José P. Zagal, Michael Mateas, Clara Fernández-Vara, Brian Hochhalter and Nolan Lichti, "Towards an Ontological Language for Game Analysis"

(In Worlds in Play)

- Game Ontology Project, "framework for describing, analysing and studying games"
- Unified vocabulary
- Heirarchical organization of structural elements, relationships between them
- Not a taxonomy or a classification of types, not design imperatives
- Define, classify "essential" elements of "gameness" in games and gameplay
- Category membership is dependent on context, culture
- "Blackbox analyses" based on what is percieved or experienced by players
- Specific/general/middle or obvious elements, "central" (strong) and marginal/blurry/borderline (weak) examples of each element
- Iterative, adaptive, organic method, grown from the middle starting with the obvious and extending to abstract and specific elements
- Representational elements, fiction, game setting, relationships to other media are bracketed in order to focus on formal/strucutral gameplay elements (Zagal et al acknowledge that more in-depth analyses must account for both and the relationship between them, however)
- Top level abstract categories: interface, rules, goals, entities, entity manipulation
- Each element is described, weak and strong examples are given, "parent" and "child" elements are listed and "part" (compound) elements are identified
- Example: "to own/ownership" (child of entity manipulation) -> saving mushrooms in Super Mario World
- Interface: presentation, input device, input method (hardware and software)
- Rules: framework/model in which game takes place, regulate development and basic interactions
- Two types of rules: gameplay (lives) and gameworld (gravity) - Both determine the possibility space of the game... is this is a meaningful distinction?
- Rules synergies (combinations of rules)
- Goals: objectives, success conditions, whether explicit or not (includes evaluation, feedback, scores, etc.)
- Player imposed goals are not included in the ontology (why? Not concrete?)
- Agent goals, game goals, goal metrics
- Entities: objects, agents, walls, power-ups, etc. (an undeveloped part of the ontology at the time of writing, possibly removed entirely later in lieu of entity manipulation, because actions make entities significant?)
- Entity manipulation: alter the attributes (adjectives)/abilities (verbs) of objects in the game
- To collide, to create, to own, compound actions
- Gameplay space vs gameworld space vs representational space (again, I'm not too sure about the distinction between the first two)
- Levels, waves, checkpoints as sub-elements of the Segmentation of Gameplay element