The interoperability among distributed and autonomous sys-
tems is the ultimate challenge facing the semantic web. Het-
erogeneity of data representation is the main source of prob-
lems. This paper proposes an innovative solution that com-
bines lexical approaches and language games. The benefits
for distributed annotation systems on the web are twofold:
firstly, it will reduce the complexity of the semantic problem
by moving the focus from the full-featured ontology level to
the simpler lexicon level; secondly, it will avoid the draw-
back of a centralized third party mediator that may become
a single point of failure.
   The main contributions of this work are concerned with
(1) providing a proof of concept that language games can be
an effective solution to creating and managing a distributed
process of agreement on a shared lexicon, (2) describing a
fully distributed service oriented architecture for language
games, (3) providing empirical evidence on a real world case
study in the domain of ski mountaineering.