Connecting video games as a solution for the growing video game markets

Abstract

The growth and development of the video game industry has led to fierce competition for customers’ attention. Video game companies are using increasing amounts of money in advertising to gain visibility in the markets. In addition, the owners of digital distribution stores tend to favor the most successful video games when showcasing and suggesting new games for the players. Both these tendencies make it hard for small and new video game companies to compete in the same video game markets with the larger and well-known companies. The goal of this thesis is to develop a general technical solution which would enable video games to exchange knowledge and allow video game developers to create games that can be connected to each other, for example by sharing common characters or items. This solution approaches the problem of visibility and discoverability on the video game markets from the viewpoint of enabling co-operation between video game companies. This is done by using semantic technologies to create a general model of video game information, allowing the video games to exchange semantically enriched knowledge about their game contents, instead of raw data. The research has been conducted by following the principles of Design Science Research. The research started by performing a literature study to find out the current state of the art in the research of connecting video games. In addition, video game developers were interviewed to gather requirements and opinions on the possibility of connecting video games with each other. Based on the interview results, an ontology for modeling video game information was created. This model was then used as the basis for creating a platform to enable connecting separate video games. Also, a survey among Counter-Strike players was carried out to find out if players could be motivated to perform physical exercises in order to gain digital rewards in their favorite video games. The ontology model was shown to be able to model and capture video game information in a general manner. The ontology, combined with the developed platform, allows video game developers to connect separate video game products with each other and to create new models for interaction between the games. The performed survey suggested that players are willing to do physical exercises in order to gain bonuses in video games.