Making metadata work in digital asset management and video game production

Abstract

This article focuses on Digital Asset Management (DAM) and the metadata used to support and strengthen the asset to which it is related. A DAM solution involves both technical and human components, most notably the subjective understanding of the rich media assets being used and the creation and application of metadata for those assets. Making metadata work in DAM means investing in the construction of a metadata model, a container of descriptive elements about the assets, that enables the users to search for and retrieve the assets needed for their work. The production of video games will serve as the backdrop to this discussion; specifically, the unique digital assets used in a game's creation with some examples from Electronic Arts. Furthermore, this will provide the setting for an analysis of how DAM may be useful for the description, identification and retrieval of those digital assets so that they may be made accessible. Metadata must not be seen as a static indicator of knowledge, but rather as a fluid model that is always subject for review and for change in its ongoing support of the rich media digital assets in the DAM system.