State-of-the-Art: Semantics Acquisition Games - Semantic Acquisition Games: Harnessing Manpower for Creating Semantics - page 33

Chapter 3
State-of-the-Art: Semantics Acquisition Games
Abstract In this chapter, we review the state-of-the-art of semantics acquisition
games (SAGs), focusing primarily on the purposes these games fulfill. We first define
the terms: crowdsourcing game, human-computation game, semantics acquisition
game, serious game and game with a purpose. Then, we present a classification
of semantics acquisition games' purposes, which nowadays range from multimedia
metadata acquisition, through text annotation, building common knowledge bases
to ontology creation and upkeep. For each category, we list and describe some of
the typical games. We conclude the chapter with discussion on current limitations of
SAGs, namely for the specific domains.
A human computation game is a computer game application, which, in addition to
providing entertainment to its player, exploits the power of the human mind to solve
a computational task that is hard or impossible to be solved by a computer, but easy
to be solved by a human (a human intelligence task, HIT). This is done by special
design of the game rules which force player to solve a problem or to disclose some
of his knowledge. The idea of human computation game is based on the premise
that though humans relax and have fun while playing, they meanwhile do non-trivial
reasoning and problem solving during the game. This means a lot of “human cycles”
performed during games may be harnessed to solve real problems.
When a human computation game engages a crowd of players for solving a task,
wecallita crowdsourcing game . To this day, almost all of the human computation
games are crowdsourcing games. Some games may be considered as exceptions, for
example when they serve the individual players separately, rather than the owner of
the game [ 17 ], but practically, these terms are interchangeable. The crowd of players
is non-expert (regarding the task) and usually open. The crowdsourcing games typi-
cally use the redundant task solving and player agreement principle for their output
validation. The main distinction of the crowdsourcing games within the crowdsourc-
ing field is the motivation for participation in the process: the entertainment.
Finally, if the purpose of the game relates to creation or upkeep of semantics, we
call the game a semantics acquisition game (SAG). For this topic, this category is of
the primary interest.