Indexação de mídias não convencionais: a recuperação de jogos eletrônicos na plataforma digital Steam

Abstract

In the current digital landscape, electronic games hold a prominent position in the entertainment industry. With the expansion and diversity of media in this market, digital distribution platforms such as Steam, which is currently recognized as the leader in this segment, have emerged. With a vast catalog of nearly 30,000 electronic games, Steam employs an indexing and information retrieval system, whose functionality is crucial for ensuring a good user experience. The justification for this research arises from the lack of a specific treatment for electronic games within the field of Library and Information Science. The study adopts a comparative case study method, applied with a qualitative approach, through a literature review and practical tests, to analyze the functioning of metadata, controlled vocabularies, and collaborative tags, which are essential for the efficient retrieval of games available on the platform. The objective of this research is to explore and understand the indexing process used by the Steam platform for retrieving electronic games. Thus, it aims to investigate how Steam organizes, classifies, and makes its games available by analyzing the metadata used, the role of collaborative tags, and the effectiveness of the search system. For this purpose, a sample of 40 games distributed by Steam and highly rated on Metacritic was selected. Based on the results, the search tool will be evaluated according to three criteria: precision, recall, and ranking. At the same time, the terms used in the indexing of these games will be collected and compared with the metadata provided by the developers on each game's main page to determine whether the indicated terms align with the thematic content of the indexed media.