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27 DecemberVideo Game Data ServicesVideo Game DatabaseVideo Game MetadataVideo Game Taxonomy

Case Study: How Metadata and Understanding Gamers Can Drive Conversions

by Karthik Balasubramanian0 Comments

In this study, we discuss how a user survey of an online gaming store yielded actionable insights about improving game discovery for gamers across various demographics. 

Why do customers play games? What makes them hate or avoid a game? How do they select a new game to play? The response to such questions revealed that coupling game metadata with a nuanced understanding of user attitudes and preferences can foster game discovery and drive more conversions in a scalable, consistent and user-focused manner.

About the Survey: Key Findings

Our survey respondents were all customers of a budget-friendly online gaming store that makes use of our game metadata services. The survey population skews young – 70% were less than 35 years old and 26% of the population – the largest single chunk – was between 20-24 years of age. Female participants were overrepresented in the youngest age group (under 25 years of age), but underrepresented in the survey population as a whole. Many of our more nuanced insights about driving conversions are derived from how user preferences change based on demographics. Our survey responses allow, but do not require, multiple responses, helping us understand the many factors that drive user decisions. 

A majority of respondents – about 60% – seek to take their mind off things by playing games (though 26% may also want to experience something beautiful, while taking their mind off things), and many customers avoid games with aggressive monetisation. Genre is the foremost decision driver in selecting a new game to play – 56% choose a game based on its genre – and nearly 75% of the site’s users are prompted to start a new game based on favourable critics’ reviews, user ratings, and friends’ recommendations. 

In the following sections, we add nuance to this basic gamer journey by delving deeper into the survey responses. We detail how game metadata can be harnessed to refine game discovery based on definable concepts such as game genre, setting, theme, and gameplay elements. We also discuss how stores can leverage even subjective attitudes about game aesthetics and monetization when directing key demographics towards games they would enjoy. Where possible, we link to relevant content such as blogs and other pages on our website, so that our insights into user preferences can be understood in a wider context. 

Each section below is entitled with the questions we asked in our survey, and contains insights we gleaned about user preferences from our survey respondents. 

Why Do You Play Games?

While a majority of the respondents play to take their mind off things, a fourth said they want to experience a beautiful game, and 14% said they used games to unleash their creativity. 

In fact, female respondents are 18% more likely to prefer games based on their visual appeal, and are around 60% more inclined to use games as an outlet for their creativity: both aesthetics and expressing their creativity matters to them. 

Given that female respondents are even more likely to play games with appealing visuals, retailers can drive conversions among their female customers (and even attract more women gamers) by curating games that are universally praised for their beautiful visuals, and adorning such games’ store pages with attractive screenshots. Stores can also feature games with a strong creative element – such as Minecraft (2011) and other similar sandbox games – to achieve the same effect. 

Only 14% of all respondents cited graphics quality as a decision driver for buying a game, and only 13% said they seek out games with a specific art style. Our store’s customers are not necessarily looking for state-of-the-art graphics, or for a specific ‘look’, but good aesthetics, and to learn more about how videogames can be beautiful, read our blog on the hunt for photorealism.

What Makes You Hate or Avoid a Game?

Respondents cited aggressive monetization, an unfriendly player base and poor performance (bugs and technical issues) as the three main factors that make them hate or avoid a game. For this question, any one of the responses can serve as a deal breaker – customers who cite multiple factors do not mean they will put up with some, but not all, of the problematic aspects of a game. They will abandon a game if it has even one of the features that displease them, and our sentiment analysis can help gauge user attitudes about a game’s monetization strategy, its performance, user experiences with a game’s multiplayer base, and even perceptions about whether the game delivers value for money. 

Players younger than 25 – who form a significant chunk of our survey population – are 15% more likely to tolerate aggressive monetization, though cost plays a greater role in their buying decisions (around 35% vs the average of 30%). Younger players want to be convinced of the value a game offers before parting with their money, and the freemium/free-to-play, or live-service game model is ideally suited to their preferences – they can assess the free base game and decide whether premium content will be worth the price, and can also satisfy their need for social engagement through such games. 

Stores can drive conversions among younger customers by selling premium content for prominent live-service games and other games that adopt the free-to-play or freemium business model. Such a strategy can be highly lucrative, as such titles can keep gamers engaged for years.

Older respondents are 20% less likely to play with other gamers. In fact, for older store  customers, forced interaction with other players is a deal-breaker. When compared with younger players, customers aged 25-40 are 25% more likely to avoid games with forced interactions, and respondents over 40 are 50% more inclined to abandon such games.

Case Study Image

Customers over 40 are 60% more likely to play games to solve problems with careful thinking and planning. For such users, gaming is a solitary pursuit and an opportunity to flex their brains. Featuring single-player games that emphasise puzzle-solving can attract more older players, and drive more conversions among them too, and our game metadata framework can help identify games of this sort, which serve niche interests.

What Makes You Start a New Game?

More than 70% of our respondents start playing a new game based on critic reviews, user ratings and friends’ endorsements. Our metadata framework provides details about critic reviews and user ratings, and player sentiment can be gauged to see if the game is likely to be recommended to others. Stores can feature favourable reviews and user ratings and use sentiment analysis to establish a game’s bonafides.  

About 30% also start a new game if it resembles what they have played before. But what exactly does the customer mean by resemblance? Is the similarity in gameplay, visuals or something else? 

The store could make educated guesses about resemblance through the customer’s purchase history, but guesswork is not scalable. The best insights about user preferences and game discovery will emerge from a rigorous metadata framework which categorises store titles by gameplay, visuals, or any relevant video game feature.

Suppose a customer has bought several Assassin’s Creed games, all after a year of the game’s launch. The user may not buy the latest release because it’s not yet on sale and they are at the store for a bargain. 

What if the store uses metadata to suggest a parkour-style exploration game, or an open-world game with stealth mechanics? Ghost of Tsushima (2020) – like the Assassin’s Creed games – is a gorgeous open world with stealth mechanics, and could resonate with an Assassin’s Creed fan.  

But if the customer wants games that resemble Assassin’s Creed in terms of parkour traversal, then Sunset Overdrive (2014), would be a good match, and Mirror’s Edge (2016) and Dying Light (2015) would be a novel experience because of their thrilling first-person parkour mechanics.  

Only by using a metadata framework for defining features like visuals, gameplay and traversal can the store identify multiple titles ‘like’ Assassin’s Creed. Such a framework is also scalable as it covers the store’s entire catalogue rather than a single franchise. 

What Drives You to Select a New Game?

This question is vital to retailers because of its direct insight into what drives conversions. 

Cost is the third-most cited factor and customers may well be conservative in their choice of games, especially considering that they tend to stick to a certain genre.

The second-most important factor – a strong story – is cited by 30% of the respondents, but only 17% abandon games with bad or weak stories. Players may likely put up with this flaw if the game is otherwise appealing. Games whose stories have resonated with gamers can be identified using sentiment analysis and given more prominence.

Only 17% cite good performance as a factor behind buying games, but 27% of the respondents will avoid games with poor performance. Good performance is expected – publishers won’t get brownie points just for delivering a functional game – and a bug-ridden release will attract few users. Consequently, stores can feature titles that are making a ‘come-back’ from bad and buggy launches. 

Genre is the foremost decision driver, with 56% citing it as a factor in buying games. Stores could identify the most popular genres amongst its users and give popular game genres prominence, but how would it define ‘game genres’?  

Sites like Metacritic do provide genres, but many games fall into multiple genres: Skyrim’s genres are ‘Role Playing’ and ‘Western Style’, to distinguish it from Japanese Role-Playing Games (RPG). A store using borrowed genre classifications might present open-world RPGs to customers who enjoy linear RPGs (if its metadata does not distinguish between the two), resulting in few conversions. 

A comprehensive metadata framework would define genres precisely and help identify the most popular genres amongst users, after which the store could play up the most prominent games in popular genres. A sufficiently granular metadata framework can give gamers the exact type of game they want within the foremost genres as well. 

Suppose the shooter genre is one of the most popular amongst store users. One customer has purchased several less-known shooters, and is unlikely to buy the more popular titles. 

Just as the metadata framework can be used to categorise a franchise like Assassin’s Creed by game features, a descriptor like genre itself can be sliced and diced into subgenres based on combat, visuals, camera perspective and more, to find a match for the user who buys niche shooters. 

Like a detailed map, a store whose pages contain granular information about genre, setting and other descriptors can speed up the user journey, steering gamers toward the title they want, and propel conversions. Such pages can also lead more people to stay on the site, instead of abandoning it. 

Our metadata framework is wide, covering a multitude of games, and deep, covering each game with detailed descriptors and dividing games into precise sub-groups. It can hence consistently drive conversions in a scalable manner, and this is why we do what we do. To learn more about how we do it, visit our pages on video game metadata and game taxonomy. 

Conclusion

Our survey respondents depend on trusted sources to start playing a new game and prefer specific genres or settings over others. Some of the reasons they play, or avoid, a game can be considered subjective – a game cannot be defined as beautiful with rigour, nor can its monetization be objectively characterised as ‘aggressive’. Game retailers can use sentiment analysis or trawl news outlets to gauge the prevailing opinion about aesthetics and monetization, and give prominence to certain games accordingly.

But our survey also indicates that many gamer preferences require a robust metadata framework – genres need to be well-defined if a store sets out to play up popular genres to all players, or specific genres to some of its clientele. Gamers who like to play something resembling a previous game need to be given suggestions using descriptors that can identify similarity precisely. A nuanced metadata framework can also identify the subtle but significant differences between two largely similar games, giving the user a better idea of what to expect from their new purchase.

Ultimately, the most robust game discovery or personalisation system will emerge when we understand why customers have the preferences they do, and we at Gameopedia are working to codify what drives user preferences. It is difficult to imagine that more than half of our client store’s customers prioritise genre for the same reasons. Some may like shooters for the adrenaline rush of its fast-paced action, and others may like interactive adventure games because of their strong narratives. If gamers prefer certain genres over others for specific reasons, game retailers can suggest other games that boast similar qualities to coax users into trying new genres. 

Our survey results thus indicate the need for a game metadata framework, and a deeper understanding of a user’s preferences, not only to improve conversions, but to truly understand, and satisfy, customer needs. 

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06 OctoberVideo Game Data ServicesVideo Game DatabaseVideo Game Genre

Managing Video Game Information on E-commerce Websites

by Kaavya Karthikeyan1 Comment

The video games industry is one of the fastest growing sectors in today’s world. Those who play video games tend to be some of the most enthusiastic and loyal customers when it comes to the games they love, as well as the most discerning. This sort of audience requires e-commerce stores who are looking to sell video games and associated merchandise to give them three things:

1. They need to provide a fantastic customer experience.
2. They need to provide the products their customers are looking for.
3. They should provide the customer with the ability to discover new gaming products that are right for them.

The gaming sector has been consistently growing over the last two decades, and is one of the few industries that has thrived during the pandemic. People stuck at home found video games a wonderful escape into a virtual, fun reality, leading to a 20% YoY growth from 2019. The market reached over $179 billion in global revenue, and it’s not slowing down. Another result of the pandemic is that bigger and bigger slices of this pie are moving online. Gaming marketplaces like Steam, GOG, and Epic Games, to name a few, are experiencing meteoric growth, demonstrating the increased comfort gamers have with e-commerce services.

Challenges That E-commerce Businesses Contend With

Video game e-commerce retailers deal with quite a few obstacles when it comes to increasing sales. Some of these are:

  • Maintaining customer loyalty and engagement:

Acquiring new customers costs three to five times more than keeping your existing ones. If your checkout processes aren’t easy and your website format is unattractive and hard to navigate, it’s unlikely that your customers will return or even stay on your site long enough to buy something.

  • Standing out amidst competition:

There are so many video game e-commerce portals out there right now, ranging from giants like Steam and Epic Games Store to smaller entities, as well as game developers and publishers directly selling their game. You need to figure out how to set yourself apart from your competitors who offer similar services or products. 

  • Obsolete and outdated technology:

If your technology is outdated or hard to use, it will limit your ability to sell. Whether it is your website or app, your billing solution, or any other feature, it has to be simple to use. Secondly, you need to be able to manage data security to ensure your customers’ confidential data is safe, as well as make sure your website’s functioning isn’t affected. If your data gets hacked, it will lead to a loss of trust.

  • Sourcing accurate data:

To ensure that your products are easily discoverable by your customers, it’s important that their specifications, related media, tags, and the like displayed are accurate and contain relevant information. This data should be periodically updated as needed.

When it comes to ensuring that your customers discover your products and services though, one of the most important factors is video game information/metadata.

Why Is Video Game Information Important In E-commerce

In our blog about video game metadata, we took a deep dive into what exactly metadata for video games is, as well as the different parties which need it. To quickly recap, gaming metadata is any information that gives the reader insight into the game. Everybody that is a part of the gaming ecosystem, from the retailer to the consumer, uses game metadata at some level.

With an exhaustive game metadata repository, you get access to descriptive tags and information, facts, and media that provide an in-depth understanding of the gaming product or service you are offering. This allows you to improve customer retention, engagement, and sales.

Vital Video Game Information

The format in which video game information is presented for a particular gaming product and how it is used can vary depending on the requirement, though there are some fields which most retailers/consumers need. These include:

Title

The title is the official game name in a particular region.

Alternate Title

Alternate Title covers unofficial or common titles associated with a game such as abbreviations.

Game Developers

Developers are the studio, organization, or people that are responsible for creating the video game.

Publishers

Publishers are the entity that is responsible for publishing the video game in a particular region.

Description

This is the official description or blurb of the game released by the developer/publisher.

Age Ratings

The official age ratings and descriptors for a game released by the competent authority in a particular region on a particular platform.

Reviews

Reviews from major editorials about the game.

Platforms the game has released on

Platform information tells consumers what platforms the game is playable on.

Video Game Release Date

The game’s release date in a particular region.

Barcodes

Official Barcodes of the game in a particular region.

SKU Number (From the store)

A SKU number is assigned to a product in order to identify specific information. It  stands for “Stock Keeping Unit” and is a code used to differentiate products typically by an alphanumeric combination of 8-or-so characters.

Screenshots

Screenshot captures from within the game which can showcase its setting, characters, and gameplay for consumers to see.

Trailers

Various gameplay and cinematic trailers released officially for the game.

Gameplay Videos

Gameplay videos are captures of the actual gameplay featuring its mechanics, artwork, graphics, music, and the like to show players in detail what they can expect.

Box Art

This is the cover a hardcopy of a game can come in.

Genres

This category describes the defining Genre of a game, which is a term that summarizes the core gameplay concepts and elements present within. A video game genre is assigned to a video game based solely on its gameplay, and not the story, narrative, or lore. 

Single-player/Multiplayer Info

This covers whether the game can be played in single player or multiplayer, as well as the type of multiplayer (if a multiplayer mode is available.)

Perspective

A video game perspective defines the orientation, position, and angle of the player’s viewpoint of the game. The Main Perspective refers to the perspective that is used most frequently through the game and most if not all of the game is presented to the player in this perspective. 

Gameplay Engine

This mentions the gameplay engine used to build the game.

Theme

The Theme of a video game broadly covers what the game is about. This section details the central theme of the game. A game may have more than one applicable theme.

Cross-play compatibility

Cross play compatibility refers to if users from different platforms such as PC, console, and mobile can play together in a session, as well as gives details about this.

Community Data

Community data covers things such as how many hours a gamer spent playing a particular game, the number of achievements they unlocked, the amount of progress, and other such factors.

In-game achievements

These are achievements which a user can garner within the video game, such as high scores and completionist trophies.

Relations 

These are relations the game might have to other games or gaming products such as prequels, sequels, DLCs, and expansion packs, to name a few.

Metadata for video games - Cyberpunk-2077
Metadata for video games Cyberpunk-2077

Best Practices For Video Game Metadata Management

We’ve established the importance of metadata for video games with respect to maximizing how your customers engage with your products and services. Here are some best practices which can help ensure that you’re utilizing the metadata you have optimally:

1. Have a well-defined strategy:

It helps to have a plan before you start out on incorporating metadata into your future projects. An important question you can ask yourself as you start is what your use cases are for metadata. If your main interest is selling video game console/PC games online, ensure you plan to maximize their visibility and reach with well-defined metadata.

This will help you align your metadata strategy to your business goals and identify important activities.

2. Figure out the scope for your metadata:

In order to focus your resources effectively, you need to analyze both current and future use cases for your gaming metadata. Based on this, you will know the requirements for your web pages and when you’re articulating a solution, you need to specify exactly how you will be doing so: how you will be capturing metadata, integrating it with your page, publishing it, and so on. This will drastically improve product discoverability on your video game e-commerce website or application.

3. Get your metadata from a reliable source and avoid crowdsourcing:

When it comes to obtaining your game-related metadata, the most commonly utilized method, crowdsourcing, often results in poor quality information. It’s easier for details to be incorrect or missed out on without expert curation and strict quality control. With a company like Gameopedia though, any metadata we provide you is run through multiple checks for quality and accuracy, ensuring the final data we give you is error-free.

4. Localize Metadata for the regions you’re selling in:

Quite often, video game information in various regions tend to differ from one another. This could be the game’s title, protagonist names, publishers, release date or other details. Ensuring your metadata is localized and updated for consumers is integral to a game’s discoverability. It can also boost sales on your gaming e-commerce website or portal drastically. Gameopedia has you covered here with extensive localized video game metadata coverage across four continents.

5. Optimize your E-commerce Portal to leverage metadata for Discoverability:

While this isn’t directly related to metadata, it ties in with management and can be used to ensure that as a video game retailer, your customers can find and buy the games they want. Some tips which can help make your website or portal optimal for your consumers are:

-Your customers should ideally be able to navigate to any page on your website in 3 clicks. Include genre categories as a side bar and a clearly visible navigation bar.
-Incorporating detailed video game information through metadata for every one of your available products is essential for delivering effective and relevant search results. Account for typos and misspellings while doing this.
-Implement cross-selling and upselling as much as you can in your website pages. If you see a customer interested in one particular game of a franchise, ensure that your website suggests deals related to not just that game but other ones from the series. Add games or products that are in-demand and trending to your home page.

Metadata management is a continuous activity which needs to be scaled with your organization. The sooner you can incorporate a process to go about it, the easier it will be for your team in the future. Make sure you conduct regular audits to help identify both problems and areas where improvements can be made.

Conclusion

Comprehensive and high quality video game metadata can massively improve discoverability, user engagement, and conversions, helping you capture a larger share of the consumer market. Reach out to us for industry leading video game information for over 180,000 games, spanning across 200 platforms for four continents.

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04 OctoberVideo Game DatabaseVideo Game Genre

Video Game Genre Trends Among Console Games In The Last Five Years

by Kaavya Karthikeyan0 Comments

In 2020, the video game industry clocked global revenues of nearly $180 billion, up from almost $150 billion in 2019. It’s one of the fastest growing ecosystems in the world, especially considering the effect the pandemic has had on people, with more and more of them looking to video games for entertainment. The console market has a solid fifth of this pie, making it an essential segment to focus on. We at Gameopedia want to understand why gamers love what they play.

People with different tastes go for various types of games. For example, some people like games that test their reflexes, others like to solve puzzles, while some of them just want to unwind and build their fantasy world. These types of games are commonly categorized into genres. We have already published a detailed guide to learn more about the different kinds of Video Game Genres if you’re interested. 

In this article, we will explore genre trends in the console market across the past five years, i.e. 2016-2020. 

Consoles Covered

  • PlayStation 4 – Launched in late 2013, the PlayStation 4 went on to sell more than 100 million units in its lifecycle, and served as the home for several bestselling games such as God of War, Horizon Zero Dawn, and The Last of Us Part II.
  • PlayStation 5 – Launched in late 2020, in the thick of the pandemic, the PlayStation 5 provides a significant hardware upgrade over its predecessor.
  • Xbox One – Launched in late 2013, the Xbox One started off weak against its rival, the PlayStation 4, and continued to lag behind in sales. It made up for this by providing support to older games through its backward compatibility feature, and later became known for its well-received Xbox Game Pass subscription.
  • Xbox Series X|S – Launched in late 2020 alongside the PlayStation 5, the Xbox Series X is touted to be the “World’s Most Powerful Console”. The other member in the family – the Xbox Series S – carries the tag of being the “smallest Xbox ever made”.
  • Nintendo 3DS – Launched in 2011, the 3DS was a popular handheld console whose USP was to display stereoscopic 3D effects without requiring the use of 3D glasses. The model had a long lifespan, getting discontinued in 2020.
  • New Nintendo 3DS – Launched in 2014, this is a prominent revision to the original 3DS, bringing along with it several hardware enhancements. Curiously, it got discontinued a year earlier than the original 3DS.
  • Nintendo Switch – Launched in 2017, the Nintendo Switch is a hybrid console that can switch between handheld and TV modes. This unique model quickly appealed to gamers worldwide, as the Switch shipped more than 14 million units in its first year.

As seen above, there are primarily three console brands, each with multiple devices available in the market during the study period. The newest entrants to the market – the PlayStation 5 and the Xbox Series X|S – arrived in November 2020, marking a new generation of consoles.

Put together, the games released for the above consoles represent a diverse mix, ranging from titles developed by a studio with hundreds of employees to a solo developer working tirelessly on their dream. They also represent a large mix of genres, catering to the varying tastes of the gaming market. When you want to analyze this data, Gameopedia’s expertise with game metadata and taxonomy come in handy.

Our Analysis of Video Game Genre Trends among Console Games

We utilized Gameopedia’s extensive database to build the dataset to be used for the study.

Since the focus of this study is on genre trends among console games, we built a list of games that were released on at least one of the above-mentioned platforms. Each game in our database is classified into one or more Genres. Further, we also took note of the game type, whose definitions are given below:

  • AAA Games – These are games developed by large teams, backed by a huge budget, ensuring the production values are high. The scope of these games is similar to that of a blockbuster film. Only a handful of established studios across the world currently work on producing AAA games, and they are usually accompanied by a sizable marketing budget as well. Some examples of this type include Resident Evil Village, Returnal, and Ghost of Tsushima.
  • AA Games – These games are developed by smaller teams as compared to AAA games, and have relatively smaller budgets and scale. Mid-sized and Major publishers are both known to develop AA games on occasion. Some examples of this type include A Plague Tale: Innocence, The Outer Worlds, and It Takes Two.
  • Indie Games – While the word “Indie” stands for Independent, “indie game” is a term often used to describe games that have been built by extremely small teams (sometimes even consisting of a solo developer), with a minuscule budget compared to the other two game types. A smaller scale does not mean a smaller game however, and indie games are well-known to be creative and innovative. Some popular indie games include Gone Home, Untitled Goose Game, and Stardew Valley.

After building our dataset, we analyzed the number of releases across genres observed over the past five years. We also took note of the number of releases across each game type and looked for patterns.

Since the goal of this study is to examine trends among primary genres, we have excluded sub-genres from our dataset. Before going further into the study, it is important to explain how we define a ‘genre’ and ‘sub-genre’. 

Simply put, any genre that isn’t a defining characteristic of the game is treated as a sub-genre. For example, an adventure game might contain a few levels where the player is required to solve simple puzzles to progress. However, solving puzzles isn’t the defining characteristic of the game. Players do not buy that specific game with the intent to solve puzzles. In this case, Puzzle becomes the game’s sub-genre, indicating that the game has a few puzzles, but they aren’t the main focus of the game. A game can have multiple genres and sub-genres.

Our Game Insights

Overall Genre Distribution from 2016-2020

AA Genre Trends

This graph showcases the major variations in genre trends across the last five years related to AA games.

AAA Genre Trends

This graph showcases the major variations in genre trends across the last five years related to AAA games.

Indie Genre Trends

This graph showcases the major variations in genre trends across the last five years related to Indie games.

It is immediately apparent from the study that two genres feature consistently at the top every year – Action and Adventure. This is true for each game type and each year. Some of the popular games belonging to these two genres over the past five years include Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End (Action, Adventure), Red Dead Redemption 2 (Adventure), Super Mario Odyssey (Action, Adventure, Platform), Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War (Action, Shooter), and Battlefield 1 (Action, Shooter).

Action and adventure games have been and will always be extremely popular amidst gamers because they bring to the table the two best things about gaming: escapism and involvement. As the protagonist of these games, you usually have a great deal of power as well as choose how to use it to change the world(s) you’re in. With the advancement of technology, the setting of the game as well as the abilities your character has are only getting more and more awesome, so these genres will always be popular.

Super Mario Odyssey: 5 things that could make it epic

Action games aren’t necessarily violent all the time. Super Mario Odyssey, Nintendo.

Following the top two are a few genres that jostle for third place with varying results across the game types and over the years. One genre that keeps cropping up here is the Shooter genre.

Shooter games are arguably one of the most popular kinds of game, no matter how you define popularity. Are we talking sales? The annual Call of Duty games consistently feature among the bestselling games each year. Are we talking about actual playtime? Some of the most played games in the world are shooters – Counter Strike: Global Offensive, Fortnite, and PUBG: Battlegrounds, to name just a few. And yes, even in our own study, we noticed that across all game types, the Shooter genre did feature in the top 3 in every year except one. Nothing quite gets one’s adrenaline pumping like a high intensity firefight. As newer shooter games come out, the social aspect related to these games is under constant enhancement as well with an increased focus on tactics, team coordination, and communication. This keeps the genre ever-beloved, be it single-player or multiplayer titles.

Next up is the puzzle genre, which is among the most beloved genres in the market, although this is not immediately visible. Games like The Witness (Adventure, Puzzle) and Tetris Effect (Action, Puzzle) may not receive as much publicity as a highly-marketed AAA game like Cyberpunk 2077 (Adventure, Role-Playing). However, they are well-received by the market and have a dedicated audience.

Puzzle games are a good way to unwind at the end of the day. Tetris Effect, Enhance Games.

It is no wonder then, that indie games feature the most amount of releases for the Puzzle genre, where it consistently features in the top 3 or top 5 at worst. It features among the top 10 for AA games, while it is entirely absent from the top 10 list for AAA games. This makes a lot of sense because compared to action, adventure, or even shooter games, puzzle games don’t need to be as graphics-intensive or have a complex setting. They’re more about gameplay and engaging their audience, and thus, easier for smaller studios to make.

Another genre that has proven to be consistently, quietly popular are Role-Playing games. This is a genre that never quite reached the top in terms of number of releases, but makes its presence felt nonetheless. Among AAA games, Role-playing games featured among the top 3 most-released genres for every year, while it did so for four straight years for AA games, losing out the third place in 2020.

Nothing beats exploring an alien world on a Saturday night. The Outer Worlds, Take-Two.

Curiously, a lot of indie publishers seemed to avoid releasing Role-Playing games, as the genre always made up less than 5% of all indie game releases in any year. This explains why some of the most well-received Role-Playing Games of the past five years are all AA/AAA titles. Some of these include Final Fantasy VII Remake (Role-Playing), The Outer Worlds (Role-Playing, Adventure), and Assassin’s Creed Odyssey (Role-Playing, Adventure). It makes sense if you think about it: the most popular RPGs are those with beautiful, rich, detailed worlds and elegant gameplay mechanics, which might be hard for indie gamemakers to create when compared to AA/AAA studios.

Similar to Role-Playing games, indie publishers didn’t release a lot of games in the Sports genre in the past five years. These games however have been consistently popular with AA/AAA publishers. It is easy to point out that there are a few annual sport franchises – FIFA, NBA 2K, Madden NFL, NHL – which make up for the bulk of sales and media attention each year. However, this study takes into account the number of game releases each year, and the above-mentioned franchises are but a tiny percent of the overall pie. 

What comes to mind is how most of these games facilitate online gameplay with players around the world. Competition is a key feature of these games; whether you’re playing against your buddies for fun or taking part in a high-stakes tournament, you’ll end up enjoying yourself. The real-world element that a lot of sports games provide as well, with references to actual athletes and teams help it to stand out and have a dedicated group of consumers. This genre provides a very unique experience which accounts for its consistent popularity.

Riding down dangerous curves. MotoGP 20, Milestone.

Among AA games, the genre features among the top 10 consistently, with 2020 being its best year, where it broke into the top 3. This year saw the release of such games as Rugby 20 (Sports), MotoGP 20 (Sports, Racing, Simulation) and Football Manager 2021 (Sports, Simulation, Strategy). Now let us turn our attention to a genre that is popular with indie game publishers, and not so much with the AA/AAA publishers.

Looks simple, but isn’t. Celeste, Matt Makes Games.

The Platform genre is one of the oldest genres in the industry. Classic games such as Donkey Kong (Action, Platform) and Super Mario Bros (Action, Platform) were pioneers of the Platform genre, and it was popular with AAA publishers for a long time. Franchises such as Prince of Persia, Tomb Raider and Uncharted made their name by being excellent platforming games. However, of late, the genre is fast disappearing from AA/AAA titles, and has found a new home among the indie scene.

The numbers indicate that the genre either features at the very bottom of the list or doesn’t make the top 10 list at all for AA/AAA released in the past five years. For indie games however, it always features in the top 5, with the total percent of releases falling between 9 – 12% each year. Some popular platform games released recently include Super Meat Boy Forever (Platform, Action), New Super Lucky’s Tale, (Platform, Adventure, Action) and Celeste (Action, Platform). This is an interesting trend: if you look at these games, they’re intuitive, easy to understand while challenging to master, and have very unique art styles. While they aren’t always as technically groundbreaking as releases from bigger publishers tend to be, they nevertheless satisfy the most important rule of game-making: they’re fun!

Conclusion

Just like any other market, the stakeholders in the video game industry are constantly aware of changing trends and try to appeal to their consumers. While it’s safe to say that games featuring a combination of the Action, Adventure, and Shooter genres will continue being a safe bet for now, the market is wide open for a broad mixture of genres to be explored.

The fact that the same genres do not appear among the most released games every single year is a strong indicator of a market that is eager to try something new, while still having something familiar to return to at the end of the day.

No matter what combination of genres game publishers come up with over the next five years, you can be assured that we at Gameopedia will always be here. We’re ready to guide you through the exciting world of video games with our game comparison and sentiment analysis tools, as well as other interesting projects we have in the works. Drop us a line if we can help you with anything!

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18 MarchVideo Game Data ServicesVideo Game DatabaseVideo Game GenreVideo Game Metadata

The Definitive Database Of Video Games

by Abhishek0 Comments

With an estimated market size of $167.5 billion, the video game industry has come a long way since its humble beginnings around fifty years ago. Once marketed almost exclusively towards kids and teens, video games have now matured to create unique experiences for adults as well. This is helped by the fact that the children who grew up playing video games in the 20th century stuck to their hobby and are now adult gamers.

A natural consequence of this evolution is that there are now multiple genres of games to choose from, with each game further having several sub-genres and other elements that make it unique. Even for the most passionate gamer, it can be hard to keep track of the multitude of games arriving in the market each year. This is one of the reasons for the existence of a Video Game Database.

What is a Video Game Database?

A Video Game Database contains intricate video game data on multiple aspects of each game. There were some databases that started in the 1990s, became popular and in fact continue to thrive today. These were almost always crowd-sourced and worked as a good source for gamers and enthusiasts. 

Since then, Video Game Databases have continued to evolve and gave rise to niche Professional Databases for more intricate requirements. They are maintained by teams of video game experts, who take great care in curating the data entered into the database. Their goal is to provide curated and classified high-quality video game data for the gaming ecosystem. 

Before we dive deeper into the two types of databases mentioned above, let us examine the need for a Video Game Database in the first place.

The Need For A Database Of Video Games

With thousands of video games releasing on just one popular marketplace (Steam) every year, it is clear to anyone who works in the industry that there needs to be a process through which one can organize and study data regarding major releases. This is where a database of video games comes into the picture. A properly managed database can provide accurate information about an assortment of games.

The two major types of Video Game Databases – crowdsourced and professionally managed – are both essential to organize and understand the huge stream of data pouring in each year. This video game data, when used efficiently, has several applications, the most prominent of which is to help consumers make smart purchases.

Now let us compare the two major types of databases, looking at the benefits and limitations of each one.

Crowdsourced vs Professional Databases

Video Game Database

What does a Video Game Database contain?

  • Video Game Metadata (Basic information) – This includes information like the game’s release date, developer/publisher, age ratings, release platforms, and so on. Video game metadata is used to quickly identify core information about a game, which can then be used to find games with similar data. 
  • Game Breakdown/Teardown  – A breakdown/teardown of a game breaks down the various concepts and components that make up a game, to analyze what makes it tick. This builds upon the information included in the metadata and adds on data like Genre, Gameplay Actions, Game Concepts (Design choices used in the game), Perspective, Types of Elements used (weapons, mods, and so on). Building upon information collected in a game breakdown, Games can be classified into groups. This classification helps in identifying patterns between games. 
  • Game-related multimedia– These include screenshots, high-definition trailers, and gameplay videos.
  • Relations – This information analyzes how a game is related to other games in a series or franchise. For example, a series includes games that continue their story with sequels. An example of this is the Halo series. A franchise is a group of games that all revolve around a common theme, but have their individual stories. An example of this is the Assassin’s Creed franchise (which, interestingly, also has a series of sequels included)

This varied mix of information enriches the value that a database can provide, giving rise to many potential applications. So, who exactly taps into this potential?

Who Needs A Database Of Video Games?

  • eCommerce Stores – Digital game purchases have gone up by leaps and bounds in recent years. This makes it important for online game stores to ensure that they provide accurate data that are always up to date about each game to their customers using high quality video game metadata. It is also in their interest to provide smart game recommendations for returning customers. These recommendations are powered by algorithms, which in turn need a database to feed them.
  • Game Developers & Publishers – Market research is a key phase in the development of any video game amidst the video game industry. Game developers of all sizes spend a considerable amount of time analyzing the in-trend game features and their competitors’ games to make their games better. Such video game data can easily be provided by a professional database.
  • Advertisers – Advertisers can use video game data for creating better ads, powered by sentiment analysis. This allows advertisers to pick an opportune moment to run their campaign, by reaching out to a targeted and engaged audience, that is already invested in the kind of game(s) being advertised.
  • Media outlets – As competition heats up in the media space, larger outlets can differentiate themselves from their competitors by providing richer and up-to-date video game data to their users via an API that is powered by a stream of data fed by a Video Game Database. The data is then supplemented with high-quality screenshots, trailers and artwork related to the games. 

And it’s not just limited to these four; many digital distribution platforms, gaming websites and forums also require access to an up-to-date video game database.

Conclusion

The recent boom in gaming due to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic is expected to sustain well into the future. As the number of gamers across the world increases, businesses in the video game industry will need to serve this rising audience more efficiently. Using the functions of a well-maintained database is a step in the right direction.

Gameopedia’s professionally maintained database and high quality video game data can serve multiple needs of businesses in the gaming industry. We provide a vast array of customizable services, powered by our database that contains more than 5 million video game facts/insights and up to 13,000 Game attributes for more than 180,000 games.

Our database keeps growing every day and we are excited to work in the dynamic, ever-changing video game industry. Get in touch with us to know more.

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10 MarchVideo Game Data ServicesVideo Game DatabaseVideo Game Metadata

Everything You Need To Know About Metadata For Video Games

by Abhishek0 Comments

What is Video Game Metadata?

Metadata describes an item, i.e. it is any information that summarizes basic details about the item, which can make finding and working with particular data easier.  For example, the ingredients listed behind a box of cookies is metadata describing the contents of the cookie. 

Similarly, video game metadata refers to descriptors about the game that not only give you an overview of the game like the developer’s name, publisher’s name, release date, game description, and so on, but it also helps the people using this video game data easily understand what the game has to offer without having to purchase or play the game themselves.

What Constitutes Video Game Metadata

Video game metadata could be any information that gives the reader insights about the game. From the release date to the game franchise it belongs to, any information that tells us something about the game can be considered game metadata.

Let’s take the example of Borderlands 3 – an action role-playing first-person shooter. The metadata for this game would look something like this.

Metadata for video games

The information above may appear to be basic but its applications are invaluable to certain sections of the industry. 

This leads to our next question:

Who Needs Metadata For Video Games?

Everybody that is a part of the gaming ecosystem, from the retailer to the consumer, uses video game metadata at some level. The format in which the data is presented and how it is used can vary depending on the requirement. Let us explore this in detail. 

e-Retailers & App Stores

A retailer’s goal is to engage their customer and attend to their needs or solve a problem they have. 

Your first thought might have been retailers want to sell more but it might be more prudent in the long run to gain the trust and loyalty of their existing user base. And gamers are a loyal bunch.

The best way to gain a gamer’s trust? Understand what you are selling inside out. 

With detailed and descriptive metadata and good metadata management policies, the store can display the right games to the customer most likely to buy them. What are these “right games”? They are games which have the features that a customer wants, or a game by the same developer whose earlier work the customer enjoyed for example. This is information that the customer needs to make a decision. By offering the right games, the store improves not just the customer’s user experience but also instills a certain sense of loyalty in them. You gain their trust by putting the customer first with recommendations and search results that solve their problem.

Let’s consider the example of Cyberpunk 2077. Even though it was the most anticipated game of 2020, not everybody was looking forward to the game. This segment of your user base would prefer not to be inundated with content and promotional material regarding the game. For these users, “Cyberpunk 2077” is the definition of not being the “right game”.

Metadata for video games - Cyberpunk-2077

Combining comprehensive game metadata with user behavior, your game store can display content that actually appeals to the audience, making their experience more personalized and improving conversions. But above all, you put the customer first, building their trust in you and retaining their loyalty.

For more information, have a look at our video game metadata offerings for e-Retailers.

Advertisers

People use the same item for different purposes. These purposes are defined by the users’ requirement. For example, while a gamer could be looking for a mouse suitable for gaming, an office employee will look for a mouse more suited for day-to-day use. Depending on their requirement, the features they are looking for can also change.

This means that to advertise the right product to the right consumer, it is vital to understand the “why” and not just the “what”. That way, you don’t just show the user the item that they were looking for, but you also solve their problem.

Let us look at this through the example of a game. The “Mario Kart” franchise is an incredibly popular series of games, having sold over 150 million copies worldwide. These games are enjoyed across all age-groups, by gamers who have different expectations from their gaming habit. 

Mario Kart 8 Deluxe Metadata

Some gamers play because they like to win. They like competitive games.  There are those who play games purely as a social activity that they indulge in with family or friends. There’s another group of gamers who have a hard day at work, and would like to unwind in the evening, without having to worry about complex plotlines or learn advanced gameplay mechanics. 

The beauty of “Mario Kart” is that it has something for all the types of gamers described above, but an advertiser can’t expect to use one campaign to reach out to all three groups. Trying to sell a game in the “Mario Kart” series requires using a different pitch to sell to each of these three kinds of gamers. To do that, they need to understand how to appeal to these target demographics. What keywords do they look out for when making a game purchase? What features do they expect from a game? Do they expect their games to look simple, or photorealistic with complex mechanics?

Hence, the advertisers should not only align with “what” the consumer is looking for but also the “why”. With comprehensive game metadata, ad networks can improve their targeting, making it more personalized while providing context to why the said product is best suited for your needs, and not just the best on the market.

Advertisers can learn more about our data offerings that can benefit their campaigns.

ACR Platforms

With the rise of OTT platforms, we have seen a significant need for Automatic Content Recognition (ACR) – identification technology that utilizes a large database to recognize content (video, audio, or digital images) played on a media device. Using this technology, ACR platforms can not only extract user-specific viewing data like time of viewing, show title, and genre, but also prevent third-parties from pirating online content.

For example, major appliance providers like LG and Samsung do not have a way to track what content is being played on their Smart TVs via gaming consoles, making it difficult for these brands to understand user behavior and interests. Instead, they have to depend on the device manufacturer or third-party providers for this information.

In a world where gaming has become everyone’s new favorite pastime, this information is gold, and paying for this data is not feasible in the long term. This led to manufacturers using ACR to bridge this gap. 

ACR platforms utilize thousands of “fingerprinted” content to use as a reference in identifying the viewer’s on-screen content. With comprehensive game metadata, ACR platforms can tag game videos and screenshots with descriptive tags that describe key characteristics or elements that can be used to identify a specific piece of content.  

Read more on our data offerings for ACR Platforms.

Why Do You Need Metadata For Video Games?

Improve Search Results and Product Discoverability

In a study carried out by Kotaku, 40% of purchased games are never even played. From this information, it is clear that there are people to play games but they can never find the right one. So, to get the right game to the right individual, it is important to catalog these games properly using specialized video game data and metadata management practices.

With an exhaustive game metadata repository, you get access to descriptive tags and information that provide an in-depth understanding of the gaming product or service you are offering. This allows you to improve product placement and discovery.

For example, if a customer is interested in purchasing a popular RPG game called “The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt”, they would understand from the description that the game is an open world Action RPG with a medieval setting. But if they wanted to understand to what extent the open world and RPG elements are present in the game, they could be presented with additional information by using descriptive tags. For this game, some tags would be, “Open World (Defining)”, “Action (Key Feature)”, and “Role Playing (Defining)”. 

From these tags, the customer understands that the game heavily features open world and Role Playing features, while Action elements are strongly present without being the main focus. This additional layer of information can strengthen the customer’s resolve to purchase the game.

Understand and Use Your Data Effectively

The most common problem faced by people working with video game data is that it is not ‘clean’, i.e. it is not organized and easy to understand. This makes working with data difficult and time-consuming. 

With comprehensive metadata, people can make sense of the data presented to them quicker. This reduces turn-around times, and improves the quality of insights derived from the data. Conventionally sourced data would require a great deal of fact-checking and cleaning before you’re sure it’s employable. However, using an organized and quality-checked dataset and good metadata management practices, such as the ones provided by Gameopedia, means you can utilize it right away. 

Improve Trust in Your Data

Organized game data and information, collected in a standardized manner, means that the data is immediately ready for use and its in-depth nature provides transparency that would have been difficult to achieve otherwise.  Gameopedia has a proven track record in delivering standardized metadata consistently, with all the definitions and use cases being agreed upon by a team of gaming experts.

Properly managed video game metadata can help organizations better trust the collected data because they know that the information is curated in an organized manner.

The video game data that we collect can be used for a variety of purposes. How much data you collect and how you use it is at your discretion.  Powerful, descriptive metadata and proper metadata management makes the data easier to understand and use irrespective of the volume.

At Gameopedia, we look to provide informative game metadata to every member of the gaming ecosystem in order to empower their efforts and capture the gaming market. Reach out to us to leverage the power of our data that encompasses over 180,000 games spanning 200 platforms. 

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01 MarchVideo Game Data ServicesVideo Game DatabaseVideo Game GenreVideo Game Taxonomy

The Urgent Need For A New Game Taxonomy

by Abhishek0 Comments

As video games become more complex and have increasingly intricate features, there is a long overdue need for a new, comprehensive Video Game Taxonomy for 2021. In this blog, we will look at the need for a new taxonomy, as well the industries who need these levels of video game classification.

In the last decade, video games have become the world’s favorite pastime. With this massive expansion of the market, every member of the gaming ecosystem, from developers to retailers, now have a larger audience to build games for and sell them to. 

However, selling to this audience can be tricky. Developers and publishers need to understand the complicated formula that works for successful games and then build on it. Retailers, who now have thousands of games to feature on their portals, need to correctly identify and recommend titles that a customer is likely to buy based on their preferences. This is where a comprehensive, flexible, and actionable taxonomy comes into play.

The Definitive Video Game Taxonomy

Today’s games are complex works of art that are designed to continuously engage a wide audience. To think that only one aspect of a game makes it special is definitely foolish. For example, Candy Crush belongs to the Match-3 Puzzle genre, but is this the mechanic what led to its enormous success?

The answer is no.

The leaderboard, new level additions, timer, move-limit, and reward systems are some of the other attributes of the game that incentive the player to keep returning to the game. More screen time means more ad impressions which translates into more income for the developer, publisher, and ad networks. 

As you can tell from the example above, there are multiple factors that play a part in the success of a game. To identify the importance of these aspects in the game is what matters. And this is where Gameopedia’s Values System comes into play.

The Values System

Gameopedia has been delivering insightful game data to some of the biggest companies in the world since 2008. In the last 12 years, we have created detailed video game breakdowns for over 180,000 games. Over time, we have come to realize that while a genre, feature-set, mechanics, and graphic style may be useful in providing a high-level description about the game, it does not do justice to describe what the game has to offer. 

To help with this, we introduced a rating system that assigns a value to feature-sets and mechanics to help evaluate their importance within the game. Going back to Candy Crush, here is how our video game classification framework would break down the game:

This unique view into the anatomy of a game can reveal information that otherwise would have gone unnoticed. For example, although Puzzle is the main genre of the game, there are certain important attributes of the game like the Beat the Clock mechanic that is more prominently seen in Action games. Clearly, to exclude Action as a Genre would be foolish but it is definitely not more important than solving the Match-3 Puzzle when it comes to game progression.  

This extra layer to the data allows for a more comprehensive look into the game and its offerings. Additionally, you can identify exactly what makes the game popular among its audience and how it can be improved or modified to appeal to another demographic.

The Importance of Detail in Video Game Classification

Starting with Pong in the 70s, video games have evolved from a simple digital game with a couple of controls into more complex entities with multiple characters, storylines, mechanics, and so on. In this multi-billion dollar industry, game developers and publishers are innovating daily to engage a community with a goldfish-like short-lived memory. 

To break into the market, it is important that studios understand market trends, analyse their competition, and identify popular features to gain video game insights. But with thousands of games hitting the shelves each year, it is difficult to recognise what a new game can offer. This is where a well-defined, in-depth, and flexible Video Game Taxonomy can help. 

A comprehensive Game Taxonomy lets you deep-dive into every, single aspect of the game and decode where each feature and mechanic fits in the overall scheme. It also gives you insights into how the developer has designed the game to make it not just enjoyable, but profitable as well.  

How Gameopedia does Video Game Breakdowns using our Game Taxonomy

Let’s take a look at two of the most popular open-world games in the market today: Grand Theft Auto V and Mafia II. Both are relatively well-known but one is clearly more popular than the other. The reason for the crowd loving Grand Theft Auto V more than Mafia II is because of the well-thought out, vast world. Our video game breakdown reveals that Rockstar Games created a dynamic open-world environment with multiple side-missions, heists, and DLC content that immerses the player thoroughly, keeping them in a trance. Mafia II on the other hand, serves the purpose of delivering a more linear story experience, while still allowing the player to explore the open-world.

Both games have been successful in their objective and have proven profitable for their respective publishers. But for someone looking to replicate this success, it is necessary to understand what made each game tick.

Industry-Defining Game Taxonomy Designed With A Purpose In Mind

A comprehensive Video Game Taxonomy has use cases for a wide range of beneficiaries. Gameopedia’s Taxonomy has been created while keeping the pain points and requirements of the gaming ecosystem in mind. 

Retailers – They can help their customers find better results for the kind of games they are looking for. For example, a customer may want to purchase a shooter game. This is a huge genre that has drastically different games that can show up in a search result. A single-player game like Metro Exodus and a multiplayer title like Halo 5 are both shooters, but they are each meant for a different target audience. A well-defined taxonomy can help narrow down the results to suit the customer’s preferences, thus helping the retailer maximise the chances of a sale. 

Advertisers – Advertisers can benefit from a good Video Game Taxonomy by having access to better ad targeting tools that are built by measuring trends in the community. Understanding the current mood towards popular genres and using these video game insights can help advertisers focus their attention towards maximising returns from markets that are highly receptive.

Developers/Publishers – In order to ensure that their in-development game will get a strong start at launch, developers and publishers need to understand the market and analyze their competition. Releasing a game in a particular genre when there is negative sentiment in the market towards that genre can be bad for business. Similarly, releasing a game that is too similar to the competition can also be bad news. Therefore it is essential to do the research beforehand in order to come up with a strong launch strategy. This can be achieved by making use of a comprehensive Video Game Taxonomy and game classification to understand the competition as well as the market.

Conclusion

A good Video Game Taxonomy should ideally be consistent, flexible, and most importantly, up-to-date to keep in touch with evolving market preferences. 

At Gameopedia, our team of experts are constantly at work analyzing the changing trends in the video game market. Our taxonomy is well-researched and built to ensure that the most important aspects are covered accurately. It is vital that you have a good video game classification system such as ours to provide accurate video game breakdowns and get high quality video game insights. If you have a business problem that requires a customized solution powered by a comprehensive Video Game Taxonomy, get in touch with us to start making better business decisions using game data.

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30 DecemberVideo Game Data ServicesVideo Game DatabaseVideo Game GenreVideo Game MetadataVideo Game Taxonomy

How e-Retailers can boost Game Discoverability with Quality Game Content

by Valmik Kumar0 Comments

The ability to collect from and analyse vast pools of information is expected of all enterprises with a digital footprint. This represents an increasing number of businesses and operations every year.

With more than one-third of all global retailers selling the majority of their products via digital platforms, and the rest expecting the gap between physical and digital retail to shrink ever further in the coming years, it is becoming ever more imperative for e-Retailers and App Stores to streamline their data usage in order to improve uniformity, efficiency, and cost. 

In order to take advantage of the ripe condition of the digital retail market, there needs to be both a mechanism for sourcing large quantities of data, as well as the ability to analyse, categorise, and easily communicate what that data means.

This is especially true in the video game industry, which is growing exponentially, both in terms of overall sales, but also in terms of how many of those sales are switching over to digital retailing.  

PC gaming has steadily been shifting from physical sales to digital sales, with the ratio being 4:1 in favor of physical sales in 2009 in the US, to an almost directly inverse 1:4 in favor of digital sales by 2018. Gaming app download revenue was responsible for $20.9 billion, or 72.3% of all app revenue for Q3 2020, across both iOS and Android app stores. 

As a result of the current global pandemic, which has led many customers to turn to digital options for their needs, Sony has seen the digital sales for their console games grow by 154% this year alone, in comparison to their physical sales growth of 1%. In the same year, for the first time in their history, more than 50% of all their gaming revenue came from digital sales. This trend tracks similarly for other major game developers. A major reason for improved digital sales is good usage of video game taxonomy and metadata.

What is Video Game Metadata?

Game metadata consists of descriptors about the game that not only give you an overview of the game like the developer’s name, publisher’s name, release date, game description, and so on, but it also allows the people who use this data to easily understand what the game has to offer and game content without having to purchase or play the game yourself.

Video Game Metadata

How Stores Benefit from Quality Metadata and Game Content

Video game metadata can be vital in increasing product discovery, as well as providing an enhanced customer experience for discerning customers keen to know more about a product, especially via a digital platform. This increases the transparency offered by a digital retail platform, further increasing the likelihood of a purchase, as well as the customer returning. Video game taxonomy helps in classifying and organizing games which makes it easier for your customers to find what they need.

The presentation of certain keywords regarding genre or gameplay specifications will also greatly enhance a platform’s SEO, allowing visibility across search engines, while simultaneously increasing visibility of related products on the app store or e-retail platform. Powerful video game taxonomy allows retailers to bolster their in-house personalization and search solutions.

Good metadata and  game content is capable of guiding the customer from when they arrive at the app store or e-retailer platform till the point at which they make a purchase. During the discoverability phase, keywords, SEO classifications, and relevant images help the customer along this journey. A varied database improves the targeting of a wider array of customers, leading to increased conversions.

An estimated 65% of users barely swipe or scroll beyond the first images and text they see. The remaining users, however, prefer to examine their products in detail. Access to well-organised video game metadata and game content caters to both types of users. In addition to this, the smart deployment of a well-curated database can keep customers engaged for longer periods, improving website traffic.

Despite the rapidly growing state of the global digital market, the presence of high-quality video game metadata remains minimal. In 2020, most e-retailers and app stores rely on data provided to them by suppliers, and their own in-house collection and sorting. This is an expensive and cumbersome process, with supplier data varying in its quantity, quality, and clarity.

How can e-retailers and App Stores gain the Competitive Edge in Video Game Metadata?

In place of these expensive and inconsistent options, e-retailers and app stores are better served seeking out services and products that specialize in providing metadata collection and curation.

This allows retailers to avoid the hassle and expense of organizing and maintaining their own databases, freeing up their time and capital to be invested elsewhere. It also ensures the accuracy and uniformity of game information across platforms. By utilizing a pre-existing and well-curated database for video game taxonomy, game content, and metadata, e-retailers and app stores will be able to improve existing personalization and product discovery with detailed descriptive tags and metadata.

With that being the case, an even wider, more varied customer base is likely to turn towards e-retailers and app stores for their video game needs. The ability to provide these customers with the most relevant information, organised and classified according to their individual search and spending patterns and quirks by using video game taxonomy, game content, and metadata, is a provably successful way of increasing the frequency a customer returns to purchase more.

With a database spanning 40 years of video game metadata across over 200 platforms, this is where Gameopedia and our products shine. We specialize in a niche suite of data services that improve game discoverability, enhance customer experiences, and increase conversion. Reach out to us for industry leading video game information for over 180,000 games.

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