Wikipedia:WikiProject Video games/Newsletter/20200105/Feature
Feature: Rare Replay GT postmortem
[edit]Submitted by TheJoebro64
In this issue the Newsletter brings you the story behind the Rare Replay good topic, which consists of the video games featured in the 2015 compilation Rare Replay. We've done postmortems before (in Vol. 4, No. 3 and Vol. 10, No. 2), but this one in particular is a first: a multi-person postmortem. We will be interviewing Jaguar and Czar, who spearheaded the initiative. And boy, was it a Herculean effort. In less than a year, we had 26 good articles—some of which didn't even exist before the compilation's release—and five featured articles about some of the greatest, most important, strangest, and most mysterious games developed by one of the greatest, most important, strangest, and most mysterious studios in the industry. It was a true embodiment of the spirit of Wikipedia, and today we're taking a deep dive into the work that went into this project.
32 articles
A bit of background
[edit]- WP:VG Newsletter - So, let's begin. Would you mind telling us a bit about yourselves to begin?
- Czar: In terms of my Wikipedia contributions, I consider myself foremost a content contributor. Over the last decade, I've contributed the equivalent of two full-length novels in text to the public domain via Wikipedia. It's given me enough time to develop many opinions about our encyclopedia.
- Jaguar: I joined Wikipedia in 2009 and became an active editor the year after. I was always a content creator; started by creating a dozen video game articles but was not an active member of WPVG at that time. After being burnt out (or driven out) in 2012, I reemerged as a full-time editor in 2014 and it was then I truly started focusing on content, balancing out my other pursuits with VG articles from the 90s and franchises I held in high esteem, Rare's being among them. Believe it or not what first drove me to editing properly was my allure with
Project Dream, the first article I created back in 2010. After much trepidation I quit Wikipedia last year, for reasons I shouldn't get too much into, but chiefly I did not feel compelled to stick to a project I felt too much disaffection for. But regardless of how I feel, I'm half-proud to have amassed almost 100 GAs and over 200k edits, it felt like a good run while it lasted.
- WP:VG Newsletter - What was your first experience with Rare? For me, it was playing Donkey Kong Country Returns on the Wii (I know Rare didn't develop this, but it was a continuation of their work). Did you grow up playing their games?
- Czar: Dating myself here, but in my earliest Rare memory, I had basically given up on the first few levels of Donkey Kong Country and was watching my father somehow endure through to the first underwater level (...not very far into the game). He glitched out somewhere in the coral reef but I couldn't bear to reset the game because I thought that, like the NES, none of the progress would be saved. (I was wrong.)
- I experienced the N64 golden era firsthand. It was as magical as it is remembered but, I've found, that magic hardly warrants writing a Good Topic on their entire back catalog.
- Jaguar: Oh yes, I grew up with them. Either Goldeneye or Diddy Kong Racing were the first games I ever played - watching my older brother and father play them too. I also had Star Fox Adventures when it came out, but six year old me didn't understand how it worked. I grew up with the N64, so was mostly confined to that golden era. Must be getting old.
- Czar: Dating myself here, but in my earliest Rare memory, I had basically given up on the first few levels of Donkey Kong Country and was watching my father somehow endure through to the first underwater level (...not very far into the game). He glitched out somewhere in the coral reef but I couldn't bear to reset the game because I thought that, like the NES, none of the progress would be saved. (I was wrong.)
- WP:VG Newsletter - Out of all Rare's games, which is your favorite? If so, why? This is a question I've never really been able to answer—I started playing video games long after Rare's golden days.
- Czar: Would choosing
Rare Replay be a cop-out? 
- I wouldn't say I have a favorite, but of the Rare Replay compilation, I was most excited to revisit Blast Corps, which was so unique in concept and had so many distinct, cinematic moments. I think of the serenity of crushing UFO orbs at sea from a bird's eye view contrasted against the ratcheted anxiety of a ground-view shot in which the explosive payload encroaches from the foreground while, in the shot's background, the butt-clenched player futilely slams into buildings to clear a path. Its gameplay had a distinct feeling and I think that's why the retrospective reviewers remembered it so well.
- I wouldn't say I have a favorite, but of the Rare Replay compilation, I was most excited to revisit
- Jaguar: Not sure if I can answer that directly. From a purely nostalgic perspective, I think Goldeneye was the one I held the most attachment to, and now looking back I can really appreciate how it revolutionised the FPS genre, and it holds up today. If I were to answer this question pragmatically though, it's Banjo-Tooie, hands down. What a pure, unadulterated masterpiece. (btw I'm going to be disappointed if czar says Battletoads)
- Czar: Actually, that reminds me: Battletoads—that's the one!
- Czar: Would choosing
- WP:VG Newsletter - Here's the opposite question: which is your least-favorite Rare game? If so, why?
- Czar: Probably one of the NES-era, marketing tie-in dregs that would only pique the attention of someone specifically considering the entirety of Rare's back catalog
- Jaguar: Anything Rare made since Microsoft bought them. Don't get me wrong, Nuts & Bolts was well executed, had a good design and mechanics, but it wasn't a Banjo game. Their stagnation was really spelled out through utter crap like Grabbed by the Ghoulies (an article I had the misfortune of writing) and even lacklustre titles like that Perfect Dark sequel I can't remember the name of and most recently Sea of Thieves, a sort of No Man's Sky with water. I personally can't like Viva Pinata - doesn't appeal to me but I know people enjoy it. I think even the mediocrity of some of their early NES and ZX Spectrum games can be appreciated among die-hard followers, but their recent games don't hold the same standard. I've learned not to anticipate anything from Rare now.
- WP:VG Newsletter - This is a broader question, but I want to ask it because it will relate to one of the questions I'm asking about the project. What kind of games interest you?
- Jaguar: It's diverse, though I particularly like platformers and mostly orientate toward retro games. I own a Sega Saturn collection of 50+ games and a growing N64 one. I enjoy the level of depth games from the fifth and sixth generations had to offer in contrast to what they are now — no DLC, microtransactions or overblown visuals in sacrifice of meaningful game design. Rare's late 90s collectathons hold a special place in my heart, though I can sympathise with those who don't share the sentiment.
- Czar: The weirder the better.
The project
[edit]- WP:VG Newsletter - Let's shift gears to the actual project now. When did you start thinking about making Rare Replay into a good topic, and whose idea was it?
- Jaguar: I believe it was czar's idea, though the topic's eventual growth meant it was our brainchild. I was looking forward to Rare Replay as it was coming out, even with its absent Nintendo-owned IPs. If I recall correctly czar just asked if I was interested, and I just said yes, not really thinking much of the workload.
- Czar: Most of our discussions were centralized here: Wikipedia talk:Featured topics/Rare Replay
- I really don't recall how it started but perhaps we were generally talking (maybe over email) about collaborating on something? We were already working in the same topic space, reviewing each other's articles, etc. If I'm not mistaken, both of us might have been working on some articles about Rare games?
- But I suppose here is where I say my piece on the purpose of Featured Topics (FT). When I think of what keeps me active in the Wikipedia project, I'm attracted to the idea of writing to honor creative works. That heretofore in the annals of humankind, there remain complete topics whose stories have yet to be told succinctly (and devastatingly!) I remember working on Sega's Menacer light gun article around the time the Sega Genesis FT was proposed. On its face, the article was a merge candidate, having little extant sourcing, until someone wrest decades-old scans from the dustbin. While these magazines had become non-current/archival material, it was enough to write a Featured Article (my first). Now I could care less about the light gun itself—I've never laid eyes on one—but the act of writing that article from the detritus of history, breathing life into something from nothing, was thrilling. Topic groups on Wikipedia (whether "Featured" or "Good") appear to offer the same warm glow many times over, that with the outsized commitment to perfecting one tiny corner of the encyclopedia, the ultimate justice is done to the topic. Blame it on the 80/20 rule, but this doesn't quite work out in practice.
- I've finished a few Good Topics and each time, the final few articles are such a slog that any feeling of achievement is totally obliterated by its end. It's easy to gaze at a topic group with starry eyes, thinking of the few exciting pieces that will occupy your next several dozen hours of research and writing, but it's harder to see through to the one or two articles that are going to stand in your way of actually finishing the topic. In the case of games, those last few articles are always some form of shovelware or details about which you could care less... Stewarding those articles on a watchlist feels like a self-imposed sentence.
- WP:VG Newsletter - How long did you figure the effort would take? Did you anticipate much difficulty?
- Jaguar: At the time I thought it would take around six months, but honestly I didn't have any expectations. I was a fast writer and usually got fairly average-sized articles to a GA standard in a solid day. The bulkier articles (those from the N64 era and beyond) naturally took more time - a few days of solid writing, ref collecting and polish, but I think it all boiled down to our availability and motivation. I can't remember if we lapsed for a while or if our pace slowed down, but we got there in several months. I don't think I was doing much back then, so a lot of my free time was (ghastly) spent on Wikipedia.
- Czar: Not sure we had an estimate apart from knowing that Rare Replay was to launch soon, which created some urgency. As for "difficulty", we were working against the slow erosion of interest. (It's easy to trace our waning enthusiasm in the aforementioned thread.) While the company was known for being secretive, we found ways to satisfy basic breadth requirements. The real trouble was writing the articles that make the mind numb (and making them decent to read!) The exciting works were not so difficult.
- WP:VG Newsletter - How was the project coordinated? Did you decide which articles you wanted to work on before starting, or choose them as you went on?
- Jaguar: I was grateful of the syndicate we had. I don't think we made any decisions of who would take what. If I recall correctly we made our choices subconsciously and just agreed to take whatever we felt like writing at the time. I never used to write drafts either - just blitzed each article as I was working on it.
- Czar: I had some sense of the articles that excited me and we would gently scrum for the outstanding articles that were still up in the air. So we each received our own dregs. Reading through the talk page now, it's nice to see the other editors who chipped in to the topic.
- WP:VG Newsletter - Czar, this question's for you, and it relates to the question I asked earlier. What articles were your primary focus?
- Czar:
- I usually write from scratch so I started with the Sabreman series: Knight Lore, Sabre Wulf, Underwurlde
- While cleaning up low hanging fruit (the NES game articles that had a decent start): Slalom, R.C. Pro-Am II, Cobra Triangle
- But my sights were mainly on Blast Corps during that time
- Odds and ends: Battletoads Arcade, Killer Instinct Gold, and Rare Replay itself (it just happened)
- Kameo and Underwurlde came towards the end, and we all were hurting by the time we got around to Viva Piñata and Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise
- I usually write from scratch so I started with the Sabreman series:
- Czar:
- WP:VG Newsletter - Jaguar, I'm asking you the same question—what articles were your primary focus?
- Jaguar: When we started I thought we were going to do them in chronological order, so I chose the very likeable Jetpac first and czar took Attic Atac, probably the magnum opus in terms of showcasing comprehensibility and good quality prose. I ended up doing Nuts & Bolts, the last title in the topic, so our distribution was equal (can't remember if it was 15/15 or close to that). I think I got the short straw of article choices: Solar Jetman was by far the most dull and tedious thing I ever written — it probably took me longer to research and write that article than the time it took them to develop the actual game. I think that was the article I had to resort to using torrents to retrieve the extremely obscure newspaper retrospective the developers gave, and that was excruciating to find. What a god awful dismal game. How they included it in the compilation is beyond me.
- Czar: Atic Atac was you! Are you thinking of Knight Lore? To round out the question, eight GAs (the biggest ones) were finished in the topic before us: Banjo-Kazooie, Perfect Dark, Jet Force Gemini, Banjo-Tooie, Perfect Dark Zero, Conker's Bad Fur Day, Snake Rattle 'n' Roll, R.C. Pro-Am
- Jaguar: Look—they all look the same!
- WP:VG Newsletter - Of course, bringing 20+ articles to good article (GA) status or higher in just a year is no easy task, to put it mildly... not to mention that Rare is infamously secretive about its development processes. What were the biggest hurdles you faced?
- Jaguar: I was afraid of the lack of source material out there. Before approaching the topic I wasn't sure if there was going to be any development background on those early Spectrum titles, let alone solid reviews. I was relieved to discover that the ZX Spectrum has a large anorak community cataloguing hundreds of its titles, and mercifully the Stamper's early games were well covered. There were more than enough interviews, previews and commentaries to work with and we put it to good use. There were however a few articles that were completely devoid of inside information. As WPVG guidelines require articles to have some form of a development/background section, I made a workaround by writing a template which contained a cursory amount of company background and some inkling on the Stamper's work ethos. The section I made even stated that "little was known about their development process" - a statement familiar with even the journalists at the time. Without that formality I just would have never been able to get those Spectrum titles to pass GAN, and thankfully people understood the necessity of that circumvention due to the impossibility of gaining insight on those bedroom-made games.
- The later games were no problem, in fact they were quite enjoyable to write as they were well documented and I was also particularly motivated on writing them.
- WP:VG Newsletter - Of all your work, which article(s) are you the most proud of? How did you feel about the fruits of your labor?
- Jaguar: I'm not sure if there's an individual article I feel the most proud of, but rather I look at the collective effort and good topic in its entirety as an accomplishment. I didn't push any article to FA standard, though the thought of upgrading Rare Replay into a featured topic was a tempting one, and maybe a doable one, had my drive and zeal not waned.
- I'm proud of the topic as a whole, but in particular I was joyous over getting all those Spectrum titles to GA - my efforts expanded out of Rare Replay and into the rest of catalogue from the 80s. I think I got around 10 extra articles to GA alongside those included in our good topic.
- Czar: In order, most proud of: (1) Finishing, (2) The work that spun out of this ( Stamper brothers, Read-Only Memory (publisher)#Britsoft, @OceanHok's Rare (company)), (3) A slew of FAs (Blast Corps, Knight Lore, Sabre Wulf, Rare Replay, Killer Instinct Gold, and perhaps a few more to come?), (4) Rare noticing Knight Lore as "Today's Featured Article" close to its 35th anniversary (h/t @TheJoebro64) and Rare staff noticing Blast Corps' TFA on its 20th anniversary, (5) Noticeable improvements in my own writing technique (after banging out enough of these), and (6) Feeling enough satisfaction to wrap this project and turn towards new topic areas. We both drifted away from video game articles for a while after this initiative which, sure, is a loss to WPVG but I think a better showing of professional development as editors.
Aftermath
[edit]- WP:VG Newsletter - I've always considered the Rare Replay project an example of what Wikipedians should strive for—coordination, cooperation, and improvement. What do you think?
- Jaguar: It's what it should be. Albeit for me, I mostly worked in a vacuum but the Rare Replay project (and a couple of other collaborations) was the most fun I had during my time at Wikipedia.
- Czar: Really nice of you both to say and the feeling is mutual. I like to see our fellow editors set goals and hit them, and I especially like to see effort (I look for smooth prose and topical completeness as markers of quality).
- I can appreciate the beauty and rarity of reciprocated commitment on a volunteer project, but I also know it comes with trade-offs. Quality easily suffers under a quota, when reviews consist more of meeting MOS standards than whether the article is a fulfilling read for a general audience. The pinnacle of WP editor collaboration, in my opinion, is when we encourage each other to make the latter.
- WP:VG Newsletter - Looking back, what are your favorite memories of this project?
- Czar: My favorite part will be us making excuses instead of writing Viva Piñata and remembering how much Jaguar hated Solar Jetman. I'll also remember the first time I sent Jaguar the empty navbox with all the orange "Start" icons; all the article subjects whose gameplay I will (willingly) never experience; and compiling the potential "List of video games developed by Rare" (collapsed above), thinking about it, and laughing.
- Jaguar: For me it was just exploring the time period. I love the 80s and 90s. The former decade had the better music and the latter the better games (in my opinion). I spent a great amount of time looking through crystal clear scans of gaming magazines from the 80s, and it felt so surreal. There was something about that time period that felt so progressive — the market was expanding rapidly and diverse enough to encourage anyone to make a living. Of course it was all before my time but regardless, it hit us both hard when we discovered just how severely underrepresented the ZX Spectrum is in general. It not only propelled the IT industry but was bigger than the NES! I have no doubt that Spectrum history marks the biggest absence out of any video game history article there is on Wikipedia, and it felt good doing a small justice to that.
- Czar: Which reminds me, an online friend of mine had died around the time we started and since he loved the Spectrum, writing on the Sabreman series felt like an apt tribute.
- WP:VG Newsletter - If you could have done anything differently, what would it have been?
- Czar: If we had started earlier, I wonder whether the contributors who predated us would have pushed their articles to FA, putting the "Featured Topic" within striking distance. I would have liked to push a few more of the articles I wrote to FA (I know they're close) but I still think we'd be a few articles short of the FT threshold and I would have needed to rewrite significant portions of articles that are otherwise already GAs.
- Jaguar: In all fairness, I think a few of the articles I wrote for this project stand out as quite unpolished in comparison to my later works. It was probably the result of time constraints and the high tempo we had early on, but also probably inexperience. Maybe I should have slowed down or made drafts like normal people? Or maybe I should have stockpiled a list of references first and planned out our strategy before we took on articles, not entirely sure but on the whole I don't have any regrets on how it got done.
- WP:VG Newsletter - A few editors (myself included) are planning to collaborate to create an SNES Classic good topic; when it was proposed, it immediately reminded me of the Rare Replay project. Do you have any suggestions or advice?
- Czar: Ah, we've both already written two articles apiece for that one. ;) Honest advice would be to assign the hardest ones first—the ones no one wants to write—as those will take the wind out of you later on. Now would be a good time to get your participants to commit to FA-level, which is more feasible since the work is so broadly distributed and the titles are individually so famous (even more so than Rare Replay's).
- Jaguar: Blood, tears, toil and sweat.
- WP:VG Newsletter - Thank you for your time! It was a pleasure speaking to you.
- Czar: Likewise!
- Jaguar: Thank you Joebro for the interview.
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