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An Ontology for Role Playing Games

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SBC – Proceedings of SBGames 2018 — ISSN: 2179-2259 Computing Track – Short Papers

An Ontology for Role Playing Games

Artur O. R. Franco, Túlio V. Rolim, Alexandre M. M. Santos,

José W. F. Silva, Vânia M. P. Vidal, Fernando A. C. Gomes, Miguel F. Castro, José G. R. Maia
Universidade Federal do Ceará
Fortaleza, Ceará, Brazil
Email: {artur.fhtagn,tulio.xcrtf,magnomont12}@gmail.com, [email protected], {vvidal,fernando,miguel}@lia.ufc.br

Abstract—In this paper, we introduce a new, comprehen- in computing this term became widely known due to its
sive ontology specially designed for modeling Role-Playing use for the representation of knowledge [6]. There are
Games semantics. We build on top of a foundational ontology different definition of ontologies, as can be observed from
approach, namely Unified Foundational Ontology, to cover
elements from Interactive Storytelling and aspects from a the following definitions found in literature [7] [8] [9] [10].
game’s narrative. Experimental results using two well-known,
representative titles from the electronic and the analog sup- A. Brief Literature Survey
ports, respectively, shows promising flexibility and effectiveness The Video Game Ontology (VGO) [10] aimed at the in-
in terms of competency questions. teroperability between games and providing the exchange of
Keywords-games; rpg; ontologies; semantic web; information. This model covers characters, items, and events
happening between the games, by extending an approach
I. I NTRODUCTION initially proposed in [11]. A similar, previous approach [12]
According to Tim Bernets Lee [1], endowing web data named Digital Game Ontology was shown to be sufficiently
with significance will make it possible for computers and capable of processing a wide variety of concepts and events
people to interact more seamlessly. This is a core goal from digital games as pieces of media. These authors sought
of the Semantic Web, but electronic games stand out as to produce an ontology suitable for applications related to
research opportunities for exploring other medias [2]. Doran game production, activities, and players’ experience. Other
and Parberry [3] analyzed adventures from four Massive works [13] propose to facilitate the identification of technical
Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPG) titles requirements in game design through an Ontology in support
in order to realize which elements of this genre that could be of Games Development.
recommended for automatic quest generation models. Their Existing game concepts were exposed to model a new
study is limited to the MMORPG genre, thus excluding other ontology that represents general aspects of serious games
rich models such as text adventures, tabletop Role Playing [14] resorting to a formalized model and language capable of
Game (RPG), and electronic RPG played online. supporting the creation of new game-specific content. Sacco
This work aims to provide an improved semantic model, et al. [15] present a vocabulary for describing character
which is necessary to consult and discuss a given material information in digital games, and also an ontology that can
in common for these RPG platforms. Models, methods, be used to define information extracted from several different
and techniques already applied in the context of semantic data sources of game characters. Kritz et ak. [16] developed
web are reused and adapted for tackling the challenges an ontology that represents Game Mechanics based on the
regarding “semantic games” [2]. Within the context of RPGs, categories presented on BoardGameGeek.com through the
we already can find ontologies such as the one proposed formal concepts of the well-known MDA Mechanics, Dy-
by Djuric and Konecki [4], which fits well to a part of namics, and Aesthetics framework [17]. The general purpose
RPGs, but cannot extract other simple information about of these studies was to represent generic aspects of games
adventures, quests, and other concepts which are central for and their components, hence there a lack of comprehensive
typical applications of RPG game semantics [3]. We propose models developed specifically to handle the RPG domain.
a comprehensive ontology specially designed for modeling Okrea and Schatten [9] present a mixture between an
RPG games for semantic applications, which is built on ontology of organizational concepts, adequate for the de-
top of Unified Foundational Ontology (UFO) [5] and covers velopment ofLarge-scale Multi-Agent Systems (LSMAS), in
elements from Interactive Storytelling (IS). conjunction with an ontology composed of the elements
found in the MMORPG title The Mana World 2[18]. By
II. R ELATED W ORK proposing this combination, these authors emphasizes es-
In the vast field of philosophy, ontologies are applied in pecially the identification of elements and organizational
the study of the nature and existence of elements, while aspects they argue are appropriate to the development of LS-

XVII SBGames – Foz do Iguaçu – PR – Brazil, October 29th – November 1st, 2018
SBC – Proceedings of SBGames 2018 — ISSN: 2179-2259 Computing Track – Short Papers

TABLE I. C OMPARISON OF R ELATED W ORK

games. In addition, the practices from IS and their criteria
Ontoloy Approaches
Reuse Storytelling
UFO regarding planning are also considered in this first attempt
[19] X - - to incorporate IS planning models [3] [21] to understand
[4] X - - the actions and controls. This allows for diversity and depth
[9] X - -
This paper X X X
when players affect histories with their actions. The game
world is described by a set of states, which serve as a
guideline for the objectives of the entities in the game.
MAS in the context of MMORPGs. Roman [19] detailed a Actions, in their turn, trigger state changes and require
general method comprised by the use of both W3C Resource previous states, so it is possible that, in order to achieve
Description Framework (RDF) and W3C Web Ontology certain state as desired by a character, that character must
Language (OWL) standards as a way to represent knowledge perform a sequence of actions, i.e., execute a plan [22] [21].
in RPG games. According to the author, his method covers Therefore, our model is expected to be able to cover the
elements like characters, history, and resources. In order to adventures and missions found in both tabletop and digital
integrate these elements, the work used Jena framework in a RPG titles.
fictitious Java-based game which was written by the authors A. Methodology
as a study case. Similarly, in [4], an ontology was proposed
for RPG games in the style of [18] contemplating aspects We adopted the following steps of the NeOn Methodology
of: NPCs (Non-Player Characters), characters, items, maps, [23]: i) Specification of Ontology Requirements; ii) Reuse
abilities, (skills), and properties. Table I presents the main and Fusion of Ontological Resources; and iii) Ontology
related works found in the literature regarding the adoption evaluation. Our ontology considers the structure of digital
or development of ontologies for RPG games. Columns in and tabletop RPGs, the supplements and accessories that can
this table provide a comparison on what important aspects be seen as books, magazines, and data that can be computed
can be found in published works and this paper. or represented. This is important so that the ontology allows
to extract both information and the relationship of these
B. Unified Foundational Ontology (UFO) data in the future. We adopted Competency Questions (CQ)
UFO [5] is an ontology of foundation that provides a based on the work by Grüninger and Fox [24], which
system of categories and relationships, which are based on should be answered, thus providing an initial assessment
a set of theories derived from Philosophy, Logic, Language, of the completeness of the ontology: (QC1) What items
and Cognitive Psychology. These are formally characterized are being carried by the player? (QC2) What entities are
by means of logical axioms, thus endowing models with a present in a game? (QC3) What actions are necessary to
possibility of deriving inferences. achieve a goal?. The modeling was performed in OntoUML
UFO is comprised by three main modules: UFO-A, an aiming to provide answers to the questions of competence
ontology related to objects (endurants); UFO-B, an ontolgy aforementioned reusing ontologies [10] [15].
related to events (perdurants); and UFO-C, a social entity RPG Metadata covers Planning, System and Scenario.
ontology which is built on top of UFO-A and UFO-B. Planning is closely related to Interactive Storytelling (IS)
UFO is more representative, for example, in relation to and the narrative, while the system is involved with the
binary relations, since it allows a more precise specification, mechanics and rules of the game. RPG Systems covers
distracting the relations in formal and material [20]. UFO mechanics and rules, including calculations for performing
was used as the basis for OntoUML [5], a modeling language combat maneuvers and character prowess. RPG Planning
whose metamodel is based on ontological properties and comprises all elements necessary to represent actions, ob-
possesses a great number of classes, stereotyped relations, jectives, and goals, which, in its turn, allows for analyzing
and axioms. and reconstructing narrative elements [21]. Entities are
Based on UFO-A and UFO-B, OntoUML provides bene- represented within a system as concrete elements of the
fits when modeling knowledge both based on the use of a game universe. In this case, entities are divided into objects,
foundational ontology and ontology engineering. OntoUML characters, and places. All entities have the characteristic of
presents wide availability of related tools (e.g., Menthor) being able to perform actions and even have plans [25]. In
useful for the verification and validation of the models. addition, we must observe that Entities inherit the Friend
Moreover, OntoUML also allows to export of the ontology of a friend (FOAF) character relationship model, and there
in the W3C’s standard OWL format. is also the distinction between Player Character (PC) and
Non-Player Character (NPC). Moreover, for each entity,
III. O UR A PPROACH there is also a relationship to other entities as place and
RPGs are proven to have a strong potential as a medium items. Materials an important addendum to the proposed
for telling interactive stories [21], so we take into account model. These could be game books, magazines, websites,
the models proposed in the modeling of RPGs and video and forums. These materials have records representing a

XVII SBGames – Foz do Iguaçu – PR – Brazil, October 29th – November 1st, 2018
SBC – Proceedings of SBGames 2018 — ISSN: 2179-2259 Computing Track – Short Papers

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Figure 1. Overview of the proposed ontology. Some aspects are not shown due to the lack of space.

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