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Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Video games/Archive 119

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Side-issue: Men and video games

Bear with me, but why isn't there Men and video games? There's dozens of sources that focus on men specifically. (And there would also be a far longer List of notable men in the video game industry, for example). Having just one side feels WP:UNDUE even if women in video games has been focused on by the media. There's a lot of sources that focus on gender minority in industry, but we seem to focus on women entirely because of this, rather than people and their actual contributions. Take, for example, The 40 Most Powerful People In Video Games -- unsurprisingly, very few women. Yet, we don't cover the list to the same extent. When we say "notable in industry", too often gender is added even to people whose contribution has nothing to do with gender. I'm not saying to not cover women specifically, but purely objectively, there are more than enough sources for articles on both genders. I don't want to create it now WP:POINTily, but wouldn't it make sense? —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 16:55, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

I'm not fond of our recent "List of women in the video game industry" list either, but that discussion is for its Talk page. Whether we should have a "Men and video games" article... what would you even write on that? Can you give me an example of source that focuses on the relationship between men and video games? ~Mable (chat) 17:04, 6 January 2016 (UTC)
Wouldn't an article like gender and video games be an idea? --Soetermans. T / C 17:21, 6 January 2016 (UTC)
I see that's a redirect to women and video games. Hm. --Soetermans. T / C 17:22, 6 January 2016 (UTC)
Yeah having gender and video games being a redirect to the women and video games page isn't a good idea. Maybe the redirect should be deleted. GamerPro64 17:23, 6 January 2016 (UTC)
(edit conflict) I'm not fond of it either and I originally intended this for list's talk page, but my question ended up broader. There's many articles with "men" and "video games" about various topics, stats, preferences, players vs developers, etc. in our reliable search. Less than for women, because men is status quo and there's not much to say. It would take some effort to sort through them and pick useful ones. Plus, many of the articles about women would have accompanying stats about men. I'm sure there's also plenty features in gaming magazines. It just seems like it wouldn't put WP in such a biased light if we at least attempt at coverage of both sides. The closest I can find is portrayal-specific Gender representation in video games#Portrayal of men. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 17:27, 6 January 2016 (UTC)
It's worth noting that when it comes to content, Wikipedia is allowed and encouraged to have biases that match those of the RSes. In other words we can only report on what the RSes are reporting on even if that leaves us with much more coverage of one side than the other. You see a similar effect with Women in mathematics (covering women in a traditionally male-dominated sphere), Parental leave (covering the male side of a traditionally female concept), Domestic violence against men, etc., etc. Of course we also see articles like Men in nursing (covering men in a traditionally female-dominated field) coexisting nicely alongside Women in nursing, so if there are the RSes to support it then I'd say go for a "Men and video games" article. Just make sure the sources supporting notability address the topic of "men and video games" directly so we stay away from WP:SYNTH. -Thibbs (talk) 03:42, 10 January 2016 (UTC)
(edit conflict)x3 Honestly, I think its because there's really not all that much focus on either side of it right now, or people in general in the video game world. Even a lot of video game company articles are in pretty bad shape. I think its kind of similar to the problems we keep having with eSports related articles - there just aren't many experienced/dedicated editors working on it. I don't want people to think I'm blaming anyone or "Wikipedia" or anything like that though, its more like I speak out of experience - I'm not particularly interested in writing about any of these things myself either. Sergecross73 msg me 17:29, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

It seems to me that Women and video games is very focused on the women aspect, in such a way that it couldn't easily be turned into a "Gender and video games" article. If someone wants to write an article on Men and video games, or wants to convert the "Women and video games" into "Gender and video games", feel free to start a draft. I guess I agree with Sergecross that this would be a difficult change to make unless someone is very interested in working on it. ~Mable (chat) 17:58, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

Well that raises an argument on how much information there is on men in video games. Let's be honest, its s stereotype that video games are for guys, which is why there are so many articles about women in gaming. I can't recall any articles focused on men in gaming because what's the point in doing so? I don't think there's enough material for the subject, as ironic as that is. Obviously I can be proven wrong. I hope I can be proven wrong. This subject doesn't seem like something that would interest me anyway so I expect someone more interested would take the helm. GamerPro64 18:02, 6 January 2016 (UTC)
A way to put this is that (ideally), X years in the future, the gender of game developers and the like won't matter. But today, it's clear there is attention on the impact women have in the gaming industry, given that it has been male-dominated. Our article on Women in video games will at some point be talking historically about this period where there was an heightened awareness of gender issues, so the article will always be okay as long as as the situation improves in terms of gender balance, that the articles becomes more a historical document than an ongoing one. To that end, it might be more important to focus on female developers (and perhaps male ones?) that specifically contributed to helping to improve the gender balance in the industry as key figures in this area, rather than just influential females. --MASEM (t) 18:15, 6 January 2016 (UTC)
If there's an article about them, we can assume they're notable, right? I am all for more female representation in the industry, but isn't a list like List of notable women in the video game industry arbitrary? We could have lists of notable Christians, notable Japanese, notable artists in the video game industry. Women and video games is a broad topic, and women especially notable could be listed there. There's also Gender representation in video games. --Soetermans. T / C 21:46, 6 January 2016 (UTC)
  • Just a general suggestion: if it isn't already mentioned, it would be very good if top-level articles on video games (not just gender and video games) could have content relating to demographics. I know there are at least som surveys and studies regarding this. I seem to recall that women are overrepresented as players of mobile games while men are overrepresented as players of computer games. The latter group is those who are often presented as "real gamers" and are the basis for most stereotypes of players. Peter Isotalo 08:53, 11 January 2016 (UTC)
i personally recommend having a main article summarize both male and female, but have each one in detail have their own article. the previous article of Women in video game was a load of synthesis. Lucia Black (talk) 09:33, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

January 2016's TFA

This month on the 11th Dishonored is will be that days Featured Article. Congrats to Darkwarriorblake for getting the article to that status. Also that makes it the first video game article at TFA for 2016. GamerPro64 04:04, 10 January 2016 (UTC)

Thanks, it looks like that's the date when the game was released 6 years ago. --Niwi3 (talk) 09:34, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

Lists questions

1 About List of million-selling game consoles

Isn't that a clunky title? Compare to List of best-selling game consoles by region and List of best-selling video games. There isn't a List of game consoles selling less than one million, so wouldn't List of best-selling game consoles be a more approriate title, with an explanation that sales from 1 million are mentioned?

2 About List of longest-running video game franchises

Is a list like that notable? If having a list of longest video game franchises is useful, why does List of video game franchises say "This list does not include non-gaming intellectual properties that have been adapted for use in games (such as James Bond or sports leagues)", but why does the longest list have Star Trek, X-Men or NBA? We could change the title to List of longest-running video game series of course. The lead says the franchises should have seen "regular releases for the last twenty years", but what should we consider "regular"? It mentions the Kid Icarus series, which has three games, with twenty years between the two latest. Why is the cameo appearance of Alex Kidd in Sega All-Star Racing seen as a continuation of the Alex Kidd franchise, but another cameo appearance of a character in King of Fighters is not okay? --Soetermans. T / C 10:51, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

At least for the first one, I agree that's poor language. "List of video game consoles with over one million in sales" while longer is also more readable, and still likely to be as searchable as the current.
On the second, I do agree there's a bit of OR going on, but I think it's repairable. "Video game franchise" is clearly a notable topic and listing the longest-running ones, even if we are talking the Kid Icarus type approach, is still fair, but perhaps this should be offset with a similar table for franchses with the most entries (video games only) in it. --MASEM (t) 15:21, 11 January 2016 (UTC)
  1. For what its worth, many of the best-selling game articles per platform, like List of best-selling Nintendo 3DS games, use 1 million sold as a cut-off point for inclusion criteria, so I support your proposed renaming.
  2. I agree with Masem, it needs fixing, but I don't think it should be deleted. I've noticed that, in general on Wikipedia, there's a lot of questionable "drive-by" IP edits in regards to series/franchises. Stuff like proposing that Sega Racing is somehow a part of the Alex Kidd series, or that Splatoon or Eternal Darkness is a "series". (Maintaining the "Nintendo series" template was a nightmare.) It needs constant maintenance - I'd chalk up inconsistencies largely due to this. Sergecross73 msg me 15:31, 11 January 2016 (UTC)
Alright, I'll request a technical move. What should be the criteria for the longest-running list? Should we keep it as "video game franchises" and remove IPss that started as other media, or move it to "video game series"? There's a new Shadow of the Beast in development, is that a continuation of the franchise? Are cameos seen as a continuation of a series or not? --Soetermans. T / C 15:41, 11 January 2016 (UTC)
For the franchises, I'm hesistent to discount the Star Wars or Star Trek games, only because while they are based on an existing IP, they are generally developed as brand new stories using that IP, in contrast to the Bond games which are generally adaptions of existing stories. But if we can't make a bright line between these cases, I would agree with leaving them out or sorting them separately. Cameos should not be a "brand new" entry (eg Parappa appearing in PS All Stars does not make for a new Parappa game), and entries should be clearly sequels, prequels, remakes, reboots, or the like, so the new SotBeast is definitely extending the series. But again, keep in mind I think you want to possibly sort both on longevity and number of games. A 2 game series split by 20 years is somewhat dishonest to call a long-running franchise because there were no entries in between, it wasn't "running". --MASEM (t) 15:47, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

New articles - January 8

Main page: Wikipedia:WikiProject Video games/New article announcements

New articles from the past week. I also included articles from the New article announcements that have been moved into draft space over the past week and the number of articles from that page that have been deleted. This post has been made to help raise the visibility of new articles being created that fall under this project.

December 28

December 31

January 1

January 3

January 4

January 5

January 6

January 7

January 8

Salavat (talk) 12:15, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

Thanks, this alerted me to the fact that a new user disregarded my advice and made a lousy Bubsy character article... Sergecross73 msg me 20:45, 9 January 2016 (UTC)
At least there's one source, and that's better than none. If there's content some users are doubtful of, they could at least put a [citation needed] on some of the statements. And rather than removing an article, they should correct its contents. 208.54.4.130 (talk) 22:54, 9 January 2016 (UTC)
Well, you have to establish notability to keep an article in existence, and Bubsy as a character isn't notable. Anything notable to say about him as a character could fit easily in the series-article. ~Mable (chat) 22:58, 9 January 2016 (UTC)
The series-article is mainly about the games. The article for Bubsy is strictly about the character. The Bubsy article mentions brief things about the character's creation, personality, and abilities. 173.55.37.52 (talk) 00:40, 10 January 2016 (UTC)
That's not a valid reason for creating an article. It needs many, third party sources that cover the subject in significant detail. See the WP:GNG. You can always create a section about the character at the series article if you feel the series article does not discuss him enough (though even that should be written according the sources, not personal observations.) Sergecross73 msg me 02:56, 10 January 2016 (UTC)
Nar I just forgot to sign off on the post (my bad). Salavat (talk) 07:47, 10 January 2016 (UTC)


Mable, when you say not notable, do you mean the character doesn't appear in enough games or isn't publicized enough? 172.56.41.206 (talk) 21:28, 12 January 2016 (UTC)
With lack of notability, I was referring to how there are very few publications that discuss the character of Bubsy in any depth, and those that do exist probably mostly discuss the entire series or all elements of a specific game. I think it would be very difficult to create a meaningful "Reception" section without taking snippets from various game reviews, and I doubt anyone has ever said more than a few sentences about the character's design. It's interesting that "The way Sonic goes airborne and lands safely was the inspiration for one of Bubsy's moves," but can you tell me anything else about how the character was designed? Of course, if you can find such sources, then I would be very interested in looking into it, but if you can't write more than three sentences that aren't in-universe, then there's no reason not to write those sentences in the series article. ~Mable (chat) 09:26, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

Banjo-Kazooie content dispute (GR content issue)

A discussion of whether this series article needs GameRankings scores listed could use new voices: Talk:Banjo-Kazooie_(series)#Review_scores czar 00:24, 14 January 2016 (UTC)

This is the one and only known consensus that i see above with the following closing statement:

There is consensus for the change. The majority opinion is that GR is mainly useful for older games and it is mainly duplication in newer ones. I do not see support for removal everywhere, more of phasing it out on newer games. It was almost clear consensus that it was useful for older games, from both minority and majority opinions. Were that fits on a timeline though isnt clear.

After that, there was an active discussion on how the wording was done, but it was not universally accepted. Nor does it follow or support the conclusion of the initial consensus. This is where i'm saying this is "misleading". And we need a proper consensus on "how" to word and change the rules based on that. My changes were completely made based on what the above consensus was. Not just because i believe GR rankings are relevant to Banjo-Kazooie. Czar wants to focus on strictly why Banjo-Kazooie needs the GR based on the new changes made to WP:VGAGG, but those changes were never fully supported nor are they accurate to the reached consensus. TL;DR : Per status-quo, a solid consensus to use the wording has to be done before discussing Banjo Kazooie. Lucia Black (talk) 00:40, 14 January 2016 (UTC)
I think it would be best to keep the discussion at the talk page. – Rhain☔1999 (talk to me) 00:44, 14 January 2016 (UTC)
I dont think you are listening to what i'm saying. We "can't" discuss it there, if you read my comment (specifically TL;DR section in bold), you would know why. Lucia Black (talk) 00:50, 14 January 2016 (UTC)

List of fictional universes in games

This article is a mess. Does anyone want to try to save it? You could start with finding sources that explain why fictional universes in video games are important to list in the first place. czar 21:21, 10 January 2016 (UTC)

It should be deleted. If it's including the GTA world and the Half-life world, then it's really just a list of video game franchises, not even just fictional settings. Which, itself, would be an unmanagable mess of most every sci-fi/fantasy game series ever made. --PresN 22:05, 10 January 2016 (UTC)
Would agree with deletion. It's not really a notable subject in of itself. --MASEM (t) 02:31, 11 January 2016 (UTC)
Same as above, there's no possible way for this article to be sourced adequately. ~Mable (chat) 07:04, 11 January 2016 (UTC)
I guess I'll just comment again with a keep vote if it ends up coming to a AFD, but do note WP:CSC "Every entry meets the notability criteria for its own non-redirect article in the English Wikipedia". In this case most of the constituents meet GNG, and perhaps the items that don't have articles can just be rooted out during the cleanup process. There's not question that this article is pretty embarrassing but I don't think that's the solution is to just delete the page.--Prisencolin (talk) 01:51, 14 January 2016 (UTC)
For what its worth though, a number of the entries are redirects - for example the first 2 entries. A number of other ones have been tagged for major cleanup for years, and may not survive an AFD themselves, should someone go through and nominate it for deletion. Something to consider as well. I'm personally undecided... Sergecross73 msg me 13:39, 14 January 2016 (UTC)

Release date reform

Let's talk release dates. We agreed fairly recently that we should not be dropping aggregator percentages in the Reception section a propos of nothing because it was devoid of context, signified little on its own, and made for terrible prose. What about release dates? We tend to dump every date into the late Development or early Reception section for all sorts of regions and for what? If, for example, a game released on January 1 in one region and in all the others within the month, why not just say it like that and let readers follow the source if they want more specific dates? This is also connected to the infobox, which collects all sorts of release date cruft. Is listing each specific date a form of overinformation? I know my eyes generally glaze over when I hit such a section and I actually try to be interested. Readers generally want to know when each port of a game was released—do we really need to specific each specific date or can we generalize? czar 19:46, 12 December 2015 (UTC)

  • I've been doing this exact thing for a while without any controversy, so I had thought it was an unwritten guidelines. For example, when a game is released worldwide over the course of a month, we really should just state it was "released worldwide in December 2015" instead of listing each individual date, as the infobox covers that. ~ Dissident93 (talk) 20:08, 12 December 2015 (UTC)
The way that I've dealt with this, in the case of The Last of Us Remastered, is to place the separate release dates within a footnote. This hasn't been challenged in the past, and I consider it a good way to approach it. – Rhain1999 (talk to me) 00:04, 13 December 2015 (UTC)
How do other WikiProjects deal with this? I checked some albums, but they only list one release date in the infobox, which I assume is the first release date. Same goes for film. This seems to be the case for American and Japanese material (the ones I checked). May it be proper to only list the original release date - leaving out all (other) English language releases? I suppose translation is often more a thing for video games than it is for film, so a localized release may be vastly different to the original and this leads to an "extended development" before a second release. That may be an argument to keep the first English-language release date in for non-English-games. Other than that, I really don't know a reason. If this were the German Wikipedia (for example), it would make perfect sense to list the German release date, but as the English Wikipedia, we should either list all English releases or none of them. I understand where this cruft idea comes from.
I definitely agree that specific release dates should generally stay out of the prose, but I'm still on the fence on whether we should be listing secondary release dates in the infobox. ~Mable (chat) 00:29, 13 December 2015 (UTC)
I can agree with the idea to keep specific release dates out of the prose unless notable, but they definitely should be in the infobox. Video games, maybe more than any other media, are affected by regional release dates. While I can import a novel from, say, the US, instead of waiting and hoping for it to be picked up by a local publisher, I couldn't do the same with a region-coded video game. It would not be helpful to tell a European reader in 2013 that yes, Shin Megami Tensei IV is available in English now, without mentioning that it had in fact not been released in Europe yet. I think this is interesting with already released games, as well - at least I personally find it interesting to look back on when a game was first released and how long it took for it to make it to other regions. I am not sure if I'm making a particularly strong case for this, but I do find infobox release dates useful, and often go to Wikipedia to check when a game came out or will come out in my region.--IDVtalk 00:52, 13 December 2015 (UTC)
The Film project uses the following format: for the infobox and the lead, the earliest cited released date, plus the release dates for the country of the production company are featured. If there are additional notable release dates for a film, they are written in prose in a Release section. - Favre1fan93 (talk) 06:09, 14 December 2015 (UTC)
In prose, absolutely trim down. In the infobox, while we get specific on region and platform, I also see a lot of cases where, say, different platforms in the same region are marked even though the difference is just a few days. That's spammy. A difference of a month or so is definitely worth to point out but not a few days. --MASEM (t) 00:57, 13 December 2015 (UTC)
Hmmm, I would say the exact opposite. In the hierarchy of data, I see the infobox summarizing the lede, and the lede summarizing the body. The body should include any detail worth mentioning, and the other two should summarize that information. Unless I'm reading your post wrong, you seem to be suggesting the opposite. Maury Markowitz (talk) 01:54, 14 December 2015 (UTC)
So you think writing "was released in Japan on December 1, 2015, in North America on December 2, 2015, and in Europe on December 3, 2015" is better than writing "was released worldwide in December 2015"? I disagree, and it seems others do as well. Exact dates should go in the infobox and release section, but having it in the lead? ~ Dissident93 (talk) 01:44, 15 December 2015 (UTC)
I disagree with the generalizing of release dates. Wikipedia is not paper; there is no need to be stingy with our documentation. Wikipedia should serve as an historical record and maintain the existence of this information. Just look at Super_Nintendo_Entertainment_System#cite_note-NAReleaseDateNote-1---information from as recent as 25 years ago is already being lost to the digital aether and if it isn't Wikipedia's job to counteract this, then whose is it? We already have two perfectly suitable solutions for so-called "infobox release date bloat": using a footnote and using Template:Collapsible list. There is absolutely no need to excise this information completely. As someone who has spent countless hours tracking down specific reliable sources for actual release dates, no easy task for some older games, this proposal spits on that effort and I can't abide by it. Axem Titanium (talk) 04:38, 14 December 2015 (UTC)
I should mention that I am referring only to preserving data in the infobox. In prose, use your best judgment w.r.t. "brilliant prose". Axem Titanium (talk) 04:42, 14 December 2015 (UTC)
Isn't this exactly what the release section is for? A lead should cover all information in the article, but in a generalized style with the detailed info in the sections below. Anything wrong with that? ~ Dissident93 (talk) 05:40, 14 December 2015 (UTC)
Release sections are useful for this, but only if the releases are somewhat notable. Release events or long lines - stuff like that - is usually listed in such sections. If the only thing that is in the "release" section is three or four release dates, you might as well just keep that in an infobox. ~Mable (chat) 08:34, 14 December 2015 (UTC)
The release section should be specific, unlike the lead and the infobox. That's the point of the release section. If the main article doesn't include all these release dates then the lead and the infobox shouldn't, as they are there to summarize the article. All release dates are notable as they are covered by reliable sources, and they shouldn't be excluded because they make for terrible prose. AdrianGamer (talk) 09:20, 14 December 2015 (UTC)
For the record, I agree with the person who forgot to sign their post ("So you think writing ...") that the infobox should be there to deliver specific kinds of data regardless of whether it is also described in the prose. ~Mable (chat) 09:26, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

Sorry, that was my comment. Anyway, the best example of this in my opinion is Bloodborne. The lead says "worldwide in March 2015" and the release section gives the exact dates for each region. The game was released in successive days across global markets, but it's a mouthful to have that in the lead, in my opinion. ~ Dissident93 (talk) 01:44, 15 December 2015 (UTC)

We are an encyclopedia

I think the bigger point to be made here is that we are an encyclopedia and not an archive of every release date on every platform. We are data in reader-friendly context, not every data point. This like when we realized that our articles should stop being gameguides and do the harder work of actually summarizing gameplay, development, and reception so as to tell the story of each release: our articles should be the simplest way of learning about each topic and not a collection of every technical detail. There are (or else, will be) other sites to fill the functions that WP does not. But we're more realistically looking at paring down our leviathan lists of release dates on some articles to reader-friendly prose. This might mean only including the first major releases (for each platform?) in the infobox and otherwise elaborating in the appropriate section and, as Rhain suggested, relegating nitty gritty date-by-date differences between regions to footnotes (or excluding them altogether) unless a source makes a point about their temporal difference. Something as simple as not giving the specific date of release in the lede would be an improvement here—we put more importance on saying it's December 17 in the first sentence than on saying what the game is actually about. Also, to be fair, we're not even that great at collecting the original release date for every platform in every region—but it's not in our mission and would be best left for some other site to handle. czar 19:11, 17 December 2015 (UTC)

I agree with this. In nearly all the articles I wrote, the only importance on the release date is the month/year (which gives a rough idea if its timed for the holiday rush or in the winter lull, for example, and gives an approximate time frame when the game was released on one platform or region.) We don't need this level of exactness in prose, and even in the infobox, trying to document every date for every release becomes silly. For nearly every game the key dates are the first release of a game in a region that seems to matter most. --MASEM (t) 19:24, 17 December 2015 (UTC)
So... Only list the initial (non-English) release and first English-language release in the infobox? Thus, for example, almost never listing Australian release dates? ~Mable (chat) 19:35, 17 December 2015 (UTC)
I don't think Australia/NZ should be singled out. This is more about using Wikipedia as a repository for exact release dates, when that is not the function of a general knowledge encyclopedia. I'd say that, like film and music, we should only include the original release date as a reference point in the infobox. Later releases, if important, can be elaborated in the Release section as appropriate. Some might propose, as a compromise based on how WP is currently used, that we pare down only to the original releases on each platform, to which I'd say that could be better described in prose in the lede and Release section. There are other sites better equipped to be almanacs for release dates—but it's beyond our scope. (If we can, however, reliably source release dates for multiple regions and express them in reader-worthy prose, I think they are usually best put in a footnote, as Rhain recommended above.) I'll add that most of my article steward work is watching IPs futz around with dates in the infobox instead of actually improving the article text. The proposal would be (1) to put less emphasis on specific release dates in the lede and Development/Release sections, so as to express the release window in more context-rich, reader-friendly prose, and (2) to use only the original release date in the infobox. My main example for the former: does it matter more, when explaining the Rise of the Tomb Raider development cycle, that we are providing the specific release dates for each region or that we are explaining the context of its release—before the holiday season but cannibalized by being released the same day as Fallout 4.[1][2] It doesn't have to be mutually exclusive, but the latter is much more conducive to what we are trying to do with an encyclopedia. czar 22:01, 23 December 2015 (UTC)
I "singled out" Australia/New Zealand because it just happens to get games the last, while either Europe or the United States get games first. I believe listing the first English-language release of any game is definitely notable, especially if a longer amount of time was between a (for example) Japanese release and the first English release.
I completely forgot about multiple platforms, though. This complicates the matter quite a bit. I'm really not sure how to cut down on those. Of course, they should not be written down (in its entirety, anyway) in the prose. "Summer 2015 on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One" would do just fine, for example, as would not mentioning the release date at all in prose. However, I think they need to be there in the infobox... ~Mable (chat) 22:19, 23 December 2015 (UTC)
WP:SEASON ;) —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 22:28, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

Release date proposal

The film infobox is too small to reproduce the long lists of release dates provided by sources such as the Internet Movie Database. Release dates should therefore be restricted to the film's earliest release, whether it was at a film festival, a world premiere, or a public release, and the release date(s) in the country or countries that produced the film, excluding sneak previews or screenings. {{Film date}} should be used for the film's release dates. If other release dates are found to be notable, it may be appropriate to include them in the main body of the article (example). ...
— Template:Infobox_film#Release_dates

Original album release date, formatted according to the Manual of Style for dates ("December 14, 2003" or "14 December 2003" depending on the article style, without the quotation marks). The {{Start date}} template may be used here. If the day is unknown, indicate only month and year ("December 2003"); if the month is unknown indicate only the year ("2003"). Only the earliest known date that the album was released should be specified; later release dates (incl. re-issues) can be mentioned in a Release history section.
— Template:Infobox_album#Released

Proposed for {{infobox vg}}:

List only the first major release in the infobox. Put other notable release information (e.g., major ports) in prose in its respective Development/Release section or a footnote thereof.
  • Support. As discussed in the section above and as standard in other infoboxes, we shouldn't have endless lists of dates in our {{infobox vg}}. It's beyond our scope as an encyclopedia and we've proven quite poor at maintaining them. If later releases/ports are notable, they should be worth summarizing in the lede (in reader-friendly language). This change should also encourage editors to focus more on the port's development and release in prose in the appropriate section (rather than slapping unsourced dates for every region in the infobox). I contemplated an addendum to add the first major Western release if the primary release date is somewhere else, but I don't think it's necessary. When we collapse our giant lists of dates, only one date shows on the outside of the list and that has been sufficient. Open to friendly amendments. czar 04:45, 3 January 2016 (UTC)
  • Comment i may be late on this, but i don't see video games. Most games tend to be just fine. I do agree some articles get so cluttered with release dates, but most times they don't. Just the initial release date from the initial platform that it was intended (and additional platforms if they were close together). The ones that do get cluttered are the episodic release and the games that get ported every single time. Example of this is Final Fantasy (video game) and Super Mario Bros.. Video games aren't exactly like films where DVD, VHS, and maybe Blu-ray are practically irrelevant. Same with Albums. For the most part film/albums tend to have simultaneous releases. I would suppport this only if A) we keep all the initial release dates, and include the region releases in the infobox. I also think episodic games are becoming the norm. I think we should implement a parameter for these type similar to that of the TV series infoboxes or Series infoboxes where we just list the first and the last release. Lucia Black (talk) 07:29, 3 January 2016 (UTC)
  • Support, according to the guidelines of the other WikiProjects. However, I'd like to note that if a video game's first English-language release was multiple years after its initial release, it is definitely worth noting in the article's prose. Subsequent English-language releases are probably rarely notable, unless they were ports or remakes. "Release" sections are proper for this information, but should also consist of more information about why these specific releases are worth mentioning. ~Mable (chat) 10:46, 3 January 2016 (UTC)
    • Reply When are release dates not worth mentioning in prose? Lucia Black (talk) 00:54, 4 January 2016 (UTC)
      • Basically whenever the release is no different from another release. For example, if a game is translated to English and released in America, and then a month later released in the UK and Australia as well, those two are completely irrelevant. As always, almost all international releases are irrelevant. If a game is released on multiple systems during the same month, or a translated version of a Japanese game is released in the west within the same month, there is no good reason to list them all. ~Mable (chat) 06:49, 4 January 2016 (UTC)
        • This is why i opposed. Right now things are too simple. We need to put real clarifications. Albums and Films are really easy to do.I think if we want release date reform, we actually need to reform on the whole infobox because release dates are tied to consoles and publishers. Lucia Black (talk) 06:57, 4 January 2016 (UTC)
          • How would one explain why releases, besides the original release, are notable to list? Currently, we list all English-language releases on all platforms, but are any of these dates notable? Listing notable release dates only in the prose of an article creates context for said release dates. How do you suggest we cut back on arbitrary release dates? ~Mable (chat) 09:15, 4 January 2016 (UTC)

This is essentially why i'm suggesting to look at the "entire" infobox, not just release dates, because release dates are attached to region, publishers, consoles. If we single out one release date just because it was a week, 2 weeks or even 1 month away, this also means we have to remove the next publisher of that region as well. Also what if the console release was only one month away? Timed-exclusives are a thing now, so now matter how big the gap is, that gap is wha makes the other release dates notable too. Instead of proposing something right away, why not make it a discussion first. Lucia Black (talk) 09:29, 4 January 2016 (UTC)

As for how to deal with region-specific publishers... I don't know, and that's a good thing to ask about. I'd like to see input from other people about that. About month-long gaps: those are irrelevant in the long run. If reliable sources talk about the difference in release dates depending on platform or region, we can talk about this information in the Release section. The only release date that is always important regardless of the state of the industry is the very first release date. ~Mable (chat) 09:36, 4 January 2016 (UTC)
  • Support - Infobox isn't mean to be all encompassing. But if this passes, we have to change 1000s of articles, which will be a hassle. ~ Dissident93 (talk) 01:11, 4 January 2016 (UTC)
  • Support but with grandfathering. That is, if this gets consensus , then GA/FA/A-class should require this to be done to pass, and we should go through at least our FA articles to fix those up, but should not force it on older articles though editors are free to do this if they want. --MASEM (t) 01:15, 4 January 2016 (UTC)
  • Oppose only because lack of clarification. Albums, and Films are far different from video games. We're asking to ignore simultaenious multi-platform releases. If there was more clarification on how it would work, then i would be happy to support. But its far too simple as it stands now. Lucia Black (talk) 01:42, 4 January 2016 (UTC)
  • Question - I guess I'm okay with this, but just out of curiosity, something along the lines of what Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward, would that work? It only lists the initial release date, and states that the game was released later that year in other regions. Also, my apologies for using this article, as I've put a lot of work into it over the last few months (along with IDV and Thomas01989), and I'm planning on nominating it for FA status soon. Famous Hobo (talk) 01:31, 4 January 2016 (UTC)
I would personally recommend that we limit infobox dates to solely the main date and eschew all date lists (alternatively, we could relegate the dates to a footnote, as noted above), but I think there's room for discussion once we find consensus on the proposal as stated. czar 22:37, 6 January 2016 (UTC)
  • Oppose - Just use the collapsible list template for the infobox. With that, the very first date will be shown while the rest will be hidden unless you click "show". Like Dissident93 said, that's 1000s of articles that would have to be changed. I do agree with only putting the first major release in the lead and the other dates in the Release section prose, but as per the infobox, what I said previously. --JDC808 ♫ 03:15, 4 January 2016 (UTC)
@AdrianGamer and JDC808, collapsible lists, or any effort to systematically collect all release dates on a multi-plat release, are almost always incomplete or unsourced (which is partly why it's beyond our scope). Here are three basic examples of collapsible lists that I can't ever see not being clunky without wholesale removal: Another World, Doom, The Walking Dead. czar 22:37, 6 January 2016 (UTC)
The collapsible list has already solved the problem. If we are not listing dates in infobox or in the prose, these information (which is notable) will be lost. They are unsourced and incomplete, but that doesn't mean that we have to ignore them. AdrianGamer (talk) 15:17, 7 January 2016 (UTC)
  • Comment For those concerned on port dates, what if we used right-aligned, collaspable tables in the development section that detailed port releases, presuming that there is sourcable information about when ports were released? Once outside the restriction of the infobox, that type of table can be more useful when, most often, the ports and re-releases are described in detail in the Development section. Possibly a inter-page link in the infobox to an archor for that table could help too. --MASEM (t) 17:54, 4 January 2016 (UTC)
  • Oppose - As per others. I want lists of dates kept out of the prose, in the same way I want lists of review scores kept out of the prose. - hahnchen 22:52, 5 January 2016 (UTC)
    • So having them all crammed in the infobox is better? They'd have to be put into a collapsible list, else I don't see how that's a better idea. ~ Dissident93 (talk) 23:01, 5 January 2016 (UTC)
      • Yes. It is better. - hahnchen 23:34, 5 January 2016 (UTC)
        @Hahnchen, the idea was to not have lists of dates anywhere—not in prose or the infobox. Where do you think that was misconstrued? Removing release date dumps from the infobox forces editors to actually write about the ports in prose (when they're worth mentioning). Lists in prose wouldn't make sense. czar 22:37, 6 January 2016 (UTC)
        • I believe this approach was tried years ago, and failed, with WP:ALBUMS, which has the constant battle of WP:GENREWARRING. They tried to remove the "genre" tag out the infobox, so people would stop edit warring over, and be "forced" to write prose about the genre. But then people just wrote stuff like "Metallica is metal. Metallica is also hard rock. Also they are progressive metal." - like the lowest end prose possible. And the arguing ensued still remained, and ultimately the scrapped the plan. Similarly, I think this proposal will just push the clutter off to other parts of the article. Sergecross73 msg me 14:19, 7 January 2016 (UTC)
  • Oppose - I believe this is yet another effort to impose unintuitive standardization upon articles. Maybe I'm just getting a little burned out, but I'm tired of all the reverts on my watchlist over these things that aren't obvious to people who haven't studied the massive WP:VG Guidelines page. Too much counter-intuitive standardizing is just going to be ignored by anyone outside of the core 10-15 WP:VG editors, and those core editors are going to have to clean it up for everyone else all the time. I'm more of JDC808's mindset - if the lists are too long/unwieldly, collapse it. Sergecross73 msg me 13:57, 6 January 2016 (UTC)
  • I also reject the notion that only the initial release date is worth noting. I find them equally important, and sometimes, even more important. For example, I would think that the release window for the iOS/Android release of Sonic CD in 2011 would be of more significance to many readers than the release on the tiny userbase of the Sega CD over two decades ago. Sergecross73 msg me 17:31, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

Proposal No.2

I propose we only keep the original major release date(s), original console(s), and original publisher(s), and instead create a new parameter called "other releases" where we only list the consoles it has been moved to. We do however keep re-releases, ports, and remakes separately from the infoboxes, especially if they have an article of their own and simply put it under some form of "Related" parameter. Lucia Black (talk) 13:53, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

How does this deal with English-language releases in the USA/EU/Australia, which seemed to be the primary reason to discuss this? ~Mable (chat) 17:10, 7 January 2016 (UTC)
We keep NA, EU, and if it distinctly noted by well known sources, we add in AUS aswell. But only if its scheduled as part of the initial release. But with that said, we don't add in NA/EU/AUS release dates after the initial release. Meaning if there is a game that came out on PS3/Xbox 360 and there will be a PS5, Xbox two, Nintendo NX2 or whatever future console re-release out there, we do not give it high-priority in the infobox. Instead we mention only the console its been released in in the proposed "other releases". we still have to give proper release information for them in prose. Lucia Black (talk) 17:26, 7 January 2016 (UTC)
  • Comment unlike the other proposal, this one simplifies the infoboxes while new and old members can easily adapt to it. But, i'm not going ot push it for anyone, if they oppose, oh well. Not like its a huge deal for me. But i thought it was a nice compromise. Lucia Black (talk) 17:30, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

The encyclopedic value of release dates

I think that before we can cement how to handle what goes on in the infobox, we should step back and reassess what importance release dates in general are, and which specific release dates are most important.

Let's consider a game that comes out for PC, Xbox 360, and PS3, then much later for Xbox One and PS4, and has different release dates in the three major English markets (NA, EUR, and AUS). Strictly speaking, that's 15 release dates, though there will be times they might double up, but for sake of argument lets assume due to circumstances these are all different. Further, assume that as commonly happens, the PC/360/PS3 release in one region is all within the same week due to timing of being on the respect storefronts, and same with the Xbox One/PS4 release (eg these two in the same week); just that the various regions get these at different times.

Are all those exact dates necessary for en.wiki to document exactly so that all 15 dates are represented? I don't know for sure, but figuring this out would help to define better how to fix the dates in infobox. --MASEM (t) 18:24, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

I just want to say other areas such as WP:TV and WP:CARTOON have been using DVD region code such as (Region 1, 2, 4). I don't see it any different for WP:VG to mention all the relevant regions. However, the problem is giving proper weight to each individual console release. And that's what my proposal aims to fix. There's nothing wrong mentioning each individual release for each region. Any Wikiproject can do it, but that's not the problem for WP:VG. the problem is having large details all for the infobox. The infobox is suppose to be concise and only gather key information (but not all) of the article. Your hypothtical is extreme, but i would say still very manageable with my proposal. If we were to use my proposal, we would only have 9 specific release dates while having Xbox One and PS4 listed as "other releases". I know its not "perfect" the way it sounds, but it definitely cleans it up without too many glaring issues. Lucia Black (talk) 18:35, 7 January 2016 (UTC)
I feel that they're all necessary. People keep making comparisons to other media like films and music, but video games are different in that they are re-released through different non-compatible mediums far more than film or music. There's far more conditions for compatibility with video games. For instance, in Film, DVD was the primary format for at least a decade, and every single DVD played with every single DVD player. That's not the case for something like Sonic Adventure, which went from GD-ROM to GameCube Disk to PC Disk release to digital releases through things like PSN. Not a single release is compatible through another platform. This makes the release dates and platforms much more important to note. Sergecross73 msg me 18:56, 7 January 2016 (UTC)
You gave a great explanation, but it doesn't exactly tell us why "release dates" are important. It only tells us why the "console" is important. I agree, and shared similar sentiment that the a console isn't just another format like albums and DVD. it's not simple MP4/MP3. However, that doesn't exactly tell us why we have to list every release date into the infobox. There has to be a better and easier way. Again, my proposal cleans it up pretty well. Of course not every infobox is gong to reduce. For example Final Fantasy (video game) has been released on several platforms. that doesn't mean all of them have equal weight. Lucia Black (talk) 19:16, 7 January 2016 (UTC)
Its just that, if each release on different platforms are more significant in video games than other media due to compatibility, more frequent technology changes, etc, then the release dates would be more significant to note as well. Sergecross73 msg me 14:47, 8 January 2016 (UTC)
I'm sorry Serge, but you actualy dodged the point. I'm saying that yes, you gave the answer as to why each console needs to be in the infobox, but you didn't answer why the "release date" of the platform it released on needs to be in the infobox. Lucia Black (talk) 18:58, 8 January 2016 (UTC)
  • I don't have any more rationale other than "if the separate releases are deemed to be of more importance in video games than other mediums, due to compatibility, changing technology, etc, then the release dates of said changes would also have an increased importance, because availability is an important part of a products release". Furthermore, I see no compelling reason to remove them from the infobox. It's already there and implemented. The "collapse" option hides the content from people who have a problem with the clutter. Its the type of information reads clearly in the context of a list (context or description is generally not necessary, just the platform and date conveys the message). Its the type of information that infoboxes were made for. Sergecross73 msg me 19:51, 8 January 2016 (UTC)
  • I think the reason why its because for WP:VG, one release date does not give strong encyclopedic value as a "set" of releases. But again, i dont believe "All" releases are valuable. There's two sets for me "original release" and "everything else". Lucia Black (talk) 20:02, 8 January 2016 (UTC)
  • Responding to Masem's original question, this cluster of release dates provides a good "at a glance" summary of a game's availability in English Wikipedia's major readership areas (NA/EU/Oceania) both temporally and platform-wise. I believe this easy summary is valuable in and of itself. Axem Titanium (talk) 23:13, 8 January 2016 (UTC)
Yes, well put, this is sort of part of what I was driving at... Sergecross73 msg me 00:46, 9 January 2016 (UTC)
  • I expressed my thoughts on this at length above, but two other relevant points for this section:
  1. Other major game encyclopedias (slightly different from WP but our closest equivalents—Giant Bomb and MobyGames) only put the first release date in the main infobox (as proposed). I would think this is because...
  2. Very, very, very rarely are the release date lists (the one's we're proposing to collapse—read: hide) sourced. It would be fine to leave them unsourced if they are cited in the article, like the lede, but they almost never are. So instead we become a repository for dubious release dates and throw verifiability into the wind. Another major reason for cutting back on release dates is that we don't do them well (scope issue).
For those who opposed the above proposal, if we're keeping the status quo, what do you propose we do about unsourced date sections? (Remove them? And is that effort more manageable than keeping the infobox smaller in the first place?) czar 00:36, 13 January 2016 (UTC)
The simple answer, source them. --JDC808 ♫ 19:16, 13 January 2016 (UTC)
Agreed, it should just be handled in the same manner we handle all unsourced information. Similarly, we don't necessarily need to go and remove every single unsourced release date you see, we can focus moreso on ones that seem particularly questionable or unlikely, and tag plausible with CN tags. Also, at the very least, you can usually narrow it down to a particular year, from first party accounts like manuals or title screens. Sergecross73 msg me 19:42, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

In considering collapsable lists

I am in general agreement that if we are going to keep all the dates for each platform and region, a collapsible list is appropriate. If the game has 2 or more different release dates of concern, I would argue you should use a collapsible so that the date line only takes up one line of the infobox when collapsed.

But what I would like to offer is considered having multiple collapsed lists when the game has a specific remake/remaster, as opposed to when it is just ported. So, taking something like The Stanley Parable (where it is clearly a remake, not a port), the infobox would have two collapsible lists, one for "Original" with the first date of release, and "Remake" with the first date of that release in it. This unfortunately begs the question of a difference between a simple port, an enhanced port, or a remake. But I do believe that we can establish rules of thumb here to make 90% of the cases of port vs remake easy to clarify, while the remaining cases would be one for discussion. And it should be noted that regardless of original or remake, re-issuing of a game on a storefront ala how PSN is doing with PS2 games on PS4 right now, is not a new release date for any system. --MASEM (t) 23:18, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

I have no objections to this. I don't even have a problem with the PS2 re-releases on PS4 - I think a game's first release in often a decade, could be of note. But my main concern is the massive effort that would be involved in the removing of a ton of good information in the prior 2 proposals. I'm less concerned with things that would be adding more content in. (The current guidelines don't allow for PS2 to PS4 or Wii to Wii U digital re-releases, do they? Theyre re-added to articles I maintain/come across so often I forget which way is the wrong way...) Sergecross73 msg me 00:44, 9 January 2016 (UTC)
I think i'll leave it up to other members to work on this. TO me, its just another way to micro-manage. Lucia Black (talk) 20:34, 9 January 2016 (UTC)
Anything that comes out of this section should automatically have grandfather clauses : existing articles do not need to be rapidly conforming to this decision, though any new article or new GA/FA nomination going forward should be tuned for whatever results. And if an editor feels compelled to then work out those articles that do fall into the grandfather clause, so be it. But absolutely no way this should be considered a mandatory change that must be enforced immediately. --MASEM (t) 01:44, 13 January 2016 (UTC)
I tried to ignore the subject but i can't help but still want WP:VG to be easier to use, not follow trends that the WP uses to compensate. So here are my thoughts on the matter: I hardly ever see an infobox with a collapsible list other than in WP:VG. I believe if there is an option to hide details in the area where its suppose to show key info, then its clearly doing something wrong. That said, i believe holding value to every "release date" int he infobox is a form of systemic bias, rather than something we need to improve the article. Whats the point of collapsing it if we can present the exact same information in a separate table somewhere in the general prose of the article? With that said, i like the idea of a section dedicated to remakes/remasters. But for re-releases, perhaps a more generic section in the infobox that doesn't demand so much details. Such as only the console, not the release dates of them.
If i could update my proposal before to include that, then i'm sure we would have the best possible infobox. but i ultimately reject anything to not giving the key information to the reader in an easy to access format. Remember that the criteria for GA articles is accessibility, and collapsible is often rejected (but I've been gone, so who knows if this is still relevant). re-releases just don't have that strong value in the grander scheme of things when all it does is add more and more tiny, unnecessary details to the point that a collapsible list is being demanded when in reality we can avoid it. If we just list the consoles rather than the dates, we wont need to collapse anything. Here's another piece of perspective: VG franchise infoboxes summarize articles far more efficiently and they also just list the console, not the release dates (they do show timeline and release dates in the article). Lucia Black (talk) 20:08, 13 January 2016 (UTC)
  • A potential solution could be what Masem proposed earlier:

    For those concerned on port dates, what if we used right-aligned, collaspable tables in the development section that detailed port releases, presuming that there is sourcable information about when ports were released? Once outside the restriction of the infobox, that type of table can be more useful when, most often, the ports and re-releases are described in detail in the Development section. Possibly a inter-page link in the infobox to an archor for that table could help too. --MASEM (t) 17:54, 4 January 2016 (UTC)

    I am much more amenable to this solution than the collapsible list in the infobox. Such a template could have a space for citations baked right into its setup, so you can have your lists of dates while our concerns about indiscriminate additions and verifiability are allayed. czar 20:33, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

Solves virtually nothing of the original problem and is essentially the same thing. But sure, why not. I "like" it too. Lucia Black (talk) 20:54, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

  • Oppose - As per above. Removing a list of dates from the infobox to not-the-infobox addresses none of the supposed concerns about verifiability or encyclopedic-content. The only thing it might do is improve the aesthetics, I'm just not interested in that over the utility of having the dates all in one place. I expect to see the localisation dates for Xenoblade Chronicles in the infobox, I expect to see the different platform dates in Rise of the Tomb Raider. This should not change article to article depending on whim. - hahnchen 18:13, 14 January 2016 (UTC)

Decision on the requests board and Trouble Witches (series)

So over at Wikipedia:WikiProject Video games/Requests there has been one article that has been on there for over five years. Yet, it has never been made: Trouble Witches (series). I'm not sure what's to be done with this request. I feel like deleting it from the request board so the backlog can be taken back one year. But I feel like getting some input on this might be best. GamerPro64 04:34, 15 January 2016 (UTC)

I suppose the article would be titled Troubled Witches, as no disambiguation would be needed. Has anyone ever started a draft for this? Has anyone ever tried to find sources for this topic? ~Mable (chat) 12:25, 15 January 2016 (UTC)
Come to think of it, I don't think there are articles for the individual games. What's the point of making an article on the series if we don't have any for the games proper? Might just be best to remove it then. GamerPro64 19:08, 15 January 2016 (UTC)
In case of Japanese doujin franchises, it's actually pretty standard to have series articles without specific game articles. Take Corpse Party, for example. Sometimes, it's smarter to make a series article rather than a video game article because none of the games in the series are notable on their own, but the series itself is. If any specific game ends up notable enough for its own article, it could expand from the series article naturally. ~Mable (chat) 20:37, 15 January 2016 (UTC)
If you're gonna do that, keep Serellan at least. That one interests me. GamerPro64 21:06, 15 January 2016 (UTC)
I prefer games to devs or events, so I might leave that one, Loot Drop and Indie Speed Run. Or I might end up doing nothing at all. Don't hold your breath. Plans are optimistic. :p ☺ · Salvidrim! · ✉ 21:09, 15 January 2016 (UTC)

Sourcing of a game's engine

While it is always better to use a third-party source to affirm this information, most games today have splash screens and credits that affirm what the primary game engine it was written in, if it was a mainstream engine ala Unreal, Unity, and so on. If it is clearly listed in splash screen or credits, do we believe it is necessary to provide a source for the game's engine (assuming it is a notable engine), presuming no reliable third-party sources mention it?

What I am seeing are users using wikis like indiedb or the like to source the engine field. If we can use the game itself to source this simply by observing the name of the engine, I think it is preferable than sourcing to a wiki. Note that if the version of the engine is not explicitly stated, it is better to leave it out than to second guess based on judgement. (eg saying "Unreal engine" if you can't tell the difference between "Unreal 3" and "Unreal 4"). --MASEM (t) 17:41, 15 January 2016 (UTC)

If the game (or game's materials) clearly say the name of the engine, then I think it's perfectly fine to primary source it in absence of secondary sources. This should be mostly an uncontroversial fact in those cases. Wikis and similar should likely be avoided for the same reason we don't use them for other materials. However, IndieDB and such by the developer themselves could and sometimes should be used too, especially if there is an engine on top of the engine. It's typical to have a custom engine built on top of Unity or Unreal or XNA or similar IDEish ones (Unsure if we want to include both then). So undisputed uncontroversial claims by the developer are fine too. Anything that requires original research, like examining game files should not be used as a source. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 17:51, 15 January 2016 (UTC)
We don't include custom engines that are not notable in the infobox anyway. If the game has a splash screen showing Unity or Unreal, then it's perfectly fine to use that in the article, since it's no different than using the credits. ~ Dissident93 (talk) 21:59, 15 January 2016 (UTC)
Yes, for infobox, only if it is notable. But there's nothing against a sentence or two mentioning a custom engine in development section, especially if the dev provides insight into development process. In fact, just an infobox entry is fairly useless without some prose giving context, especially for general purpose "engines" like Unity or Unreal. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 22:27, 15 January 2016 (UTC)
This I totally am fine with. There's actually a good deal that Jonathan Blow wrote about his engine for The Witness but that's all in the dev section and doesn't go to the infobox. Here, the game in question is That Dragon, Cancer which clearly has Unity markings all over it, but I just can't confirm through a third-party source. --MASEM (t) 22:31, 15 January 2016 (UTC)

Giant Bomb's GAR

Giant Bomb, an article that you or your project may be interested in, has been nominated for a community good article reassessment. If you are interested in the discussion, please participate by adding your comments to the reassessment page. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status may be removed from the article. GamerPro64 04:14, 16 January 2016 (UTC)

Do we or has there been any coordinated gaming sessions or groups between us VG project editors? I'm talking more than just having editors on friends lists or the like. (I hope I can share the reason for this question soon) --MASEM (t) 12:38, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

I don't think there ever has been one. Are you proposing something such as a gaming session? Lucia Black (talk) 13:14, 1 January 2016 (UTC)
Basically for historical reasons. Perhaps this may prompt us to make something, but that's not the reason I am asking. --MASEM (t) 13:18, 1 January 2016 (UTC)
can you elaborate a little more? correct me if I'm wrong but it seems you are suggesting a group of editors working outside Wikipedia and donating/borrowing games in order to get first hand experience? Lucia Black (talk) 13:23, 1 January 2016 (UTC)
No, I just mean us as editors, playing games together in a common manner for fun. --MASEM (t) 14:06, 1 January 2016 (UTC)
I'm not aware of any such occurrences, but I'm "game". (chuckle chuckle chuckle). -- ferret (talk) 16:36, 1 January 2016 (UTC)
What is this thing you call "fun"? Can you edit it? In seriousness, I would be interested in such a thing, though I'm not much of a gamer, oddly enough ^_^; ~Mable (chat) 16:39, 1 January 2016 (UTC)
I rarely play multiplayer games. SharkD  Talk  01:29, 2 January 2016 (UTC)
I volunteered at Wikimania 2014 (so I have one of the WP:VG leaflets IRL). There was a video games night during the event, but I don't think I came across any WPVG people. - hahnchen 12:29, 2 January 2016 (UTC)
I find it funny how it turns out that Wikipedia's elite VG project core don't play many video games. I like this idea, but it sounds like someone would have to do some organising. JAGUAR  15:01, 2 January 2016 (UTC)
I doubt most of us don't play video games, but i don't believe anyone seeks out a play session with fellow members. Just like other projects. WP:NOVEL don't read novels together and WP:COMICS don't read comics together. But they must have some interest in them by first-hand experience in order to be in the project (i assume). Although, i think its about time we got an idea of what Masem was planning or what idea he had. As fun as this sounds, it sounds like a bigger distraction. Everyone is free to make their own choice, but i don't believe it should be a Wikiproject-sponsored idea. Lucia Black (talk) 15:14, 2 January 2016 (UTC)
True, but I think video games are more interactive as opposed to the solidarity of reading a novel. I don't know how such an idea will work but considering this project is one of the most successful on WP, it might be a good idea to bring out the fact that some of us aren't cold editing warriors. It might even boost productivity. JAGUAR  15:23, 2 January 2016 (UTC)
There are many reasons why WP:VG is successful. Almost universally accepted, easy to find sources (for more modern games), easy to find exemplary articles to imitate and a strong community to support in finding sources and clarification. None of it has to do with actually playing games together. And i don't think anyone is calling anyone here a cold editing warrior. Let's be realistic. We all want to have our fun, editing Wikipedia is a hobby in itself. But if we really want to pursue this, its best to do it privately. Lucia Black (talk) 15:51, 2 January 2016 (UTC)
I don't see any reason or harm in asking the the project if there's anyone who'd like to be involved. Though of course, we need some more details from Masem at this point. -- ferret (talk) 16:01, 2 January 2016 (UTC)
I asked not for purposes of setting up anything, but just to determine if anyone was aware of anything that we've might have had organized in the past. I wasn't planning on setting up anything as a result, though I see there does seem possible interest if anyone else wants to organize such an event. --MASEM (t) 16:13, 2 January 2016 (UTC)
I think it would be appropriate to discuss these plans somewhere that isn't WP:VG's main talk page. ~Mable (chat) 18:06, 2 January 2016 (UTC)
I agree, its not like i'm against people doing this on their own accord, i just think its a bad idea to try to make it a main project for WP:VG. It can be a bigger distraction than you all realize. Heck, even trying to defend this is a distraction. Lucia Black (talk) 23:05, 2 January 2016 (UTC)
Distraction from what...? Freely volunteered time on Wikipedia..? -- ferret (talk) 23:08, 2 January 2016 (UTC)
I will not clarify what should be painfully obvious jst to justify what you all want to do. You can do whatever you like, but lets keep this project strictly to editing articles. Lucia Black (talk) 23:20, 2 January 2016 (UTC)
  • There's no fun in working and collaborating on articles about video games if we can't play and discuss them every once in a while. I also may or may not have opened a Steam group that anyone is welcome to join. Whoops. – Rhain1999 (talk to me) 00:07, 3 January 2016 (UTC)
    • There, problem solved. Anyone interested can hang out there. But wikipedia is about fixing articles, if certain times you dont feel like editing articles or improving them. Then you can go there. Lucia Black (talk) 00:15, 3 January 2016 (UTC)
The WikiProject talk page is totally fair game for discussing off-wiki activity. There's no need to reply in the thread if it doesn't pertain to you. (In fact, as goes in Robert's Rules, the best way to move a conversation to its conclusion is to not say anything.) czar 02:01, 3 January 2016 (UTC)
The wikiproject talk space is for things related to the Wikiproject. And the wikiproject is to Working on video game-related articles. If you want to make a proposal to focus on things outside of Wikipedia, then make a proper proposal. Otherwise, please keep this in your own personal talkpages if you truly want to pursue non-Wiki related. Policy is policy. Lucia Black (talk) 02:10, 3 January 2016 (UTC)
Additionally, there is a place for people who want to pursue non-wiki related things in the depart of fun WP:FUN. The only place dedicated to not do anything to improve wikipedia. If you want, you can propose a Video game play-session there. Lucia Black (talk) 02:13, 3 January 2016 (UTC)

I've sent a friend request to Rhain. I'll see you guys on Steam ;p Let's get out of this page, though, Wikipedia is not a forum. ~Mable (chat) 10:52, 3 January 2016 (UTC)

Would it be a good idea to have a WP:VG subpage where we can write our usernames and the platforms we use? Maybe also put down with what games or game genres we're most familiar with. Not for gaming together necessarily, but to look up possible collaborators. For instance, Rhain and I worked together on having a good gameplay images on The Last of Us. I made the two gameplay images, Rhain uploaded them. If we have subpage like that, interested editors can also add each other for possible coordinated gaming sessions. --Soetermans. T / C 14:36, 4 January 2016 (UTC)
This sounds like a pretty good idea, especially for collaborations. I'm worried that less active editors would also add to the list, however, causing it to get rather large. Listing specific games one is familiar with would also result in a pretty long list. ~Mable (chat) 18:03, 4 January 2016 (UTC)
I suppose listing games isn't necessary, if you were to add me on PSN you'd see my game activity. I don't think having a long list would be an issue. There is already WP:VG/MEM, perhaps expanding on that list could work? --Soetermans. T / C 19:43, 4 January 2016 (UTC)
Is anybody interested in possibly working together like this? I think Rhain1999 added me on PSN (for the other PlayStation users, my username is Soetermans there too). I started a PSN community called WP:VG, feel free to join. --Soetermans. T / C 20:45, 12 January 2016 (UTC)
I'd join, but is the community stuff PS4 only? Vita is the only modern PlayStation console I use at the moment. If I can't do it through that, then I'd only join when I get a PS4 someday... Sergecross73 msg me 21:08, 12 January 2016 (UTC)
  • I'm not much of a Steam guy (not at all actually), but I'm on PSN, Hearthstone and Smite daily, and WiiU/3DS every once in a while. See my userpage infobox for all my usernames. I'm always down to game with anyone! I only have Jaguar and Serge on my various friend lists, AFAIK, but anybody here is especially welcome to add me on any gaming network I'm on (or any social network really, I'm very open). Definitely add me on PSN, I'll join the community later tonight when I get home. :) ☺ · Salvidrim! · ✉ 21:21, 12 January 2016 (UTC)
Am I the only schmuck without a PlayStation or Steam account? Anyway, I don't mean to add more to this topic, since some people already voiced their dissent at this topic, but for any Xbox gamers out there, my gamertag is also on my userpage infobox. Don't do much during the weekdays thanks to school related work, but I'm pretty active during the weekends. Famous Hobo (talk) 21:41, 12 January 2016 (UTC)
Well, I only play games from the fifth generation, so I'm probably the most backward one here. Still, my names are on my userpage, and I do go online almost every day. I'm 'Jaguar' on everything on the internet, so I'm easy to find. JAGUAR  23:03, 12 January 2016 (UTC)
I received a couple of friend requests (and accepted those too of course). Is having a WP:VG subpage or expanding on the members list a good idea? I believe I added @X201: on PSN too, but not sure if they're up to for that. --Soetermans. T / C 15:40, 13 January 2016 (UTC)
I'd say make a subpage or members list subpage. It'll keep people from complaining on the main page here. I think that, if someone ever pushed for deletion, we could argue it is project-based (Like fact finding for video games for the articles - it really could be used like that. Or maybe even just as the equivalent of a "work retreat/morale improving/teamwork building" type thing you hear of in the business world, haha.) Worst case scenario, it gets deleted, no big loss. Sergecross73 msg me 13:35, 14 January 2016 (UTC)
I joined the Steam group. I don't think discussing this here or on a subpage is really a problem, the project guide seems to support it: A WikiProject may also be a focal point for building ties between Wikipedians interested in a certain topic area, and the broader community interested in that topic area. Projects aren't 100% solely black and white about editing, it's about the editors too. -- ferret (talk) 14:03, 14 January 2016 (UTC)
Moved to User talk:Lucia Black § WP:VG
 – Continued discussions with Lucia about her attitude. ☺ · Salvidrim! · ✉ 14:53, 14 January 2016 (UTC)

It is. WP:NOTFORUM. Essentially, Wikipedia should be focused on improving articles. I don't need to point it out. I know we all know this. As much as you hate that I'm pointing it out, it has been said to take it upon your personal talk page. Lucia Black (talk) 14:37, 14 January 2016 (UTC)

Like I said before, @Lucia Black:, we could also work together by gaming or through other digital channels besides WP:VG, that's why I pressed on. Rhain1999 and I worked together on the gameplay pictures of The Last of Us, well, I noticed Salvidrim also has Rocket League in his PSN library, so in theory we could start a multiplayer game to capture a good screenshot or make a video. I think The Witcher 3 could really use a screenshot, if I were to see another editor playing the game, that would make it much easier to get that done. --Soetermans. T / C 19:54, 14 January 2016 (UTC)
FWIW, I created the Rocket League article and managed to get the dev to freely-license cover art. We were supposed to speak again after E3 2015 for more but never got around to it. Psyonix could certainly be convinced to release a few freely-licensed screenshots. Also, screenshots are generally easier to produce on the PC versions of games for obvious reasons :p Buuuut, none of that should stop us from playing a few Rocket League games anyways ;) ☺ · Salvidrim! · ✉ 20:10, 14 January 2016 (UTC)

In so far as off-wiki gaming/collaboration goes, similar to how Wikipedia in general has IRC channels on freenode, would anyone see a benefit in having a Discord server setup for the project? Being gamer oriented and providing an (optional) voice chat, it could be useful to VG editors in discussing article efforts in a more free flow way or organizing game play efforts if needed. Thinking more on this along with Soetermans points, I've thought about such possibility as finding someone with a particular game who could try to verify a plot point, and relay the information back, or share a screenshot back. I've quickly setup a server, but won't provide a link if no one believes it would be of any possible benefit. -- ferret (talk) 22:20, 14 January 2016 (UTC)

I don't it think would be used too often, but I do really like the idea. – Rhain☔1999 (talk to me) 12:57, 15 January 2016 (UTC)
We share a queen, but I'm still across the ocean. :p ☺ · Salvidrim! · ✉ 18:19, 16 January 2016 (UTC)

Gameography citations

An article I worked on, Richard Honeywood, just got slapped with an additional citations template in the gameography section and it made me realize that I didn't know what the best practices were for providing references in that section were. Looking at WP:VG's current good/featured content, there don't seem to be many, if any, people articles in which the gameography section is ref'd up. Is this a situation where the end credits of the games themselves implicitly provide the citation for the information? If not, where are the best places to look for references to support this section? Axem Titanium (talk) 23:22, 15 January 2016 (UTC)

(not usually involved with articles on people) I would say these are uncontroversial claims. Is there suspicion that the content may be inaccurate? WP:V asks for sourcing on content likely to be challenged. WP:BURDEN would put it on you to source it if it's challenged. But I don't think anything more than a primary source is needed unless some specific work is being challenged. And since the table is already referencing the primary work, a citation is somewhat redundant unless it is unclear what work is meant. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 23:34, 15 January 2016 (UTC)
With Neil Druckmann and Bruce Straley, I favoured online, reliable secondary sources when citing their roles within the game. In a few cases, it was difficult to do that (presumably because the games didn't receive much online press, or because their roles within the development wasn't too notable), so I referenced the game credits using {{Cite video game}}. I always checked the credits on YouTube beforehand, just to be sure. – Rhain☔1999 (talk to me) 23:42, 15 January 2016 (UTC)
Yeah Druckmann and Straley were the only GAs that I saw had references for the gameography section. Do we have a consensus about whether or not this should be mandatory on a project policy level? Or only require references for controversial and/or uncredited roles? Axem Titanium (talk) 20:47, 16 January 2016 (UTC)

New articles - January 15

Main page: Wikipedia:WikiProject Video games/New article announcements

New articles from the past week. I also included articles from the New article announcements that have been moved into draft space and redirected (the ones I have spotted) over the past week and the number of articles from that page that have been deleted. This post has been made to help raise the visibility of new articles being created that fall under this project.

January 5

January 8

January 9

January 10

January 11

January 12

January 13

January 14

January 15

Salavat (talk) 07:46, 16 January 2016 (UTC)

Recent PS2 emulated games on PS4

Apologies if this has been asked before, but how do we handle the recent batch of PS2 games that are now on PSN? They are emulated without any graphical/gameplay updates, but do include trophy and basic widescreen support. ~ Dissident93 (talk) 08:39, 15 January 2016 (UTC)

I would not add their release date or info to the infobox, but it is a valid point to add in a Dev/Release section. It is the same idea of 360 BC for Xbox One - there's the tiniest amount of extra work in a wrapper to make sure the game runs fine but its still 99% emulation, and not a new release platform. --MASEM (t) 17:37, 15 January 2016 (UTC)
Yeah, that's what I thought. ~ Dissident93 (talk) 06:42, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

Review Thread 21: Enter 2016

We're in 2016 now so we might as well get the ball rolling with reviews.

FAC
GAN
PR
Good Topic
Featured Portal

And, if one is interested in creating new articles, we have Wikipedia:WikiProject Video games/Requests which is now at a four and a half year backlog for requests. There are also nearly 300 drafts at Category:Draft-Class video game articles that has possible articles to be made. GamerPro64 20:22, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

I'll trade a review of any type in return for image/source reviews on the Seiken Densetsu 3 FAC. --PresN 15:53, 9 January 2016 (UTC)
PresN, I'll be happy to expand my review on the FAC to an image/source review, if you like (assuming that's permitted). I don't expect a trade either, but it would be great if you could leave some comments on The Last of Us' FAC too, if you have time. – Rhain1999 (talk to me) 15:59, 9 January 2016 (UTC)
@Rhain1999: It is permitted, and that would be great! --PresN 18:28, 9 January 2016 (UTC)
I left some comments. – Rhain☔1999 (talk to me) 00:21, 11 January 2016 (UTC)
I'm doing a review of South Park, but if someone wants to prompt me to take a look at their FAC/GAN/PR/whathaveyou, an excellent way of doing that would be participating in the FAC for "Rejoined": Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Rejoined/archive1. Not a video game, but other media needs love too :) Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs(talk) 15:20, 13 January 2016 (UTC)
David Fuchs, I'll have a look at that FAC in exchange for you taking on the GA for Bionicle: Mask of Light. --ProtoDrake (talk) 15:42, 13 January 2016 (UTC)
I'll take up your offer with Rejoined. Don't have a video game related GAN right now, but I currently have a peer review you can look at. I'll mention it on that page. Also, to throw in some video game stuff in here, I'll take a look at The Stick of Truth when I can. Famous Hobo (talk) 15:46, 13 January 2016 (UTC)
Sounds good, Famous and ProtoDrake. Thanks! Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs(talk) 16:29, 13 January 2016 (UTC)
@David Fuchs: I've just left some comments at the Rejoined FAC. If you get the time, please could you take a look at the Jumping Flash! FAC? It's already got some comments, but it's running dry at the moment. More input would be greatly appreciated. Thanks! JAGUAR  13:59, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

Marvel video games template

Hi everyone, I've nominated {{Marvel Video Games}} for deletion. The template is used on a hundred or so articles, so your input would be appreciated. Thanks. --Soetermans. T / C 12:59, 18 January 2016 (UTC)

New useful article for several games

PC Games' 50 most important PC games

Note that this is not necessarily "best" games, but critically important games towards establishing genre or genre changes, etc. For example, just having worked on roguelike, it helps to establish where Rogue and Spleunky sit in that framework. --MASEM (t) 16:56, 18 January 2016 (UTC)

Alert: Lost Odyssey

To anyone whose interested, I've just finished doing editing work on Lost Odyssey, which basically amounts to some tidying up, added detail, and general expansion, along with the addition of a screenshot and some reliable sourcing for previously unsourced info. If anyone is interested in taking it any further, please feel free. I've done what I intended to do and made it slightly more readable and encyclopedic. --ProtoDrake (talk) 16:41, 18 January 2016 (UTC)

I'll probably give it a read-through, considering how interesting your The Last Story rewrite was, though I don't have much prior knowledge on this one, or much motivation to do much on it, as long as its a game that's trapped on a platform unavailable to myself... Sergecross73 msg me 17:02, 18 January 2016 (UTC)

Sources for Japanese companies

Anyone have sources for the following?

They're in pretty weak shape. czar 18:03, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

  • Imagineer is the only one I have any experience with, and as the publicly-traded "most prolific third-party Nintendo developper" (sourced quote), I'm sure it merits its article. Here is some SIGCOV from IGN: [4], [5], [6], a 2006 article in GameFront.de (which I can't directly find) but was reported on in Engadget. If all else fails, I'm still planning on merging the four "Quest" games into a single article (they are landmark as one of the only JRPG on N64 introduced in NA) and Imagineer could then be redirected there... I guess. ☺ · Salvidrim! · ✉ 18:34, 17 January 2016 (UTC)
I found those Imagineer ones in the VG/RS search (had more than the other companies—forgot to add the links) but there's still not a lot on the company. Anyone have ideas on where these companies might be covered in print? @Hahnchen? czar 18:42, 17 January 2016 (UTC)
I'm familiar with Sting Entertainment, as I've played most of their games. They're another one where, they've released enough third party games across various platforms , I'd think the coverage would exist somewhere out there. They've put out a lot of games with, or that are comparable to, Atlus and Idea Factory, so maybe there's more coverage at the type of websites that cover their sort of games. (Siliconera, RPG websites, etc.) Sergecross73 msg me 17:57, 18 January 2016 (UTC)

Chris has given us an oldie for an upcoming TFA, and some of the links are dead. I've removed some material in the lead not supported by text below the lead or by working links, but both the article and the lead probably need some work. Let me know. - Dank (push to talk) 03:13, 18 January 2016 (UTC)

I never noticed that some of these articles used in the page were by a website Zeality was part of. Zeality later being the editor who got it to Featured Article status. Can that be seen as a concern? GamerPro64 04:07, 18 January 2016 (UTC)
Was Zeality, or whoever wrote for that website, generally regarded as a widely quoted expert in the field? WP:FAC requires "high quality" sources (a term subject to some interpretation.) - Dank (push to talk) 04:15, 18 January 2016 (UTC)
I have no clue. I can tell you that he also took part in creating Chrono Trigger: Crimson Echoes, which is why he only touched it twice to fix up the plot. GamerPro64 04:25, 18 January 2016 (UTC)
My understanding was that while Zeality was one of/the admin for Chrono Compendium, he didn't write the actual content, though he did as you say work on the Crimson Echoes game. CC is a fansite, though, even if an absurdly (absurdly!) comprehensive one, so if it's being used for more than just English translations of Japanese liner notes/interviews, it shouldn't be. Though finding any other source on this super-niche game is likely to be impossible, if so. --PresN 04:33, 18 January 2016 (UTC)

For the most part, Chrono Compendium falls under general fansite usage, i.e. it is generally an unreliable source except where instances of creation/translation staff commentary are used, however the encyclopedia may also be considered a lexicon of information on the game(s) and as it may be difficult for some users to access the game, the site is thus viable alternative. (seeVideo games section).
— WP:SE

The Chrono Compendium (about) links should be removed—it's a fansite. Might have been okay for 2008 but not now. czar 04:34, 18 January 2016 (UTC)

I write the TFA text, and Chris and Brian select the articles. If you guys decide you want more time to work on the article before it hits the Main Page, please let Brian and Chris know (a note at WT:TFA will work, or you can ping us all with {{@TFA}}). - Dank (push to talk) 19:11, 18 January 2016 (UTC)
It might not take that much to fix. The citations mostly aren't so much citing the fansite's original work, it's more that they're citing scans or text the website is hosting from other sources. It's more like the website's scans of Famitsu and whatnot. And Zeality is responsible for a lot of the content on there, so he may be able to confirm the scans authenticity too. Sergecross73 msg me 00:22, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

With the passing of Seiken Densetsu 3, we now have 200 Featured Articles! Congratulations to everyone who has helped us reach this lofty milestone, and special thanks to:

Awesome work everyone. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs(talk) 19:33, 16 January 2016 (UTC)
That is impressive, great job all around! —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 20:00, 16 January 2016 (UTC)
Congratz, all of you. Great work! :3 ~Mable (chat) 20:06, 16 January 2016 (UTC)
Hard work but worth it. Darkwarriorblake / SEXY ACTION TALK PAGE! 20:22, 16 January 2016 (UTC)
Honored to have helped. --ProtoDrake (talk) 20:31, 16 January 2016 (UTC)
Great news! Looks like I have to step it up in 2016. :) Axem Titanium (talk) 20:46, 16 January 2016 (UTC)
Been long since I pushed a game article to Good or Featured status, but an awesome milestone to reach! igordebraga ≠ 01:27, 17 January 2016 (UTC)
Definitely an impressive milestone. Congrats to all the other contributors! JimmyBlackwing (talk) 01:45, 17 January 2016 (UTC)
Anyone else feel nostalgic? 200 articles with this project with lots of editors taking part in creating these articles. Good times. GamerPro64 03:25, 17 January 2016 (UTC)
Only 6? Gotta get more! But hey, I am in the Top 10 Thumbs up icon Let's make it to 250 by 2017. --JDC808 ♫ 04:18, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

It currently says there are 199 FAs – did an article get demoted? ~Mable (chat)`

That number hasn't been updated to reflect the recent FA. If you click on the 199, Seiken Densetsu 3 hasn't been added there yet (at time of my posting at least). --JDC808 ♫ 12:32, 17 January 2016 (UTC)
Ah, my bad ^_^; ~Mable (chat) 13:42, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

Oh. We're nearing 1000 GAs. We currently have 986, so it's close. Is it possible to organise a list of users by GA count like we done here? JAGUAR  14:04, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

That's not as easy. Nominations, I have 3 (Metroid Prime Trilogy, Metroid: Other M, Rock Band (video game)), and only those from 2010 on have an easy way to track nominators in the WP:VG/AA archives. igordebraga ≠ 15:56, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

Yeah... for FAs I actually went to each FAC page and tallied up the nominators... (with some glances at WP:WBFAN to make sure I was combining renames correctly). I could do that with GAs too, but there's 5 times as many, so I'm not promising anything. --PresN 16:03, 17 January 2016 (UTC)
It sounds like a pain. Perhaps it's possible to list everything post-2010, but only because I'm assuming 1000 GAs would be the most important milestone for any WikiProject. As far as I'm aware only WP:USA and WP:MILHIST have more GAs, with 2160 and 3221, respectively. JAGUAR  17:41, 18 January 2016 (UTC)
They do, but they also have a lot more articles, so we're actually doing better on a percentage basis: Milhist: 3221 GAs + 455 As / 153691 = 2.39%; USA: 2160 + 76 / 247386 = 0.90%; VG: 987 / 35759 = 2.76%. --PresN 18:31, 18 January 2016 (UTC)
Okay, I guess I am going to try to get nominator stats done in time; good thing I have a little bit before we reach it (assuming someone doesn't try to review all the outstanding GANs tomorrow.) --PresN 01:08, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

Internet Archive is down because the connection is refused!

Something is terribly wrong with the Internet Archive and the Wayback Machine! Minutes ago, the entire website is down because of an error that says the "connection is refused"! It's still down, no matter how many times I hit "Refresh"! When will the website be back up? Here's the link. --Angeldeb82 (talk) 04:21, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

It works a-okay for me. ☺ · Salvidrim! · ✉ 04:37, 19 January 2016 (UTC)
I've said this multiple times, Angel. Stop panicking if Archive.org or some random website temporarily goes down. Unless one day the people at Gamasutra calls it quits then announces it, then we should start worrying. GamerPro64 04:41, 19 January 2016 (UTC)
Yeah, I can see that the Archive.org website is working again. Thanks. --Angeldeb82 (talk) 04:58, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

Arthas Menethil draft

This is for the Blizzard task force but could someone look at User:Harry Blue5/Arthas Menethil (at MFD right now) and comment on whether it could merged into Arthas Menethil? -- Ricky81682 (talk) 10:24, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

Another chronological template

I've nominated {{The King of Fighters chronology}} for deletion. --Soetermans. T / C 11:02, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

Source opinion

I have a problem about a source that looks good, but I'm not sure I can use it. I am doing a rewrite for the Xeno series article, and this article from a site called Nintendo Inquirer goes in the series and makes mention of thematic content that is pointed out by others but that I can't find recorded on other sites. I was hoping that it was something I could use, seeing as I seem to recognize the author's name from other accepted sites. But since I have never used the site before, I wanted second opinions on whether I could use it safely.

PS: If anyone has a less questionable source which goes into the themes mentioned in the above article, I would be most grateful. (Note: prefer sources other than reviews of the games in question). It's infuriating that this series is recognized for these but it's not as well documented. --ProtoDrake (talk) 22:53, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

Looking at their about page and I don't think there's any credibility here. What other websites have you seen the writer on? GamerPro64 22:59, 19 January 2016 (UTC)
That's the trouble. Don't really remember. It may have been on this site, or even this article, and I've just forgotten. --ProtoDrake (talk) 23:14, 19 January 2016 (UTC)
If Tom Brown had written elsewhere, it would surely be mentioned in his bio on the About page. According to his Twitter, a Jan. 12th review was "his first big review", so I doubt he's got much experience. ☺ · Salvidrim! · ✉ 00:01, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

Three new categories

I've created today three categories to keep in mind and help populate:

Category:Early access video games - for games that have used the Early access model (not necessarily Steam's, so things like Minecraft are included).
Category:Game jam video games and Category:Ludum Dare video games - for games developed initially during these events. The latter is a subcat of the former, and there may be other more specific game jams to include. I would include things like Double Fine's Amnesia Fortnight in these as well. --MASEM (t) 01:21, 20 January 2016 (UTC)
Apparently I've made a lot of these... czar 05:16, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

Category:Chiptunes musicians

Shouldn't this be singular? Category:Chiptunes musicians → Chiptune musicians czar 05:15, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

Yep. ~ Dissident93 (talk) 08:59, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

Metroid on Nes

A user on the French wikipedia (Archimëa) has asked for my help in finding english sources for the original Metroid game for its development and reception. I've tried to look myself but come up short since there are so many games with a similar name in the series, and bizarrely my google-fu has failed where normally it's quite good for finding at least some stuff, especially for a game as big as this. Can anyone help in providing these sources? Darkwarriorblake / SEXY ACTION TALK PAGE! 21:08, 16 January 2016 (UTC)

I also couldn't find much, but there was an interview in Siliconera with co-director Yoshio Sakamoto. Woodroar (talk) 21:22, 16 January 2016 (UTC)
Some are useful, I think the hardest part is that the user is after the release reviews from the time rather than re-release reviews or retrospectives. Darkwarriorblake / SEXY ACTION TALK PAGE! 22:12, 16 January 2016 (UTC)
Thanks Jimmy. I think a scan would be good if possible as the user is French but can read the English, so they will be able to take from it whatever they feel they need for the French article. Darkwarriorblake / SEXY ACTION TALK PAGE! 12:11, 17 January 2016 (UTC)
Okay. I'll try to get this to you by tomorrow—it's been insanely busy off-Wiki. JimmyBlackwing (talk) 02:36, 18 January 2016 (UTC)
@Darkwarriorblake: Here you go: GI ish 115, Nov 2002, "The 25 Greatest Moments in Video Games", page 70. No author listed. JimmyBlackwing (talk) 04:08, 19 January 2016 (UTC)
Thanks Jimmy, pinging Archimëa Darkwarriorblake / SEXY ACTION TALK PAGE! 22:09, 19 January 2016 (UTC)
Hello. Thanks for this Darkwarriorblake & JimmyBlackwing. I'm very grateful, as i could never find this alone. And about critic reviews from the release date, this seems impossible.
Thank you all for your help.
Best regards --Archimëa (talk) 16:54, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

Aardwolf MUD

I am surprised to see an attempt to remove Aardwolf (MUD) from Wikipedia. I initially wrote the article using several references and it was in a decent, albeit small, state in January 2015. In November 2015, Czar decided that the references were unsuitable for Wikipedia and changed the article to a simple redirect. Now it appears that all trace of Aardwolf is being removed from Wikipedia. This is despite the fact that Aardwolf is regularly top of the chart at topmudsites and The Mud Connector. (I know that those websites can be gamed and do not confer notability.)

Aardwolf has been around for 17 years and is probably the most actively played MUD in existence.

[Disclosure: I play Aardwolf] Axl ¤ [Talk] 17:55, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

Well, you're free to undo his redirect, though he'll likely then send it to WP:AFD, and I'm not so sure it would survive a deletion discussion. You need sources like those found at WP:VG/S that cover the subject in good detail. Of the sources in the article, really only http://www.engadget.com/2012/07/08/rise-and-shiny-aardwolf-mud/ would qualify as significant coverage from a reliable source. Perhaps someone else can dig up more for you though, some people around here are pretty good at it. Since you started a discussion on it, I have at least declined the speedy delete placed on the redirect. I feel it should be discussed further. Sergecross73 msg me 18:16, 20 January 2016 (UTC)
Aardwolf already does not have an article. The fact that it doesn't have an article is why I removed it from List of MUDs, since the extremely clear and extremely prominent inclusion criteria for that article dictate that. I assume this is what you mean by an "attempt to remove" it. It is, in fact, already gone, and the rest is bookkeeping.
If Aardwolf is extremely important, you should be able to produce two independent reliable source citations discussing it to base an article on. All else flows from that.
Preserving a dead redirect that goes nowhere relevant to the name of the redirect based on the content the article had before it became a redirect is faintly ridiculous. What encyclopedic purpose is served by maintaining dead redirects? —chaos5023 (talk) 18:20, 20 January 2016 (UTC)
... the very next edit was restoring the pre-redirect article, since it was a topic under discussion here. Please calm down and don't be hasty about bookkeeping. --PresN 18:23, 20 January 2016 (UTC)
Take it easy, I merely felt that it wasn't appropriate to speedy delete something that was actively being discussed. I figured someone else could figure out what to do with it, whether it be changing the redirect target, re-adding the entry to the list, restoring the article, etc. I'm no expert in the world of MUDs, and its not like it was an offensive WP:BLP or WP:COPYVIO content that needed instant action, so I just made a change to prevent deletion. Sergecross73 msg me 19:01, 20 January 2016 (UTC)
I'm happy to see the article back, and have restored it to List of MUDs. The article was dead for two months before I proceeded with bookkeeping; I dispute that this is "hasty". —chaos5023 (talk) 18:27, 20 January 2016 (UTC)
I'd suggest AFD would be the best option for an article such as this, it's weak but bit a bit of work it could be borderline.. Яehevkor ✉ 18:25, 20 January 2016 (UTC) (ex-mudder)
I don't particularly think it needs to go to AfD. Its citations look adequate to me. —chaos5023 (talk) 18:28, 20 January 2016 (UTC)
  • I agree that one in-depth reliable source should always be sufficient to decline a CSD, as there is high likelihood of other sources or at least editors who would contest the deletion. Unfortunately, it was a redirect at the time, so it wasn't obvious and I assume good faith on the nominator. Restoring redirect seems like proper WP:BRD. WT:VG and AfD appear to a reasonable venues, since there is an argument about notability. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 13:52, 21 January 2016 (UTC)

Visual book for Kileak: The DNA Imperative

I'm looking for a book on the game called Kileak: The Blood - Official Visual Book that was published by Sony Magazines in 1995. As seen in one of the images I found at Yahoo! Auctions, the book has interviews with those who worked in the game. Does anyone have a copy of this book by any chance? If so, it might be needed for expanding the development section. Thanks. -- Hounder4 22:41, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

  • This is going to be very rare. Usually WorldCat is the best way to see what libraries hold a copy of the book for loan (but then again, is this a full book?—I can't tell). WorldCat has no hits for the ISBN but there are two book hits for "kileak the blood" held in Tokyo's National Diet Library. czar 05:20, 21 January 2016 (UTC)
  • Your best bet is to bid on the auction. - hahnchen 21:23, 21 January 2016 (UTC)

Image deletion discussions you should be aware of

Multiple video game screenshots are being debated at Wikipedia:Files_for_discussion/2016_January_19, an example being File:WWF Wrestlemania 1991 Ocean game.jpg which is used at WWF WrestleMania (1991 video game). The wider use of video game screenshots is being discussed at Wikipedia_talk:Non-free_content#Clarification_regarding_general_legitimacy_of_video_game_screenshots.

We generally don't want non-free image jobsworths with no understanding of video games as a medium or how video game articles are read, imposing ridiculous image use guidelines onto the VGspace. So if you are familiar with image use policy and know what video games are, you should chime in. - hahnchen 22:18, 21 January 2016 (UTC)

External opinion needed

WP:SONIC

Someone (an inexperienced user) appears to be attempting to resurrect WP:WikiProject Sonic. Anyone have any comments? --Izno (talk) 19:41, 21 January 2016 (UTC)

As a relatively inexperienced editor, I'm curious how one would go about doing that. To resurrect a project, wouldn't you need a significant number of interested editors to discuss with? Furthermore, I assume any discussion related to the Sonic franchise can take place here as well. If it's about more technical aspects... as I said, I'm curious what exactly to do. ~Mable (chat) 19:56, 21 January 2016 (UTC)
Yes, as is so-often touted, a WikiProject is the collaboration of multiple people. --Izno (talk) 12:34, 22 January 2016 (UTC)
I think it should start as a VG task force first. There's unlikely to be enough editors to warrant a full WP-scope project. We've got many task forces that are larger than just Sonic franchise and they have less participation. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 20:04, 21 January 2016 (UTC)
Yeah, I doubt anything would come of it. There's really not many editors consistently working on Sonic articles beyond myself and Tezero, and even he's been MIA for a bit now. It'd probably be better to start with a task force, but even if they insist, I imagine interest will wither away shortly regardless... Sergecross73 msg me 20:16, 21 January 2016 (UTC)
I'm pretty sure this is 100% redundant and already covered under WP:SEGA, and that WP:SONIC's pages should be redirected there. ☺ · Salvidrim! · ✉ 20:25, 21 January 2016 (UTC)
(WP:SONIC actually does redirect there already. But WP:WikiProject Sonic does not, for the record. I thought I'd point this out, as it confused me at first. Sergecross73 msg me 20:35, 21 January 2016 (UTC) )
My comment was actually aimed at the fact that WP:SEGA was WP:SONIC at one point, and that this user would certainly benefit from that more structured WP:SEGA. I would certainly support a straight redirect, but do not want to WP:BITE the user. --Izno (talk) 12:34, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

Help

Excuse me, but I can't seem to log out of Wikipedia properly. I've tried clearing my cache, and that hasn't worked. Where can I report this, or if someone knows can this be explained? --ProtoDrake (talk) 14:53, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#No longer able to log out .28thank you.2C WMF.21.29.—  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 14:58, 22 January 2016 (UTC)
You're locked in here. Now get back to editing! Mwhahahaha ☺ · Salvidrim! · ✉ 15:01, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

Question about the video game series infobox

So for the Five Nights at Freddy's series article, Lordtobi (talk · contribs) states that we should list Scott Cawthon (the sole designer of the game) in the developer and publisher fields, simply because the video game series infobox doesn't not explicitly say that we can't. I, however think we should be going with what the normal video game guidelines state, where it says "In the case of a game made entirely by one person, use the designer field instead." If the game was created by "Scott Cawthon Games" or something, then it could stay, but we're suppose to omit individual people in the developer and publisher fields. A "creator" field already exists in the series infobox, so he will still be listed regardless. A spin-off infobox should still be going by the guidelines of the main one, unless it clearly states something else in it's own documentation, which it doesn't here. ~ Dissident93 (talk) 03:40, 23 January 2016 (UTC)

Czar and I are currently discussing this topic at Template talk:Infobox video game#Developer field definition, feel free to participate. Lordtobi (✉) 13:45, 23 January 2016 (UTC)

Valkyria Chronicles series

Hello wikipedia folks, along with the Souls (series) I have now changed the original redirect page of Valkyria into it now being the page for the franchise. Just as before, the article is pretty bare bones, so please for those of you with spare time, help to fill it in. Much appreciated. Thank you. Osh33m (talk) 20:36, 23 January 2016 (UTC)

Media by franchise/game categories

How should video game media (generally images like screenshots/art) be categorised here? In general, there's two different systems being used currently:

  1. Media is placed in the corresponding franchise category (Category:Fallout (series), Category:Call of Duty)
  2. Media is placed in a separate subcategory (Category:Metroid media, Category:The Elder Scrolls media)

Which option do people think is best? 1 or 2? Personally I'm leaning towards option 1. I don't think the media subcategories are needed as media is separated from pages automatically in categories. I want to hear what other people think and get a general consensus because I'd like to fix this so it's consistent across the board.

There's also a couple of oddball cases that should be eliminated:

--The1337gamer (talk) 14:06, 24 January 2016 (UTC)

Please comment

I am seeking comment regarding the translation of Super Smash Bros. (video game). Some discussion can be found in the history of the main page, while the discussion itself should continue to be held at Talk:Super Smash Bros. (video game)#Translation of title. --Izno (talk) 18:25, 24 January 2016 (UTC)

GameRankings discussion

I think we need to talk about the use of GameRankings. With current talks about use of Aggregation websites here this one seems to be the most expendable. At least, in my opinion. OpenCritic has been the new up-and-coming site that might become more popular than industry standard Metacritic. That's speculation right now as we don't know what's going to happen in the future. Metacritic is also one of two aggregation websites we consider reliable and use at this time. The other being GameRankings. Why do we still use GameRankings? It's older than Metacritic, as well as both sites being owned by CBS Interactive, but you don't hear critics or publishers talk about its importance. So I'm wondering if there should be a cutoff of using GameRankings on Wikipedia. Just stop using it past a certain date. Any other suggestions are welcome of course. GamerPro64 19:05, 17 November 2015 (UTC)

Might want to set this up more like an RFC or something - this may not be as clear cut as you think, as the consensus the last time we discussed this was pretty strongly in favor of keeping it. Sergecross73 msg me 19:18, 17 November 2015 (UTC)
In the 18 months since the last discussion, GameRankings has continued to be an irrelevance in the games industry, its presence on Wikipedia outweighs by its presence anywhere else. It should not be used for modern games. A lot of articles probably include it just out of habit, it might be difficult to do anything about it unless someone decides to go all Giraffedata on it. We could update Template:Video game reviews/doc to recommend the use of only one aggregator. - hahnchen 20:41, 18 November 2015 (UTC)
"GameRankings has continued to be an irrelevance in the games industry", maybe by your opinion or the people you have around you but just a simple look at Alexa shows it's far and above more popular than a site like OpenCritic. I'm not taking a stand on the use of aggregators (although I'm somewhat against linking to them), but they are pooling scores from published sources. They don't change the scores. You not liking them doesn't make the scores they recorded any less valid. If we're going to link to aggregators, I don't see why they are any more or less relevant than MetaCritic, OpenCritic or Rotten Tomatoes for that matter. And I absolutely am against the idea of picking a favorite. BcRIPster (talk) 21:58, 18 November 2015 (UTC)
I'm still of the opinion that trying to enforce not using it will require more effort than its worth to remove something that has nothing actually wrong with it. Sergecross73 msg me 22:05, 18 November 2015 (UTC)
Iff we were to decide to omit GR from the table, I would consider it a deprecated step, grandfathering in all existing uses and recommending it not be used for others. But I would also insist that we should GR as an external link because it serves the purpose of being a launching board for other review sources for the reader, in addition to those by MC (and possibly OC). --MASEM (t) 22:11, 18 November 2015 (UTC)
This is not done on articles on any other form of media, it shouldn't be done for games. Our reception section should already give a good overview of the critical landscape, and its references should be sufficient. We don't link to exhaustive lists of news or previews. Generally, for video games, I link to the official website(s) and to Mobygames, which itself has further links to reviews already. - hahnchen 22:59, 18 November 2015 (UTC)
Spot-checking a number of film articles, many include 3 or more links to aggregation sites (not just reviews, but things like RT, MC, Box Office Mojo, IMDB, AllTheNumbers, etc.) I see the aggregates that aren't used in the review table in the same way, alongside a link to MobyGames. --MASEM (t) 15:33, 19 November 2015 (UTC)
Mobygames is the IMDB equivalent. The Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes links are already in the references, we don't usually repeat these in the external links in games articles. We have removed links to GameFAQs, Gamespy, Gamespot, IGN, StrategyWiki and many others. I do not support the addition of aggregators to WP:VG/EL. - hahnchen 13:10, 20 November 2015 (UTC)
I feel the same way about rounding GameRankings' scores… —zziccardi (talk) 05:48, 19 November 2015 (UTC)
Given that we have nearly 12000 links to GameRankings on the English Wikipedia alone, I think we should remember that their Alexa rank may be largely determined by our use of them. Sam Walton (talk) 22:18, 18 November 2015 (UTC)
That's a good point. There might be a possibility of removing a large amount from here might cause a plummet in ranking. Now that's an article I would like to see, "Gaming Aggregator's traffic plummets thanks to Wikipedia". GamerPro64 23:58, 18 November 2015 (UTC)
That's a Wikipedia article I would love to see: Wikipedia's impact on gaming aggregators. ;p ~Mable (chat) 11:06, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

The indents are getting a little crazy at the top, so I'll put my response down here: For the record, when I say "not worth the effort to enforce", I'm talking about all the repetitive discussions/arguments that are going to break out over and over again.

  • Newbie: Hey, Serge, why did you remove Game Rankings?
  • Serge: Consensus is to not use GR on Wikipedia.
  • Newbie: How come?
  • Serge: Its not as prevalent as MC the industry.
  • Newbie: But I like GR/don't like MC. Here's some reasons why. What's wrong with using GR?
  • Serge: Well, there's nothing wrong, its just redundant.
  • Newbie: But what's the harm? And its on Sonic 2. And Super Mario 3D World, and etc etc etc.
  • Serge: Well, we set a cut off point.
  • Newbie: Why that point? What changed, and when? I want to open up a big RFC at WP:VG and get everyone all worked up over it.
  • (excessive arguments ensue)
Repeat Ad nauseam. Which is why I think its all more trouble than its worth. I fine with having this discussion over and over again about something like using VGChartz as a source, where there are issues that clash directly with WP:RS, and always a pretty strong consensus against it, but not this sort of thing. Sergecross73 msg me 16:10, 19 November 2015 (UTC)
I think "it is too much work to keep arguing about it with newbies" isn't really a valid argument. Shouldn't we think about what is best for Wikipedia, rather than what is easiest for us? Either way, if we do stop using GameRankings, all you need to do is link to this conversation whenever someone brings it up. There is no use in talking about it on specific article talk pages. ~Mable (chat) 16:16, 19 November 2015 (UTC)
But that's the foundation of my argument - there isn't any any detriment to using it. There is detriment to wasted time and effort better spent on other things though. Sergecross73 msg me 17:15, 19 November 2015 (UTC)
I don't think newbies are really the ones to bloat review tables with Gameranking scores, it's generally regulars who follow a pattern. We can refer those editors back here, and make the instructions clearer at Template:Video_game_reviews to establish that those patterns have changed. It's more important to establish a precendent rather than to look at policing. - hahnchen 13:10, 20 November 2015 (UTC)
Regardless of whether we should, we could remove the GR field from Template:Video game reviews such that the tables no longer contain the GR figure; this would likely discourage its use with minimal effort, while removing it from one of the prominent places it is frequently located. Sam Walton (talk) 13:20, 20 November 2015 (UTC)
I'm guilty of adding it, even when I don't like it, for this reason. The template supports it, and as long as it does, that's viewed by many as implicit approval to use GR, if not an outright mandatory requirement. In places where I only add MC, I often find that an IP editor adds GR within a day or two. -- ferret (talk) 13:27, 20 November 2015 (UTC)
In my experience, its either drive-by IPs that are making the changes, or the type of editor that is somewhere between "newbie" and "editor who regularly edits at WP:VG. There's a lot of them - the type that are huge fans of video games, but edit WP infrequently and don't really have a vested interest in following things, they really just want to add their 2 cents and be on their way. These are the types that these arguments are going to arise with over and over again. Sergecross73 msg me 13:47, 20 November 2015 (UTC)
  • The above dialogue has not been my experience. I remove GR whenever I see it not adding value (this is often) and I honestly cannot recall even a single article steward contesting the action. I see no issue with leaving GR in the template—it can be useful on specific, older games (really isolated cases). It just should be removed from the template default. I don't think it's a hard ask. It works the same way as the other Reception box rules and it's only unintuitive for those who have not read the documentation overview at all. I think it is fine to revisit this conversation if enforcement turns out to be a mess, but I really don't see how it will be. So the proposal is to remove GR as a default but leave it as an option if it adds value in the absence of Metacritic. czar 19:56, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

GameRankings proposal

The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
There is consensus for the change. The majority opinion is that GR is mainly useful for older games and it is mainly duplication in newer ones. I do not see support for removal everywhere, more of phasing it out on newer games. It was almost clear consensus that it was useful for older games, from both minority and majority opinions. Were that fits on a timeline though isnt clear. AlbinoFerret 00:32, 17 December 2015 (UTC)
Only include GR in {{video game reviews}} when it adds value atop or in the absence of Metacritic (especially in the case of recent games)
  • Support. I'm not seeing any honest defense of GR's importance above. I haven't seen any warring over including GR—we should be basing our decision to include something based on its use and not on the perceived difficulty of changing editor habits. I haven't seen a substantive reason for keeping GR as a default alongside Metacritic when it's just duplicating its numbers and makes no characterization about the reviews as a whole ("critical acclaim"/"overwhelming dislike") for us to use in prose. I don't think it should be scrapped outright because there are some edge cases in which it provides at least some description of the sources as a whole. czar 15:13, 25 November 2015 (UTC)
  • Suggested tweak: Deprecate. I think there's still some value as a secondary set of numbers, and for older games, but I do think looking forward the future of our articles doesn't include GR. Rather than removing it outright I think it'd be better to no longer recommend or encourage its use but bide our time another year or so and see if another option takes its place or we agree with the sentiment previous and go ahead and remove and/or discourage entirely. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs(talk) 15:16, 25 November 2015 (UTC)
  • Support, really per above. No need to remove it in articles where it is already in use, but seeing as it doesn't add anything to the article, I feel like we should discourage its use. ~Mable (chat) 15:59, 25 November 2015 (UTC)
  • Partial support, in that for any new games (not articles) since, say 2010, that GR should be deprecated over MC. GR is still rather valuable for older games that we might not have full articles yet and where MC doesn't capture the same websites that existed at that time. I would support removing it from the example at vgr but it obviously needs to stay part of the template. --MASEM (t) 16:21, 25 November 2015 (UTC)
  • Oppose - As long as there's nothing inherently wrong with it, it's not worth the effort to remove/enforce. Sergecross73 msg me 16:39, 25 November 2015 (UTC)
    • This proposal suggests neither of those. There is no need to remove any GameRanking numbers in currently existing articles and it is only discouraged and advised against in new articles, if this idea passes. There's nothing inherently right with it either, so why should we keep adding it to our articles? ~Mable (chat) 17:51, 25 November 2015 (UTC)
      • Neither of what? I'm saying it's not worth the effort to do anything towards making a change. Unless he's proposing changing nothing, then effort to change or enforce is involved, and in my opinion, not worth it. Sergecross73 msg me 22:22, 25 November 2015 (UTC)
        • I don't feel it is worth the effort to keep adding GameRankings if it doesn't add much of anything, and would prefer this effort to go into something else. ~Mable (chat) 09:20, 26 November 2015 (UTC)
  • I tweaked the proposal for clarity czar 17:47, 25 November 2015 (UTC)
  • Oppose — I'm not seeing a strong and convincing argument for actively discouraging the use of GR. I believe that having more than one aggregator is beneficial in terms of neutrality. Overall, I'm just not seeing any harm or a need to change current practice. --Murph9000 (talk) 20:43, 25 November 2015 (UTC)
  • Partial Support: It still has a valid use in articles for pre-Seventh Gen games. Others after that, it could be removed unless Metacritic does not give a proper view of aggregate scoring for a title. --ProtoDrake (talk) 21:36, 25 November 2015 (UTC)
  • Support - We should not be using Gamerankings for modern games. - hahnchen 12:40, 26 November 2015 (UTC)
  • Support - I can dig this. GamerPro64 19:19, 26 November 2015 (UTC)
  • Support - I find GameRankings useful for older games, but I agree that it shouldn't be encouraged in modern games, like anything seventh-generation plus. JAGUAR  14:34, 27 November 2015 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

GameRankings proposal implementation

I apologize if I missed where this was stated, but with the RFC now closed, how will this be documented? An addition to WP:VGSCOPE or similar? -- ferret (talk) 00:37, 17 December 2015 (UTC)

I figured that the documentation of {{Video game reviews}} would be updated (now done). --PresN 01:24, 17 December 2015 (UTC)
I agree with that, but GameRankings is also used in prose. VGSCOPE update would give something to refer users with if I undo an addition in new game articles. :) -- ferret (talk) 01:40, 17 December 2015 (UTC)
WP:VGAGG links to the section of the documentation—that should be sufficient czar 04:45, 17 December 2015 (UTC)
I would also assume some changes should be made over at our list of sources. ~Mable (chat) 06:20, 17 December 2015 (UTC)

Question. What's the definition of "Older games" in this equation? Seventh generation and older? Sixth? Before 2010? GamerPro64 17:45, 17 December 2015 (UTC)

Not a hard and fast definition, but games that predate Metacritic aggregation would be the easy answer czar 18:17, 17 December 2015 (UTC)
I mainly assumed a "from now on" idea, that anything before 2015 can keep its GameRankings score, though mostly because it would take effort to remove the source from the hundreds of articles of games that have come out the past few years. ~Mable (chat) 18:20, 17 December 2015 (UTC)

While removing GR from a recent addition done just today, I discovered that I had to specify gr=no for Template:Video game series reviews. Can someone look into updating this template to only display GR if populated? -- ferret (talk) 01:46, 19 December 2015 (UTC)

✓ done. And re: "from now on"—the documentation now says,

Do not include GameRankings unless it adds value atop or in the absence of Metacritic (e.g., games that predate Metacritic).

I don't think anyone recommends a systematic deprecation. I think the expectation is that it'll be applied through normal editing, whether the game is from 2005 or 2015. Let's move any additional discussion about implementation to the {{vg reviews}} talk page? czar 07:23, 19 December 2015 (UTC)
That message does not reflect the consensus we reached. E.g. that it still can be used for old games. SharkD  Talk  13:40, 21 December 2015 (UTC)
For completeness, this is in response to me reverting the addition of GR to Fallout 2. While it is an older game, it has lacked GR all this time with no detriment, so I don't feel it should be added now when Metacritic suffices for this game. I also don't know how you claim it doesn't reflect the consensus. It's almost a direct copy and paste of the statement from the RFC above. -- ferret (talk) 13:42, 21 December 2015 (UTC)
That was the message that started the RfC, but the result of the RfC was, "The majority opinion is that GR is mainly useful for older games and it is mainly duplication in newer ones." SharkD  Talk  13:46, 21 December 2015 (UTC)
Actually the result is "There is consensus for the change." The rest was the closer's reasoning. -- ferret (talk) 13:48, 21 December 2015 (UTC)
Let me be more clear. The consensus was not to disallow GR on articles about older games. It was to discourage its use on articles about newer games. Read the actual responses people made to the RfC. Or do we need to start a new RfC? SharkD  Talk  13:54, 21 December 2015 (UTC)
The consensus was to make the proposed change, as stated. I believe you're editing against consensus here, and the fact that you won't wait to finish discussion and use 3RR for a shield on your edit is a bit meh. -- ferret (talk) 14:03, 21 December 2015 (UTC)
I think you need to back off and stop making personal attacks. The fact is that @AlbinoFerret: made the correct interpretation, which was to not remove GR from articles about old games. SharkD  Talk  14:06, 21 December 2015 (UTC)
Since I was pinged Ill add this clarification. You cant pick and choose what part of a close best suits your position and ignore the rest. Take it as a whole, as the closer takes a look at the entire discussion it isnt based on the question itself for the most part, but the responses. I specifically add the reasoning to closes to hopefully limit this kind of thing and stop editors taking a short close and jumping off a cliff. The responses indicated it was useful for older games. I didnt read support for removal everywhere, more of phasing it out on newer games. It was almost clear consensus that it was useful for older games, from both minority and majority opinions. I will be adding the preceding 2 lines to the close. AlbinoFerret 15:25, 21 December 2015 (UTC)
@AlbinoFerret: In the immediate case, the GR sources were added just today, to an article already containing Metacritic. I did not remove long standing sources, simply reverted their new addition. I'll accept your call on that, but I was not going around simply removing GR from old articles. -- ferret (talk) 15:29, 21 December 2015 (UTC)
That would be following the close and consensus. I think at some point a line needs to be drawn on a timeline as to when it should be added, but adding it to a game that already has Metacritic may defeat the purpose of the RFC. AlbinoFerret 15:40, 21 December 2015 (UTC)
So, is the age of the game the issue, or the age of the article? Because it's an old game from 1998, and GR MC was formed a year later and might have more fewer old reviews in their database. (GR has 26 reviews, MC has 15. I haven't looked at each of them individually.) SharkD  Talk  16:59, 21 December 2015 (UTC)
I just checked in detail, and of the 34 reviews listed, only 7 are on both MC and GR. SharkD  Talk  17:11, 21 December 2015 (UTC)
Pinging @AlbinoFerret. Also, I edited my post above with strike through text since I got MC and GR mixed up briefly. SharkD  Talk  20:00, 21 December 2015 (UTC)
I dont know the age or year most games come out or came out. One of the things not covered well in the RFC is the cutoff date. This is going to have to be worked out amongst yourselves, I would rather stay uninvolved. But if you cant, perhaps another RFC is in order. AlbinoFerret 20:23, 21 December 2015 (UTC)
  • I don't think this is complicated. No one said anything about a cut-off date. The consensus is to use GR only when it's better than nothing. (Usually this would be the case for older games, as mentioned above.) For Fallout 2, GR adds nothing atop what Metacritic already says so there's no ready reason to keep it. czar 20:56, 22 December 2015 (UTC)
What do you mean exactly by "adds nothing"? Because while the scores are similar, the reviews being aggregated are mostly different. Of the 34 reviews aggregated by MC and GR, only 7 are listed at both sites. SharkD  Talk  18:26, 23 December 2015 (UTC)
GameRankings is more beneficial for older articles where Metacritic doesn't cover. Metacritic covers the more recent games, but GameRankings may have an aggregated score for something a little more older. Hence if there is no Metacritic,but ther eis a Gamerankings, thats where GR becomes more beneficial to be included in the article. Recently GameRankings has been collecting less reviews than Metacritic, so its not beneficial. On the off-chance that GR has more reviews than Metacritic, should it be ok to use GR? would it just make more sense to just go with "the Aggregating review website with the most reviews"? Lucia Black (talk) 18:34, 23 December 2015 (UTC)
In the case of Fallout 2, GR has 26 reviews and MC has 15. SharkD  Talk  18:37, 23 December 2015 (UTC)
The metascores were essentially the same, so there were two rows that showed exactly the same info. GR also uses far more unreliable sites, on the whole—having more reviews does not mean the metareview is more complete. (For quick reference: GR, Metacritic) I think it would be a waste of time to have an RfC to see if GR "adds value" over Metacritic in this case—it very plainly does not. czar 18:45, 23 December 2015 (UTC)
I agree that the GR link lists a lot of sources I have never heard of. SharkD  Talk  20:23, 23 December 2015 (UTC)
I started another discussion at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Video_games/Sources#Multiple_sources to see if some of the sources in the GR and MC articles are considered reliable by this project. SharkD  Talk  04:49, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

GameRankings proposal #2

In the case of older games, if the scores are similar, GameRankings should be omitted. [edit: e.g. regardless of which sources' scores are being aggregated]
  • Oppose - If the reviews being aggregated are mostly different, then there's a valid reason to include GR. SharkD  Talk  18:45, 23 December 2015 (UTC)
  • This was covered in the previous RfC. In the case of any game—old or not—if the scores are similar and there is no particular rationale for why GR's aggregation covers something more important than Metacritic's, then GR does not add value and does not need to be included. As explained above, having more reviews included in a score is not any closer a guarantor of quality—in fact, GR tends to have much more unreliable junk than Metacritic in its metascore (see the Fallout 2 example above). czar 18:57, 23 December 2015 (UTC)
    • I don't believe this was actually covered by the original RfC. I think it is appropriate to discuss whether we should look at whether there's a difference in aggregated reviews or the end score. I'm not really sure how I feel about this myself right now. I would like to see this discussion. ~Mable (chat) 19:16, 23 December 2015 (UTC)
    • The previous RfC was pretty clear about what to do in the case of newer games. But older games were singled out as a special case, and I think we need to iron out what to do with them. SharkD  Talk  20:24, 23 December 2015 (UTC)
      • Actually, now I disagree. Earlier, the "older games" part was stroked through. What I want to know is simply how to deal with games that are modern enough to have an appropriate Metacritic rating (based on multiple RSes). Should games from 2005, for instance, where the Metacritic score and the Gamerankings score are nearly the same, but both use completely different sources to get this result, have both rankings listed? Is the difference in score or the difference in sources what we are basing this on? ~Mable (chat) 20:35, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

Separate from the above discussions, I would propose that if GR is left out of the reviews section, it may still be included as an external link, akin to what a link to MobyGames would be providing. This presumes that the GR page for the game is "useful" and has more than a few reviews. If, for some reason, GR is used instead of MC (older games primarily) and the MC page is similarly "useful" then it should be an EL too.

I would also qualify - if we presume it reliable in separate discussion - the same would be true for OpenCritic pages as EL rather than in the review section.

In all cases, I would avoid this being spammy: if the game is out for two or more platforms and the aggregate tracks each platform separately, then the EL section should not bullet point each aggregate per platform but smartly organize them onto one. --MASEM (t) 20:51, 23 December 2015 (UTC) --MASEM (t) 20:51, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

  • I think this is the most appropriate way to handle games where Metacritic and Gamerankings scores are nearly identical, yes. I definitely support this idea. ~Mable (chat) 21:34, 23 December 2015 (UTC)
    • (Disclosure: CEO of OpenCritic here) - Just want to comment on this. Reading the discussion, I'm concerned that the "nearly identical" flag is misunderstood. OpenCritic shows the relative rankings of games, and to be clear, a small move of even 2 or 3 points can represent huge jumps in quality. Going from 79 to 82 moves your ranking from the top 27.5% to the top 15.4%. While 3 points might not look like much, it implies a significant difference in quality. Going from 72 to 74 represents a 10% swing in your relative ranking. So while scores might appear close, just remember that 75% of games reviewed fall within a 25-point window of 65-90, so even small point differences have meaning. MattEnth (talk) 17:33, 6 January 2016 (UTC)
      • If OpenCritic is deemed reliable in future discussions, I believe that we should have many of these conversations all over again, Matt. OpenCritic isn't in any "danger" of decisions of how we deal with GameRankings. ~Mable (chat) 18:02, 6 January 2016 (UTC)
This is off-topic so my response is on MattEnth's talk page czar 21:55, 6 January 2016 (UTC)
  • Support solves at least half (if not most) of the issue at hand. Lucia Black (talk) 21:36, 23 December 2015 (UTC)
  • Oppose - This proposal gets around procedural issues, but 1) it will not decrease work, 2) it will result in more edit warring, and most importantly 3) I would rather see more cited content in articles than external links. SharkD  Talk  21:39, 23 December 2015 (UTC)
    • SharkD, this idea would solve the issue where the Metacritic and Gamerankings scores are nearly identical without duplicating information in the article proper. Whether or not an article should have Gamerankings in its external links should be up to personal preference and, in the end, it doesn't really matter. We don't always list MobyGames under the external links, and I don't believe there is much edit warring about that? I see this as similar as how people can pick different citation styles, with none being "preferred". This also doesn't result in edit warring. ~Mable (chat) 21:52, 23 December 2015 (UTC)
      • I thought MobyGames was listed in External links because it is not considered reliable enough to use as a source, and ELs get around this restriction? Otherwise it *would* be used in citations. SharkD  Talk  21:55, 23 December 2015 (UTC)
        • I'm actually not sure how it is reliable enough to have it as an external link, but besides that, wouldn't the same basically be the case for Gamerankings here? It is not useful in the article proper, but can still deliver extra content indirectly, and thus could be useful as an external link. After all, Gamerankings pages are basically lists of articles on a topic. ~Mable (chat) 21:59, 23 December 2015 (UTC)
  • (1) If GR provides something useful to the article, we should cite it in the article. What would it add for our readers to have it as an external link? (2) Why wouldn't our existing ext link policy already cover this? I don't think we need a carte blanche yes/no on this, but in the off case a group of page stewards thought the ext link would be useful, let them agree and go for it. In my experience, MobyGames and GR are only useful resources when they index critic reviews that have yet to be added to the article (but once they are, there is no need for the ext link!) czar 22:27, 23 December 2015 (UTC)
  • Oppose - I still don't see what value GR adds at all, when it's almost always the same score (or within one) of Metacritic. ~ Dissident93 (talk) 01:07, 24 December 2015 (UTC)
  • Oppose - As per Czar. - hahnchen 13:36, 28 December 2015 (UTC)
  • Nothing which could be written in WP:VG/GL regarding this section banning the use of Gamerankings as an acceptable ELINK would be in accordance with WP:EL and so the question is moot. OTOH, I see zero reason to write anything in WP:VG/GL encouraging the practice of adding Gamerankings, as I would see that as rulemaking for rulemaking's sake. In other words, per Czar bullet #2 (but not bullet #1). --Izno (talk) 16:48, 8 January 2016 (UTC)
  • Oppose Per Czar. -- ferret (talk) 17:47, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

Template display of GR

Was there a consensus to remove GR reviews from the VG review template? Lucia Black (talk) 16:49, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

The template module has not been changed since August 2015. -- ferret (talk) 16:53, 13 January 2016 (UTC)
I see what you meant on Banjo-Kazooie (series). The VG Series Reviews template, you have to add "GR = Yes" for GR to show. It used to default to GR = Yes but that caused the template to make empty cells for GR anywhere it wasn't used. -- ferret (talk) 17:00, 13 January 2016 (UTC)
I find this odd because not too long ago, i saw GR reviews on other articles. It wasn't just Banjo-Kazooie. It wasn't too long that they just disappeared. Lucia Black (talk) 17:14, 13 January 2016 (UTC)
It looks like GR was deliberately removed from Banjo Kazooie (@Czar). Then later, an IP added GR back to the template but did not include GR = Yes. -- ferret (talk) 17:28, 13 January 2016 (UTC)
Well as much as i want to ignore this discussion ever happened since we didn't come up with any agreements, i have to say that we should not be changing any articles and removing GR, the only thing that was confirmed was that newer games don't benefit from GR (which some of us have suggested making this generation as the cut-off point, but this has not been confirmed as consensus). Lucia Black (talk) 17:32, 13 January 2016 (UTC)
I think they should be removed from any article where they aren't necessary. I don't mean we should comb through articles simply to remove it, but if an editor is cleaning up an article and does a comparison between GR and MC and decides there's no added value, they should be free to remove GR. If another editor disagrees, it should be discussed at that article's talk page on what merits GR brings to the individual article in question. -- ferret (talk) 17:38, 13 January 2016 (UTC)
The above statement as to using GR is based on being less relevant in new games as opposed to older games. What you are suggesting makes things more time consuming then it needs to be. We now have to look at the scores and based on our personal ideas, we have to judge GR over MC. Lets not forget that no example was given where GR and MC would be significantly different to include both as oppose to too similar to remove GR. Both sites will essentially have the same score (despite having different review-count). The only reason why i voted to stop using them (for this current gen of games) is because GR's score has become less accurate with less reviews in more recent games. Not because their score isn't valuable. There are more variables than just having the same score. Lucia Black (talk) 18:15, 13 January 2016 (UTC)
Editors make personally calls all the time regarding which sources to keep or trim. I'm not really "suggesting" anything outside of normal article work, and am not making a proposal of any sort. Again, no one should just comb articles and remove GR for the sake of it. Editors should, however, be free to remove GR if they feel its the correct thing to do. If I look at an article with both GR and MC, it's not about whether the score is the same or not, but whether GR provides value through different or more numerous reviews. If not, why keep it? I use the same discretion when I see a sentence with 6 references. I look at each of them, and typically trim down to one or two sources that I feel has the most value/details/reliability, etc. -- ferret (talk) 20:02, 13 January 2016 (UTC)
Editors do indeed make judgement calls all the time, and i'm not arguing that at all. But the above consensus and what you are suggesting isn't the same. If we use GR because its so radically different as oppose to MC, then we should be using GR "more" for the newer games as opposed for the older ones. Lucia Black (talk) 20:16, 13 January 2016 (UTC)
You say this, yet you tried to delete GR from the Fallout 2 article. Why is this? SharkD  Talk  02:20, 20 January 2016 (UTC)
I don't see how that conflicts with my statement at all. I didn't comb through Fallout 2 and remove GR after it had been there for ages. I reverted it's fresh addition when it came across my watch list, and felt my reason was clear enough. If you really want to continue on that, take it to my talk. -- ferret (talk) 13:00, 20 January 2016 (UTC)
This is relevant to the larger discussion. I don't really think this should be continued in private. SharkD  Talk  04:32, 22 January 2016 (UTC)
I meant in particular this part: "If I look at an article with both GR and MC, it's not about whether the score is the same or not, but whether GR provides value through different or more numerous reviews." The GR page in question had 26 reviews versus 15 for MC. Of all the reviews on both GR and MC, only 7 reviews were shared in common. This to me counts as "different [and] more numerous". SharkD  Talk  04:40, 22 January 2016 (UTC)
To go through more detail, I still believe my original Fallout 2 revert to have been appropriate, and I believe AlbinoFerret validated that I had made the correct reading of the consensus. That said, I chose not to pursue it further and let it become the defacto local consensus for that article. Local consensus can always trump project guidelines, in the end. The rest of my statement represents my current (weeks later) position on how I would decide whether to remove GR from a particular article it already exists in (Versus one where it was newly added). Editors should be free to make that call, and Lucia appeared to be arguing that editors could (should) not remove GR because the project didn't clearly state when to remove. Any editor should feel free to remove GR if they believe it appropriate, and if it's contentious, it should be discussed at that article's talk page. -- ferret (talk) 12:58, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

Misc section

This thread has been going on for two months now. What exact consensus has been made from all of this? I just feel like we need to wrap up this discussion here. GamerPro64 02:41, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

I agree. I mostly just lost track of the discussion and stopped following it myself. I have no idea where we stand anymore... ~Mable (chat) 10:07, 20 January 2016 (UTC)
We had an RfC. The summary at the end should explain things. SharkD  Talk  04:35, 22 January 2016 (UTC)
I've read books with a lower word-count than the discussion that followed that RFC. What we're asking is what came out of that discussion, not the RFC preceding it. Should we hold a second RFC to get a better grasp of the current consensus? ~Mable (chat) 11:36, 23 January 2016 (UTC)
I tried with a second proposal, but I was the only person who voted on it. Here is a list of other items to consider:
  1. Should GR no longer be added to articles about games from now on, even if the articles are about old games that predate Metacritic?
  2. When considering whether to add a GR score to an article, do we compare GR's score with MC's, and omit GR's score if they are the same/similar, regardless of whose scores are being aggregated?
  3. When considering whether to add a GR score to an article, do we compare the individual review scores, who made them, etc., and retain the GR score if the individual review sources are different, even if aggregate scores are similar/the same?
Maybe it's time for a third fourth RfC? SharkD  Talk  04:29, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

Main series and spin-offs at Template: Kirby series

Does anybody know what is considered part of the main series and what is a spin-off in the Kirby series? Its template has a hidden comment: "Only games whose Japanese name starts with "星のカービィ" [Hoshi no Kirby] are main series. All others are spinoffs, even if they're side-scrollers". The series' overview does not say anything about "main series" or "spin-off". Is Kirby and the Rainbow Curse considered a spin-off, because its Japanese title doesn't start the same as other games? --Soetermans. T / C 15:03, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

That seems to make sense to me. My WP:OR opinion is that those called "main series" are classical in their gameplay while the others (mass attack, rainbow/canvas, yarn) are based around gimmicks and special gameplay. So I can understand why HAL wishes to differentiate them explicitly with the titling scheme. ☺ · Salvidrim! · ✉ 19:14, 22 January 2016 (UTC)
If it bothers you that much, I would put forth the suggestion to replace "Main series" with "Hoshi no Kirby series" and "Spin-offs" with "Other games". It requires slightly less interpretation on our part. Axem Titanium (talk) 00:14, 24 January 2016 (UTC)
Don't get me wrong, it doesn't bother me, I wasn't sure if based upon the Japanese title is WP:OR. Salv's explanation makes sense. --Soetermans. T / C 10:40, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

I, the only one who edits Halo 5: Guardians?

Am I the only one who is currently editing Halo 5: Guardians? My looking at its history page, currently, no edit for this article is made by someone other than me since my first edit, and my reaction to that is that I cannot believe that I seem to be the only person who trys to take care of the article's overall quality.

So I am raising my problem here and attempting to have more editors improve this page, and I am hoping to get experienced editors such as @Ferret:, @Czar:, and @GamerPro64: as well so as to make large progress in making the article reach its GA status. Gamingforfun365 (talk) 01:56, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

I would also like to invite @The1337gamer: to talk with us about how we can improve the article. Gamingforfun365 (talk) 02:04, 25 January 2016 (UTC)
Your first edit on the article was a little over 48 hours ago. It's not that surprising that nobody else has edited it in this time. – Rhain ☔ 01:58, 25 January 2016 (UTC)
On the other hand, it has not even reached its B-class status. I would have thought that the article would get a lot of contributors, but no. Gamingforfun365 (talk) 02:04, 25 January 2016 (UTC)
I'm not really a follower of Halo and do not have any Halo articles on watch. That said, the article is relatively complete and the game has been out for over 3 months, so edits tend to slow down after a while. Feel free to work on it and submit to GA when you feel it's ready though. As for lots of contributors, I'm not sure what you mean. That article has over 1300 edits to it from over 500 different editors, and I see several prominent members of the project have worked on it already. -- ferret (talk) 02:09, 25 January 2016 (UTC)
I'm not that much into Halo either. Though why not ask David Fuchs? He's done a lot of the previous Halo articles in the past. GamerPro64 03:01, 25 January 2016 (UTC)
As stated, plenty of people, myself included, edit the article. It can only get improved so fast, and when you have other wiki-tasks or real-world projects that work slows down. It's going to get to FA at some point. I'm not in a rush. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs(talk) 15:12, 25 January 2016 (UTC)
Halo 5 seems in pretty good condition to me. It could be improved, like most articles, but it's not in dire need of editing. --Soetermans. T / C 15:16, 25 January 2016 (UTC)
I'm not sure what you want me to say. Just go ahead and expand the article. Coverage on the game was just as extensive as Halo 4, so there's plenty of information left to add. --The1337gamer (talk) 21:07, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

iQue Player in the infobox

So, for the 14 N64 games that also had a Chinese iQue Player release, do we the follow standard guideline and omit China as a region in the infobox (and as a result, the platform won't be listed in the "release" section), or do we make a special exception and keep it? ~ Dissident93 (talk) 10:41, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

Seeing as iQue player versions are regular ports of the game with deviations from the original Nintendo 64 versions, I don't see why it wouldn't be listed. I imagine this getting excessive if other countries started similar project with ports to "separate consoles", but the fact that The Ocarina of Time is available on this hardware should definitely be listed in some form on the game article. Whether the infobox is the best place for this... We can't even decide if the infobox is the best place for English-language release dates, so this is difficult as well, though I suppose I would think it looks better in a "release" section of some sort. ~Mable (chat) 12:46, 25 January 2016 (UTC)
I don't see a contradiction. The iQue Player is a platform, distinct from other platforms, so it should be listed in the Platform parameter. However, iQue games were only released in China, which is not a majority English-speaking country so it should not be listed in the Release date parameter. The location for this information (if deemed worthy for inclusion) would be the Development or Release section of the article. English-speaking readers of English Wikipedia rely on the Release date parameter of the infobox for at a glance information about whether a game has been released in their region on their chosen platform. This is served by presenting all of the release dates for consoles in English-speaking regions and not diluting it with release dates from non-English-speaking regions (except, of course, the region where the game was developed. Axem Titanium (talk) 17:13, 25 January 2016 (UTC)
I'd say because it's a different platform and since there are only 14 games adding it to the infobox would be okay. Also considering the special status of the iQue Player in mainland China. --Soetermans. T / C 17:23, 25 January 2016 (UTC)
Exactly my thoughts. ~ Dissident93 (talk) 22:00, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

Website in Template:Infobox video game series

Website was removed from Template:Infobox video game long ago due to consensus. Does anyone recall a reason it was left in Template:Infobox video game series, or if it was even addressed? I think for consistency we should try to keep this templates as close as possible. -- ferret (talk) 22:11, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

Probably nobody brought it up. In series infobox, it's even more useless for lasting material than in the regular infobox. And what is |creator= supposed to be -- isn't that the director/producer? —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 23:13, 25 January 2016 (UTC)
I was bold and simply removed it. We'll see if my edit sticks. --Izno (talk) 23:20, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

New articles - January 22

Main page: Wikipedia:WikiProject Video games/New article announcements

New articles from the past week. I also included articles from the New article announcements that have been moved into draft space and redirected (the ones I have spotted) over the past week and the number of articles from that page that have been deleted. This post has been made to help raise the visibility of new articles being created that fall under this project.

January 16

January 17

January 18

January 19

January 20

January 21

January 22

Salavat (talk) 16:30, 23 January 2016 (UTC)

I've reverted the CSD->Draft space moves at Nintendo Quest, QLOC & Gamer (2011 film), following on from my reasoning at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Video_games/Archive_116#User:Czar.2C_please_stop_redirecting_stuff. Registered users have rights to publish articles in the mainspace and these are not CSD candidates (WP:NOTCSD), if you don't like them, send them to AFD where they can be dealt with by the community in a timely manner. - hahnchen 13:22, 24 January 2016 (UTC)

No one CSD'd those... Enough with the patronizing—they're very clearly undersourced or unreliably sourced and an AfC (new article) reviewer is better prepared to make the call (or else actually help the author) rather than throwing it into mainspace to languish for all of time. No "rights" have been impinged here. AfC is dealing "by the community"—it's a review process designed for these users unfamiliar with the notability guidelines. If AfC has no issue then neither do I. czar 16:42, 24 January 2016 (UTC)
You CSD'd them. I have an issue with you CSDing articles that aren't CSD candidates. There are plenty of options for dealing with articles which don't involve you deleting them and telling users to try again. - hahnchen 19:55, 24 January 2016 (UTC)
Moving an article to draftspace deletes it in zero ways (nevertheless through CSD). Plenty of articles get posted prematurely and Articles for Creation is designed to help/onboard those editors. I'd wager that almost all of the new editors from the above articles had no idea such a process even existed. In the end, IAR—what makes the encyclopedia better? No good comes from putting this back in mainspace, no good comes from throwing editors in the deep end or sending their articles to AfD when they need help expanding instead, and no good comes from this repeated WTVG witchhunting. czar 20:11, 24 January 2016 (UTC)
Agreed, moving to draft space is not the equivalent of speedy deleting them at all. Not only are they not deleted, but they're still publicly available for the editor to improve, and/or to have the general populace discuss them. Hahnchen, if you're unhappy about it, bring in a third party - send a few to AFC and see if the reviewers there are deeming it worthy of the mainspace or not. The results there will be a good indicator of whether or not Czar's decisions are on the right track. Sergecross73 msg me 20:29, 24 January 2016 (UTC)
Also agreed. Moved from main to draft space is absolutely not a deletion process, since all edits are still retained. --MASEM (t) 20:50, 24 January 2016 (UTC)
If an article is moved into draft space a notification on the creators talk page wouldn't hurt, just a courtesy kind of thing. Salavat (talk) 00:01, 25 January 2016 (UTC)
A bunch of editors with the delete button telling editors without the delete button that using the delete button isn't really deleting it because it's still in the recycle bin. The closest analogue to what Czar is doing, is Userficiation, but sadly mostly WP:USERFY#NO. - hahnchen 17:33, 25 January 2016 (UTC)
I don't think you're going to sway anyone with an essay about userfication, when he was moving articles to draftspace. (Even your essay points out there's a difference between userfy and drafts.) Also, the articles in question are in terrible shape, so this feels a bit like arguing semantics. Anyways, regardless, much like the last discussion on this, you're free to complain about it, but Czar's not actually doing anything wrong here, and as long as the moves are in good-faith (they are) and not editwarring (he isn't), there's nothing to be done here. Sergecross73 msg me 19:32, 25 January 2016 (UTC)
I've only just taken a look at WP:DRAFT and it turns out that yes, anyone can just move mainspace stuff into the draft space. I mean, that's bollocks, and came from a misreading of Wikipedia:Article_Incubator#Which_articles_may_be_moved_into_the_incubator.3F during a merge, but still. The "anyone can remove stuff from mainspace" clause was actually removed once, but then reverted by someone else who misread WP:AI. I'm going to continue reverting moves into draft space which aren't CSD candidates. - hahnchen 21:46, 25 January 2016 (UTC)
...Or, instead of sticking your fingers in your ears and announcing that you plan to perform a one-man crusade against Draft-ifying articles (but only the ones you notice, in one specific area), you could start an RfC to generate a project-wide consensus on if it's okay to Draft-ify articles. Since, you know, the rules currently state that it's fine, and you think those rules are in error. So the right thing to do is to get the rules "fixed", not declare that you're going to ignore them. --PresN 21:52, 25 January 2016 (UTC)
This is what I'm planning to do. But for the time being, just a heads up for editors to stop wasting time with drafts. - hahnchen 01:46, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

Draftspace RFC

Further heads up - Wikipedia_talk:Drafts#Clarification_over_main-space_to_draft-space_moves - hahnchen 02:42, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

I've created a new subsection here, so that this notification isn't lost in the massive section above. Sergecross73 msg me 15:56, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

God of War: Ascension Peer Review

I've just listed God of War: Ascension for Peer Review if anyone has some time. Tried getting this article to FA last year and had two unsuccessful nominations. I backed off for a bit and am now gonna try again, but taking it through Peer Review first. --JDC808 ♫ 21:56, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

Release chart in image

Is having an image of a release chart like this useful? I noticed it on Bubble_Bobble#Sequels. After removing it, I've been discussing it, but the creator of the image does not agree that it should be in a list or table. --Soetermans. T / C 08:39, 27 January 2016 (UTC)

Feral Interactive EL

Is having a separate Feral Interactive external link appropriate? I've noticed a link to their website a couple of times now (Tropico_4#External_links, Deus_Ex:_Human_Revolution#External_links, Hitman:_Absolution#External_links), but isn't that ELNO? Most of these have an official website, or an entry at the developer's own website. It's not appropriate to have a link to a Steam, XBLA, PSN or Amazon product page, so this is WP:ELNO, right? --Soetermans. T / C 16:59, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

Smells like advertising spam. Axem Titanium (talk) 17:15, 25 January 2016 (UTC)
Agreed, I'd remove them. ~ Dissident93 (talk) 22:02, 25 January 2016 (UTC)
Thought so too. I'll take a look at them tomorrow. --Soetermans. T / C 20:09, 26 January 2016 (UTC)
Took a while, but I removed the link on the articles linked at Feral Interactive. I noticed that User: Eeeeeb was responsible, who also pointed out to work for Feral. They haven't edited since July 2015, but I left a note nonetheless. --Soetermans. T / C 11:42, 27 January 2016 (UTC)

Subtitles again

I noticed that Lego Star Wars II was moved by request from @Czar: in December 2015. @Lordtobi: moved it back to its full title Lego Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy, which was subsequently undone because of lack of a consensus. In August 2015, Czar undid my move of Eternal Darkness to its full title Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem. I think it's time for another discussion about subtitles. I'll bring the discussion here, because I think this goes for a lot of video game articles.

Czar cited WP:SUBTITLE and WP:COMMONNAME. I'll tackle these separately.

WP:SUBTITLE

WP:SUBTITLE is part of Wikipedia:Naming conventions (books), the guideline on book titles. It starts with: "This is a naming conventions guideline for the naming of Wikipedia articles about books, which includes printed books and e-books. The titles of books (usually meaning in fact the title of the literary work contained in the book) are capitalized by the same convention that governs other literary and artistic works such as plays, films, paintings etc." Well, if WP:SUBTITLE is just part of the guideline on book titles, and not a general title guideline on arts and entertainment, I don't see why it mean WP:NCVG should automatically follow suit.

To continue: Wikipedia:Naming conventions (books)#Subtitles reads: "Usually, a Wikipedia article on a book (or other medium, such as a movie, TV special or video game) does not include its subtitle in the Wikipedia page name, per WP:CONCISE". I find that odd, because like I pointed out, WP:SUBTITLE is part of the book guideline, and not a general one, but here it says it does include video games somehow. So why is not part of WP:NCVG, a guideline intended for video games? Anyway, WP:SUBTITLE is based upon WP:CONCISE. The entire bit of Wikipedia:Article titles#Conciseness says:

The goal of conciseness is to balance brevity with sufficient information to identify the topic to a person familiar with the subject area. For example:

  • The official name of Rhode Island, used in various state publications, is State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations. Both titles are precise and unambiguous, but Rhode Island is the most concise title to fully identify the subject.
  • The full name of Fiona Apple's 1999 album is 90 words and 444 characters long, but it is abbreviated in sources (and in its Wikipedia title) to When the Pawn.... (See also Wikipedia:Naming conventions (books)#Subtitles.)

Exceptions exist for biographical articles. For example, neither a given name nor a family name is usually omitted or abbreviated for conciseness. Thus Oprah Winfrey (not Oprah), Jean-Paul Sartre (not J. P. Sartre). See Wikipedia:Naming conventions (people).

So the bit on which WP:SUBTITLE is based upon points to WP:CONCISE, which gives two examples and points to WP:SUBTITLE. That's circular reasoning. I find the sentence "The goal of conciseness is to balance brevity with sufficient information to identify the topic to a person familiar with the subject area" also very odd. "To identify the topic to a person familiar with the subject area". Let's take Eternal Darkness/Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem. I, as a gamer and as an editor of video game related articles am familiar with it. But isn't Wikipedia written for a large audience? The title by itself, shortened or not, is not sufficient information at all to "identify" Eternal Darkness is. So losing Sanity's Requiem wouldn't make any difference.

WP:COMMONNAME

WP:COMMONNAME reads: "Names are often used as article titles – such as the name of the person, place or thing that is the subject of the article. However, some topics have multiple names, and this can cause disputes as to which name should be used in the article's title. Wikipedia generally prefers the name that is most commonly used (as determined by its prevalence in reliable English-language sources) as such names will usually best fit criteria such as recognizability and naturalness." I think WP:COMMONNAME is more important than WP:SUBTITLE. How is removing a subtitle more "common"? Because Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem is called as such by IGN, GameSpot, NintendoLife, etc. The Verge calls it Eternal Darkness in the article header, but does use the subtitle. We could try a Google test: "eternal darkness" got 450,000 hits, "eternal darkness: sanity's requiem" got 89,000 hits. And while the shortened version does receive more hits, WP:COMMONNAME say "Wikipedia generally prefers the name that is most commonly used (as determined by its prevalence in reliable English-language sources)". So GameFAQs, CheatCodeCentral, any blog or only forum post that uses Eternal Darkness shouldn't have to matter.

WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS

WP:CONSISTENCY is also a guideline on article titles. Should we start removing Black Flag from Assassin's Creed IV, Skyrim from The Elder Scrolls V? These might be sequels like Lego Star Wars II, but like Eternal Darkness, there are articles with titles like Turok: Dinosaur Hunter, Kileak: The DNA Imperative, Injustice: Gods Among Us, Sniper: Ghost Warrior, Aion: Upheaval, Lichdom: Battlemage, Ryse: Son of Rome, Hunt: Horrors of the Gilded Age. Removing those subtitles because of a guideline on book titles is not the way to go.

To recap: WP:SUBTITLE is for books, not video games. It's based upon WP:CONCISE, but removing a subtitle is not necessarily being concise. WP:COMMONNAME does not mean subtitles should be removed; we should go by its common name, which is based upon WP:RS, not a Google test. WP:CONSISTENCY says we should be consistent, but there are a lot of articles that do have subtitles. Removing those wouldn't make sense, so I say we should keep (and possibly reinstate) subtitles. --Soetermans. T / C 11:36, 27 January 2016 (UTC)

  • I agree that subtitles that are a common part of a game (like "The Original Trilogy" on Lego Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy) should definetly included. Counter-examples to this would be "Hatoful Boyfriend: A School of Hope and White Wings" as of Hatoful Boyfriend and "Challenge of the Five Realms: Spellbound in the World of Nhagardia" from Challenge of the Five Realms, both of which are very long and thus basically never used, neither by critics, nor by the community. Therefore those don't apply. On Lego Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy, however, most articles found give it in full title. Therefore, the two moves undone as stated above by Soetermans should always apply. Lordtobi (✉) 12:29, 27 January 2016 (UTC)
  • If I have an opinion, it's that WP:NATURALDIS also needs to be considered, further lending weight against the books-only guideline. --Izno (talk) 13:23, 27 January 2016 (UTC)
  • I can respond to this later if you'd like, but I think (1) it's more nuanced and case-by-case than it's presented above, i.e., the answer isn't to clear-cut all text after colons, (2) the main guideline at hand is the article naming criteria (WP:NC), from which the other parts extend, e.g., when is a name sufficiently recognizable, precise, and concise? (3) that some of the hypotheticals have already been discussed before in Archive 115 if not elsewhere (please link prior discussions) czar 14:47, 27 January 2016 (UTC)
Well, yeah, because to me, we still have not reached consensus on a couple of these issues. In the discussion you brought up, you said: "If the subtitle is rarely used in reviews, it should absolutely be removed per the guideline as is established practice". Considering the fact that some articles do and some article do not have subtitles is not established practice to me. You said "reviews", but not previews, promotional material or an E3 report by a RS? And what is "rarely"? Once, twice in a piece? And how many reviews do we count? Is IGN better than Giant Bomb? And is a mainstream media outlet like a newspaper a higher ranking source? This exactly the reason why we, as WP:VG, need a good guideline on the matter, so we do not have to "borrow" a guideline from WP:BOOKS. --Soetermans. T / C 15:57, 27 January 2016 (UTC)
  • I don't think there's any compelling principle to be found here. It's going to vary on a case-by-case basis via usage, and occasionally disambiguation needs. There will be games with official subtitles that rarely get used that shouldn't have them in the title, games with frequently used unofficial subtitles (e.g. Star Trek: The Original Series for a TV example), games with multiple versions or expansions where some sport the subtitle and others don't (Dragon Warrior IV vs. Dragon Quest IV vs. Dragon Quest IV: Chapters of the Chosen), etc. It all depends. I will say that I think Czar's move of Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem was a mistake, if a mild one. It's fine at either title, but the subtitle is featured prominently enough for it to be legitimately included to my recollection, for all that the game is indisputably referred to as just Eternal Darkness in short. SnowFire (talk) 00:08, 30 January 2016 (UTC)
Quelle: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Video_games/Archive_119