Game Metadata Contents

The Game Metadata file should contain the essential details about a game. For example: title, developer, publisher, description, genre, URL(s) to buy or download, etc. We should include information that would be useful to a potential player when browsing games to check out, so we can look at existing platforms like Steam and itch.io for inspiration.

We'll need to decide exactly which details we want to include and how they should be represented in JSON.

Considerations

Some details will be relatively straightforward to represent (e.g. title is a string property) but others will require more discussion (e.g. is genre a string property? an array of strings? an id/enum of some kind? does it need its own property or should be it be lumped into a more generic property like "tags" the way Steam handles it?).

Even a simple detail like game title may not be as straightforward as it first appears. Should the metadata include localized titles when available? If so, how does that change the JSON format?

Localization

The metadata schema should provide a way to include localized properties. You should also be able to specify what language the base properties are in. We shouldn't assume the base language will always be English.

{
  "title": "洞窟物語",
  "language": "jp",
  "localization":
  [
    {
      "language": "en",
      "title": "Cave Story"
    }
  ]
}

Contents

Metadata Contents

Item	JSON Name	Type
Title	"title"	String
Description	"description"	String
Developer	"developer"	String
Publisher	"publisher"	String
Links	"links"	String Array
Genre	"genre"	String Array
Tags	"tags"	String Array

Example

{
  "title": "Hollow Knight",
  "description": "Forge your own path in Hollow Knight! An epic action adventure through a vast ruined kingdom of insects and heroes. Explore twisting caverns, battle tainted creatures and befriend bizarre bugs, all in a classic, hand-drawn 2D style.",
  "developer": "Team Cherry",
  "publisher": "Team Cherry",
  "links": [
    "https://www.hollowknight.com/",
    "https://store.steampowered.com/app/367520/Hollow_Knight/",
    "https://www.gog.com/en/game/hollow_knight"
  ],
  "genre": [
    "Metroidvania",
    "Platformer",
    "Singleplayer"
  ],
  "tags": [
    "2D",
    "Indie",
    "Exploration"
  ]
}