This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the
current talk page.
Here is a list of articles that are in serious need of work:
Spore (video game): the game isn't out, and the article is massive. I don't even want to think of how big the article will be when the game actually is released. Splitting into other articles is possible: but copyediting and other things to condense this should be done first. It shouldn't be a complete case of "it's too big, let's just split it". It's a massive game, but that certainly doesn't mean the article has to be massive.
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (video game): This (along with most other Harry Potter games) are cluttered lists, and not much else. I've asked at the Harry Potter project for help on this one (not many responses there yet).
Tony Hawk's (series): Just about every game listed on the series page, suffers from massive, bad formatted and cluttered lists as well.
Hi all. Months ago, I tried my hand at revamping the Ocarina of Time article without actually submitting my results. I'm not active at Wikipedia anymore, but I thought some of the material could be used to better the article. The material is located in my sandbox:
User:Tristam/sandbox. If it looks like a huge wall of text, it's because it's a combination of what I wrote, what other Wikipedia users wrote, and material from other sources; I never organized it or weeded any of it out. There's probably also a lot of shorthand (such as reminders to myself about what to write) and other nonsense only I would understand. However, there are more than a few complete paragraphs in there that would really help the article (e.g., introduction, first paragraph of the plot, the first three paragraphs of the "gameplay" section, and others). Hope this helps out. --
Tristam
I'm pretty new here, but I've been looking around pages I know about to see if I can improve them (mostly typos :D) Anyway, looking at the SSX 3 page, there is LOADS of bad info and missing info, which I'll try to add within the next two weeks. If no-one minds, I'll also split each character's data into seperate pages, like
Tricky'sKaori Nishidake and
Elise Riggs.
P.S. Some tips would be appreciated, in my talk page is probably easiest :D
If they are one time characters, a page for each them isn't necessary. I'm no expert on SSX, so I can't be of much help here.
RobJ198118:51, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
Actually I've had a change of heart. Seeing as I have 3 of 5 games and a strong knowledge of the series, I will go back to my original idea of a page per character, And put in all the information from each game they appear in. I can do bio's and info from Tricky to On Tour, and the rest as well as unlockables I can find by walkthroughs. I think that'll be sufficient data :D I'll try to do it within a month :D
At0m1Ca 1408:11, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
I'm afraid my project will be delayed a bit, I got Guitar Hero 2 yesterday and.... well, it's good. Very good. Very VERY good. You know :D I'll still try to do it... eventually
At0m1Ca 1413:02, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
Okay me and a group of users decided to organize a task force to keep the DMC articles in top shape, it was originally proposed as a WikiProject but we ultimately decided to be a task force and to work under this project, just letting you know, any comments you have please contact me or leave a message at the Task Force's
talk page. Cheers! -
DDF
Compromise reached on Soul Calibur character articles
Bethereds has agreed to leave the katakana in the leads as long as it is at the end. I think this is a reasonable enough compromise and so I've edited the remaining articles for consistency. Whether the entire thing should be moved to the bottom as a footnote is something else that might be considered. I've also reverted the name on the
Mitsurugi article. Thank you everyone for your assistance in the dispute. Articles in question:
Hwang Seong-gyeong,
Seong Mi-na,
Hong Yun-seong,
Seong Han Myeong --
Exitmoose03:21, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
Adding your name there is all you need to do, and even that is optional. Wikiprojects are informal collaborations, so if you want to improve video game articles, you're already a member of the project. -
A Man In Bl♟ck (
conspire |
past ops)
05:20, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
Did you make this from scratch? While I appreciate your efforts, it isn't quite the same. Personally I prefer the original as it has brighter colours and flatter buttons. Wikimedians can be very picky about SVGs being identical to the images they are superseding, and I think there may even be some obscure rule about this somewhere.
GarrettTalk10:29, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
Same here, it's appreciated, but the svg one is flatter and duller. If we're going to replace an image used on 16000 talk pages, it needs to be the same/better than what we have. --
PresN03:51, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
In my opinion it doesn't. What exactly defines a flop? A game that was hyped/advertising alot, then sold bad? A game in general that just sold bad? A game that failed to live up to expections? A CFD is in order (and if there is a list page: afd that as well).
RobJ198105:07, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
It's quite a bit of work for just one editor to work on, and as such this is a call for help. It's nothing really difficult, so if anyone can help out, even a little, that would be great. -
Digiwrld108:41, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
Hello, I am a visitor from Wikiproject Categorization. I've been frustrated on a number of occasions in finding the proper category for a video game developer, programmer, artist, and I realized that this category lacks what most high level categories have which is
Category:Video game people. So, I created it and copied Video game designers and video game artists. Now I would like to propose some additional work that will make your category easier for the unfamiliar user (such as me). There are now a number of occupations, including occupations by nationality (e.g.
Category:Japanese video game designers), all of which fall under video game designers. I would suggest that now that there is a video game people category, you create
Category:Video game people by occupation and
Video game people by nationality and if you really need it then
Video game people by occupation and nationality (yes, this is common). And then under these categories, move/copy all the profession related categories under them. I feel confident that others will need the video game people category, so I was
WP:BOLD but didn't want to be too presumptuous and storm through your area. I am happy to do the work if I get a nod that this makes sense. Note: as of now, the categorization in this section has not been disturbed, I have just created a new layer of Video game people and copied artists, designers and directors into it (and most occupations now fall under designers)
Scarykitty19:05, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
A comment about Wii Points on several Nintendo articles
I made a comment here:
Talk:List of Virtual Console games (North America)#Wii Points doesn.27t need to be listed. But I thought I would get some extra input here. Basically to sum it up (if you didn't read my post on that talk page): how much Wii Points the Virtual Console games cost, doesn't needed to be listed. They are downloads, but look at just about any video game article: no prices are listed. I would've removed it, but I'm sure people would've reverted it. This same thing applies to the
Wii Points and
Virtual Console article, and the other country lists for VC games as well. Maybe someone can think of a reason to keep it on: but I highly doubt listing prices is encyclopedic. It's helpful, but this is an encyclopedia: not a guide to prices. I can understand keeping the prices of the Wii points cards in general: but not game prices. If they are kept, then people might as welll list on every article the game cost $50 or whatever. A download shouldn't make it an exception to the rule, period. In other examples: movie articles don't have prices, nor do CD articles. In comparision to other actual downloads: I haven't checked that, but I'm sure a mass listing of prices doesn't exist on the articles. I've also posted this on the Nintendo project talk page, to get more responses.
RobJ198119:36, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
Also there is the price lists at
Xbox Live Arcade. I really would like to know, why exactly are download prices more notable than regular game prices? It should be both or none at all: I prefer none, seeing as how many older games prices will be hard to find, and it's just un-needed fan adding. If people really want to find prices: they can go to the official source, Wikipedia shouldn't be the place for this. Since when did Wikipedia become a guide to prices? I think a lot of this isn't needed, as this isn't a guide to prices (as I stated above).
RobJ198119:48, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
I agree with this. Aside from the fact that price listing for games isn't really encyclopedic material. There's the issue of upkeep. Prices of games change a lot and the effort spent up keeping prices could better be spent improving more important things. If someone is really caught up in listing prices, they should rather work on an article about
pricing in video games (the history of prices of games, how pricing changed based on different media formats, the pricing structure of PC games Vs. console games, etc.). I think that could make a good article. —Mitaphane?|
!00:47, 31 March 2007 (UTC)
Anyone else care to comment? As of now, not many have commented (at any of the talk pages I posted this at). The talk page at the list page has several responses: but only by a few people overall.
WP:ILIKEIT is what this leaning towards, in my opinion.
RobJ198117:55, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
Game prices for direct downloads such as this are more notable because they're fixed by the distribution service. An MSRP is just that, a "suggested retail price", which declines over the life of the title until one can no longer find a non-used copy at all. In contrast, the games on services such as
Xbox Live Arcade will continue to be there indefinitely at their original price, unless Microsoft does some sort of clean-up and retires old titles. Thus, the price is quite notable, since this is the price that one will always pay, and in fact, the price (in points) is the same regardless of region, so it's always accurate and doesn't require any sort of upkeep or maintenance. Merchants can't discount it, and one can't get the title at a higher or lower price at all. --
Slordak18:27, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
That's true, but it still brings up the matter of this is an encyclopedia. Since when did Wikipedia become a guide to prices? Wikipedia certainly shouldn't be made into a download price guide, due to the price not changing.
RobJ198118:35, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
The information is readily available, accurate (without requiring further maintenance), and in no way jeopardizes the informative content. Why not include it, at least in the Xbox Live Arcade / Wii Virtual Console game list, even if not in the article itself? It is something that people care about. As a counter-example, I don't personally think it's notable for every PS3 game article to say that the game "Media" is a "Blu-ray Disc", since this seems to go without saying, but people put it there, and it's not particularly problematic, so why not? --
Slordak18:42, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
Merge Proposal
Following the suggestions of various Wikipedians, I've created a Comparison of Wii Games to complement the current
List of Wii games. It allows for additional details to be listed that could not have been fit into the current list, such as Controllers used, Number of Players, and any features.
I had been in discussion with another editor about at what point a description of in-game items (in the example, powerups) goes from 'description', worthy of inclusion, to 'game guide', and properly the province of a site devoted to them. I cannot say I have seen any articles that would violate this rule in my opinion, but I would like to know what the main concensus is in this: what is the main defining difference between the two, as far as describing gameplay elements in general (scoring IF ATYPICAL FOR GENRE, powerups, basic controls)?
IL-Kuma07:07, 1 April 2007 (UTC)
I've read
articles that I've thought are way too detailed for anyone but players of the game, but different people have different thresholds for what kind material is suited for a "game guide". The whole no game guide thing come from
WP:NOT#IINFO under instruction manuals. Keeping that in mind, I'd say the point starts where you start describing, in detail, how the item is used, why its used, and such. In general, I'd say it's when you start describing things that would only be relevant to instructing a player of the game: stuff that isn't useful for someone who will never play the game. —Mitaphane?|
!07:52, 1 April 2007 (UTC)
If I find myself reading something that outlines the item's statistics and/or how that item is used, that's game guide material. --
Scottie_theNerd08:26, 1 April 2007 (UTC)
The threshold suggested on
our guidelines states "if the content only has value to people actually playing the game, it's unsuitable." I've recently begun to think of it in two phases:
A basic description, for context (no more than a couple paragraphs)
Things which are relevant to how reviewers see the game (if you cite a reviewer for criticising features X, Y, and Z, it is certainly worthwhile to describe such features in the gameplay section)
I think the above approach works particularly well when we talking about controls or other such sections that should discussed be in some games but not others.
Nifboy09:06, 1 April 2007 (UTC)
Per
game guide, a game guide is a strategy guide, a walkthrough or hint collection. Basically, discussing game mechanics does not make something a game guide, but telling people how to beat the game does. --
tjstrftalk09:09, 1 April 2007 (UTC)
I don't think it's as clear cut as that. FAQs (such as those found on
GameFAQs) are often not game guides, but do explain the mechanics of games. Many editors have used to
game guide definition, which only covers - as you mention - how to beat the game. A list of weapons outlining their statistics won't help a gamer directly, but it would contain a lot of technical information that would be of no use to non-players. Does this fall within our guidelines? --
Scottie_theNerd11:00, 1 April 2007 (UTC)
Proposal to ammend video games to Naming conventions (use English)
I've added it to the project page.
JACOPLANE • 2007-04-2 13:49
What makes a game notable
I'm trying to make the article Marble Blast Gold notable, after it's been marked as not notable. Have added a couple of favourable reviews. Is this sufficient to make the game notable? Would be a shame to lose this article, it's a cracker of a game and its successor Marble Blast Ultra was similarly outstanding. --
Oscarthecat17:12, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
You can't "make" the subject notable, what you do is "prove" that it's notable. The way you do this is find multiple reliable outside sources that mention it. Incidentally, GameRankings is not a reviewer, they pull various reviews together to get an average, so quoting them means nothing, you need to get the review that the quote was pulled from. --
PresN17:37, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
This should be merged with
Marble Blast Ultra as, the way I understand it, Ultra is just an updated version as Gold was in turn an update of the original Marble Blast. By covering the series as a whole you decrease notability concerns.
GarrettTalk00:48, 4 April 2007 (UTC)
Just for the record, I think the notability guidelines are entirely overused. There's no reason that Wikipedia can't support an article for every subject anyone would feasibly look up. --
Exitmoose01:14, 4 April 2007 (UTC)
New navboxes proposal, AMiB out of here
Hmm, it seems that
User:A Man In Black has gotten so pissed over the navboxes debate that he has decided to quit Wikipedia altogether. Now some users are
trying to introduce a new guideline that is radically different from what we've had for some time now. I think it's important that all CVG members contribute to that discussion so that perhaps we can finally settle this once and for all (wouldn't that be nice).. Please comment on
Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Video games/Navboxes so that we don't get splintered discussions again.
JACOPLANE • 2007-04-2 17:48
For what it's worth, it wasn't that that caused me to lose my appetite for Wikipedia.
The List of Wii games is getting ready for Featured status and is currently undergoing a
Peer Review. Please take a moment to look over the article and add your suggestions/comments for improvement here. It would be really helpful and prepare the article for FL candidacy.
Does it have a chance? That page is going to be changing a lot, with new announcements and changed dates and cancelled games and all that. I'm not sure if it's stable enough for Featured list status (in comparsion other featured lists are are of defunct systems, like the N64 and VB).
hbdragon8801:02, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
A valid concern, to which I can only answer that we shall see. I have not been a contributor for very long, but I realize that a list such as this will be an interesting one to send to FLC. According to the FL Criteria, however, Dynamic Lists are allowed to be submitted, and as such this list is tagged with that category. Though it is relatively early in the lifecycle, the list is relatively stable and is not undergoing any major edit war; nor is there new games added every day. Rather, every few dsys a couple of games are added to the list, and articles (stubs at the least) are crated for them relatively quickly. For these reasons I believe that the list can be submitted to FLC.
Digiwrld122:52, 5 April 2007 (UTC)
Actually, I believe the rule is that you're in fact NOT supposed to have an article in both a subcatagory and parant.
WP:CAT says Articles should not usually be in both a category and its subcategory.", though
WP:SUBCAT says that "When an article is put into a subcategory based on an attribute that is not the first thing most people would think of to categorise it, it should be left in the parent category as well."...so I dunno. I can KINDA see the use/need to the -only catagories, but then again it almost seems like so-called cruft...
♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫11:42, 5 April 2007 (UTC)
Seems like a pretty clear case of that second condition, I think. It's a lot more notable that something is a DS game than it is to say that it's a DS-only game. I can only wonder why, besides the random argument about which system is best (yawn), one would look up DS-only games in any case. --
Exitmoose00:44, 6 April 2007 (UTC)
I've never rated the -only categories, they're redundant. You know that a game is a system exclusive if it's only in one Game system category. However, without any kind of Metadata searching, this can't be done, and the -only category system is purely a hack around this. I personally would prefer to see
List of Nintendo DS exclusive games instead. -
hahnchen01:57, 6 April 2007 (UTC)
I think the only categories are fine, and obviously a game shouldn't be in both the regular cat and "only" cat. Why overcategorize? If something is only for one system (or handheld): it should be categorized in the "only" cat, not the regular one. I don't see a list replacing the categories: because if it did happen, every exclusive game for DS (or any system) would probably need a link to the list. Otherwise, how would people even know an "exclusive" games list exists (besides searching the main cat of DS or whatever). As the old saying goes: if it's not broken, don't fix it.
RobJ198105:01, 6 April 2007 (UTC)
There are other problems, however. For instance see
Category:Xbox 360 games. The sub-category can't even be seen because it begins with an "X" and so is on the next page. Perhaps, a standard needs to be adopted where "-only" subcategories are placed under "*" instead of under their respective letter. --
Exitmoose06:31, 6 April 2007 (UTC)
The whole -only thing is redundant. For example,
Category:Nintendo DS games should show up every available game for the DS in one category, not split into subcategories such as DS only. If you want to see if a game is DS exclusive, it'll be obvious in the article itself as there is only one Game system category. The List of exclusives could be prominently linked from the
Category:Nintendo DS games along with the other Lists of DS games which currently exist. -
hahnchen09:48, 6 April 2007 (UTC)
Furthurmore, "every exclusive game for DS (or any system) would probably need a link to the list." is not really an issue. After all, every game needs to have the catagory added in the first place. Hell, certainly a bot could do the work if needed (not that there are THAT many in each system that three or four people couldn't run through in short order per list). The only problem with a list might be that there's no real good annotation for them...
♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫11:34, 6 April 2007 (UTC)
Anybody here that has played Command & Conquer has to admit it was a great strategy game. It should be a wikiproject category.
Xsoldier17:03, 4 April 2007 (UTC)
There's also the question of scope. Does a single game series have enough notability to mandate an entire WikiProject? Probably not; probably just an article for each game, one for the series, and maybe a few more for things related to the game. This falls firmly under the scope of the existing Video game WikiProject, and doesn't need its own. --
Slordak17:23, 4 April 2007 (UTC)
I agree that this is too small of a scope, but a taskforce Westwood studios or Taskforce EA games would not surprise me at all.--
Clyde (
talk)
21:32, 4 April 2007 (UTC)
Those articles certainly need it. There are a ton of great sources out there that could be used to polish them up, and
Frank Klepacki's article can offer anything one needs for soundtrack sections. There's also some in-universe stuff floating around... --
Zeality16:15, 8 April 2007 (UTC)
Discussion over the inclusion of Brain Age in the
Sudoku article.
I really only started editing the wiki because I thought that the Tekken characters needed a navbar. They did, I made it, it's useful. However, recently I made on for the Virtua Fighter characters. Still useful, but I noticed one thing about their pages. They're god-awful. Many of them don't have pictures, they say only a little bit about their story and nothing about their gameplay-
Needless to say, it was a shock after editing Tekken articles. Regardless, these articles are in desperate need of cleanup and further information. I know I can't do it by myself, so I decided to come here and ask for help. I'll do what I can, but it'd be nice to know I've got some help before I start. -
Sharpevil19:34, 5 April 2007 (UTC)
No, it is a very
indiscriminate way of sorting information. I've prodded it. Would have warned the creator, but he's been blocked and the user talk page protected.
hbdragon8823:06, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
Since nobody seemed to notice my merge suggestion, I thought I'd ask here, is there some reason the information shouldn't be merged to
List of Nintendo DS games? It'd be simple to add a [SW] tag to the games where it is relevant, so the information wouldn't be lost, and I'd say it's roughly comparable to the Wi-Fi tag. Also, I don't think anybody noticed the numerous other video game lists that focus on functionality similar to using the microphone. I'm not even sure if that wouldn't be viable information for the list. Does every game use the Microphone, or just some in particular?
FrozenPurpleCube16:05, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
Grand Theft Auto characters
Hi there,
I'm thinking of creating several articles with the GTA characters on, one page for one character, as I feel it would be easier to get to. In effect, I would also propose the deletion of the
List of characters in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories page along with all the other character list pages assosiate with GTA. I think we coulsd delete the list of gangs page for GTA, and create individual pages for the gangs. Opinions?:-
Davnel0310:59, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
I think this is better, as you can say all about the character in one page, and you can at least say if anything is unknown. I really think this is a better way of doing it, maybe not for the gangs, but for the people. I'm going to start creating a few pages (not many!!) to give an idea of what I mean.
Davnel0313:37, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
Oppose. These characters are simply not notable enough on their own. Our general trend is to try and collapse this information into one larger page, since this allows us to capture the information but avoids having to try and defend many small pages full of fan-cruft and unsourced junk. Since there are apparently already unified lists, there's no need to create anything additional. --
Slordak17:22, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
Oppose. The only possible result of this would be an excessive amount of pages containing a minimal amount of information that could be considered encyclopedic and not cruft.
The Kinslayer17:26, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
Oppose. Merging into one large article is better - lots of stubs are simply not useful and increase the amount of maintenance and work needed, plus it adds a ton of new pages to the already large backlog of stub class WP:VG articles. However, do create redirects to the list from all list items. I bolded the word oppose in the above two comments for clarity and continuity. --
User:Krator (
tc)
17:31, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
Strong oppose — characters need to be merged into so-called "lists"; not only does it strengthen content by weeding out the excess, it allows notability to be established on the whole by providing creation, merchandise, and criticism information, which is infinitely easier to do with the entire cast. Not to mention the
GFDL violation if any of that list content is merged into the individual articles, or the
numerouspolicy and
guidelineviolations. See
Characters of Final Fantasy VIII. — Deckiller02:32, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
Oppose - As per above. The characters don't have enough notability by themselves and most likely lack third-party sources. Wikipedia is not a GTA Wiki. --
Scottie_theNerd06:17, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
Uhhh, excuse me if it was out of place to do so, but I went ahead and just redirected them into the list of characters of the first game they appeared in. I did that before I was aware of this vote per, basically, everybody's arguments here. That being said, you all can do whatever you feel is necessary, if what I did won't suffice. ♣
KlptyzmChat wit' me§Contributions ♣
06:27, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
I recently removed a link to a suggested list page for "book-style" Nintendo DS games
[1] (which currently doesn't exist), and thought it would be better to create some of categories for handheld games with the option to play with the system held sideways, which includes games for PSP, Wonderswan, Game Boy Adance, and the Atari Lynx, and probably others. Any thoughts on the best way to approach this, such as naming or organization?
Dancter18:38, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
Actually, I think I want to keep this discussion separate. In my experience, in discussions concerning list pages, proposals to use categories as an alternative are usually ignored. Frankly, I don't want the decision over a list page to affect what I'm trying to do, which can happen independently.
Dancter19:20, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
I agree, a lot of times suggestions like yours are ignored. I don't oppose the category, and I favor including the information on the main Nintendo DS page. In fact, I suggested that when I removed the prod, but it doesn't seem to even be considered.
FrozenPurpleCube21:56, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
I'm not that involved with the VG project right now, as far as this talk page is concerned, and I haven't played a lot of the Silent Hill games, but I'll help, if I can. Like I said, I ain't that involved but, if you wish, I can help however I can. ♣
KlptyzmChat wit' me§Contributions ♣
22:23, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
Great. I'll work on setting up a task force page, along with checking around and getting what needs to be done in terms of Silent Hill related articles organized. One thing to look out for is symbolism, I've noticed in a lot of SH articles that people will give their own input on plot symbols and ideas on connections between various characters/monsters (such as "It's plausible that Pyramid Head was linked to...."). A while back there was a whole section on the SH movie page about symbolism which was pretty much an entire collection of fan theories and possible relations between certain game and movie elements unconfirmed by Konami. Anyway, I'll get working, glad to see that people are up for the task force. --
Neur0tikX.
talk14:37, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
Requested articles
The list of requested articles is getting rather large. I'll make a stab at some of them, but quite a lot simply aren't going to be notable enough. Can we prune these out?
Marasmusine07:15, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
Yes, feel free to cull anything you think would definitely be deleted anyway. If it turns out it was a notable game someone's bound to create it or add it again anyway. If you're unsure just leave it for someone else to assess. You can also check
Special:Log; some will have been deleted before which means you can see the reason and/or the Afd and all that.
GarrettTalk10:18, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
I was just discovering this project today, and I noticed that in the recomended lists, that it was mostly Nintendo. I'm not saying that Nintendo isn't that great. I am even planning on getting a Wii to go next to my Playstation 3. I just thought that there should be more diversity including Sony and Microsoft stuff, even if I am not the biggist Microsoft fan in the world.
Playstationdude21:03, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
If you really want to and people will join it, I'd suggest making a task force. To do this, make a page and add it to the list of the other taskforces in our wikiproject box. If you are bound and determined to make a wikiproject, go
here to see if anyone else is.--
Clyde (
talk)
21:45, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
Units Sold
Does anyone have any idea or is there any reliable place to get the statistics of number of units sold for games? Most of the games I work on are not extremely well known, and I've had considerable trouble finding any stats for them.--
Clyde (
talk)
22:15, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
OK, so
Thunderbrand has decided to leave Wikipedia for now... I will take up the task of maintaining the
WP:GCOTW (If I don't do as good a job as Thunderbrand feel free to lend me a hand :), which Dan
has done since October 2004... This WikiProject owes a lot to his contributions but I'm sure others will step up to the plate.. I for one wish Thunderbrand all the best and hope he returns one day...
JACOPLANE • 2007-04-13 23:37
Seems the board caved in to the paranoids, so we can no longer use copyrighted images on the main page. I'm really hoping that's not what holding any of my articles from the main page, but at any rate, I guess we might start exploring free alternatives. That's the issue, though -- I can't think of a single one. What could one use for Chrono Trigger? Everything's copyrighted, right down to a picture of the cartridge. --
Zeality03:26, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
That's the inherent problem with completely eliminating fair use for everything. Films, video games, albums, etc. usually have no free images, while other areas like the US military and the sciences have a wide range of pictures to choose from. In some cases we might be able to substitute something - i.e. if
Nintendogs was featured, I imagine that we could use a general picture of a dog, kind of like how the
recently featured Scooby-Doo FA had a picture of a dog.
hbdragon8804:12, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
If you focus on any screenshots shown, that'd be a no-no. If you don't, then the relevance of the picture wouldn't be immediately obvious unless it were in a section that specifically describes the concert. —
TKD::Talk01:16, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
My understanding is yes, given that there is no other feasible way to illustrate anything about a video game until its copyright expires. —
TKD::Talk01:17, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
How is that "mind boggling"? They spent the money to buy the broadcasting equipment, they have the rights to whatever footage they air. Likewise, if you went to that same event and took your own picture, you have rights to that picture, too. Would you want that stripped away?
hbdragon8804:15, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
I was thinking that might work, but the hard part is getting a free photo of one of them considering not many exist. The only shots of Masato Kato I've found are all from official SE publications. Maybe something could be found for a high profile guy, like Hironobu Sakaguchi. Or, we could just carve "Chrono Trigger" into the side of a potato and get it featured status on the Wikimedia Commons. At any rate, I plan on improving FF Chronicles to Good status soon and submitting "Chrono Series" as a featured topic with Judg. --
Zeality16:21, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
Actually the main argument agianst merging states that states that since we cannont prove that the plot of
Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Trials and Tribulations will not be sufficently different
Gyakuten Saiban 3 placing the plot and character info from the GS3 article into the the trials and tribulation artice is a violation of
WP:OR. Maybe trying a discussion on that page is a better idea since a consensus on whether OR applies in this case would probably be helpful. --
67.68.154.25301:49, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
Regions, Ratings, and Release dates (RRR)
In infoboxes for various games, at least eight lines are always occupied by ratings and release dates. That is bad: avoid redundancy.
Kittens like clear infoboxes
A clear infobox is paramount for a good article. The infobox is the first thing any reader will see and read, and a bad infobox could make a reader turn away from the article, whether by introducing new questions or getting in the way of reading. New questions such as "What the hell is
USK" are not productive when all the reader wants is to read about a game. Infoboxes often extend well into the first or second section, and almost always below the table of contents. Reducing the size of the infobox is good. There is a lot of information that could be left out of the infobox, but for now I will only address the redundant release dates and ratings.
Currently, infoboxes can contain any number of release dates, though a number between two (
AOE3) and five (
FFX) is most common. Ratings always include
ESRB and a European agency (usually
USK,
ELSPA,
BBFC or
PEGI) at minimum, and when including Australia (
OFLC) and Japan (
CERO), this makes for a maximum of seven ratings. Rating collectors might include all 12 ratings in the
relevant category.
An example, from the article I am currently working on:
The current practice ("include some") is a compromise - some argue for including every single country, because doing anything else would be geographical bias. It is true that Indian or Chinese ratings, together more than a third of the world population, are rarely included. However, is this a bad thing? Sixteen million people from the Netherlands know no other rating than
Kijkwijzer, should it be included too because of that?
It is indeed good to know when a game will be released in one's country. However, I think a better place for details like that is in the article itself, perhaps in the Development section or in the
Lead section. One of those sections usually repeats the information in the infobox now anyway. In the above example from
Supreme Commander, all dates are within one week. Are these few days of difference worth listing in the infobox? If changed to, for example,
February 2007, no information is lost to most readers. When more than a few weeks apart, this could be
Q1 2007, or even
2007 if
Brunei releases the game in November. The specific dates should be in the article. It must be noted that when the release date itself is notable, an exception should be made. For example, if Chinese censors surprisingly agree to allow Guitar Hero XXX: megapr0n version in
China three years after the release of the game, and the
New York Times writes about it, the Chinese release date could be included.
Ratings are even more redundant than the release dates, because they are never far apart, except in very special circumstances which would warrant multiple ratings. If every rating organisation rates a game as "Teen" or the local equivalent, why list it as "T" "Teen" "12+" "12+" "12-year" "K-11" "MA-13" "12" - if "Teen" would do? If one rating organisation rates the game differently (such as 14+ or 16, or even XXX), it should be explained in the Reception section. An article like Motion picture rating system could be made to explain the local ratings when a game is rated "Teen", or better - such information could be integrated into Motion picture rating system.
This has become more of an essay than a small note — apologies for that. I propose changing the infobox description once there is consensus for a policy change on this subject.
I firmly agree with what has been proposed here. Most game articles don't have that problem mainly due to the lack of editors collecting such information, but for more popular, widespread games this can lead to bloated infoboxes containing release dates from countries some people haven't even heard of. I agree that most release dates are more less the same if not a few weeks apart, with some uncommon exceptions that can easily be covered within the article itself, either in the Development section or, if the release dates are staggered enough, a separate Release section. The idea of summarising data like this makes for an easier reading experience instead of being flooded with lots of geographically exclusive data. Readers who are interested in specific pieces of data such as release dates can find out on specialist sites, such as
GameFAQs or
MobyGames. --
Scottie_theNerd15:20, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for this guide! My kitten was getting confused by the infobox and started batting at it. My kitten wonders if there should be an info box template with fields to fill in that would give a common look between game articles (also the reader would not become confused having to decode different layouts). Meow.
DJ Barney19:27, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
I've actually already seen release sections in articles which can be anything from comparing different versions of the game to talking about notbale updates (is that even possible?). Perhaps the specific release dates have a place in these sections. It would certainly be better than the
mosh pit of info we have now.--
Clyde (
talk)
23:05, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
Audio clips
I'm not sure what license should come under. There are templates for "Screenshot from a videogame" and "Music clip", but this isn't either of those. It is essentially the audio equivalent of a screenshot but I haven't been able to find any other examples of such clips. I've asked this on the helpdesk and Image Copyright Tags pages, but there haven't been any responses. Does anyone know of any other game articles that have audio clips, so I could see what licenses have been used?
Arganoid19:21, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
It seems that the current task forces that are focused on a company, like the Capcom, Sega, and Konami taskforces, are pretty inactive. On the other hand, the Devil May Cry task force seems more focused and has been doing good things. The video game images task force has also a clear objective and has been filling the relevant categories and finding images, and adding fair use. Perhaps we should retire some of the inactive task forces and from now on focus on creating task forces with a more limited scope. Any objections? If not I'll go ahead with removing them from the {{WPCVG Sidebar}} and removing the links on the talk pages.
JACOPLANE • 2007-04-19 17:06
I'll do that. BTW, I redesigned the sidebar the other day. Does anyone have any suggestions for further improvement?
JACOPLANE • 2007-04-19 18:19
I honestly question the need for company-level WikiProjects/task forces. Like
WP:NES vs.
WP:PCP. PCP is well-focused and has much discussion, while Nintendo seems a bit dead. Okay, it's not that dead, still some talk page topics, but it's not nearly as active as PCP. Of course, when you become too specfiic, that's no good either. I remember the
Nintendo Wars WikiProject, for instance.
hbdragon8819:40, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
In the case of Nintendo, it probably should just go (as it's pretty inactive). Some posts doesn't seem like much to keep it around. Also, if people can: keep on eye on
Wikipedia:WikiProject PlayStation. I can imagine it will go the way of many of these taskforces and projects: inactive. Sometimes I wonder why people want taskforces (or whole projects), then when it's made: it has activity for a bit, then nothing. In my opinion: just post the article issues here, and a much wider group of people can help out. Why seperate them, just because they have alot of articles of their own? The video games project is for everything. So it makes more sense just to post here, asking for help and so on. Much more people can help in one project, rather than just splitting into other projects and/or task forces.
RobJ198120:02, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
Well, I think that the
Wikipedia:WikiProject Final Fantasy has demonstrated that a focused group of editors can achieve a great deal. The problem with this WikiProject is that it's almost too generic and therefore has little participation in spite of the large number of participants. Look at the GCOTW: usually less than 10 editors contribute in any given week. Besides, academic studies in business schools have demonstrated that teamwork is usually most efficient in a groupd of 10-20 people.citation needed We have over 700 participants here, and those are only the people who have bothered to indicate their participation on their userpage.
JACOPLANE • 2007-04-19 20:14
True, our Final Fantasy articles are in great shape, generally. But to be fair, how much of this shall we attribute to the WikiProject, and how much shall we dedicate to the zeal and skill of individual contributors? I'm inclined to think that the latter is by far the important factor here. Large projects like WPVG here are beneficial, in my opinion, in mostly cross-article tasks. We help standardize video game article elements such as the infobox, offer video game-specific style information, etc. Now consider a narrow project like
WP:ZELDA, which has
around 60 listed participants. That's over four editors per Zelda game in the main series, yet only two of those are featured articles, both of which predate the project (I believe - correct me if I'm wrong). The third Zelda featured article about Link also predates the project. A group with that narrow a focus cannot offer much beyond individual contributions. There is (and should not be) Zelda-specific style guidelines — anything of this nature should cover all video games, and thus come from this project. This, incidentally, is why I have not joined the Zelda project, despite it being my main VG interest. Pagrashtak05:12, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
One of the biggest uses of a WikiProject is like a noticeboard, such as
WP:CVG/D. I wouldn't necessarily count the usefulness of the said project purely in terms of FAs. For instance, issues on the notability of some character comes up, and people from the WPFF argue about it until something comes out. It's a centralized discussion that can be much more easily followed on one WikiProject talk page instead of a few scattered talk pages.
hbdragon8822:45, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
Looking at that noticeboard, there is no day with over three entries. Why would each task force need their own deletion noticeboard when they could simply look there? The driving force behind any WikiProject or task force (with the possible exception of projects like the
WikiProject Council that do not focus on the article space) should be article improvement. In fact, one could make the argument that a project that shows no discernible impact on improving articles but has editors come out en masse in deletion discussions has an overall negative impact. Pagrashtak23:53, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
hbdragon88 was not advocating that every task force should have their own deletion noticeboard. He was trying to point out that within the context of the CVG community, there is a benefit to listing all relevant entries in one central place rather than expecting CVG contributors to go through the AFD entries for every day. I agree that there are a lot of tasks that have very little to do with taking articles to FA that would benefit from more centralised discussion. The
images task force is a good example of this.
JACOPLANE • 2007-04-24 00:44
I know. The deletion noticeboard is useful for this WikiProject — I was explaining that such boards, if made more specific, would not be so useful for our subprojects or task forces. Pagrashtak04:03, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
A new big task
Anyone care to help me tackle this big task? The Infobox needed tag is no longer for the talk page, and it belongs on the article (so people can see it, and fix it sooner). A full list is here:
Category:Talk pages with misplaced main page templates. While it's not all video games, there is quite a few video game articles that need this change. I believe the category contains a few other misplaced templates: but overall it's for infobox needed. Also, you could just put in the infobox when you can, which would also help out this massive infobox task.
RobJ198118:41, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
Fucksake, this is just a load of work for very little payoff and will make articles even uglier than they are. We have enough article banners already, and a ridiculously ugly "No photo here" image too. This is really going to ugly up a lot of articles for a long time. It's not a big deal either unlike say NPOV and unsourced (which readers should be warned about), but some backroom consistency worry. Do you guys really think it's a good idea? I don't, and there hasn't been much discussion either. I might take this to VP or AN or something. -
hahnchen23:47, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
Chill Rooster :) I tend to agree with you, but no need to get all worked up. Like you said, there hasn't been much discussion yet, so let's have the discussion before we take this to AN/I (in any case most admins who give a shit are watching this page anyway).
JACOPLANE • 2007-04-20 23:53
Creating one infobox is better than moving ten templates, if you ask me. So if anyone wants to help out with this task, why not make a few infoboxes rather than moving a bunch of templates? Pagrashtak06:07, 22 April 2007 (UTC)