<p>&xep0060; and &xep0163; can be used to publish a wide variety of "extended presence" information about users. This document specifies an extended presence payload format that communicates information about the games a user plays. This information may be of interest to a user's contacts and can also be used in social networking applications.</p>
<section2topic='Container Element and Child Elements'anchor='protocol-elements'>
<p>Information about games is provided by the user (or automated integration with gaming systems) and is propagated on the network by the user's client. The information container for gaming data is a <game/> element that is qualified by the 'http://jabber.org/protocol/gaming' namespace. The game information itself is provided as the XML character data of the following children of the <game/> element:</p>
<tablecaption='Child Elements'>
<tr>
<th>Element</th>
<th>Description</th>
<th>Example</th>
<th>Datatype</th>
<th>Inclusion</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>character_name</td>
<td>The name of the user's character in the game</td>
<td>Stentor</td>
<td>xs:string</td>
<td>OPTIONAL</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>character_profile</td>
<td>A URI for a profile of the user's character</td>
<p>When a user starts playing a game, its client may publish that fact to a special pubsub or PEP node (if a PEP node, the NodeID is "http://jabber.org/protocol/gaming"). The gaming information SHOULD be communicated and transported by means of the <cite>XEP-0060</cite> protocol, especially the subset specified in <cite>XEP-0163</cite> (as shown in the following examples). Because gaming information is not pure presence information and can change independently of the user's availability, it SHOULD NOT be provided as an extension to the &PRESENCE; stanza type.</p>
<p>The games that a user plays may be sensitive. A client must provide a way for a user to configure which games or types of games will not be published (e.g., via user preferences).</p>