Using Wikidata as Work Authority for Video Games

Abstract

Video games have a short but rich history. Therefore, they have been gaining popularity as cultural heritage and research material. Several studies have analyzed the metadata and cataloging of video games. However, the research on its implementation is limited. Hence, we investigate the practice of cataloging video games at the Center for Game Studies, Ritsumeikan University (RCGS) in this study and examine the effectiveness of data utilization from Wikidata to construct an authority of works for video games. We accomplished this by associating the distribution package with Wikipedia and Wikidata. Consequently, records of works covering approximately half of the video games were created. However, the problem of uniformity of granularity and completeness was found in these data based on Wikipedia's culture and policies. Thus, data enrichment is difficult owing to the non-uniform granularity of bibliography with Wikidata. In contrast, the cost of data creation is effective. Furthermore, the external link ID is highly effective in enhancing the value of catalog as Linked Open Data (LOD). It is also evident that using published authority data is useful for data integration but Wikidata has some problems with its features. There is a need to consider the function and purpose of the catalog as linked data instead of a separate catalog. Thus, the adaptation of Wikidata for catalogs needs to be designed accordingly as linked data.