A linguistic analysis of mobile games : Verbs and nouns for content estimation

This paper outlines a linguistic approach to understanding the content of games. Understanding game verbs as the fundamental unit of interaction within game environments it provides perspective on popular play experiences. The benefits of such analysis include a scalable view of the self reported content of games and the ways in which problems are being solved in games. The content of games is contrasted with the content of books for comparison. The findings indicate games are relatively limited in the diversity of verbs they use. The results also demonstrate greater emphasis on gender, and life or death in popular books than in popular mobile games. The occurrence of violent language like war and kill occur significantly more often in best-selling book descriptions than in best-selling mobile games. The most common game verbs from this research are use, touch, get, have, take, like, earn, try, create and make.