're using. And we can easily add Book and Movie
> and the other creative works that want to reflect their participation in a
> series without having to mint new types.
>
> Dan
>
> [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Horror_Story
>>
>>
>> On Thu, Oct 16, 2014 at 8:13 AM, Dan Scott <dan@coffeecode.net> wrote:
>>
>>> On Thu, Oct 16, 2014 at 9:32 AM, Yuliya Tikhokhod <tilid@yandex-team.ru>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> I agree that re-engineer Series is a good idea. Not only for video
>>>> games, but for many others type of creative work (books, articles, etc)
>>>> But should it be obstacle for shipping VideoGame into schema.org?
>>>> I see two options:1) as Viki said create a VideoGameSeries (like a
>>>> subtype of Series or for example Intangible) for now and than re-engineer
>>>> Series 2) using hasPart and partOf properties without specific type for
>>>> Series, re-engineer Series and create specific type
>>>> What do you think which way is better?
>>>>
>>>
>>> Every video game is effectively part of a series when it is launched;
>>> market conditions usually determine whether that series gets more than a
>>> one-off entry (e.g. "Mass Effect" went from being a one-off game to a
>>> series only when "Mass Effect 2" is launched).
>>>
>>> Therefore, I would prefer your second option: let VideoGame go ahead
>>> as-is (with the minor convention fixes that have been suggested), and for
>>> now providers can use http://schema.org/hasPart,
>>> http://schema.org/isPartOf, http://schema.org/exampleOfWork and
>>> http://schema.org/workExample to relate the individual games to a
>>> larger _conceptual_ body of work that is not necessarily sequential in
>>> nature--see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Sim_video_games for
>>> examples of games that are all part of the Sims universe (including games
>>> missing from http://www.freebase.com/m/03mh0vs such as "The Sims
>>> Online" and "The Sims Social") but which are not strictly sequential.
>>>
>>> As that larger body of work could also include books, movies, action
>>> figures, comic books, etc, then perhaps, as Jerome suggested CreativeWork
>>> would be the right parent type to signify the conceptual/collection aspect
>>> and differentiate a more concrete instance of a VideoGame ("Mass Effect"
>>> the first game in the series) from the conceptual body of work ("Mass
>>> Effect" the series of games). It would be trivial for a consumer to see the
>>> CreativeWork - hasPart - VideoGame relationship and enumerate the games in
>>> the collection based on their types.
>>>
>>> In the slightly longer run, rehabilitating Series to be less TV/Radio
>>> focused would also enable us to use it more effectively with other types.
>>> I'm a bit conflicted; I'd love to advocate going with a multi-type entity
>>> approach to avoid the need for spawning BookSeries, MovieSeries,
>>> ComicBookSeries, ActionFigureSeries, etc types, as @typeof="VideoGame
>>> Series" would allow producers to signify a strong expectation for the types
>>> of entities contained in the series... but that would be incorrect because
>>> the series is not also a video game. Perhaps Series gets a property that
>>> takes an enumeration value, with the allowable values generated
>>> automatically from the various children of CreativeWork?
>>>
>>> In addition to looking at what Freebase does for video game series, we
>>> should also investigate what Wikipedia does with their infoboxes (another
>>> form of structured data) such as
>>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Infobox_video_game_series
>>>
>>
>>
>