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Resolved WTVG threads

I added a secondary archive bot to handle threads that don't need to wait nine days to archive. It'll archive threads marked with {{resolved}} or {{done}} within a few hours—see the diff for the templates it likes. I expect it to play well with the other archive bot, but feel free to edit it if it doesn't. czar 02:13, 15 August 2016 (UTC)

Go article?

Hi everyone,

I haven't played any of the Go video games by Square Enix Montreal. No, not Pokémon Go, I'm talking about Hitman Go, Lara Croft Go and the upcoming Deus Ex Go. Since these three games (will) share a common gameplay style and design, would an article about Go be a good idea? soetermans. ↑↑↓↓←→←→ B A TALK 04:24, 15 August 2016 (UTC)

They're not really a series, per se, and while there are likely similar elements that can be sourced, they are generally considered separate. I think what's at the Square Enix Montreal article is a good place to keep anything arcing on the go series together, rather than a separate article. --MASEM (t) 04:42, 15 August 2016 (UTC)
I started a section a few months back (Square Enix Montreal#Go series) because there wasn't enough for a dedicated article czar 05:13, 15 August 2016 (UTC)
Damn that Czar, always one step ahead! ;-) soetermans. ↑↑↓↓←→←→ B A TALK 06:22, 15 August 2016 (UTC)

Soma Bringer question

Hi. I'm in the middle of doing work on Soma Bringer. I've got all I need in my sandbox for every section except "Synopsis", which is clearly the most difficult part as I haven't got access to the game and it's in Japanese (which as a written language isn't my strongest suit). Can someone help me with some kind of synopsis of the plot, or direct me to some safe site that has it posted? --ProtoDrake (talk) 18:29, 15 August 2016 (UTC)

Not what you're after, but fans have created an English translated rom. --Odie5533 (talk) 22:41, 15 August 2016 (UTC)
Was always shocked this game wasn't officially translated, between the system's massive userbase, and relatively good track record for having JRPG's translated for it. Sergecross73 msg me 01:16, 16 August 2016 (UTC)
For a second I thought this was the very awkwardly titled sequel to Soma. soetermans. ↑↑↓↓←→←→ B A TALK 05:40, 16 August 2016 (UTC)

It's alright, everyone. I did manage to put together a synopsis. Thank goodness for Japanese fan resources and online playthroughs! --ProtoDrake (talk) 07:47, 16 August 2016 (UTC)

List of baseball video games question

Hi, I just started editing the list of baseball video games article as I noticed it doesn't include any of the R.B.I. Baseball titles on it. There is one question I have in regards to this page I'm hopeful someone here can answer. Is there any standard way to list a games platform in regards to computer releases? For instance, the Out of the Park Baseball series have been released on Steam, but also list Windows, Mac, and Linux (but it doesn't list Steam under Platform). Super Mega Baseball does list Steam, but none of the OS's. -Electricbolt (talk) 04:33, 16 August 2016 (UTC)

Relevant RFC

WT:MOS#RFC on unifying "OS X" and "macOS". An RFC about whether we should unify this across the project. --MASEM (t) 05:53, 16 August 2016 (UTC)

I'll just leave this here... :)

[1] --MASEM (t) 00:14, 10 August 2016 (UTC)

"Casual readers may not notice that the English Wikipedia’s video game articles are usually written to a set of stringent guidelines that can set them apart from other articles on the site." That's one way of saying that we have very high standards here. Anyway, congrats Masem.GamerPro64 00:22, 10 August 2016 (UTC)
Being active in this project has given me a good sense of the kind of guidelines I should try to adhere, and I hold on to that knowledge when writing about other topics on Wikipedia, like webcomics. I wanted to add that I strongly appreciate this project's standards, as they influenced me a lot. The low barrier of entry of contemporary topics with a large web presence of course also helps :) Congratz, Masem, that's a very nice interview. Good read~ ~Mable (chat) 00:08, 12 August 2016 (UTC)
  • Of course, the average Wikipedia editor is an English-speaking male millenial, and so is the average gamer, so it makes sense that VG-related articles would be amongst or most well-attended-to topics. :) ☺ · Salvidrim! · ✉ 12:59, 12 August 2016 (UTC)
  • Are there any actual numbers on this? Back when I edited the Swedish Wikipedia regularly, I got the impression that most editors were men in their 40s and up. It's harder to get a sense of what the ENWP "community" looks like since it's so much bigger.--IDVtalk 13:16, 12 August 2016 (UTC)

PlayStation and Xbox page move requests

⇒ RightGot's page move requests: Talk:PlayStation (console)#Requested move 16 August 2016 and Talk:Xbox (console)#Requested move 16 August 2016. I put these here, in case they catch anyone's attention. – // Hounder4 // 12:10, 16 August 2016 (UTC)

While we're at it, what's the score with renaming everything from "Category:PlayStation" to "Category:PlayStation (brand)" that we have seen recently? Cats are being renamed one-by-one, "Category:PlayStation (brand)-related lists", "Category:PlayStation (brand) magazines", "Category:PlayStation (brand) screenshots" and so on. — TPX 13:39, 16 August 2016 (UTC)

Eyes on Shadow the Hedgehog (video game)

An anonymous editor is continuing to change the infobox without consensus and I'm not entirely sure why. I've dropped a edit war notification on their talk page--I'm reaching my limit for 3RR. An eye from another editor or two would be appreciated. My read of my changes is that I'm correct to be making the reverts. --Izno (talk) 18:47, 16 August 2016 (UTC)

Page protected. (Par for the course with terrible anonymous editors for the Sonic fanbase though...) Sergecross73 msg me 20:07, 16 August 2016 (UTC)

Saurian Wikipedia Page

Hello, I am the main editor of the Saurian page. I wrote up, among other things, an in-depth history of the game's development thus far and some basic planned gameplay, and would like suggestions on how to improve the writing of the article further. Full disclaimer; I am a community moderator for this game, so I do have a personal stake in getting this article as good as I possibly can. I feel strongly at the moment that this is not the case, and would like to ask if there are any outside eyes who would mind taking a look at the article and point out what needs improving and how. I must confess, this is rather new to me- I have made use of Wikipedia for a long time now, but this is my first time writing an article like this. I do hope I am going about this the right way...

Edit: Thank you for the Feedback- and the help in formatting the article.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saurian_(video_game) — Preceding unsigned comment added by GarrusSaurian (talk • contribs) 03:20, 15 August 2016 (UTC)

  1. You should read our Conflict of Interest guidelines - in short, its strongly discouraged that you don't write Wikipedia articles about something you have a close connection to personally.
  2. You should probably read the WP:GNG. Wikipedia articles are supposed to be written about third party sources say about an article. I can't help but notice that the article is almost entirely written according to what the game's Kickstarter and Facebook articles say about the article - that would be first party sources. That's a big no-no too.
I don't mean to be harsh, but these are rather large problems that would need to be overcome. If third party reliable sources aren't writing articles about the game, it could be deleted if nominated for deletion. See WP:VG/S for some examples on what is usable or not usable. Sergecross73 msg me 03:32, 15 August 2016 (UTC)
I recommend using this Custom Google Search for Saurian, which only includes articles from reliable sources. I'm seeing some articles from Siliconera, CNet, and Kotaku, which is a good start, but unfortunately, that's all I'm getting. Try and see what you can do with those articles. I read through a bit of the article, and it reads well, and it's obvious a lot of time and effort went into writing up the article. But unfortunately, due to limited coverage from reliable sources, I'm afraid other editors might not see Saurian as notable enough to have it's own article. Hopefully that helps. It's a bit late out here, but I don't mind going through the article and copyediting tomorrow. Famous Hobo (talk) 03:46, 15 August 2016 (UTC)
  • The article should be written for a general audience. I'd move the primary sourced stuff to an external wiki and rewrite it from the sources FH mentioned above. czar 05:15, 15 August 2016 (UTC)

Trouble at the Metroidvania page

Over the last couple of months, User:Phediuk has taken it upon himself to create a bloated and inaccurate table purporting to list Metroidvania games. His methodology is to simply take any game that a source has indicated has a feature similar to Metroid and add it to this list of Metroidvanias. This would be akin to labeling every movie with a shootout a Western regardless of its setting or other characteristics. The definitive and largely unchallenged definition of a Metroidvania is a 2D side-scroller featuring, combat, platforming, a continuous world, and the need to backtrack and overcome obstacles through the use of inventory upgrades (see, for example, this quite thorough Gamasutra article). Unfortunately, Phediuk has so far reverted every attempt to trim the list to include only those games that are actually part of the genre. Therefore, to avoid edit-warring, more eyes are needed on this. Indrian (talk) 07:14, 13 August 2016 (UTC)

  • First off, I've only included games that sources have explicitly noted as similar to Metroid, which is what matters for the list. Your opinion on what should count and what should not is pretty much irrelevant; it's not our job to make sure the list rigidly adheres to some arbitrary definition. Second, there is considerable variance in the definition of the genre. A few examples below:
      • VentureBeat: "a non-linear platformer".
      • Matt Fox, The Video Games Guide; "[A] non-linear platform game" (189).
      • USGamer "Games that, like Metroid and the latter-day Castlevanias, revolve around non-linear exploration, acquiring permanent power-ups, and advancing into the adventure with the help of the tool and weapon upgrades you collect along the way."
      • PocketGamer "Then games like Metroid came along, offering massive interconnected worlds that you could explore at your leisure - as you hunt for upgrades and items that will let you bypass obstacles. They're all about exploration, making maps (mental and paper ones), and soaking in the atmosphere."
      • GamesTM 116: "a classification of two-dimensional side-scrolling videogame in an open-world environment, containing platforms to naivgate, where progress is dependent on item acquisition and non-linear world exploration" (148).
      • Paste Magazine: "all [Metroidvanias] need is to bear some mechanical similarities to Metroid and mid-period Castlevania, the two franchises from which this “genre” took its name. This translates into in-game platforms, exploration elements and serialized item collection."
  • As you can see, some don't mention a platforming element at all, while others make it central; some restrict it to 2D games, others don't; some emphasize the interconnected world, while others require simply some degree of non-linearity; some mention permanent upgrades, while others include any kind of item acquisition, and others don't even mention items. The point being, pretty much every source defines the genre differently, even disagreeing on what its name should be. There is no universal set of criteria that a game must meet to be considered "like Metroid"; all that matters is that the source considers the game to be so. Phediuk (talk) 07:40, 13 August 2016 (UTC)
    • Every source you have posted here (including the VentureBeat source that later in the same article says there is more to the definition than merely "non-linear platformer") agrees on the basic point that a Metroidvania requires progress through a continuous world through inventory upgrades. You are putting games on the list that do not adhere to that definition like Jet Set Willy, Shadow of the Beast, Saboteur, and Thexder. Again, just because a game is influenced by some aspect of Metroid or has one gameplay element similar to Metroid does not make it part of a genre. And the sources you are using do not define these games as Metroidvanias. For example, the sources for Turrican, a run-and-gun that took inspiration from Metroid for its morph ball and weapons but does not gate progression through inventory upgrades, merely states that its "a close relation to Metroid" and features "taut-Metroid-esque gameplay." That is drawing parallels between two games, not genre classification. Is every film starring military personnel a war movie? Indrian (talk) 15:13, 13 August 2016 (UTC)
      • The VentureBeat source doesn't prescribe any of those elements to the genre; in fact, it opens up the article by simply saying "nonlinear platformer". True, it later describes elements that made Super Metroid a particularly potent example, but it also doesn't mandate those to the genre at large, it simply discusses them as elements that led to Super's hallowed reputation. The article says, and I quote, "Most Metroidvanias that came before lacked refinement, which makes sense given that many NES games were fairly rough. Super Metroid is just leagues better..." So yes, the genre existed beforehand, and furthermore, the article uses the term "nonlinear platformer" interchangeably with it. As for the war movie point, if the source referred to it as a war movie, then yes, I would add it. Likewise, if the source used a slight variation on the term "war movie", such as "war drama movie" or "war combat movie", I would certainly still add it. Phediuk (talk) 17:01, 13 August 2016 (UTC)
  • If the list is to be kept, I think it should be split into List of Metroidvania games, or something similar. Anarchyte (work | talk) 07:51, 13 August 2016 (UTC)
    • I agree Wuthering Anarchyte: having such a list in the Metroidvania page makes no sense. As for whether this is a proper way to establish a list of Metroidvania games, I sincerely doubt that as well. The ideal sources for any Wikipedia list would be articles or books that also include lists, such as a "top 10 best Metroidvania games". Such lists put these items next to exothermic and establish "Yes, there is a connection between all these. When it comes to lists of works that fall within a specific genre, I feel like just categorizing then is fine. This list of Metroidvania games simply doesn't have any real content other than being sortable on release date and such. At the very least, I'd love to see the table split, with Pensford the "Metroidvania-ness" of actual Metroid and Castlevania games being under discussion in an earlier section/table. We need something to give this list a reason to exist. ~Mable (chat) 09:47, 13 August 2016 (UTC)
    • Only to add that 1) when I built out the Metroidvania page to start, the list was short enough to have been easily kept within in, the number of titles added since beg that question and 2) I did ask Phediuk when they started adding to the list to make sure that unless it was a blue-linked game, to make sure they were all sourced. --MASEM (t) 15:21, 13 August 2016 (UTC)
      • He is sourcing, but in many cases the source is just identifying certain gameplay elements as similar to or influenced by Metroid. A source needs to identify the game as falling within the genre. Indrian (talk) 15:32, 13 August 2016 (UTC)
        • This is false. Shadow of the Beast is explicitly referred to as "Metroidvania-esque" in the source, and both Jet Set Willy and Thexder are identified as immediate predecessors to Metroid. I have not added everything that shares an element with Metroid, but only such games where the source affirms an overall similarity or close relation in gameplay. Please act in good faith. Phediuk (talk) 15:39, 13 August 2016 (UTC)
          • The suffix "esque" is defined as "resembling." That phrase means it is similar to a Metroidvania, but not actually a Metroidvania. Language matters. Indrian (talk) 15:43, 13 August 2016 (UTC)
            • It's a common variant used in reference to the genre, as with "Metroid-style", "Metroid-like", and "Metroid-esque". You are splitting hairs here. Phediuk (talk) 15:53, 13 August 2016 (UTC)
              • Shadow of the Beast is an action game that takes place in a large continuous overworld, which is the only part of the game that is "Metroid-esque." It features no inventory-based progression, which is required by pretty much every definition of Metroidvania including the ones you have provided above. It's not splitting hairs: you are going against the definitions in reliable sources, making your determination original research. Indrian (talk) 16:07, 13 August 2016 (UTC)
                • Shadow of the Beast does not have to conform to any individual definition of the genre. First off, to do so would be an inappropriate synthesis of sources, since these articles aren't responding to each other or anything, and many different definitions exist regardless; second, even the point that I'm defying the definitions doesn't hold up, since two sources refer to "Metroidvanias" as simply non-linear platformers, which SOTB certainly is; and third, the source already refers to it as "Metroidvania-esque". I'm not going against anything, I'm quoting the source, and yes, debating the difference between "Metroidvania-esque", "Metroid-esque" and "Metroidvania" is hair-splitting, and I would prefer not to have to gather bunch of sources to demonstrate this quite simple point, but if you insist further, I will. Phediuk (talk) 16:27, 13 August 2016 (UTC)
                • This is basically why I recommended using listacles as sources, as they would actually put different metroidvania games side-by-side without there being any question of whether "Metroid-like" or "Metroidvania-esque" means its a metroidvania or not. Regardless, I'd recommend getting rid of this list at this point, as it's just way too long and doesn't have any value that Category:Metroidvania games doesn't already have. ~Mable (chat) 16:16, 13 August 2016 (UTC)
              • I would be careful equating "Metroid-like" to "Metroidvania". There's elements of the latter that the original Metroid game lacked to a degree. One could argue that a "Metroid-like" game is one that has platforming and shooting elements, but not necessarily the RPG-ish connected world aspects. On the other hand, if someone compares a game to SOTN without actually explicitly saying Metroidvania, that's likely still a good reason to consider it a Metroidvania since SOTN is considered the ur example. --MASEM (t) 16:21, 13 August 2016 (UTC)
                • Nah, there's already reliable sources referring to the original Metroid as a Metroidvania. In fact, similarity to Metroid is practically the only thing all the definitions agree on. Phediuk (talk) 16:27, 13 August 2016 (UTC)
                  • How about games that are similar to Metroid in controls or atmosphere, Phediuk? Using the definition "similar to Metroid" doesn't always work. Games that are similar to Symphony of the Night but aren't akin to Metroid at all may also be considered metroidvania by sources. I don't believe a simple "Metroid-like" quote is enough to categorize a game under Category:Metroidvania games. ~Mable (chat) 16:40, 13 August 2016 (UTC)
                    • Those types of cases (i.e., merely similarity in aesthetic) have not been added; I've only utilized "Metroid-style", "Metroid-like", etc., when the source is clearly referring to similarity in gameplay. If the source refers to similarity to Metroid both aesthetic and gameplay, all the better. Phediuk (talk) 16:45, 13 August 2016 (UTC)
                      • Similarity in gameplay =/= same genre. Breakout and Space Invaders have incredibly similar gameplay in which the player controls an object located at the bottom of the screen and destroys objects arrayed at the top of the screen. In fact, Breakout is a direct antecedent of Space Invaders as it served as one of the designer's main influences. No one calls Breakout a fixed shooter or shmup though, just as no one would call Space Invaders a ball-and-paddle game. Practically every definition of Metroidvania, including those both of us provided here from sources, require inventory-upgrade-based progression. The definition is not nearly as vague as you continually attempt to protray it. To expand to all games that are referred to as having "Metroid-like" elements is original research that goes against the sources. Indrian (talk) 16:57, 13 August 2016 (UTC)
                        • Okay, and including Breakout on a list of shmups would be completely acceptable if a source called it a "Space Invaders-like" or a "Space Invaders-esque game". There's no issue here. Phediuk (talk) 17:05, 13 August 2016 (UTC)
                          • See, this is where you are going wrong. Calling something Space Invaders-like or Metroid-like is identifying games as sharing some similar elements. It is not categorizing a game in a genre. It takes more than similar gameplay elements to create genre. You have to examine the totality of the game objectives, atmosphere, controls, aesthetics, and play elements, which is what our reliable sources that have defined the genre have done. I am not sure how to explain this any clearer. We describe some people as "bird-like" to conjure a certain image. Do we therefore include every human character described in this way in a work of fiction in our list of fictional birds? Indrian (talk) 17:17, 13 August 2016 (UTC)
                            • Actually, a cursory glance at that list reveals a number of "bird-like" entries, such as "Digit, a bird-like cyborg in Cyberchase", "Hot Dog Harpy, a bird-like monster in Undertale", and "Coco, a bird-airplane-palm tree hybrid in Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends", and includes numerous robots that resemble birds, so it's evidently not a problem there. The list also includes a number of dinosaur-like predecessors to birds. Lastly, that list (and any other comparable list on Wikipedia) doesn't exclude "fictional robins" for not being "fictional birds", which is the kind of hair-splitting you're getting into here. Phediuk (talk) 17:27, 13 August 2016 (UTC)
                              • I like how you neatly sidestepped the question with a straw man. If I write a book about a man named Bob and describe him as "bird-like" would he go on the list? Of course not, because he does not exhibit the well defined criteria of what constitutes a bird. The term is merely used to invoke a certain understanding from the audience. Likewise when a genre is clearly defined as requiring certain elements, one cannot add games that do not contain those elements to a list of games in that genre just because a source says one game is "like" another, which is just a short-form way of helping the reader get a feel for a game's elements or style. I should really stop belaboring the point, however, because you seem unwilling to see the problem here and the current consensus is against your position. Indrian (talk) 17:37, 13 August 2016 (UTC)
                                  • There is no consensus here regarding either the definition of the genre or the acceptable terminology for it. In fact, it's pretty much just us here right now. The argument about the bird-like man is irrelevant, because we're not talking about differences in species, we're talking about minute differences in terms referring to the same species, the equivalent of saying "bird-like man" versus "bird-esque man", or "crayfish" versus "crawfish"; I would include both variations in any such lists. By that token, "Metroidvania-esque" games, along with similar terms like "Metroid-like", "Metroid-esque", and "Metroid-style" refer to the same style of gameplay as "Metroidvania"; thus, games should be included in the list if sources refer to them as such (and they do.) That is my position on the matter, and I'm sorry we haven't come to an agreement so far. However, I believe we can come to an agreement that will make both of us happy, as our interests are not that different. Phediuk (talk) 17:49, 13 August 2016 (UTC)
                                    • Well, if we need any help reaching a consensus, then allow me to be a little less polite than Indrian: Phediuk, what you are proposing is batshit crazy, and you probably should have kept it vague rather than explicitly saying that all games with "Metroid-like" elements are Metroidvanias. You would be well advised to consider why the term Metroidvania has that "vania" tacked on the end of it, and to revisit Masem's comment on Symphony of the Night above.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 19:06, 13 August 2016 (UTC)
                                      • First off, I didn't say anything containing the word "Metroid-like" meant "Metroidvania", but rather, only in such cases when the gameplay and structural similarity was explicitly noted. Second, "Metroidvania" has "vania" at the end of it because Castlevania (that is, Symphony of the Night and its follow-ups) is the second-best-known example. As Metroid is itself generally considered the biggest influence on SOTN, practically all sources link the origin of the genre with Metroid. The term arose specifically to describe these later Castlevania games until it began being applied in a wider sense by Jeremy Parish back in his 1Up days, circa 2006, as explained here. This is why the "vania" portion of the name tends to be ignored and sources usually focus on the Metroid aspect. Yes, the terminology is muddled and often confusing, and we probably wouldn't even be having this discussion if the genre's name was "exploratory platformer" or what have you. Nevertheless, there are quite a few sources that use the term "Metroid-like", sometimes interchangeably with "Metroidvania". Phediuk (talk) 19:37, 13 August 2016 (UTC)

Delete or split?

The question of how to fill this list is interesting, and I am glad that the discussion is taking place, though I'd like to split off the following question so I can get some feedback on it: Should the list on Metroidvania be split to a page titled "List of metroidvania game", or should it simply be deleted? I personally don't believe the list has much value as it is now, due to the overlap with Category:Metroidvania games. Therefore, I'd !vote Delete. Opinions? ~Mable (chat) 17:57, 13 August 2016 (UTC)

  • I'm in full support of a split. I think the list getting its own page is well overdue, for two main reasons: first, the bevy of reliable sources shows that it's both a notable and frequently-discussed subject; and second, WP already has list pages for practically every other genre of video game imaginable, so this is well within standard practice. I don't think the overlap with the category is that big of a deal, since practically every list on the site has a corresponding category. Phediuk (talk) 18:02, 13 August 2016 (UTC)
  • Nuke it. This argument is exactly why we can't have nice things. 1) The definition of "Metroidvania" is nebulous. Sources disagree about the necessary and sufficient properties and many actually admit that the definition is inconsistent even within the same publication or article. 2) The leap from something being "Metroid-like" to being a "Metroidvania" is a bridge too far. Things can be Metroid-like without being a Metroidvania because it ignores the "-vania". 3) Because of 1 and 2, it's impossible to properly categorize things as Metroidvanias, even if reliable 3rd party sources call them as such. The only parsimonious criterion that could work is if the developer of the game specifically states "I designed this game to be a Metroidvania". Anything less is just some barely qualified journalist or blogger speculating on the internet about their opinions. And for what it's worth, definitely do not split either. Axem Titanium (talk) 19:12, 13 August 2016 (UTC)
    • I agree that, if the prerequisite for properly categorizing the genre is that reliable sources have compiled lists of the games that qualify, along with a coherent definition, then the list should probably be deleted. There's only about 3 or so reliable sources that have ever attempted to compile the history of the genre in a coherent fashion, and they're all by either Jeremy Parish or John Szczepaniak ("Backtracking: The History of Metroidvania" in GamesTM 116 is probably the most comprehensive, rigorous article ever written on the topic.) The term "Metroidvania" is used in most sources as a buzzword with little attempt at rigour, in much the same way that film articles will use the term "reboot" without any real consistency. Even articles that do define the genre (aside from being like Metroid, which brings up the question of which aspects of Metroid "count", and how they're weighted) often begin either by acknowledging the inadequacy of the term "Metroidvania" and/or by discussing the difficulty of defining it consistently. I mean, Jeremy Parish, who's practically the guru of the genre, does exactly that. Seemingly every kind of game imaginable is on record as being a Metroidvania; some emphasize Zelda's influence and include games from its lineage (Darksiders, Okami and the like), some only consider platformers, some think Dark Souls is a modern Metroidvania, some think practically any RPG counts, some think certain FPSes fit the bill (System Shock, Bioshock, Deus Ex), some refer to earlier games as "proto-Metroidvanias", some consider the genre to have not existed until Symphony of the Night came out, and so on. The thing is, definitions pretty much never include all of these kinds of games together, and it would be hard to tell anyway, since "Metroidvania" is generally only used when relevant to the game being discussed, rather than in the more general sense.
    • And I think that might be the biggest problem of all: that is to say, "Metroidvania" is rarely itself the focus of any articles that could be considered to be reliable sources. The majority of sources simply mention the word in passing to describe whatever game it is they're discussing. Finding explicit mentions of "Metroidvania" for a given game is rather like a scavenger hunt; granted, I don't think that sources like that are necessarily worthless, but the term may make more sense as a category, than a list. In that format, one can simply slip in a mention in the article where relevant, which would retain pretty much all of the useful value of the list without bloating any individual article. Phediuk (talk) 19:49, 13 August 2016 (UTC)
      • Then it seems we're in agreement. The vague term "Metroidvania", in its common everyday use, is cultural shorthand meant to evoke certain feelings concerning what the game is about and I think gaming culture has generally agreed to keep its definition vague for this very purpose. Thus, it's a great tool for writers to save on word count but a terrible means of organization on Wikipedia. Axem Titanium (talk) 16:37, 14 August 2016 (UTC)
        • More or less. I think that, if there was more comprehensive analysis of the genre along the lines of what Parish and Szczepaniak have done (though, even Parish has waffled considerably on what the term means), it would be more valuable as a concept, and I do think it's interesting what games people have included in the genre. A name like "exploratory platformer" would have also simplified things, since it actually refers to gameplay elements, but unfortunately, this awkward and vaguely-defined portmanteau stuck instead. I agree with the point that the word "Metroidvania" tends to be used as an emotional appeal, i.e., "Dark Souls isn't just an action RPG, it's a Metroidvania!" It's used to invoke two popular and well-respected series and, thus, often used as a compliment more than as a descriptor of what the game actually is. So, I think that any attempt to nail down a single definition of "Metroidvania" is a futile effort, destined to end in Wiki-bickering over which sources say what. I think that, if the list is removed, the article should also reflect the variance in the definitions, i.e., treating the elements of the genre as common, but not mandatory traits (as some of the definitions themselves do.) The article pretty much already does this, but a few people want a more prescriptive definition, which the sources don't support, and probably never will. Phediuk (talk) 16:54, 14 August 2016 (UTC)
  • I'm not sure if this discussion is still active, but I think it's fine to keep the list in the article.... but shorten it. In the long term, it'd be nice to demand no less than 2 references that explicitly use "Metroidvania" as phrasing so that one random listicle calling Mass Effect a secret Metroivania or whatever can't throw things off, but for now, I'd say that deleting redlinks would be a good start to trimming the list - or, at best, moving them to a very clipped list at the end. (e.g. "Other Metroidvanias include RedLinkedGame1, RedLinkedGame2, RedLinkedGame3.") SnowFire (talk) 02:09, 18 August 2016 (UTC)

Wikipedia Library resources

Hi WPVG! Whilst reading a certain blog post it occurred to me that I haven't really given much thought into paywalled resources that are used in this WikiProject that we could try to get access to through The Wikipedia Library. We have McFarland, who have a number of VG related eBooks, and Gale who I'm also aware have some Video Game/Computing related magazine archives but are there any video game focused paywalled/subscription-based resources that we could look into the possibility of starting a partnership with? From a quick search I found the GDC Vault - how useful would that be? Let me know about that and any other requests you have :) Samwalton9 (WMF) (talk) 09:01, 13 August 2016 (UTC)

Hi @Samwalton9:, I tried to get some ebooks in October-November last year. I requested them in epub format. An ebook in epub format can be uploaded and read in Google Play Books, so it syncs across my devices and I can add highlight text, easier to mark down notable and interesting information. I however received password-protected PDFs, which were anything but convenient. I did send a message regarding the issue, but I never heard back. If this time it's more easy to get some ebooks, yeah, I'd love to some. soetermans. ↑↑↓↓←→←→ B A TALK 12:33, 13 August 2016 (UTC)
@Soetermans: For McFarland? I wasn't aware of any issues with this - perhaps The Interior could look into this for you. Samwalton9 (WMF) (talk) 13:34, 13 August 2016 (UTC)
@Soetermans: if that's the case, the password should just be "McFarland"—was for me, at least. @Samwalton9 (WMF): as far as I'm concerned, GDC Vault would be incredibly useful. I tried to see if anyone had access back in December 2014, but received no response; the Vault has so many useful videos and presentations, I'm sure there'd be an abundance of useful content there. A lot of development information, anyway. – Rhain ☔ 15:07, 13 August 2016 (UTC)
@Rhain: Alright great, I've dropped them an email. Let me know if there are any other sources that would be useful for WP:VG, or more broadly, either directly or at Wikipedia:The Wikipedia Library/Databases/Requests. Samwalton9 (WMF) (talk) 18:48, 13 August 2016 (UTC)
@Rhain: the password wasn't the issue; because they were protected PDFs I couldn't upload them to Google Books, and couldn't sync them across my devices or highlight text. @Samwalton9 (WMF): (by the way, I see now that I pinged your other account before, sorry about that), the last message that I received from The Interior was that they would relay the message to McFarland and when they would hear back, I would too. I haven't heard back, but I didn't mind, we've got plenty of stuff to do around Wikipedia :) I'll check again for some ebooks though (as long as they're in epub format though! ;-)) soetermans. ↑↑↓↓←→←→ B A TALK 13:41, 14 August 2016 (UTC)
soetermans, I did pass on your request, but did not get a reply. Would you like me to pursue again? Happy to do so - they did offer the Epub/Google Play option. The Interior (Talk) 23:42, 17 August 2016 (UTC)
Thanks @The Interior, if you would, that'd be great. soetermans. ↑↑↓↓←→←→ B A TALK 05:55, 18 August 2016 (UTC)

Metal Gear

The reception box from Metal Gear#Reception felt so big few sentences could be seen. I tried removing the GameRankings score to avoid undue weight and also since the project has also began using more Metacritic. However, an anon reverted it since some games from GameRankings have scores in contrast to Metacritic. Is there a way to avoid having such a big box and focus more on the prose? Regards.Tintor2 (talk) 01:48, 18 August 2016 (UTC)

At the very least, I would shorten the GR scores to two significant figures (no decimals) and lop off the scores that have fewer than four reputable reviews. If there is no difference between the Metacritic and GR scores, then there's cause to drop the GR column. czar 05:15, 18 August 2016 (UTC)
I think I should call the anon here @86.154.3.65: rather than starting an edit war.Tintor2 (talk) 14:46, 18 August 2016 (UTC)

New articles - 19 August

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

New articles from the past week. This post has been made to help raise the visibility of new articles that fall under this project.

13 August

14 August

15 August

16 August

17 August

18 August

19 August

Salavat (talk) 07:08, 20 August 2016 (UTC)

Review Thread (Missing) No. 26

Since we've got a severe backlog of stuff, here's a new review thread to bring things more to the fore. Some of the GA nominations here have been hanging around for over two months!

FAC
  • Ellie (The Last of Us) (nom): On its second FAC, active since 27 June, and currently has four supports.
  • Rare Replay (nom): Active since 4 July, and currently has one support and three sets of comments.
  • Dota 2 (nom): On its second FAC, active since 12 July, and with no supports and a lot of comments. Closed.
  • Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward (nom): Active since 20 July, and currently has one support and two sets of comments.
GAN
Other

I hope anyone here is willing to contribute to clearing the backlog here. I don't have anything I can offer personally at this moment, but as per usual, I'm creating a "Begging thread" for editors to exchange reviews/comments/ect. I am barred from the currently-nominated Deus Ex, Shin Megami Tensei and Fire Emblem games due to them being my own nominations. --ProtoDrake (talk) 21:44, 12 August 2016 (UTC)

Begging thread

  • I'm getting a bit worried about the lack of activity on the Virtue's Last Reward FAC. If anyone would be willing to do a review of it, I'll do a review of any video game FAC or PR of your choosing, or any GAN except Fire Emblem Fates, Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne and Deus Ex: Human Revolution (I'm okay with doing The Missing Link, however).--IDVtalk 14:25, 14 August 2016 (UTC)
@Rhain, Czar, Omni Flames, PresN, Anarchyte, Gamingforfun365, ProtoDrake, GamerPro64, and AdrianGamer: Pinging people with current nominations, as I don't know how often everyone checks the WikiProject talk page.--IDVtalk 16:57, 14 August 2016 (UTC)
Yeah, I owe a review on Zero Escape; I'll try to do it tomorrow. Famous Hobo already reviewed my last FLC, I don't need another trade (unless you just love Commander Keen games, of course, like all right-thinking people). --PresN 01:42, 15 August 2016 (UTC)

Question on the difference between a video game controversy vs criticism

I've started working on Controversies surrounding Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, and I had a question on what is technically defined as a controversy. Obviously, No Russian, and the allegations of homophobic content with the F.A.G.S. video and Don't ask, don't tell easter egg were controversial, but the article also lists three other "controversies". One was that the PC port didn't support dedicated servers, which led to boycotts from the PC community; another was the Javelin glitch, which rendered the multiplayer unplayable for the first few weeks, and cost $40,000 to fix (at least according to this); and the third is a painting in a bathroom that had to be removed when the words "Allah is beautiful and He loves beauty" were discovered, which is forbidden in Islam. Are these three controversies or just criticisms. Even though just about every major game site covered these stories, I always thought that controversy meant that journalists outside the video game industry found it to be controversial. Just wanted to make sure. Famous Hobo (talk) 21:15, 4 August 2016 (UTC)

If it has been covered outside of the usual circle of video game sources, then its reasonable to address it as a controversy, but I don't think this is a requirement to be something considered a controversy; there are ones that occur w/o outside sources commenting on it. But I would be careful to label things that involve player expectation (like the dedicated PC server thing or the Javelin thing) as "controversy", since this can be easily overblown by a few articles. It would be a controversial issue, but not necessary a full-blown controversy. --MASEM (t) 21:38, 4 August 2016 (UTC)
Yeah, anytime it sounds more like its just the fanbase whining. (No dedicated servers, small gameplay tweaks, etc), I relegate it more to a criticism description. (If sources can be found at all - frequently you'll see its just unattributed complaints from "fans" that didn't even get coverage from sources, its just whining from user reviews and comment sections. I tend to not use "controversy" unless sources are literally using the term, but as Masem says, if it seems like issue is getting a lot of sources dedicated to it from outside the smaller video game websites, that's probably a starting point for an argument for it too. Sergecross73 msg me 12:43, 5 August 2016 (UTC)
To your point about sources, the PC port was well documented by sources, with 2 Game Informer articles, 2 by Ars Techia, 3 by Kotaku, 2 by Destructoid, as well as a GameIndustry.biz, 1UP, and IGN article. So I feel as though it may have received enough coverage to constitute a section in the Controversies article. The Javelin glitch was coverage by 6 sources, but 4 of them just say that the glitch has been patched, and given the fact that major glitches are bound to happen in the multiplayer mode of big games, I don't see it as a controversy. The final topic was the Favela painting, which, while covered again by a decent amount of sources, most of them just say the map was removed over criticism and then replaced, without giving their opinions on the matter like the F.A.G.S. video. So with that being said, I'll remove the Javelin and Favela painting sections, but keep the PC port section for now. It can always be removed later. Famous Hobo (talk) 18:22, 5 August 2016 (UTC)
Just rereading the PC server aspect, I agree it is a controversy, in that it appears that most at the time considered the locking down of server control on the PC side to be insulting, and not just an aspect of gamer entitlement, so it is proper to include. --MASEM (t) 18:45, 5 August 2016 (UTC)

@Masem and Sergecross73: So something just came to my attention. After the release of Modern Warfare 2, Infinity Ward founders Vincent Zampella and Jason West filed a lawsuit against Activision. While I haven't looked too much into the lawsuit, it appears that it's focused on Zampella's and West's roles in the company, not on the game itself. So I'm assuming that it shouldn't go in the article. Famous Hobo (talk) 01:15, 6 August 2016 (UTC)

I would agree the Zampella/West lawsuit was broader than just MW2 , so should not be included. --MASEM (t) 02:11, 6 August 2016 (UTC)
  • I know this is a strange scope for an article, but what are the grounds for splitting it out, exactly? I'm not seeing coverage that discusses "controversies of MW2" as an independent topic, so we're looking at why it was split summary style from the article. The controversy article appears to consist of major post-release events that should all be covered within the main article (and not as a "controversy" section, which we avoid) and only split out summary style as necessary. The No Russian split was certainly warranted, but I see the best endgame for the rest of the content merged into the main article. czar 23:29, 6 August 2016 (UTC)
Ah, this one's a tough one for me. I personally feel that article is justified, since a number of the sources used also mention the other controversies, and how they just kept on piling on top of each other. There's even this Daily Telegraph article about how the game managed to sell well despite the controversy surrounding it. Personally, I'd like to keep it. Famous Hobo (talk) 21:51, 7 August 2016 (UTC)
@Czar, Masem, and Sergecross73: Just wanted to make sure you guys saw this. Famous Hobo (talk) 21:47, 9 August 2016 (UTC)
Just to reiterate, the issue is that "controversies of MW2" is not an independently notable concept discussed by sources (perhaps the topics are individually discussed but not as a group) so this is a split. But then the main article doesn't actually cover this stuff in detail, which it should before it's split out. On my last read, I remember seeing extraneous info that would only be relevant if the minutiae of the events were important... but in any event, the topics should only be split out if they can't be given due weight (proportional to the coverage) in the parent article. czar 21:02, 16 August 2016 (UTC)
Wait, which articles do you want to split? The GA review of the controversy article is on hold and awaiting the outcome of the merge(?) discussion. The article meets the 'broad in scope' part of the criteria IMO, given how many sources there are for it. For future reference, I am really really tired when writing this and can't bring myself to understand anything. JAGUAR  22:00, 16 August 2016 (UTC)
The controversy article is ostensibly a split from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2#Controversy, though the latter section is gutted. I suggested merging the controversy article back into the section and see what actually remains. If everything fits in the section, we don't need a separate article. The question becomes whether there is too much necessary content to not split out the concept. I'd wager that "MW2 controversies" is not an independently notable topic. No Russian definitely is, but the other stuff appears to be jammed in (a.k.a. the controversy article functions as a coat rack) czar 20:35, 21 August 2016 (UTC)

Fighting game tournaments

As some of you may have noticed, I've spent the past two weeks creating articles for more recent Street Fighter, like Evo 2016, Capcom Cup 2015, and even NorCal Regionals 2016 and Stunfest 2016, proving that these events are ripe for getting their own articles. I've been annoyed for a long time how an event like the Evolution Championship Series had only one article for all of its events, while many of the newer ones easily meet GNG. Of course I understand why this is: no one ever wanted to come forward to write such articles well. My works aren't Featured Articles by any means, but I think I managed to describe these events completely as they are covered by reliable sources. Now the question remains of what to do with these articles in the future. I have no idea if I'd be up to creating Capcom Cup 2016 or Evo 2017 when these events roll around, knowing how much work they are to create and how busy I tend to be during actual tournament season. I hope someone would be able to create at least C-class articles for these events once they roll around, and maybe I'll be that person. I don't think it's too important to start creating articles for older tournaments (though it could be pretty awesome), but these are the things that have been going through my mind lately. I was wondering if other people on WP:VG have any interest in this subject area, so that this gap in our coverage could be covered even if I weren't around... I'm open for ideas, anyway :) ~Mable (chat) 12:53, 15 August 2016 (UTC)

To expand on how these tournament articles relate to notability guidelines: all major Street Fighter tournaments seem to be covered by Steve Jurek from The Daily Dot and Michael Martin from Red Bull since the second half of 2015 (making it fairly easy to find sources for Premier Events of the Capcom Pro Tour). If a tournament gets coverage from multiple reliable sources outside of these two, it is likely that it meets GNG. ~Mable (chat) 12:57, 15 August 2016 (UTC)
I even created the following navbox which illustrates the kind of coverage we can give to the larger Street Fighter tournaments:
I am planning on creating the article on Final Round 19 today/tomorrow, so don't worry about that. I don't know if all Capcom Cup 2016 Premier Events are/will be notable, but quite a few are :) ~Mable (chat) 17:33, 15 August 2016 (UTC)

I would like some input over at Talk:Community Effort Orlando, as @UltraDark: created some really cool tables that may be rather excessive. I'd like to know some opinions. ~Mable (chat) 19:05, 22 August 2016 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request for Trickster Online on 22 August 2016

There needs to be a change that removes the wording from the Trickster online entry that states it is offline. Considering I logged in today, and the website www.playtrickster.com is alive and well, this game is certainly not offline. 50.39.200.134 (talk) 12:49, 22 August 2016 (UTC)

Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format. VarunFEB2003 I am Offline 13:32, 22 August 2016 (UTC)

SNK of America date of creation

Hi

Regarding the citations available about the date when SNK of america was created, i think it is unclear because some citations differ, giving different dates. I started a discuccion about this on an user talk page (and a long time ago on the SNK talk page [2]), but it's better to try here. I think the problem is clearly explained there. Sorry for my english, I'm non-native english, and perhaps it will be easyer for you to find the truth. Best regards. --Archimëa (talk) 08:19, 17 August 2016 (UTC)

Hola, the current SNK article has this, "The North American division (SNK Corporation of America) was opened on October 20, 1981." Sadly, the sentence is unsourced. Maybe the guys from the SNK wikia know about it?Tintor2 (talk) 01:39, 18 August 2016 (UTC)
Hi, "Maybe" ? This is enough reliable to accept this as real informations ? --Archimëa (talk) 22:00, 20 August 2016 (UTC)
Bonjour Archimëa! Tintor2 voulait simplement mentionner que la phrase détaillant la date d'ouverture de SNK North America comme étant le 20 Octobre 1981 n'était pas référencée et qu'aucune source fiable ne soutient cette affirmation. Il conseille de demander aux usagers du wikia de SNK pour plus d'informations. Entre temps, j'ai ajouté un tag qui souligne le caractère non-référencé de cette affirmation ([3]) jusqu'à ce qu'on puisse trouver une source fiable soutenant une information valide quant à la date de création. Cela nous permettra de continuer à chercher la vérité! :) ☺ · Salvidrim! · ✉ 17:33, 22 August 2016 (UTC)
Bonjour, merci pour ton intervention sur la page SNK ! J'ai engagé cette discussion car le modèle {{Citation needed}} que j'avais ajouté a été supprimé et le message correspondant sur la page de discussion a été archivé... C'était aussi un moyen de trouver de l'aide pour découvrir la vérité ! J'espérais que des locaux, en Californie, puissent trouver plus facilement des informations...
Je comprends mieux le retour de ce modèle.
J'ai déjà discuté de ca avec des personnes très actives de la scène Neo-Geo française, et ils n'en savent pas plus que moi sur cette date de création et n'en tirent que des "guess"...
Merci d'avoir faire l'effort de t’exprimer dans un bon français.
Je ne connais pas le système de création d'entreprise aux États-Unis, et c'est peut-être un problème de dates, "date de création" et "date d'incorporation" sur lesquelles les sources ne sont pas claires...
Regards. --Archimëa (talk) 22:49, 22 August 2016 (UTC)
Effort? Sache que je suis francophone de naissance (Montréal, Québec), bien que ça paraisse pas beaucoup ici. ;) Et note que tandis que la plupart des utilisateurs de FrWiki sont peut-être concentrés en Europe francophone (Suisse, Belgique, France, etc.), EnWiki est composé de gens de partout dans le monde, pas seulement d'Américains et d'Anglais. Je ne crois même pas qu'un des contributeurs régulier au WikiProject Video Games soient de Californie. :) ☺ · Salvidrim! · ✉ 23:18, 22 August 2016 (UTC)
Tu pourrais venir contribuer sur le projet jeu vidéo français . Il y a beaucoup à faire, beaucoup d'articles essentiels à développer, comme de choses à décider. --Archimëa (talk) 12:09, 23 August 2016 (UTC)

TCGs as MMOs

Interested parties may wish to answer the question at Talk:Massively multiplayer online game#Card games. --Izno (talk) 12:29, 23 August 2016 (UTC)

Discussion about addition of character list to a GA

I started a discussion thread on Talk:Chaos;Head#Character section about Landingdude13's addition of a lengthy character list to the article. I don't think a lot of people watch the article in question, so I figured I'd notify the WikiProject about it. If you have the time, please drop by and share your thoughts.--IDVtalk 15:15, 23 August 2016 (UTC)

Should we tackle WP:CSC?

It seems that lately, at least from my experience, that we've deleted/merged/redirected a lot of "List of [x]"-type articles. Thanks to the amazing WP:VG/RS custom Google search engine, it has never been easier to look up sources. Still, not everybody agrees on what counts as notability, so for some reason the unreferenced and unnecessary List of MySims characters has not been deleted. Most editors who are against deleting/merging/redirecting those articles bring up WP:CSC often, especially the second criterium, which reads:

Every entry in the list fails the notability criteria. These lists are created explicitly because most or all of the listed items do not warrant independent articles (...)

But then it goes on with:

Such lists are almost always better placed within the context of an article on their "parent" topic. Before creating a stand-alone list consider carefully whether such lists would be better placed within a parent article. (...)

Isn't that contradictory, or am I reading that wrong? "Such lists are almost always better placed within the context of an article on their "parent" topic", so a list of MySims characters would "almost always better placed" in the main article. What is "almost" always? When is it not better to do so? What I find ironic is that the two examples given, List of minor characters in Dilbert and List of paracetamol brand names, both have been redirected. I think it is because of this ambiguously way of phrasing that some of these unnecessary are able to pass AfD's. soetermans. ↑↑↓↓←→←→ B A TALK 16:16, 18 August 2016 (UTC)

I think an important criteria for a list, and one which is entirely missing from CSC, is that even if every item in the list does not meet the individual notability criteria, the concept as a whole does. CSC doesn't get into that, though it does have a seealso just above to WP:Notability#Stand-alone lists (WP:LISTN), which begins:

Notability guidelines apply to the inclusion of stand-alone lists and tables. Notability of lists (whether titled as "List of Xs" or "Xs") is based on the group.

I think the idea behind CSC is to say that it's okay if none of the items in a list could have articles, that a list is still okay for that. It doesn't supercede LISTN, which is why we've been purging a lot of the wikia-esque lists this past year. MySims characters as a collective are not talked about in reliable sources, and are not notable as a group. CSC point 2 does not override that. --PresN 17:04, 18 August 2016 (UTC)
    • One thing important on all of these is that removing "List of..." from the titles of these, at least to me, makes me think of the ensemble group as a whole, which can help strength the lists as these above examples show. However, this isn't necessarily going to be possible for every game or series where the characters are otherwise individually notable (example would be the BioShock series, where development or reception of the cast as an ensemble is not really there but individual characters are just barely notable not to have a standalone page but to contribute to the notable list overall).
    • I will say that unless you can present the cast in this ensemble approach as The1337gamer's examples given, we never should have a character list as a separate article for a single game. --MASEM (t) 17:56, 18 August 2016 (UTC)
I completely agree, but I feel that by playing the WP:CSC card all other arguments are put aside. "None of these characters are notable? Well, WP:CSC says they don't have to be!" soetermans. ↑↑↓↓←→←→ B A TALK 06:39, 19 August 2016 (UTC)
I have the feeling that we're getting ahead of ourselves here, as most of the horrible lists simply call notability and can't be sourced properly. I'm not entirely sure what the meaning is of 'tackling WP:CSC', but if the goal is to make the guideline clearer and less ambiguous, we should have this discussion over there. ~Mable (chat) 07:34, 19 August 2016 (UTC)
  • I was actually thinking of creating a thread here much like this recently, but I've held off. While I wish we weren't so harsh on these articles, even I'm quite surprised that the MySims character list article resulted to keep at AFD. I was expecting a "no consensus" at best.
You know, as someone who has been using Wikipedia since 2006, I remember when we used to have articles on virtually any and every video game character, regardless of how much coverage (or lack thereof) they got. Eventually, notability started to be enforced on those articles more, so then we started just having character list articles. Somewhere along the line, character articles and as of more recently, character list articles, started to have been judged overly harsh on Wikipedia, leading to endless heated debates on their notability. I just wish for a middle ground between the old days of all characters having their own articles and the borderline draconic standards being enforced for character and character list articles now.
I like the character list idea as a compromise when some of the individual characters may not be notable enough for their own articles, which is why I think we should be more lax with those kinds of articles than we are now. But with that said, that's not to say we shouldn't enforce notability on them at all though. Adding something about notability at WP:CSC should at least clear up some confusion. It's just a tricky subject altogether.
Also, I think we should have the editors who have provided the whole WP:CSC argument be pinged here, like @Jclemens: and @Patar knight:. Kokoro20 (talk) 09:09, 19 August 2016 (UTC)
I would imagine that living through the standards of the mid-2000s and then seeing the enforced notability of today would be really jarring, yeah. ~Mable (chat) 09:28, 19 August 2016 (UTC)
I second The1337gamer's suggestion. It's always baffled me that Wikipedia permits list articles, as it seems obvious to me that both conceptually and in practice they're simply a way of getting around WP: Notability. Have an article that doesn't even remotely meet notability requirements and has been taken to AfD? Just merge it to a list article and you're good to go! The "List of" format even encourages readers and editors to treat each item in the list as a standalone article which simply shares a page with other standalone articles. Moreover, it encourages comprehensive coverage, so that even the most minor items on the list get writeups. The "Characters of" format doesn't have those two problems; it treats the article as a single unified subject.--Martin IIIa (talk) 13:41, 19 August 2016 (UTC)
The context you are talking about is that of a parent article on a notable subject, but with a list with sub-notable entries. I interpret "almost always" in that context as the list is strongly dependent on the parent article and so should usually be in the parent article. One exception is that if the list is so long that it would unbalance the presentation parent article, one might break it out of the article, summary style. But I don't think that absolves the list from having verifiable entries or from the parent subject from being notable. As a hypothetical example, suppose we have an article on "national flag"--the list of national flags would be quite long and unbalance an article. It would be better to break this off as a list, even if some flag entries are verifiable, but sub-notable. I agree with others that rewriting game character lists in prose with good sources, as with some of the "Characters of" examples above, is much preferable and makes for a better read. But there is a place for big lists as supplemental adjuncts to a parent article. --Mark viking (talk) 18:43, 19 August 2016 (UTC)
What often happens though with character lists for video games when spun out of an article is two-fold. If it is a game like GTA, editors have a tendancy to insert every minor character or named character into the list. These quickly bloat the list; character lists should be confined to characters that (unless otherwise notable) are essential to describe if you are giving a broad overview of the game's narrative. The second is that when a character list is separated from the game's article where one can reasonably expect to find the game's plot, people will tend to overly-duplicate that plot on the character list article as to explain the plot for each character's stance on it, and that further causes problems on these lists (It's also a problem on valid single-character articles too). Lists of characters aren't necessary a problem but they are the types of articles that attract excessive detail if we're not careful. Aligning them to be about the characters as an ensemble helps towards that, to a degree. --MASEM (t) 19:06, 19 August 2016 (UTC)
You raise good points and effectively argue against "list of" articles for characters in video games. I wasn't trying to justify "List of characters in" as a good idea for VG in particular, but give my POV on the more general WP:CSC question that Soetermans raised. Sorry for not being clear. --Mark viking (talk) 19:58, 19 August 2016 (UTC)
  • So, since I've been pinged, here's my take on it:
    1. If a topic is notable, any verifiable content on that topic is fair for inclusion. DUE applies, but it you're going to write a HUUGE article on a videogame (or any other topic) then anything can be covered.
    2. The only reason we don't cover everything in ONE mondo-huge article is that it'd be unweildy and unreadable. Thus, we have breakouts for certain parts of the article.
    3. And HERE is where it gets tricky: What does "notability is not inherited" really mean? If "Game X" is clearly notable, a list of characters in game X could remain within the article on "Game X"... but if it's broken out into a separate article, does it need to demonstrate notability for the LIST of X? Here's where wikipedians have differed and offered alternative, conflicting, rationales. My take is that a "list of X" where "X" is notable is not a violation of "notability is not inherited" even if no element in the list is individually notable, because it would be legal and appropriate (if only hugely annoying and unwieldy) to merge it back into the clearly notable article.
  • On a more pragmatic note, nothing good is accomplished by deleting these lists. Readers view them regularly, and hopefully anything COPYVIO was wiped out long ago, so that there's nothing left but possibly trivial, possibly non-notable content, which is not hurting anything. The number of people who just don't care about the readership who likes the trivial "cruft" or the dedicated fan base who creates it saddens me. I genuinely believe it has no more merit than older teens kicking down crude looking sandcastles made by enthusiastic if inept gradeschoolers. All that content was put in by people who loved the work, and we can't even be bothered to keep it around? Have we, as Wikipedia, no shame? Jclemens (talk) 02:20, 20 August 2016 (UTC)
Wouldn't the only proper reason to spin a list out of a parent article be that there are many sources covering the content of the list that covering everything the source cover _in the parent article_ would lead to undue weight? I think that in the past, people have opted for splitting an article where trimming away original research would have been the right move. ~Mable (chat) 08:53, 20 August 2016 (UTC)
Perhaps those sandcastles should be built on a fanwiki instead? Just because someone put a lot of work into something doesn't mean it's suitable for Wikipedia. If few or no secondary reliable sources discuss a game's characters, we should cover them accordingly - one paragraph in the story section of the game's article is probably plenty enough in a lot of cases.--IDVtalk 09:20, 20 August 2016 (UTC)
I second IDV's comments. It's not a matter of completely eradicating trivia from the internet; it's a matter of keeping trivia in its proper place. WP:Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information applies here.--Martin IIIa (talk) 00:58, 21 August 2016 (UTC)
The problem is, what constitutes as trivia is often very subjective. What could be seen as trivia to one person could be very useful and important information to another. I think that's where Jclemens was getting at. Kokoro20 (talk) 01:51, 21 August 2016 (UTC)
To the editors who donated it, their content mattered. Leaving aside COPYVIO or promotionalism, the endless detailed lists mattered enough that those editors chose to contribute their time to write up that information. That's where new content comes from, and a single list can represent tens of hours of various editors' time. Fanwiki is a non-starter as a solution because a) when was the last time you saw anyone "transwiki" anything to a fan wiki? It was dying out as an option 10 years ago: even though there are tons of fan wikis, Wikipedia does not spend time moving NN content elsewher, and b) Per WP:ELNO #12, we can't even link to the fan wikis where that content might be better hosted. Think on that for a sec. Understand that the "crufty-cruft" that seems useless or ill-placed to those outside the specific genre is the reason so many of these editors got into Wikipedia in the first place. When we delete their content, we show them that they aren't welcome, rather than converting them into general-purpose Wikipedia editors who learn to create and improve content outside their niche. It's a sad thing--heartbreaking, really, when we have nothing better to do than this. Jclemens (talk) 07:58, 21 August 2016 (UTC)
Jclemens, by that logic, a new member should be allowed to write an article about anything (as long as there is some primary source, I suppose). What would then stop me from writing an article on clearly non-notable webcomics, for example? Frankly, your suggestion undermines the entirety of WP:NOTABILITY. I have no idea if that would make Wikipedia better as an encyclopedia.
Look, I get what you mean. I always feel uncomfortable undoing an edit my a new person trying to be helpful as well. I can't imagine how painful it would be to see a list get deleted where you put multiple hours into. Luckily, many of the lists we are discussing here are pretty old now, so no one would really miss them, but for new articles... sheesh, should we try not to hurt anyone's feelings or should we try to improve our encyclopedia? I think the answer is the latter myself. ~Mable (chat) 09:14, 21 August 2016 (UTC)
I'm rather shocked to hear the "well someone worked hard to write it so don't be a meanie and delete it" rationale coming from such an experienced editor - usually that's something a newbie throws out there in efforts to keep their misguided efforts from being deleted. That argument never matters on an individual basis, so I can't believe you're trying to apply it on a general level. (This is coming from someone who supports about 75% of these list mergers - there have still been many I've objected to - just not on the grounds you're arguing though.) Sergecross73 msg me 13:14, 21 August 2016 (UTC)
You shouldn't be surprised at all. I'm still here, ten years since my first edit, and I still believe in the volunteer and amateur editor as the base of our pyramid, and the pool from which we develop more active, less niche, and more polished editors. So yes, they will initially write stuff that's mostly useless: but storage and text bandwidth are cheap, that as long as there's no other problem (again: attack, copyvio, promotionalism) we do more harm to Wikipedia's future and vibrancy by eliminating the "cruft" and in the process giving the middle finger to the volunteer editors who donated it, than we do by polishing what's already here. Let's face it: there's a ton of stuff that doesn't belong in Wikipedia... but the scope of this and similar Wikiprojects is where new editors who will become great editors will cut their teeth, and why it's ever-so-important that we do not alienate them by crushing their contributions. Frankly, I think that WP:NOT has become so well developed that there's no real reason to enforce WP:N any longer: if it passes WP:V and doesn't fail WP:NOT, then it's at worst harmless junk. Jclemens (talk) 20:18, 21 August 2016 (UTC)
WP:V by nature states that an article should be based on reliable sources. I assume you mean verifiable as per primary sources in this case? ~Mable (chat) 20:36, 21 August 2016 (UTC)
Indeed. WP:SPS and/or WP:SELFPUB discuss when such sourcing is appropriate. Establishing the basic facts regarding fictional elements, such as video games, is such an instance. Jclemens (talk) 21:53, 21 August 2016 (UTC)
However, WP:V does warn "If no reliable third-party sources can be found on a topic, Wikipedia should not have an article on it." Now, that doesn't necessarily condemn any character list, but it does tell us where to put the priority of information, alongside WP:NOT#GUIDE and WP:NOT#PLOT. Rambling details of a character in a video game, while wholly sourceable to the game to met WP:V, fail these others policies even if we're not trying to consider notability factors. Major characters in a video game should be documented and should be reasonable search terms, but we dont need to reiterate every plot twist that the main work already covers, which is what a lot of these character articles end up being (because it is one of the most easiest places to get involved with WP, and doesn't require normal sourcing). There's a proper balance of describing characters and summarizing the work as a whole, and standalone character lists, if they don't focus on third-party sourcing, tend to not have that proper balance. --MASEM (t) 23:50, 22 August 2016 (UTC)
I don't disagree with any of that. But cleaning up excessive detail or merging NN content into lists is not the same as deleting it wholesale. That's why lists of NN elements are the best balance between allowing rampant trivialism and kicking down sandcastles, in my opinion. Going after lists to delete them instead of just cleaning them up appropriately (to include merging back into a main article if appropriate) is a very, very different and more hostile action. Deletion is punitive and, ultimately, lazy; editing things down to the core of what SHOULD be in the encyclopedia somewhere takes far more effort and I find few people who are willing to work to curate the donated content in such a manner. Jclemens (talk) 03:55, 23 August 2016 (UTC)
I personally think deleting an article is a lot harder than to just trim away all the original research, plot info, primary sources, etc. However, for a non-notable topic, nothing remains left, as there are no realiable secondary sources to use. I've found that new users hate it a lot more when you just delete all their plot description than if you go through a deletion discussion. ~Mable (chat) 10:36, 23 August 2016 (UTC)

List of -genre- games

When I saw WP:CSC being brought up, my first thought was that we were going to talk about articles like List of adventure games and the like. I'm worried that we have a lot of lists of games by genre that simply aren't encyclopedically useful. The first paragraph of prose in WP:CSC makes a comparison to a hypothetical "List of Norwegian musicians", and that's what genre lists tend to feel like for. The recent list of metroidvania games is a god example. This is also an issue I'd like to tackle. ~Mable (chat) 07:34, 19 August 2016 (UTC)

That article reminds me of list of horror games. I'd really like to see that one go away forever. The problem with these lists is that they are far too broad and poorly sourced. Categories serve this function just fine. The horror list is based off theme rather than genre too, so you have games from Castlevania to CoD Zombies to Resident Evil to The Walking Dead. Although these games may share thematic elements of horror, they are completely different when it comes to genre and gameplay style. A list of survival horror games would be much more concise, useful, and notable, but currently does not exist. I would absolutely help with creating a survival horror list if others thought it was a good idea.TarkusAB 14:01, 19 August 2016 (UTC)
@Maplestrip and TarkusAB: How do categories serve just fine if I want to compare publishing dates? Creators? And etc. --Izno (talk) 15:30, 19 August 2016 (UTC)
Part of the problem with "List of -broad genre- games" is that it is easy for the tables to become far too long if there is no clear metric for inclusion (see the discussion above about List of Metroidvania games); it's only worse for a broad genre like "adventure", "action" or "rpg". Add the plethra of indie games coming out, and unless you require sources, that's just kudzu.
I think that lists of exemplary games in a genre is important to include but at that point it becomes very much an issue with how one interprets or takes sources and to avoid favoritism. I think it can be done if all editors involved have good agreement on when a title should quality, but unfortunately WP is not well-geared towards this type of editing approach. --MASEM (t) 16:20, 19 August 2016 (UTC)
Yeah, and semi-related to that note, this issue is kind of "bigger" than WP:VG too. I mean, for example, I recently stumbled across List of albums, which shows many lists of albums by broad genre. List of songs is even crazier. For whatever reason, people just literally obsess over genre and subjective categorization. It's an omni-present issue over at WP:ALBUMS and the other music projects too, not just here. Sergecross73 msg me 16:58, 19 August 2016 (UTC)
I'm pretty sure "obsessing over genres and categorizations" is a problem with human nature, so in that sense of course it is bigger than WPVG. ☺ · Salvidrim! · ✉ 14:05, 24 August 2016 (UTC)
Very true - I sometimes forget that since WP is the only place I try to actually mediate and control it. When someone in real life calls Tool (band) "neo post-progressive psychedelic viking grunge metal", I just roll my eyes, because they're free to their (crazy) interpretation and opinion. Here, I actually bother to argue it, since it usually flies in the face of WP:V, WP:FRINGE, etc etc. Sergecross73 msg me 14:26, 24 August 2016 (UTC)

Opinions sought "the greatest" vs "one of the greatest"

Please see discussion at Talk:The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time#Changed to "considered by many to be greatest ever". -- ferret (talk) 12:33, 24 August 2016 (UTC)

Interest in a WP:VG Facebook page?

Yesterday I was checking to see if there were any decent Dutch-language video game discussion groups on Facebook, but there isn't one. For kicks I typed in WP:VG, and found a Facebook page, dedicated to WP:VG. But it's not about the English-language Wikipedia WP:VG, the page is dedicated to our Vietnamese equivalent. It got me thinking, is there any interest in a WP:VG Facebook group? A little while ago there was a discussion where we exhanged some usernames. A dedicated WP:VG Facebook group would allow for more general bantering about video games, but would also make it easier to share and post new sources (especially with game conferences and the like). What do you think? soetermans. ↑↑↓↓←→←→ B A TALK 06:03, 17 August 2016 (UTC)

Facebook certainly seems like a better place for discussion than Steam or PSN; I suspect a fair amount of us use Facebook more, anyway. I think starting a Facebook Group could be beneficial too, for the reasons you stated. I'd definitely join. – Rhain ☔ 09:07, 17 August 2016 (UTC)
I've joined! Maybe another incentive to join: we could possibly exhange Steam keys (or Team Fortress 2 hats, if that's your thing) and video game literature. soetermans. ↑↑↓↓←→←→ B A TALK 18:09, 17 August 2016 (UTC)
Sounds fun, and I think sharing sources is a good idea. I submitted a request to join. :) —zziccardi (talk) 16:47, 18 August 2016 (UTC)
Hi everyone, I just bought the Humble Capcom PlayStation Bundle, mostly for the Resident Evil PS4 games. I already own a bunch of them so I'll have to give some of it away. If you'd like a code for say, Ōkami HD for PlayStation 3 or a coupon for 45% of Street Fighter V for PlayStation 4, you better join the Facebook group before someone else receives them. (note: this works on North and South American PSN accounts, not European/Asian/Australian etc). soetermans. ↑↑↓↓←→←→ B A TALK 16:26, 24 August 2016 (UTC)

Infobox video game series Wikidata

Discussion started at Template talk:Infobox video game series#Wikidata concerning implementing Wikidata for this infobox, please feel free to weigh in. -- ferret (talk) 12:37, 25 August 2016 (UTC)

Gamescom 2016

Hey, is anyone going to Gamescom 2016? If not, does anyone have any image requests I can try to fulfil? Sam Walton (talk) 18:59, 17 August 2016 (UTC)

It'd be great to have a shot of players at the Halo Wars 2 booth if you're around there. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs(talk) 19:11, 17 August 2016 (UTC)
And the Half-Life: 3 poster... :) --MASEM (t) 22:20, 17 August 2016 (UTC)

Metal Gear Survive maybe? I also like to see pictures of developers. Those can be used on several articles: if they have one, on the article about the developer, the studio they work at and on the games they've created. soetermans. ↑↑↓↓←→←→ B A TALK 06:09, 18 August 2016 (UTC)
It would be pretty cool if someone could take a shot of that "Half-Life: 3" banner if it's still there. It's gotten quite some attention from RSes (Polygon, PC Gamer, etc), and it's only a matter of time until the whole "Half-Life 3" can't be contained anymore in its main series article :p ~Mable (chat) 09:48, 19 August 2016 (UTC)
@David Fuchs: I wasn't interested enough to queue up to play Halo Wars 2, but I got a quick picture of the queue and booth exterior. @Maplestrip: Here's a picture of the HL3 poster. @Soetermans: I didn't see anything public for Metal Gear Survive, and didn't see any developers other than for some indie games that we didn't have articles on. Samwalton9 (talk) 12:26, 22 August 2016 (UTC)
Awesome! Thanks, Samwalton~ I may add that image to the current Half-Life series article at some point, though it doesn't seem to mention the Half-Life 3 joke/meme/conspiracy at all yet, so I'll have to do some more research first :p Thanks again! ~Mable (chat) 12:53, 22 August 2016 (UTC)
Thanks a lot mate, that was the kind of image I was looking for. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs(talk) 15:24, 22 August 2016 (UTC)
It looks like a whole chunk of these were just deleted off commons for containing logos. While I will agree that some did display logos past de minimus use, I'm not sure if that was true for all of them. --MASEM (t) 00:59, 26 August 2016 (UTC)
I hate how hard it is to find out about deletion discussions happening on Commons... Looks like I'm already too late to contest any of them. ~Mable (chat) 09:24, 26 August 2016 (UTC)

GA Reassessment of Space Marshals

Space Marshals, an article that you or your project may be interested in, has been nominated for an individual 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. Anarchyte (work | talk) 07:05, 26 August 2016 (UTC)

The first link accidentally went to the good article candidate page here is a link to tne reassessment page Wikipedia:Good article reassessment/Space Marshals/1.--67.68.161.51 (talk) 23:42, 26 August 2016 (UTC)

Overwatch and porn merger discussion

Talk:Overwatch (video game)#Merger discussion has been open since June, looking for outside/third party opinions to either join the discussion or make a review and close it. -- ferret (talk) 18:18, 27 August 2016 (UTC)

Rush deletion discussion

Rush (video gaming) has been nominated for deletion at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Rush (video gaming), if anyone involved with this WikiProject might be interested in weighing in. —Lowellian (reply) 04:13, 28 August 2016 (UTC)

Category questions

Hi everyone,

For the past week I've not been as active as usual, as it is boiling hot here right now. I'll return soon enough though. In the meantime, I did run into Category:Organized crime video games. Does that category make sense at all? "Organized crime video game" is not a video game genre of course, but even narratively speaking, what makes it "organized crime"? For instance, it lists Max Payne, who takes on the Russian mob in New York; Mafia, in which the player character is a member of a mafia crime family; Miami Hotline, a top-down action game with a plot open to interpretation about killing Russian gangsters in Miami; L.A. Noire, a third-person game, in which the player has to solve cases through detective work.

And what about Category:Art Deco games, "games containing designs in the Art Deco style". I'm not sure if that is a necessary category to begin with, but also highly WP:OR-ish. Sure, BioShock features Art Deco, but does Impossible Creatures? soetermans. ↑↑↓↓←→←→ B A TALK 10:32, 26 August 2016 (UTC)

"Art Deco" games: definitely not a defining trait. And for the other, games about organized crime or featuring organized crime? I share your reservations but open to other opinions czar 14:36, 26 August 2016 (UTC)
"Games featuring organized crime" is a valid category from a standpoint of classifying the narrative aspect of the work, and so games like Mafia, Hotline Miami, Monaco, Saints Row, and GTA would readily fit, while games like Sam & Max (which only touch on the idea) or BioShock (where background of the story is based on organized crime but it has little direct impact on the actual gameplay or present narrative) should not be included as it would otherwise dilute the category. --MASEM (t) 14:44, 26 August 2016 (UTC)
I've CfD'ed Art Deco games. Who is familiar with moving categories quickly and efficiently, so it can be moved to the name Czar suggested? soetermans. ↑↑↓↓←→←→ B A TALK 17:32, 28 August 2016 (UTC)

HotArticlesBot

This idea has been previously discussed, but nothing came of it. What's everyone's stance on adding every single mainspace article into a single category and then listing it on User:HotArticlesBot/Subscriptions? An example of the way this works is at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Feminism#Hot_articles. Anarchyte (work | talk) 11:44, 22 August 2016 (UTC)

I think this idea sounds really cool, and would love to get better insight in the project's most active articles in real-time. How much work would it be to go through with this idea? Categorizing all VG articles using a bot should be possible, I hope, but it would be a pretty large project. ~Mable (chat) 11:57, 22 August 2016 (UTC)
I was about to say, if this proposal goes ahead then I'll get JaguarBot to sort out all of the categories. JAGUAR  12:02, 22 August 2016 (UTC)
There's no need for a bot; we just modify {{WikiProject Video games}} to add articles to a single super-category as well as the class/importance ones. Most project do that anyway.
Do note that you'll probably have to hassle the HotBot owner, though- WPSE has an outstanding request from years ago that they never got around to (though it looks like other projects have had requests fulfilled since). --PresN 12:06, 22 August 2016 (UTC)
@PresN: Why would we need to hassle Kaldari? Looking at the history, it seems people are just adding the WikiProjects as they wish. Anarchyte (work | talk) 07:22, 23 August 2016 (UTC)
Unfortunately, WikiProject Video games has too many articles (73,000+). The query to generate the HotArticles list is a bit expensive, so it's currently limited to categories with 50,000 or less articles. Kaldari (talk) 14:51, 23 August 2016 (UTC)
Actually, over 28,000 of those are images, and another 5000 are categories, so if we restrict the total-articles category to just articles themselves we'd be fine. --PresN 14:56, 23 August 2016 (UTC)
@PresN and Kaldari: So, what's the process of adding the WP to the list? -- Anarchyte (work | talk) 06:52, 26 August 2016 (UTC)
@Czar: Are the categories meant to be there? Anarchyte (work | talk) 02:03, 27 August 2016 (UTC)
@Anarchyte, yes and no (Template talk:WPBannerMeta#Excluding categories and files from MAIN CAT) czar 15:51, 27 August 2016 (UTC)

New Category Retrogaming Comment

I created the category Retrogaming to further categorize video games that are no longer being produced (at least in their original version) and are played on vintage, obsolete and discontinued platforms. In my opinion this better categorizes video games for people interested in Retrogaming and Retrocomputing. There are whole conventions, websites, museums and fan forums dedicated to Retrogaming and Vintage Computing, which to me makes this an interesting category to add. There have been some comments on whether this is a relevant category so I wanted to post for other editors opinions, if the consensus is that it is an irrelevant category then I will nominate it for deletion. MBlairMartin (talk) 16:57, 30 August 2016 (UTC)

There is a lot of disagreement as to the cut-off point fire when something is no longer considered "retro". For example, just a couple of years ago, readers of Retrogaming sent angry messages to the magazine for covering Shadow of the Collosus, a relatively new game. What do we concider retro games for this category? Furthermore, I'm not sure how useful it is to have this broad category when we have more specific categories by year and platform. To be frank, this category seems ill-conceived to me. ~Mable (chat) 17:18, 30 August 2016 (UTC)
I don't think the category name or definition are particularly clear. The name "Retrogaming" sounds vague and broad. The description "Video games that are no longer produced and are played on vintage, obsolete and discontinued platforms." is quite ambiguous and open to interpretation. Also bare in mind that articles should be categorised by defining characteristics, that is, characteristics that reliable sources commonly and consistently define a subject of having (WP:CATDEF). I wouldn't really say that "retrogaming" is a defining characteristic of a game, anything that gets old just automatically becomes "retro" right? Like Mable says, it's rather difficult to pinpoint the cutoff point for being considered "retro" or not. The Category:Video games by year and Category:Video games by platform seem to facilitate similar purpose of this category anyway as one can find articles on games of a certain time period/discontinued platform from them. I would probably nominate for deletion like the Category:Vintage Video Games you created. I think video games articles are already overcategorised with lots of redundant categories. --The1337gamer (talk) 17:31, 30 August 2016 (UTC)
Yeah, I'm no category expert, but these are the sort of issues I'd worry about occurring as well. "Retrogames" is one of those terms kind of like "classic rock", where it can be hard to identify where exactly something goes from "modern" to "old"... Sergecross73 msg me 17:37, 30 August 2016 (UTC)
I think its less the fact that its old, there are lots of old games out there being offered on new platforms such as Pacman. It has more to do with the less well known games that were not remade and can only be played on their original platforms. MBlairMartin (talk) 17:45, 30 August 2016 (UTC)
Right, but that's why the category name is unclear and confusing. Because I would say that Pacman is very much a "retro" game even though it can be played on modern platforms. Really, what you want the category to be called is Category:Video games that can only be played on their original discontinued platforms, which doesn't meet WP:CATDEF in my opinion. --The1337gamer (talk) 17:52, 30 August 2016 (UTC)
The category in question could actually be filled with a different kind of item. As MBlairMartin mentioned, "conventions, websites, museums and fan forums dedicated to Retrogaming," so in theory, we could fill the category with anything that is explicitly about "retro gaming" or "vintage gaming". I have no idea how useful that is or if that function is already covered by another category. Another option is to create the following kind of category: Category:1980s video games. I never liked those much myself, though. ~Mable (chat) 18:25, 30 August 2016 (UTC)
I've nominated it for deletion. It is highly subject to WP:OR and arbitrary. soetermans. ↑↑↓↓←→←→ B A TALK 19:25, 30 August 2016 (UTC)
I understand the issues you have brought up except your reason for deletion. How is it highly subject to WP:OR? These are not my opinions or research just a simple yes or no answer to whether the games and platforms have been discontinued. MBlairMartin (talk) 19:59, 30 August 2016 (UTC)
Then, if anything, the category should have been called Category:Discontinued video games instead. This can still be difficult to define, however, with PC games being republished through services like Good Old Games, and stuff getting high-definition remasters, Virtual Console releases, etc. What's the purpose even? ~Mable (chat) 20:13, 30 August 2016 (UTC)
Define "discontinued". Any game before the rise of digital distribution did not see developer's support after release. Are you actually considering categorizing every single game that has been released on a platform before the current generation? Every NES, Megadrive, PlayStation 2, Xbox game ever made? soetermans. ↑↑↓↓←→←→ B A TALK 21:05, 30 August 2016 (UTC)

Fine, I surrender. Delete the Category. MBlairMartin (talk) 21:10, 30 August 2016 (UTC)

Razer Naga

Hi, I'm in need of a few photos of the Razer Naga Hex v2 for the Razer Naga article. Would anyone here happen to own one? Anarchyte (work | talk) 11:44, 27 August 2016 (UTC)

I found a few YouTube videos with the licensing "Creative Commons Attribution license (reuse allowed)". Would it be able to take screenshots of these videos to upload, and if so, how would it be done?
Razer Naga Hex (Green): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPLiqBm6H9k at 1:22
Razer Naga Hex v2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zuh_9Y0IGYY at 3:04
Razer Naga Epic Chroma: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ENh39ZkkjJM at 1:51
Anarchyte (work | talk) 08:53, 28 August 2016 (UTC)
My Russian isn't up to snuff so first you'd want to make sure the content in the video belongs to the channel and isn't just a repost from somewhere else. Otherwise it wouldn't be the uploader's to relicense. (@Hellknowz and Thibbs, what say you?) Then you'd use {{From YouTube}} and {{YouTube CC-BY}} (see the documentation for how to add the timecode, etc. and of course {{license review}} in case the file is taken down in the future. czar 21:09, 28 August 2016 (UTC)
This is a review from an online shop. Content/footage seems theirs. 1:22 he's talking about the surface texture. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 23:52, 28 August 2016 (UTC)
I've uploaded the screenshots from the first video, are the other two videos fine as well? Here are the files if you wish to license review them: [4] [5] [6]. Anarchyte (work | talk) 09:04, 29 August 2016 (UTC)
The 2nd and 3rd videos aren't in Russian, so I didn't check. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 16:31, 29 August 2016 (UTC)
2nd video is in Dutch and 3rd is in Italian for what it's worth. I'm afraid I'm not fluent in either... -Thibbs (talk) 04:23, 1 September 2016 (UTC)
The Dutch video seems to be completely fine. Original content by an organization called "Gamernet". I see no reason to believe that the channel isn't the owner of the unboxing video. Cringeworthy to watch, though ^_^; ~Mable (chat) 07:35, 1 September 2016 (UTC)
They both seem to be original content, so I'm going to upload the files. There are no red flags for either of the videos, both have a reasonable amount of subscribers and the first one says the YouTube channel's name at the start. Anarchyte (work | talk) 11:10, 30 August 2016 (UTC)

@Czar: Would you happen to know why the infobox glitches out when I set the image parameter to the following?

|image= {{nowrap|<!--
    -->[[File:Collection of Razer Nagas.jpg|300px]]<br /><!--
    -->[[File:E3 2011 - the Razer Naga Molten and Epic mice (5822672654).jpg|108px]]<!--
    -->[[File:Razer Naga Classic.jpg|192px]]<br /><!--
    -->[[File:Razer Naga Hex v2 side on.jpg|300px]]}}

If I set it as what it is currently: 

|image= {{nowrap|<!--
    -->[[File:Collection of Razer Nagas.jpg|297px]]<br /><!--
    -->[[File:E3 2011 - the Razer Naga Molten and Epic mice (5822672654).jpg|107px]]<!--
    -->[[File:Razer Naga Classic.jpg|190px]]<br /><!--
    -->[[File:Razer Naga Hex v2 side on.jpg|297px]]}}

It works completely fine. In case it's only on my side, here's what I saw: [7] -- Anarchyte (work | talk) 11:52, 30 August 2016 (UTC)

Looks like you worked it out czar 13:40, 30 August 2016 (UTC)

On gaming website italics or not...

I noticed while editing an article with the vg reviews template that we have a mashup of styles that doesn't feel consistent. Sites like Polygon are italized in there, while IGN and GameSpot are not. I've seen a few other cases where this has happened in prose. Since all these are websites I feel they should be similar, but at the same time, websites like MetaCritic or Twitch.tv don't feel right to be italized.

I would like propose that we standardize this in the project (grandfathering existing articles, so we're talking only about making sure these are set on GA and FAs going forward) , following this piece of advice from MOS:TMMOS:TITLE "Website titles may or may not be italicized depending on the type of site and what kind of content it features. Online magazines, newspapers, and news sites with original content should generally be italicized (Salon.com or The Huffington Post)."

For us, this means video game sites that are aimed to provide original content (IGN, GameSpot, Polygon, Eurogamer, Gamasutra, etc.) should all be italicized. If the site's primary purpose is for any other reason but just happens to include original content in the form of developer blogs, etc., they should remain non-italicized - MetaCritic, Twitch, YouTube, etc. This should be consistent in prose and in the reviews template. This also means we need to be careful in cite templates: "website=" or "work=" (they are aliases) will come up as italic while "publisher=" will not. This probably means a MetaCritic reference needs to include the italics marking so that in the final markup when used as "website=", so that that effect is cancelled out. --MASEM (t) 00:51, 17 August 2016 (UTC)

  • On the topic of the citation formatting, I was under the impression we only ever use website= for the source of the citation; publisher= is for something like "website=GameSpot|publisher=CBS Interactive", i.e. the owner of said website. ☺ · Salvidrim! · ✉ 01:10, 17 August 2016 (UTC)
  • These fields have metadata equivalents too, so it's not a good idea to force/unforce italics as a hack. The standard book citation includes the book's publisher in non-italics alongside the italicized title—that's the precedent for using that field. Metacritic, Twitch, etc. should use the publisher field. Also it's not a good idea to use both website and publisher fields unless the website on its own is somehow ambiguous (and since the website is wikilinked to an article most of the time, it rarely is ambiguous). I was one of the bigger proponents of the dual field format (doesn't really matter as long as you're consistent), but it really just adds unneeded clutter to the citation section if it doesn't give information the reader will need. Also we typically get the publisher wrong since they change so often with companies buying websites... But the proposal? Yes, a thousand times yes czar 02:52, 17 August 2016 (UTC)
  • I approve. I've been italicizing (if that's a word) website nans forever now and it's always annoying when someone else doesn't, and I agree that Metacritic, etc, shouldn't be in italics. ~Mable (chat) 07:44, 17 August 2016 (UTC)
  • Why does WP:MOSTM have any comment on whether to italicize a work's name? --Izno (talk) 11:25, 17 August 2016 (UTC)
  • Also agreed. This practice is in compliance with the MOS, as well. MOS:ITALIC (but strangely not MOS:ITAL) notes Medium of publication or presentation is not a factor in italicizing the titles of magazines, journals, newspapers, and other publications. —zziccardi (talk) 16:54, 18 August 2016 (UTC)
  • So unless there are any other concerns, I'll add this to VG/GL, and update the reviews template to use the proper italics in a day or so. The "work=" vs "publisher=" aspect for the cite web templates is something else beyond our control and needs to be something discussed at the cite template talkpages to resolve that issue if we don't want to use "publisher=" for works like Metacritic. --MASEM (t) 14:41, 22 August 2016 (UTC)
    • I should note that, after having been part of this discussion, I've changed my habit of writing "publisher=SiteName" to "work=SiteName". Regardless, I've always used italics for such websites, so no concerns here. ~Mable (chat) 15:40, 22 August 2016 (UTC)
  • I don't want to put a bold "oppose" here, so I'll not... Please review Help:CS1#Work and publisher. While the help page isn't the MOS, the choice of the citation templates to italicize always the work's name should be respected (if users here are going to use them), rather than worked around (as suggested above by Masem at If the site's primary purpose is for any other reason but just happens to include original content in the form of developer blogs, etc., they should remain non-italicized - MetaCritic, Twitch, YouTube, etc.), since the MOS specifically doesn't say what to do when the content is not "original" (only if it is original). Basically, the MOS leaves it open on what to do. The citation templates in this case obviously go beyond that, and that is permissible by the MOS. --Izno (talk) 17:30, 22 August 2016 (UTC)
    • What I think is at odds between the MOS and the citation templates is how to work with a website that otherwise does not offer normally original content. (As noted, MOS positively says when to use italics which the CS1 work= parameter follows, but not when not to use them for websites). And we should have consistency between prose and references when it comes to the style of a website's name. I think that if that if we recognize that sites like Metacritic are generally not italicized, they should be treated as publishers within the cite templates, and that respects the styling. (I spot-checked a few film articles of FA quality and Rotten Tomatoes is neither italicized nor use the work= citation). Also in reviewing this I do note that the CS1 templates also have a "via=" parameter for legit-published videos or other media that sites like Youtube only act as the hosting provider, and that field is not italicized either. So we can still make this work as long as we agree that Metacritic and similar aggregators should be treated as unitalic and as publishers for citations, so that that should all work. --MASEM (t) 17:51, 22 August 2016 (UTC)

      We agree on what the MOS says, but I'm puzzled why you think that Metacritic is undeserving of italics. So let's hash that out. "It feels wrong" to italicize such isn't sufficient to me to suggest that they should/should not be italicized; similarly, films and video games which currently do not italicize them don't make me feel squishy inside. So then, are they publishers? I'm not sure. I think we can also look at them as the equivalent of anthologies or collections of works, which would put them squarely in the italicized vein.

      Regarding "via", this is a freeform parameter--you can put whatever you want in this, so looking at that parameter isn't relevant to this discussion. "Via" is there to take care of the "republisher" scenario, as with e.g. JSTOR.

      Maybe the above needs a wider RFC, or it needs to be taken up at WP:MOS to see if they have opinions, since I am not convinced they are solely publishers. --Izno (talk) 23:19, 23 August 2016 (UTC)

      To me, the difference is between "website as a creative outlet" vs "website as a service", and what Metacritic, Rotten Tomatoes, and others are are services. It's like there's IGN the website and IGN the network. --MASEM (t) 23:57, 23 August 2016 (UTC)
      A "service" is still a creative work. --Izno (talk) 00:37, 24 August 2016 (UTC)
      Not really, as implied they are only doing a service, not creating original content. The thing is is that through WP, we don't italicize these types of sites despite the lack of any specific MOS advice positively suggesting this. (MOS:TITLE only suggest when to italicize, not when not). And it's also worthwhile to consider that in the CS1 templates, for what they are used for as inline cites, 95% of the time (if not more) when you have a work= field, it will be a site that MOS:TITLE recommends should be italicized. It is the sites like Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes that CS1 and MOS:TITLE and current practice on WP conflict on when it comes to references. --MASEM (t) 05:32, 24 August 2016 (UTC)
      Here's another data point [8] A discussion/RFC from last year about the work=/website= parameter and non-italicized sites (and italicization being forced on them by these parameters). While there was no conclusion about this about changes to CS1 templates, one this is clear is that editors readily accept that sites like Rotten Tomatoes or Box Office Mojo should not be italicized in prose. This should apply to our similar "service" websites like Metacritic. --MASEM (t) 05:41, 24 August 2016 (UTC)
      Just want to reiterate here that there is no style guide that would italicize Metacritic, especially as a "creative" work. And re: services—Xbox Live as a service is not italicized but a news website called Xbox Live (e.g., an official blog) would be. A radio station WXYZ is not a creative work but its WXYZ Morning Show is. Tumblr and Medium and other blog services are not italicized but an individual blog is a creative work. It's grayer when Metacritic publishes an original post, but that doesn't make the website itself a "creative" outlet. It's like a music radio station publishing a page on an event—is it being used as a creative outlet or is it a single informational post from a website? That's how I'd approach it. And if you doubt the definition of creative, use other style guides as a precedence, as we did with our own MoS. czar 04:07, 27 August 2016 (UTC)
      Which style guides did you check before making that rather authoritative statement? :) There seems to be come fairly clear dispute on the question in the RFC that Masem links (thanks for helping me support my point! :) about e.g. Rotten Tomatoes. SMC (who I would say is knowledgeable on such things as style) makes his opinion rather clear in the first couple of responses that RT is a work and should hence be italicized... Lapidite a bit further down agrees with him and even extends his comments to Metacritic. So really, I think for these sites, there's no consensus, and this place isn't the location to attempt to get that consensus. --Izno (talk) 14:47, 27 August 2016 (UTC)
      There are published style guides that do recommend italicizing all websites, irregardless of their nature, but WP's MOS does not necessarily follow these guides. --MASEM (t) 15:11, 27 August 2016 (UTC)
      The only major style guide that appears to do anything like this is MLA because Metacritic would be a "container" (which means that all kinds of things are italicized that aren't usually so). But to the point, (1) the other major style guides distinguish between blogs and regular websites, and (2) our MoS is just based on this precedent—we have no language that advises for MLA-style italicization of all "containers". The working consensus, based on the current usage, is to not italicize "Metacritic"—I'm not sure how you could call that in contention as I've rarely, if ever, seen Metacritic or Rotten Tomatoes italicized. If you wish to clarify that further or change that practice, I suggest starting an RfC in a centralized forum, otherwise I'd consider the consensus clear enough as existing practice. The point of this thread, as I saw it, was in consistently italicizing IGN/GameSpot when they are used as blogs/creative outlets and not "networks". I don't see any contentions on that front. czar 15:46, 27 August 2016 (UTC)
      Masem: I think you're pretty clearly playing with words there. As I noted above, there is no (obvious) consensus whether to call Metacritic a work or a publisher. That said, I think it's rather telling when there's a "© 2016 CBS Interactive Inc" at the bottom of the front page of the website in question--we could either suggest that CBS is the author (fairly ludicrous, but why not?) or we can suggest that CBS is the publisher. I suspect I will find a similar statement at the bottom of RT and others. And indeed I do, at RT, find the statement "© 2016 Fandango and Flixster". Gamerankings the same as Metacritic (oh wow: © 2016 CBS Interactive Inc--that should be most damning of any reason to have both Metacritic and GR for most games :D). --Izno (talk) 14:58, 27 August 2016 (UTC)
      I would consider Metacritic a work in terms of where to put the name in the CS1 template (as for wikidata purposes) because exactly as pointed out its published by CBS, but it's not a creative work , and in most running prose on WP, Metacritic or Rotten Tomatoes or other sites are generally not italicized. It's just that the work= field in the CS1 template is italicized by default, because for about 99% of the use, we are going to be filling work= in with a creative work that there is no question should be italized; the amount of times that we use a non-creative work like MC or RT is very few as to make carving the exception unnecessary. But the RFC did show that its unclear how this should be hanlded in CS1 templates, hence why I don't think we should be considering what CS1 done as the rule for all of WP. As I noted before, we can still use the CS1 templates and put Metacritic in as a a work=, it would just need to be italicized in the entry so that the HTML cancels out in presentation (eg "work=Metacritic"). --MASEM (t) 15:08, 27 August 2016 (UTC)
      The problem is that the CS1 templates do not strip the italicization before adding it to the COINS metadata. {{cite web |author=Author |work=''Work'' |url=http://www.example.com/ |title=Example}} produces HTML of (snipping the irrelevant bits): <span title="ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&amp;rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fen.wikipedia.org%3ASpecial%3AExpandTemplates&amp;rft.atitle=Example&amp;rft.au=Author&amp;rft.genre=unknown&amp;rft_id=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.example.com%2F&amp;rft.jtitle=%27%27Work%27%27&amp;rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Ajournal" class="Z3988"><span style="display:none;">&#160;</span> wherein rft.jtitle=%27%27Work%27%27& is the metadata. Without italics, this would be Work&</nowiki>, which is correct. --Izno (talk) 15:22, 27 August 2016 (UTC)
      Yeah WT:CS1 would have a conniption if we advocated for a hack to get around automatic styling. Existing practice has been to use "work" for italics and "publisher" for non-italics. The main trade-off is that you can't include a higher-up owner/publisher if you put a website's title in that field, but I'd advocate against that sort of redundant practice anyway. I don't see the issue. czar 15:46, 27 August 2016 (UTC)
      To me, the simple fix is to have CS1 have a "workni=y" parameter to simply disable italics on the work= name if that should be the case, so that the work= field still properly feeds to wikidata/html, and that existing use for 99% of the cites where the work is creative should be italics would not break (as default should be "=n"). Everything is otherwise respected and gives the necessarily flexibility on website names that MOS:TITLE doesn't prescribe. --MASEM (t) 16:20, 27 August 2016 (UTC)

This really isn't difficult once you sort it out

Short version: If you're addressing a website as a publication, it's italicized. If you're addressing it as an organizational entity, a service, a redistributor, or an intellectual property, it's not italicized.

Examples of the major distinctions in running prose:

"According to a GameSpot review" (publication), "before working for Sony's games department, she was a website developer at GameSpot" (intellectual property or corporate entity, as you like), "CBS Interactive purchased the GameSpot company and brand" (both entity and property), "first mentioned in GameSpot user forums" (service), "As Garcia wrote in a piece called "Frag Antics" in GameSpotting, his official blog at GameSpot" (the blog is the |work= title, GameSpot.com is the |via= vehicle (service) for it, and CBS Interactive is the |publisher=; for pre-CBS material, GameSpot Inc. might be the publisher, but we would omit that as redundant with the GameSpot or GameSpot.com |work=, in a citation template). "She is a writer for Salon" (publication), "the webmaster of Salon.com" (property/service), "on the board of directors of Salon Media Group" (legal entity) – you can use name distinctions, like domain name format or formal corporate designations, to make the distinctions clearer.

Distinctions checklist: We've been over this before with regard to other topics.

  • If you're referring to published material (a review, editorial, database, press release, documentation, whatever) at a site, you are addressing that site as a publication. This goes in italics, even if you think it shouldn't. (In a {{Cite web}} template, the site is the |work= a.k.a. |website= parameter, and the specific piece being cited is |title=.)
    • If the site is just a distributor, re-distributor, archiver, mirror, site hosting multiple publications, site inlining something from someone else's RSS feed or YouTube "studio", or is some other form of "pass-through" host, then it is not a publication, and not italicized. In the template, it is a |via=. We use this parameter for WP:SAYWHEREYOUGOTIT reasons, and this is important because intervening re-distributors often modify things from the original.
    • Wikis and other "databanks" (to use a funny 1960s sci-fi word), even if user-edited, are publications, thus are italicized. (If they're pages on a larger website at the same hostname, use |via= for the main website).
    • The case above that I see has raised some confusion: A developer blog is itself the publication and italicized. (it's |work= if put into a cite template), while the specific post's title is the title of the minor work being mentioned (in quotation marks, or |title= in a template), and the company website through which it is being published is just the "vehicle" for publication, and not italicized (e.g., |via=GameSpot.com in a template; do not use |website= for this, which would conflict with |work=).
  • If you're mentioning a site as a service (in a role other than some kind of published work), you are not addressing it as a publication, and it doesn't go in italics.
    • User forums, social networking sites, mailing lists, etc., are not publications, they are services, thus not italicized. (You and me yakking about something online may be textual, but it's not a published work.) In the uncommon event that a post on such a service is validly being used as a primary source, treat the post as |title= and the forum, list, or other website-hosted service as |at=, and the website as |via=, with no |work=. If the service has its own hostname, e.g. Forum.GameSpot.com then put that in |via= not |at=, and don't add |via=GameSpot.com, since it's redundant and incorrect.
    • If you cite documentation of a service, you're citing a publication, however, so the title of the piece goes in |title=, and the site goes in |work= a.k.a. |website=.
  • If you're mentioning the company/organization itself as a corporate, nonprofit, or other collective entity (e.g. an employer, a publisher, an open development project), you are not addressing it as a publication, and it doesn't go in italics. In a cite template, this is the |publisher=.
    • If you cite published materials on the company website (e.g. their "About Us" page), you're citing a publication; the title of the piece goes in |title=, and the site goes in |work= a.k.a. |website=.
  • If you're mentioning the name as a piece of intellectual property, e.g. a division or trademark name that was sold or acquired, you are not addressing it as a publication, and it doesn't go in italics.
  • If you're citing product packaging, it is technically a publication, after a fashion, but this comes up so infrequently we don't really address it much. The cleanest way to do this that I know of is: {{Cite book|title=Blood Monsters of Goreland |edition=Game of the Year |at=Back of product packaging |id={{UPC|732302715039}} |date=2017 |publisher=CrazyAss Games}}. Despite its name, {{Cite book}} can be used for anything where you want a title that shouldn't be in quotation marks as if it's a minor work or sub-work; it treats |title= as |work= if |work= is not specified, and this gets around the other templates' error if |title= is omitted. If we want, we can create a "Cite packaging" redirect to it, or better yet, fork it and remove all the parameters that will never be needed for product packaging. Vintage software/game system requirements are one of the few contexts on WP in which we do sometimes need to directly cite packaging as a published work.

Citation parameters:

  • The website name always goes in the |work= (a.k.a. |website=) parameter ...
    • unless it's a |via= for another publication that goes in |work=, as with a blog the site happens to host, an out-of-copyright book it is providing a copy of, a repo it is mirroring, etc.
    • Do not abuse the |publisher= parameter to attempt to game the template into not italicizing.
  • The |publisher= parameter is for the publishing company/organization only. (The |author= parameter can be used for a sub-organizational collective author, e.g. a committee.)
    • It is not even used if the publisher's name mostly (e.g., besides "Inc.", etc.) or entirely coincides with that of the work/website/via title.
  • The |via= parameter is for "pass-throughs" hosting that needs to be named to help people find and identify the resource. It does not impose any formatting. It is also not to be abused as a way to force things that should be (in our citation scheme) italicized to not be.
  • The |at= parameter, in the context of |cite web=, is for identifying the addressable "place" in an online resource that isn't arranged with numbered pages as a skeumorphic book or magazine. It is handy for specs arranged in sections, e-newspapers divided into departments, etc. It does not impose any formatting, and is not a vehicle for anti-italics antics.

If you don't like the fact that |work= / |website= produces italicization, that's just too bad, and life will go on. Any attempts to abuse the citation parameters to force-format for specific individual stylistic preferences may and should be corrected on sight to the proper use of the parameters. This also goes for trying to trick a parameter by including italics around its value in source to get the double-italics at rendering time to turn into non-italics (this screws up both the COinS metadata and the WikiData). People are just going to have to live with the facts that WP is not their personal website to re-style as they see fit, that it has it's own style guide, and that citations are rigidly formatted, programmatic data, not free-form prose. Every citation style in the world is different in minor details, zero of them satisfy 100% of the people, and probably no one is 100% satisfied with every nit-pick in any of them. There are various "visual imperfections" in our cites (e.g. an untitled work has to be given as |title=[untitled] or | and will still be quotation-marked or italicized respectively. People just have get over it and not stress about it at WP, just like they don't have their heads explode when dealing with every other publication that has a house style that doesn't produce the exact output that person would prefer. We do not live in a magically perfect world that revolves around you. :-) If someone insists on taking a misguided WP:GREATWRONGS position against against ever being made to italicize a website titles, the way to not be a WP:JERK about it and get into trouble is to just not italicize them in prose and not use citation templates when citing them, without interfering with others, and with the understanding that others may change this formatting.
 — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  09:04, 28 August 2016 (UTC)

I can live with the ideas given above. It may seem inconsistent to readers at points, though, possibly resulting in more arguing, but it makes perfect sense in theory. ~Mable (chat) 09:57, 28 August 2016 (UTC)
@Maplestrip: I'll try to iron those out if you say where you think these issues are (may just be a wording issue, as this is a rapid brain dump, not a polished information page, yet). Keep in mind this is not an idealized "wouldn't it be nice" approach, it's a practical approach to working with a sharply limited system and making the best of it. If we trust the templates to just do what they do and to not get our personal underwear in a bunch about formatting nitpicks in the output, the disputes evaporate. Especially if we focus on the role of the website in the mention or citation in question, instead of fixating on false notions like "a website should never be in italics" or "all things online are 'services' in my opinion" or "for a website, the site and the publisher seem indivisible to me", etc., etc.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  12:10, 28 August 2016 (UTC)
I can imagine people getting confused about the difference between a website as a service/corporate entity and a website as a creative work/publication. This isn't a flaw in the suggested rules, but rather something that will probably result in people "correcting" things incorrectly. For example, an article on GameSpot would use italics when referring to its subject as a work and no italics when referring to the website as a service. That would be confusing to those who haven't read these guidelines. It's not really a big issue though, which is why I glossed over it in my post saying I liked your ideas. ~Mable (chat) 12:59, 28 August 2016 (UTC)
To be clear, I am talking about italics in prose here. These rules are perfectly clear for citations. ~Mable (chat) 13:00, 28 August 2016 (UTC)
It will always have complications just because the real world is complicating itself on such matters. Everthing is "as a service" these days, so the distinction between things are blurring. I wouldn't put the above as rules (other than the one-liner summary) in any guideline; it's probably an explanatory {{Information page}} essay.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  21:48, 1 September 2016 (UTC)
So many paragraphs and yet I didn't see exactly how to deal with the various and sundry review sites. :D Example text in prose (pulled straight out of Myst#Reception):

"The PC version of Myst holds an average score of 82.57% at GameRankings based on seven reviews,[33] although the subsequent remakes of the game and the console ports have generally received lower average scores." (italics quoted [or not]).

Is Gamerankings here being treated as a work or a service? Consequently, citation 33 reads like so: '"Myst - PC". GameRankings. Retrieved February 25, 2016.', where Gamerankings is also unitalicized (meaning that it is [ab]using the publisher parameter). --Izno (talk) 13:26, 28 August 2016 (UTC)
We're getting too hung up on what CS1 does or requires compared to MOS:TITLE where the issue starts from (CS1 should follow what MOS:TITLE gives states). MOS:TITLE does not fully prescribe for all websites how to italic names, only for those that are generally ones that produce creative content. Where it is absent, on websites that do not provide creative content, the practice across WP tends to be unitalicized versions, things like Metacritic, Rotten Tomatoes, IMDB, YouTube, Twitch.tv, and others (when talking about these as websites, not businesses, etc.), though again, this is not a practice defined in MOS:TITLE, just what I've seen people default too. Now, unless we modify MOS:TITLE to force italics when talking websites, its clear that there's is some editor freedom here, hence why CS1 should not be forcing the issue on this. As I note, all that is needed to make CS1 work with the openness of MOS:TITLE is a parameter that alters the default behavior and doesn't affect its normal use; there's still would need to be discussion between the difference between "creative work", "service" and "business" but the mechanism would be in play to handle them, which right now its not, CS1 is making us force a decision or otherwise use improper parameters (publisher over work) to force formatting. --MASEM (t) 14:37, 28 August 2016 (UTC)
Yeah, to the extent CS1 diverges from MOS:TITLE, that'll get ironed out. Part of the problem is the scatteredness of MoS's advice on titles, which I'm working on merging a bit at a time. As for the GameRankings "82.57%" citation, it's being cited as a source of published information (the 82.57% figure was created at/for and published on that site, and is not itself found in the third-party reviews they are referring to and aggregating), so it's italicized as a published work. This isn't any different from a journal publishing a literature review concluding that 92% of epidemiology studies of the zika virus conclude that it is a serious global public health threat, even if you like to think of online academic journals as "services". I.e., we need to avoid fixating on that word as "magically meaningful" when it's being abused rampantly as a content-free marketing buzzword. "Jimbob McDoogal was fired as the CTO of GameRankings" is reference to it as an entity. "An extended outage of the GameRankings.com website ..." is as a property (a server resource). "The game's slow pace was defended by its lead developer in user forums at GameRankings" is as a service (it's primary-source textual material, but self-published by the dev, using GameRankings as a "via", a vessel/conduit/carrier; similarly, Google is not the publisher and Gmail is not the work publishing an e-mail I send you, and Comcast is not the publisher and Xfinity is not the work of what I'm writing now on WP; they're both just services through which it flowed.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  21:48, 1 September 2016 (UTC)
There is a difference between a literature review , which still is a creative work even if it is only summarizing other works (there's a creative element in putting the information together), and what sites like Metacritic do which is a website that presents a number based on a database search and calculation, which has zero creativity. It's arguably not "published" in the traditional sense since that result can change over time and thus requires the accessdate= to be included to set the time (in fact, it's difficult to use the date= parameter in the first place). That's why in prose most treat sites like Rotten Tomatoes and the like as a service and not a creative outlet, and thus why not italicized in prose. And when it is not italicized in prose, it does not make sense to italicize the reference to the same, at least to me. I feel there ought to be consistency or allowance thereof to reflect this difference between prose and references. --MASEM (t) 22:26, 1 September 2016 (UTC)

  • In the uncommon event that a post on such a service is validly being used as a primary source, treat ... the forum, list, or other website-hosted service as |at=, and the website as |via=, with no |work=.

    Lost me with this. I haven't seen |at= ever used in this way, and I don't understand why the website wouldn't be the |work=/|website=. czar 04:14, 1 September 2016 (UTC)
@Stanton (SMcCandlish): Yeah, I didn't know what to make of that part either. Graham (talk) 19:46, 1 September 2016 (UTC)
I incidentally just addressed that immediately above in response to previous comment, but to address it again here: A forum is a service (a users-to-users communication feature) provided by the site; the content of the posts is self-publication via the site, it is not produced by or for the company providing the site. They are simply a carrier for it, like your mobile company is for your text messages to your friends. If a forum, list, etc., is a special official channel of the publisher (announcements mailing list, sticky-posts of forum rules), those are works of the publisher, of course; I was referring here to WP:UGC on such venues. It's much easier to not think of this stuff in terms of medium at all, only in terms of who is saying what on behalf of whom, and what role does the site play in relation to those parties and to what is being said? An aggregated review stat by GameSpot is their own figure, that they are publishing. A copy of a press release from a game company they post is a self-publication of the game company that GameRankings is a via for, and likewise my post as a random yahoo on their forum saying "this game rules!". If I'm a GameRankings official blogger and post the same statement as such, that's in a publication by GameRankings for whom I'm writing in a defined role. And so on. If one takes this approach, the medium becomes irrelevant (e.g. it can be the system requirements listed on game packaging, or whatever) and one will have no trouble deciding when something is a publication, publisher, author, via, etc.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  21:48, 1 September 2016 (UTC)

Assuming no change to CS1...

Working on the assumption that no change will be coming to CS1, then I think we can work with this, which would be:

  • Sites like IGN, Polygon, etc., where we are linking to creative content (articles, reviews, etc.) should be referred to in prose and via cite web work= parameter in italics, following from MOS:TITLE. They will appear the same in both prose and references.
  • Sites that we link to that don't offer creative content, primarily Metacritic, GameRankings, Rotten Tomatoes, MobyGames, etc., in prose should be referred to without italics as they serve as curated databases, but should still be using the work= parameter unchanged in CS1 templates and thus will show up in italics within the reference; there will be discontinuity between prose and references but this is an acceptable aspect given other past conflict/resolutions (re: date formats for one). (And as a rule of thumb, when we normally reference these sites, we nearly always have to rely on spelling out the access date to justify when we're taking numbers and facts from as they often lack any actual published date, in contrast to the creative content sites where there is universally a publication date and very little change of information once published.).
  • There are likely very few cases with our standard sources (those documented at WP:VG/S) that we need publisher= filed out, due to lack of conflict between similarly named works by different publishers.

This is what I'm getting from the above. --MASEM (t) 21:02, 29 August 2016 (UTC)

I'm ok with just copy-pasting SMC's post above into VGMOS and massaging it from there as needed. Axem Titanium (talk) 13:58, 30 August 2016 (UTC)

A new round of coursework

Saw this edit on my watchlist, which I presume identifies History of video games as a potential course assignment for this term. There may be other articles affected but I haven't seen any similar edits on my watchlist. Keep a lookout for edits, and don't WP:BITE any students in the process. --Izno (talk) 18:40, 1 September 2016 (UTC)

Oh dear. Speaking as the GA-creator of Early history of video games, the idea that a bunch of wiki-newbies without experience writing actual research summaries with citations think that a good idea for one of their course articles is what may be the most difficult video game-related article to write is... concerning. Though at least it will get some work going on it? --PresN 20:37, 1 September 2016 (UTC)
Yes, I agree that it would be a difficult article to write or extend for a single student in a single term (or even multiple students in a single term). If the notice gets posted again on that particular talk page we might go advise against it--presumably the course instructor has veto power over topic selection. --Izno (talk) 22:30, 1 September 2016 (UTC)
Looks like it's been removed. Not sure what that means. – Rhain ☔ 21:24, 1 September 2016 (UTC)
I don't know either, but it may be that the post was in error. Regardless, I would be on the lookout for educational projects on video games topics. These are opportunities to add more editors to the fold. --Izno (talk) 22:30, 1 September 2016 (UTC)

Fire Emblem collaboration: anyone interested?

Note: This conversation is also in place at WikiProject Video games/Nintendo due to the Fire Emblem series' connection to Nintendo.

Hello, anyone whose interested. I've been doing steady work improving the various Fire Emblem articles, with the intention of bringing them to GA status, and creating a Good Topic. I've done rewrites on the main series article and Radiant Dawn so they remain GA, brought Awakening, The Sacred Stones and Path of Radiance to GA status, am in the process of bringing Fates to GA status (if someone will take it up as it's being hanging around for I've forgotten how long...), created and brought to GA an article for New Mystery of the Emblem, recently done extensive work on expanding Gaiden, Mystery of the Emblem and Thracia 776, and am in the process of doing a rewrite of Shadow Dragon. All that's left now for major work is Binding Blade, Rekka no Ken, Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light and Genealogy of the Holy War. Here's my proposed future aim (image is, of course, just placeholder to help with illustration):

edit | discuss
Fire Emblem
15 articles
Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light
Fire Emblem Gaiden
Fire Emblem: Mystery of the Emblem
Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War
Fire Emblem: Thracia 776
Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade
Fire Emblem (video game)
Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones
Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance
Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn
Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon
Fire Emblem: New Mystery of the Emblem
Fire Emblem Awakening
Fire Emblem Fates

Now there's still work to do on some of the others. Thracia 776 and Gaiden need plot synopses, and Mystery of the Emblem needs tidying. Then there's the sheer scale of the project. Even with those which are already at GA, it's still seven articles. I'm more than willing to do the work remodeling the articles for the more difficult things like development and reception and gameplay, but I'd seriously like help on things like the plots for those which have only cursory summaries. I'd also be more than willing for help with actually completing the GAs, as doing it all on my own would be a momentous task even without the editing work beforehand.

This is a long-term project. I've been at it for several months now since I got bitten by the Fire Emblem bug, but I realize that I'd dearly like some help in rescuing these long-neglected articles and giving them the recognition they deserve. I'd be willing to help someone else in return, as long as there was no conflict of interest with their project. So, anyone interested in helping here? --ProtoDrake (talk) 21:59, 30 August 2016 (UTC)

I'm interested in helping; it's long been something on the ol' to-do list that I've never properly motivated myself to get around to. Can you change the GT box above to reflect the current state of these articles? They're clearly not all GAs yet or else you wouldn't be asking for help. Axem Titanium (talk) 22:43, 30 August 2016 (UTC)
  • Rekka no ken (and by extension, Fuuin no Tsurugi) is in my top 5 best lifetime games. Surely I can help out a bit! But I'm a slacker and not the best at new prose, so don't rely on me too much. :P ☺ · Salvidrim! · ✉ 22:45, 30 August 2016 (UTC)

Best of luck, everyone. GamerPro64 22:55, 30 August 2016 (UTC)

  • While I haven't played much of Fire Emblem myself outside Awakening and The Sacred Stones, and am not too keen on writing about games I haven't played myself, I would very much like to see a Fire Emblem GT. I can't really see you getting around doing Marth, TMS and BSFE though, so this is where you're at right now:
edit | discuss
Fire Emblem
18 articles
Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light
Fire Emblem Gaiden
Fire Emblem: Mystery of the Emblem
Marth
Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War
Fire Emblem: Thracia 776
BS Fire Emblem
Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade
Fire Emblem (video game)
Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones
Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance
Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn
Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon
Fire Emblem: New Mystery of the Emblem
Fire Emblem Awakening
Fire Emblem Fates
Tokyo Mirage Sessions ♯FE

--IDVtalk 23:03, 30 August 2016 (UTC)

  • One thing I can say off of the top of my head is that those like me who grew up with the "classic" numbering system (Fuuin no Tsurugi = FE6, Rekka no Ken = FE7, Sacred Stones = FE8) are being thrown for a loop since Intelligent Systems decided to start including BS Fire Emblem in their lists after 2012, shifting all the later games one forward one number. Also, if we stick to "main series games", maybe Marth doesn't have to be included. Maybe Tokyo Mirage Sessions FE could also. Otherwise, we must also consider other spinoffs, such as Tear Ring Saga. Things to consider as well: there will surely soon be an article on Fire Emblem Mobile (fall 2016 is very soon...), and I think we might eventally wring make an article out of the TCG (Cipher) that accompanied Fates as well. ☺ · Salvidrim! · ✉ 23:24, 30 August 2016 (UTC)
  • At least Tear Ring Saga is in pretty good shape since I rewrote it a year or two back. I had also considered making an article for Lucina in the past too, but I haven't been very motivated to write about Nintendo lately, so I've never gotten around to it. Sergecross73 msg me 23:39, 30 August 2016 (UTC)
  • (edit conflict) If you change the topic to "Fire Emblem titles" and create List of Fire Emblem media, I guess you could avoid Marth, but TMS and BS Fire Emblem are still very much Fire Emblem media. I would probably see if it's possible to bring Marth up to GA, since it'd be the only Fire Emblem article not included in the topic. Tear Ring Saga could go either way, I think - it's not part of the series, but it does have strong ties to it.--IDVtalk 23:50, 30 August 2016 (UTC)

@IDV, Salvidrim, and Axem Titanium: Thank you everyone for your imput. I hadn't included BS Fire Emblem, character articles or Tokyo Mirage Sessions since they weren't technically part of the main series (heck, TMS is a crossover with Megami Tensei). I suppose I could also do work on BS Fire Emblem to get it to become a GA, but it would be touch and go. Marth is more than difficult as he's not got a lot of easy-to-find info on him if he has to be included. TMS should be child's play as I've already done a lot of work on it, whether it becomes part of the topic or not. Creating a media list also seems like a very good idea, since there are multiple mangas and even an OVA series to take into consideration. Anyone who wants to do that can canibalise sources from the other articles, or I can provide sources for them if I haven't gotten round to any one article yet. And Salvidrim, I'll gladly accept help, and all I'd need for Rekka no Ken and Fuuin no Tsurugi, and it'll just need the plots tidying up. I can handle the rest :) --ProtoDrake (talk) 08:22, 31 August 2016 (UTC)

UPDATE: I've done some work on Marth's article, and added as much development information as I could for him. If this were to be taken to GA, I think the rest of the process up to that point is more a matter of tidying up more than anything else. --ProtoDrake (talk) 14:45, 31 August 2016 (UTC)
I don't see why the topic couldn't be "Main series Fire Emblem games", assuming such games are as easy to define as they are with, for example, the Final Fantasy series. I don't know that much of the franchise, though, so I can't give much input on that ^_^; I may have a quick look at Marth's article for copy-edits or something. Good luck! ~Mable (chat) 15:34, 31 August 2016 (UTC)
  • @Czar I've found multiple pieces of transcription and translation from the guidebooks, which almost all have interviews with key staff with the knitty-gritty necessary to create a development section of sorts. I've made sure all the sources are acceptable for GA. There are also odd English sources I've found for some things. And for the first two GBA games, there's a Q&A with development info scattered in there. There's also stuff from surviving issues of the now-defunct Nintendo Online Magazine, many of which hold developer interviews. You can look at Gaiden, Mystery of the Emblem, Thracia 776 and New Mystery of the Emblem for examples of how I've sources the articles. --ProtoDrake (talk) 17:14, 2 September 2016 (UTC)

IP edits without explanation to Metroid Prime 3: Corruption's plot

⇒ Talk:Metroid Prime 3: Corruption#Plot summary edits by anon IP. More help needed because I can't simply handle this myself. – // Hounder4 // 23:05, 2 September 2016 (UTC)

If the resulting article is substantively worse than before, just revert as vandalism until they give up. There's no 3RR for vandalism. Axem Titanium (talk) 23:18, 2 September 2016 (UTC)
Thanks for the advice, @Axem Titanium. – // Hounder4 // 23:19, 2 September 2016 (UTC)
I've protected the article for a week, but for the record, Axem's advice is probably not very good in this scenario. As far as I could tell, the IPs changes were not improvements...but they didn't appear to be bad faith edits. You could claim they were being disruptive, but not really vandalism. As such, you'd probably be hard pressed to argue yourself out if a 3RR block. Contacting WP:VG was a good choice, but you'd probably be better off requesting page as your next step next time. Sergecross73 msg me 23:31, 2 September 2016 (UTC)
@Sergecross73: Sorry about that, I get what you're saying. Thanks anyway. – // Hounder4 // 23:38, 2 September 2016 (UTC)
True, I didn't really look into this IP's actual edits to make a judgment call. I was just reminding that 3RR does not apply to vandalism, which a lot of editors forget because they're familiar enough with Wikipedia to know about 3RR and may have been warned about it in the past, creating a fear of getting dinged for it which inhibits them from reverting actual vandalism. Axem Titanium (talk) 23:40, 2 September 2016 (UTC)

Wikibreak

Just to let any WikiProject Video games editor know that I'm taking a wikibreak because I'm not in a good mood at the moment. I wanted to distance myself from Wikipedia as I'm not really good at anything here. Regardless, I will be back on Wikipedia if I need to (a week, a month, I don't know). If you have any comments or inquiries for me, then post them in my talk page. Best wishes to everyone here. – // Hounder4 // 02:11, 3 September 2016 (UTC)

I hope my comments in the section above didn't inspire this. I didn't mean to sound like I was lecturing or berating you or anything. It was just meant to be helpful and "FYI" type information... Sergecross73 msg me 02:39, 3 September 2016 (UTC)

New task force: Retro Task Force

If there is the best place for me to suggest new task forces, it would be here on this talk page. Because I find retrogaming to be a very interesting, historical, and important topic, I would like to suggest a new task force called "Retro Task Force" that covers video games made in the 1990s, 1980s, 1970s, and so on, and there are hundreds of video games that have been made before year 2000, meaning that a vast number of such articles could be easily improved. Any opinions? Gamingforfun365 (talk) 03:40, 3 September 2016 (UTC)

Examples of articles supported by the task force would be Doom (1993 video game), Super Mario Bros., and Pac-Man. Gamingforfun365 (talk) 04:21, 3 September 2016 (UTC)
I have just read the discussion. Gamingforfun365 (talk) 04:36, 3 September 2016 (UTC)
What other task force might be useful to improve articles about video games? Gamingforfun365 (talk) 04:39, 3 September 2016 (UTC)
My point is that I do not want to turn this discussion into a waste of time. Gamingforfun365 (talk) 04:47, 3 September 2016 (UTC)
  • To be honest, there's not much point in creating a task force. Creating a task force doesn't lead to automatic improvement of articles. Most of the previous video game task forces had no activity at all so they were redirected back here. They were usually just pet projects of a handful of editors that they ultimately gave up on. If you want feedback or discussion relating to video game articles, then this talk page is the best place to get it. There's plenty of experienced editors watching this talk page that can help you improve articles. --The1337gamer (talk) 07:56, 3 September 2016 (UTC)
  • Video games predating reliable online news sources do require a whole different kind of knowledge, so I can imagine a separate talk page being useful for that purpose. However, there isn't much difference between talking about older games and newer games otherwise. I think all the interest in retrogaming lies in this project already, and that this talk page is perfect for discussing the topic. ~Mable (chat) 09:36, 3 September 2016 (UTC)
I came back here to suggest a new task force called "Classics Task Force", but I am thinking that "what constitutes a '[classic] game' is way too arbitrary". Gamingforfun365 (talk) 16:17, 3 September 2016 (UTC)
Apparently, Classic video game redirects to Retrogaming, so my suggestion is not very different after all. Gamingforfun365 (talk) 16:18, 3 September 2016 (UTC)
Naming aside, a task force should have somekind of purpose, I would imagine. ~Mable (chat) 18:33, 3 September 2016 (UTC)

New articles - 28 August

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

New articles from the past week. This post has been made to help raise the visibility of new articles that fall under this project.

19 August'

20 August'

21 August

22 August

23 August

24 August

25 August

26 August

27 August

28 August

Salavat (talk) 10:57, 29 August 2016 (UTC)

Most of User:MBlairMartin's articles here are of old video games and are in need of better sources currently. Most seem to fail notability criteria on first glance. --The1337gamer (talk) 11:40, 29 August 2016 (UTC)
@MBlairMartin, what are your plans for these? You would need to show significant coverage in multiple reliable, independent sources (?) for each new entry czar 16:03, 4 September 2016 (UTC)

Open World

Hi everyone. I came across an edit and a revert of the addition of open world as a descriptor to several games in the Assassin's Creed franchise. The reverter has added that it is 'not a genre'. [9]. I'm not sure about the genre thing, but it is descriptive. Thoughts? Dbrodbeck (talk) 14:00, 4 September 2016 (UTC)

  • On that article, open world is mentioned twice already in the lead so I don't think it is necessary to mention it in the opening sentence. Also the term "open world" is video game jargon, which why I also wouldn't include in the opening sentence. --The1337gamer (talk) 14:06, 4 September 2016 (UTC)
Doom is a 1993 linear corridor first person shooter. Or COD or whatever. It's not a genre, it's level design. Darkwarriorblake / SEXY ACTION TALK PAGE! 14:14, 4 September 2016 (UTC)
Good points. Dbrodbeck (talk) 14:18, 4 September 2016 (UTC)

Unofficial Wikipedia Discord server

There is now an unofficial server for Wikipedians on Discord, useful for a centralised means of communication between Discord users who are also Wikipedians. The server can be used to communicate with other editors more conveniently.

https://discord.gg/khvrRXV

 Speeditor talk  12:13, 5 September 2016 (UTC)

I joined, who knows, maybe it could take off. Anarchyte (work | talk) 12:42, 5 September 2016 (UTC)
Haha, I'm in. I was actually already thinking about this, but have no idea what kind of use it would be. We'll see :3 ~Mable (chat) 12:48, 5 September 2016 (UTC)
I had briefly toyed with a WPWG discord server but there wasn't interest at the time. -- ferret (talk) 13:00, 5 September 2016 (UTC)

Ninja video games? World War II video games? Hrm...

I just came across this navbox. I figured some of the articles listed in this articles would be considered... rather counter-productive. Anyone interested in nominating some of these for deletion? ~Mable (chat) 17:48, 5 September 2016 (UTC)

I nominated List of ghost video games. Many, if not all of the articles, listed under "characters" are questionable. Anarchyte (work | talk) 06:05, 6 September 2016 (UTC)
I'm half-tempted to bundle all of those into one big AfD (probably after the ghost one runs its course). I still think making list articles when duplicate categories already exist for them is redundant and useless, though many disagree. There was quite the debate over this here. Satellizer el Bridget (Talk) 12:07, 7 September 2016 (UTC)
@Satellizer: Doing a mass nomination for those articles may not be a good idea. Anarchyte (work | talk) 12:16, 7 September 2016 (UTC)
Yeah, but making each separately floods AfD and the DELSORT/VG page. I guess it's just one of those dirty jobs nobody wants to take, given that they rarely end well. Satellizer el Bridget (Talk) 12:21, 7 September 2016 (UTC)
I wonder if World War I video games have any kind of academic interest. I have difficulty finding any particularly useful sources on the topic, but I don't find it difficult to imagine they exist. World War II is everywhere in video games, so a list of that is simply ridiculous (a category is useful, though!). Ninjas have always been a popular genre in video games. I find it similarly ridiculous to have a list of ninja games, but here too I can imagine some academic interest regarding the use of ninjas in video games (then again, that should probably be covered under Ninjas in popular culture). All in all, I think all three of these lists should be TNT'ed. Doing so individually is probably for the best. ~Mable (chat) 12:50, 7 September 2016 (UTC)

Our logo used by GameTheorists

Yo! I just spotted something that might interest y'all -- it's a blink-and-you'll-miss-it moment, but prominent youtuber MatPat has used our logo in his latest GameTheory video (about fangames and copyright): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TiYEKDQZ5sk (timestamp 2:55). Of course, the logo itself has been licensed as CC0 by its creators CFCF and IDV, so the use of it uncredited is perfectly fine. I just thought it was cool! ☺ · Salvidrim! · ✉ 01:50, 7 September 2016 (UTC)

@Salvidrim!: Video doesn't exist. Was it taken down? Anarchyte (work | talk) 09:32, 7 September 2016 (UTC)
I noticed it too while watching the video yesterday. Fun little thing. CC0 content in action :3 I'm still able to watch it: link. Video itself is meh at best, if you know anything about copyright of video games. Sensationalizing weird exceptions in copyright law that won't result into anything significant. ~Mable (chat) 11:52, 7 September 2016 (UTC)
Salv just dropped the last letter in the url; I fixed it. --PresN 13:57, 7 September 2016 (UTC)
Thanks :p ☺ · Salvidrim! · ✉ 16:57, 7 September 2016 (UTC)

New Category

I notice that there is not a category for Video Game Museums and I have been classifying them as Computer Museums but that doesn't quite cover what they do and what they are for. Can we make a category for Video Game Museums? MBlairMartin (talk) 19:35, 7 September 2016 (UTC)

I think such articles are currently categorized under Category:Video game exhibitions. That category has the property that a museum doesn't necessarily has to cover only video games. However, I quite like the idea of also having a Category:Video game museums. I'm not sure ^_^; ~Mable (chat) 20:13, 7 September 2016 (UTC)
(ec) Category:Video game museums - made; you don't need special permissions to make a category, and it looks like there would be at least 8 or so articles in said category. On the subject, though, the Computer Museums category is overwraught- with ~20 articles, does it really need 2 subcategories (Computer museums in US and UK) and a sub-sub-category (Computer museums in California)? --PresN 20:15, 7 September 2016 (UTC)
It should probably not be split by location but instead by more-precise topic. Ship them to WP:CFD as over-refining a category. --Izno (talk) 21:15, 7 September 2016 (UTC)
I agree, there aren't enough museums that are defined as Computer museums alone (Not science and technology museums that have a section of computers) that one list for the whole world would be hard to read or navigate. MBlairMartin (talk) 21:31, 7 September 2016 (UTC)

Should Video game museums be a subcategory of exhibitions? ~Mable (chat) 22:25, 7 September 2016 (UTC)

Should it be the other way around? The exhibits (well some of them) are temporary, like the The Art of Video Games and others like the Indie Game Revolution at the EMP Museum are permanent. Should the emphasis be on the museums and then the exhibits? MBlairMartin (talk) 22:30, 7 September 2016 (UTC)
One could look at it like this: Every video game museum is an exhibit of video games, but not every exhibit of video games is a museum. If you put exhibits as a subcategory of museums, you end up suggesting the latter. ~Mable (chat) 07:38, 8 September 2016 (UTC)

Improving articles on the Civilization franchise

In anticipation for the upcoming game Civilization VI, I think it is good time to revisit this series and work on improving the content and tidying up the template. I've already worked on Civilization II and Civilization II: Test of Time, and created Civilization II: Conflicts in Civilization.--Coin945 (talk) 04:27, 2 September 2016 (UTC)

Need help with Dreamfall Chapters

Hello all. I've been tweaking and updating the Dreamfall Chapters article for years now, and I think it is almost ready for a GA review--however, it still lacks a proper Reception section. I've been meaning to write it after the release of the final episode, but realized that I don't actually trust myself to stay objective on the topic. As someone who backed the game on Kickstarter after over a decade of waiting, I have very strong opinions on the topic and would really like someone more neutral to write about its critical reception. Any help is appreciated! --Koveras ☭ 06:34, 9 September 2016 (UTC)

miniature re-release vs miniature replica

The NES Classic Edition is a Miniature re-release not a miniature replica. Replica is not a proper term when referring to this type of product. Replica is when someone either copies someones original idea or is done so at a amateurish level. I have a source that calls it a miniature re-release[10], but a user keeps reverting it and adding his own source. What do you guys think?--73.203.218.13 (talk) 20:24, 9 September 2016 (UTC)

"Based upon software emulation, it includes a static library of 30 built-in games from the licensed NES library, including some third-party titles, with writable storage only for save states" - so... it's not an NES. It's a device that replicates NES functionality. "Replica" is when something replicates the form/functionality of another thing; it has nothing to do with whose original idea it was or the amateurism/professionalism of the replication. The NES Classic Edition is no more a "re-release" than ZSNES is. --PresN 21:10, 9 September 2016 (UTC)
The official Nintendo website even describes it as a mini replica: [11]. That EW article is badly worded. --The1337gamer (talk) 21:15, 9 September 2016 (UTC)
"it has nothing to do with whose original idea it was or the amateurism/professionalism of the replication. The NES Classic Edition is no more a "re-release" than ZSNES is"

That's a horrible comparison the ZSNES doesn't have a SNES system that comes with it. It is a re-release like the Sega Genesis Classic is. Replica is not the correct term for this.--73.203.218.13 (talk) 21:20, 9 September 2016 (UTC)

...Do you feel you're more qualified than Nintendo themselves to define this product though? Sergecross73 msg me 23:02, 9 September 2016 (UTC)
Nintendo isn't the only reliable source there is. But go ahead keep it as miniature replica even though it's extremely improper and asinine to call it that. All i wanted to so was improve the article... I guess we can start calling movie re-release movie replicas from now on--73.203.218.13 (talk) 23:22, 9 September 2016 (UTC)

New articles - 3 September

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

New articles from the past week. This post has been made to help raise the visibility of new articles that fall under this project.

26 August

28 August

29 August

30 August

31 August

1 September

2 September

3 September

Salavat (talk) 06:03, 4 September 2016 (UTC)

Endless Sky

I've added a couple references (the only I could find) to Draft:Endless Sky (Game). I'm not sure about main-spacing it based on those alone. I've briefly considered merging salvageable content to Escape Velocity (video game) and then redirected. Does anyone have a better idea? --Izno (talk) 20:57, 8 September 2016 (UTC)

If Rock, Paper, Shotgun is the only RS that has written about it, and one of their two articles on it is literally titled "Endless Sky is heavily inspired by Escape Velocity", then yes, I think this game is better off being mentioned in one line on the Escape Velocity article under a Legacy section. ~Mable (chat) 07:49, 9 September 2016 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Files for discussion/2016 September 1#File:ToE Cover.jpg

The front cover images of Tales of Eternia are discussed at FFD. I invite you to the discussion there. --George Ho (talk) 17:18, 10 September 2016 (UTC)

Plot section length

So this was recently brought to my attention by TomStar81. Exactly how long should plot sections be for video game articles? The film project has a 700 word recommended limit, but to my knowledge, the video game project doesn't have anything similar. I'm assuming this has been discussed before, but call me lazy as I didn't want to skim through the archives to find a relevant discussion. For now, I'll just copy what I said on my talk page. "I hate to throw him under the bus, but the 700 word limit was first brought to my attention by Juhachi, a veteran editor on anime, manga, and visual novel articles. During the Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward peer review, a few editors and myself were trying to shorten the game's plot section as it was almost 1000 words and didn't make too much sense. There, Juhachi recommended the 700 word limit." Famous Hobo (talk) 15:41, 5 September 2016 (UTC)

FILM's 700 word aspect makes sense in that most films are 1.5-2hr in length, so that's a reasonable size for a summary. For video games, which easily can be 30-40 hours in length (but not all gameplay), that hard limit is more difficult to enforce. Plot-heavy games (particularly those that play with the fourth wall as the Zero Escape series does) aren't going to be easily be described clearly in 700 words. It should aim to be as short as possible, obviously, but we can't enforce a word count as easily as FILM can. --MASEM (t) 16:18, 5 September 2016 (UTC)
Zero Escape is kind of special in that it has non-linear multiple-timeline stories, but even those can be trimmed down to 700 words, so I'm not seeing why we couldn't do the same for linear and more conventional stories. Yeah, the longer story you're summarizing, the more you gotta cut, but really - most of the finer details are only important when actually playing the game, and only make a plot summary harder to understand. We're not aiming to recreate the experience of playing the game, so it's completely fine to cut out sub-plots that don't end up affecting things.--IDVtalk 16:46, 5 September 2016 (UTC)
In universe content should be kept to a minimum, and there's no reason that a gameplot cannot be described in 700 words. It might take 40 hours to complete but there's not 40 hours of story content there. And we can't include side missions unless there's room to spare. I think 700 is a fair limit.Darkwarriorblake / SEXY ACTION TALK PAGE! 16:50, 5 September 2016 (UTC)
I'm personally still under the impression that simply describing the setting and concept – without really going into the plot itself – is sufficient, but then again, I refrain from writing about fiction from an in-universe perspective for a reason. ~Mable (chat) 16:55, 5 September 2016 (UTC)
Games have a higher variance in their "experience" times than film. I continue to be against hard word count limits codified in our MOS. Axem Titanium (talk) 17:02, 5 September 2016 (UTC)
Some judgement should be made based on the nature of the secondary sources about a game. A game like BioShock Infinite, where much in third party sources have written about the setting and themes (as well as the connection to the previous two games) means that we should go into more detail on these elements in the plot context. In the case of the Zero Escape games, they are noted for having genre-bending gameplay and story elements that break the fourth wall, and though not having the same volume of discussion as BioShock Infinite, means that they could have a larger allowance to establish these elements clearly in the case of the plot. (It's also a story that involves time travel, while is one of those things that FILM's plot advice does take into consideration). On the other hand, some game plots can be summarized in a sentence or two, like Katamari Damacy, and some have no plot at all like Pac-Man. --MASEM (t) 17:43, 5 September 2016 (UTC)
Before I get started here, I'd like to thank Famous Hobo (talk · contribs) for opening a discussion on the matter to get a clearer consensus on the issue and where people stand. Now onto the business: IMO, a plot summary should be as long as it needs to be cover the details relevant to the game being described. I disagree with the idea of word limits since to me it forces editors to leave out important details for the sake of meeting a defined upper limit. For the sake of example, the rebuilt modern warfare 2 page no longer notes that prices infiltrates a ballistic missile submarine, which leaves open the question of whether the nuclear missile was fired from the port or the submarine. Similarly, the article no longer notes that Price and Soap escape a battle between Shepherd's Shadow company and makarov's forces, which leaves open the question of whether task 141 was order to turn on Price and Soap or whether Shepherd had a secondary force which turned on Price and Soap. Then there is the issue of links to relevant articles on Wikipedia for certain actions taken. The invasion of the US, for example, no longer links to punitive expedition, which deprives readers of a chance to read up on and learn about the term and real life examples. Its little things of this nature that are supposed to separate Wikipedia from paper encyclopedia's, yet to see the information gutted for the sake of a size requirement is sad. I'll make it clear here and now that I would not support a massively long list of plot and detail options since the various dedicated wikia sites for games are in a much better position to address the finer details, but we could strike a balance between the small two paragraph explanation on the back cover of the game's display box and a great-wall-of-china length plot description by covering whats needed both adequately and concisely, instead of mandating a size limit and forcing editors to choose between adequately or concisely. That's my take. TomStar81 (Talk) 01:31, 6 September 2016 (UTC)

a plot summary should be as long as it needs to be cover the details relevant to the game being described. I disagree with the idea of word limits since to me it forces editors to leave out important details for the sake of meeting a defined upper limit. I don't like to think of it as "leaving out important details", I like to think of it as "okay, I've hit the number--and still have more to write about--are all of the details I've written about actually important?" For example, the plot at The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time needed to be trimmed--as an FA, it has gotten over 1000 words. It was through use of the 700 word limit as a sieve that got it back down to an actually concise plot.

You should also review WP:WAF. --Izno (talk) 11:18, 6 September 2016 (UTC)

I don't think I need to review WP:WAF, given when it was created I'll venture a guess my actions probably served as a catalyst for the creation of the page (at least the timing seems right). That brings us to concise, but that too is open to interpretation since concise means different things to different people. At a minimum I would ask that 700 words be the recommended size and not the mandatory size, but again I speak from a position I outlined above so I like to enjoy a meaningful plot and not two lines that summarize the story without adding anything. Lastly I would point out that I have largely sworn off creating and editing these articles, so its really more about what works for this project, not what I think should be in an article. TomStar81 (Talk) 20:10, 6 September 2016 (UTC)

Izno - The problem is that sometimes, the answer to the question you pose is an indisputable "Yes." A while back, I tackled the plot summary for a film which ran about 1,600 words. After hours of rewriting and agonizing each phrase, I got it down to 900 words. Realizing that this is above the recommended limit, I posted to the article talk page saying "Well, I've done my best; I'll leave it to someone else to take a crack at it." Another editor replied, saying, "No, don't touch it. You've got it down to a concise summary which covers all the important points. If anything is taken out from the summary you've got now, the entire plot no longer makes any sense." This is why even in films, the 700 word limit is explicitly stated as a guideline and not a hard-and-fast rule. Remember, the sole purpose of the plot summary is to make sense of the plot to readers who either don't understand it or aren't familiar with it. 700 words that fail to sensibly explain the plot is just a waste of readers' time.--Martin IIIa (talk) 13:36, 8 September 2016 (UTC)

And nowhere have I suggested it as anything more than a rule of thumb (or a guideline, depending on who you ask and which guideline you're asking about). As I suggested, and as you apparently applied it, it should be a target to hit. Sometimes you miss it, and if it's a really good case of missing, WP:IAR applies per some local consensus. Sometimes it's not a really good case of missing--you (plural/general) have extraneous details, or you're bad at making things concise, and etc... you thought you might have ended up missing and it being a bad case of missing, and someone said "no, no, that makes sense, it's okay here that you missed it". But as a target, 700 seems like a gosh-darn good number for an upper-end. --Izno (talk) 13:56, 8 September 2016 (UTC)
Sorry that I misunderstood you. While I certainly appreciate having length guidelines, I don't think that it makes sense to have one for video game plot summaries. In the world of film, they have pretty strict length limits, due to the amount of time that the average person is willing to sit in a movie theater (or even in front of the TV at home) in one straight sitting. Video games, especially modern video games, generally aren't meant to be experienced in one sitting. How much of their time is given to story is highly variable, which makes length guidelines all the more impossible to set; for instance, plot summaries for most arcade games and 1990s platformers have no need to go beyond two sentences, while summing up the plots for many RPGs and adventure games in under 700 words is an impossible task. Basically, Wikiproject films has a guideline for how long plot summaries should be because there's a typical plot length for films; there is no typical plot length for video games.--Martin IIIa (talk) 13:45, 9 September 2016 (UTC)
  • My two cents - I think we should try to keep to the 700 word limit in most cases, but have leeway when we're writing about our plot-heavy Xenogears, Final Fantasy, Mass Effect etc games. I feel like we need something in place to deter massive plot summaries in most games (the massively long, play by play plot summaries I've come across for some plot-light Sonic the Hedgehog games are nothing short of ridiculous) but I also feel like we need some flexibility on some of the plot-heavy games. Yes, as someone above mentioned, "40 hour games does not equal hours of plot", but at the same time, some of these 80 hour Persona or Tales games do have 10+ hours worth of cut-scenes, making a comparison to a 2 hour movie still a bit unfair... Sergecross73 msg me 14:00, 9 September 2016 (UTC)
  • As an additional two cents from the peanut gallery - there's no such blanket idea that in-universe content is somehow bad. In fact a criticism of Wikipedia I hear nowadays is that it's gone too far from the perceived 2006 fanboy-pedia by droning on and on about what Reviewer X said, not enough about the actual content of the game itself. Anyway... it really, really depends on the game. As noted, for something like Pac-Man, there isn't really a plot at all, and there are plenty of games whose plot is basically a one-page scroll. Or just plain isn't very important. The important thing is that there are games where the entire reverse is true - visual novels most notably, but also certain plot-heavy games. Something like a Phoenix Wright game, a 999-series game, and so on, there isn't a whole lot of gameplay to talk about; the gameplay IS understanding the plot. Basically, the most important thing is to keep the length of the whole article down; allocating how to "spend" that length will vary on a game-by-game basis. (And sometimes, some games are so huge that it's really hard to cram it all in, and they end up going over the overall article length suggestions anyway - think of the likes of Mass Effect 2 for an example.) SnowFire (talk) 21:36, 10 September 2016 (UTC)

eSports task force questions

I can imagine that the esports task force has had a long history, but I'd like to improve its current situation. I mean, that very page has multiple awkward/outdated lists of articles manually categorized by quality (C-class, etc), this being one of them. Why isn't this automatized? Meanwhile, about a month ago, someone started a new WikiProject, which is currently still completely empty and hasn't seen any activity since it was started. I was hoping we could clean all this up a bit, so that we actually have a good back-end for seeing statistics and such of esports articles. I have some questions about our current content as well, like how we have outdated articles on multiple G-Leage games, but nothing on the tournament itself. I'd rather get a good grasp of the project itself first, though. I barely know where to start >.> Allow me to ping all the users who are registered to the task force, so that we can actually discuss the future of it: @Kicking222, Dat GuyWiki, Credema, DarthBotto, TitanOne, NativeForeigner, Entropy, Prisencolin, Dbzruler72, Stickynote20, Fredbr, Orihuelasergio, J36miles, Zupotachyon, MinimalNerd, Airplaneman, Larcombe, and Dissident93: ~Mable (chat) 13:11, 1 September 2016 (UTC)

FYI, I think the issues that continue to occur around the esports area stem around the fact that very few editors are both actively editing and knowledgeable of Wikipedia guidelines. I mean, looking through some of the people above - TitanOne hasn't edited in exactly one year. J36 made 2 edits last month. Outside of Prisencolin, most just aren't that active in the area. (Dissident is active, but he spends a lot of time on general VG stuff.) Sergecross73 msg me 14:08, 1 September 2016 (UTC)
Yeah, I know. It frustrates me how there isn't any infrastructure for it either, though. I can't see the quality of esports articles, and though I could bring up issues like the J-League games up on the general WikiProject talk page instead, this usually just doesn't seem like the right place to discuss such things. Meanwhile, it seems like esports-related articles are pretty poor, due to this lack of interest in the field... ~Mable (chat) 14:44, 1 September 2016 (UTC)
The quality of esports articles could definitely use work; I think a big problem is that sources which are considered reliable are hard to come by, or were hard to come by until recently. I honestly didn't know this task force existed until recently, and am definitely interested in helping out in some small capacity. As for where to start? I think it's a big ask to try and look systemically at esports articles as a whole and expect change from that level. It might be easier to just pick an article or two to work on, drumming up interest in that way, and then using that experience to bolster the task force. Airplaneman ✈ 15:12, 1 September 2016 (UTC)
I agree that trying to fix "all" esports articles is a silly idea, but I was hoping we could at least get the infrastructure in the background up to par. Right now, it's hard to even know if there are any Good Articles in the esports scope, or how many stubs people have created over the years, as this stuff is kept track of manually. To be fair, though, I am also hoping to call up some interest through this section here ^_^; ~Mable (chat) 17:55, 1 September 2016 (UTC)
I do admit, I am a bit surprised in the the lack of interest in esports on Wikipedia. I mean, I personally have no interest in competitive e-sports, but with all the reading I do on the internet, I've always felt my disinterest put me in the minority opinion of hardcore enthusiasts of video games. Then again, there does seem to be interest out there, but they seem to be the type of people who want to write whatever they want on message-boards or social media than the structured policies and writings of an encyclopedia... Sergecross73 msg me 18:11, 1 September 2016 (UTC)
If you do want the eSports articles to get automatic categorization, it's not too hard- create all of the Category:Stub-Class eSports articles, etc, and then add "|TF_2_QUALITY = yes" and "|TF_2_ASSESSMENT_CAT = eSports articles" to the correct spot in {{WikiProject Video games}}, and they'll all be autopopulated over the next few days. Just copy what the Indie task force categories/parameters say, basically, that was all done back in May 2014. If you want the auto-updated chart, just follow the instructions at Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Using the bot. (You basically just add the "X-Class" categories to a parent category, and add that one to Category:Wikipedia 1.0 assessments). --PresN 18:20, 1 September 2016 (UTC)
Thanks PresN, I'll get on that tonight. That should be a step in the right direction :3 ~Mable (chat) 19:19, 1 September 2016 (UTC)
@PresN: I've created the categories, but the VG Project template is not editable by regular editors. Shall I put an edit request on its talk page? I think the auto-updated chart can wait until we got the categories themselves going, at the least. ~Mable (chat) 20:00, 1 September 2016 (UTC)
@Maplestrip: Added for you. --PresN 11:41, 2 September 2016 (UTC)
Thanks, PresN :) ~Mable (chat) 11:53, 2 September 2016 (UTC)
As for the reason why there is little interest in eSports on Wikipedia, I guess it's just because there are already long established fan wikis like Gamepedia and Liquipedia that have organized communities working in their content. I also think there is some resistance among eSports fans in bring the phenomenon in the mainstream, so by maintaining a fan wiki they can preserve the in-group aspect of eSports for a little longer. Other reasons include these sites acquiring the license to put tons of copyrighted logos and images on articles, whereas the fair use policies on Wikipedia are quite restrictive and the vast majority of WP articles have no images and therefore look far less professional. Anyways, about the original topic, many articles definitely need to be reassessed and downgraded, and probably all of them at that.--Prisencolin (talk) 18:51, 3 September 2016 (UTC)
eSports articles on Wikipedia aren't currently worth making, in my opinion. The majority of the sources that cover them (Gosu, Liquidpedia, game specific sites, etc) aren't considered reliable (yet), which limits editing them if you want to follow Wikipedia policies. In addition to that, eSport player and team articles normally just list notable tournament results and nothing more. Trying to find biographical/historical info on them other than that is almost impossible for the most part, which is really just the fault of how new the scene really is. Even the oldest eSports teams are only a decade old, which compared to traditional sports, is nothing. I know we shouldn't use the excuse that other sites handle this sort of stuff better, so they should be used instead, but in this case (currently), I think it's true. ~ Dissident93 (talk) 19:38, 1 September 2016 (UTC)
Actually, Dissident, it was The Daily Dot, Red Bull, ShackNews and ESPN that popped up the most while writing recent esports articles, though coverage can range from International Business Times to The Escapist to Eurogamer. There's plenty to work on, and I think I could bring a few articles in this template to GA if I was interested in that. Finding biographical information on players is more difficult, and I'm personally not very interested in writing about players anymore, but that doesn't mean that we should ignore the field. ~Mable (chat) 20:00, 1 September 2016 (UTC)
The Daily Dot is considered reliable now? I've actively tried to avoid using them as a source in the Dota 2 article, among others. Knowing this would have possibly helped the FAN for Dota 2. ~ Dissident93 (talk) 03:06, 3 September 2016 (UTC)
I always just assumed The Daily Dot was reliable. Looking into it, it isn't listed at WP:VG/S, but it has been discussed in the past ([12], [13]). If you want to bring the website into question, WT:VG/S would probably be the best place, though it seems like people concluded it was reliable. ~Mable (chat) 09:31, 3 September 2016 (UTC)
Liquidpedia will never be considered a reliable source. DARTHBOTTO talk•cont 21:52, 1 September 2016 (UTC)
Like Serge said, there's not really a lot of editors actively working on esports pages, so there's little interest in the topic as a whole. There's numerous issues on various esports pages that have never been tagged because no one goes around to spotcheck their quality. I don't know Wikipedia's guidelines very well, so my work has been rather suboptimal. Finding biographical information for esports players from reliable sources (at least according to Wikipedia) is quite difficult, and finding detailed analysis of players is even more so. If someone can teach me how to do so efficiently, I would greatly appreciate it, but it seems as though those kind of "competent" editors don't work on esports very much (not saying the editors who work on esports articles are incompetent). Zupotachyon (talk) 03:15, 2 September 2016 (UTC)
@Zupotachyon: I'm happy to help out in any way I can, so feel free to ask any questions or, perhaps more importantly, bring attention to articles that may have specific issues. I mean, not saying I'm any more competent than the next person, but I have some experience identifying reliable sources ^_^ ~Mable (chat) 09:38, 2 September 2016 (UTC)

I re-activated the talk page of the esports task force ([14]). This can of course always be undone, but I think it may be helpful to create a separate page for it and we'll see what happens. ~Mable (chat) 20:06, 4 September 2016 (UTC)

The way recent conversations have gone, such a page would be used for topics that should be discussed here, out in the open, rather than relegated to a private space. Otherwise three editors make a call/pseudo-consensus on how to treat some aspect of eSports (say, any number of these) until someone else notices what has happened months later and brings it to the attention of a larger audience (where the discussion should have taken place from the start)... czar 06:34, 11 September 2016 (UTC)
I am forced to wonder if subjects such as tournament listings or prize money or player histories are even of interest to this project specifically. It all seems very far removed from what this specific project is about. This is a question about scope, anyway. That being said, the lack of activity on the Task Force talk page thus far isn't very promising. ~Mable (chat) 12:35, 11 September 2016 (UTC)

The Impossible Quiz

This article was created and deleted many times in 2007, and as a result it is blocked and can only be created by an administrator. I would like to have a discussion on whether the game is notable now, since it is 9 years hence and there are more available sources. After an extensive search, I've added a series of links below. Please assess them for notability (and strike out the non-notable ones).--Coin945 (talk) 05:36, 8 September 2016 (UTC)

Extended content
* 148Apps ✓
  • Of these, the only source that is both reliable and significant is the Wired story, and that doesn't seem to be enough to support a full article. Keep in mind that there is no reason that inXile Entertainment cannot include a brief summary of this non-notable game. --MASEM (t) 05:44, 8 September 2016 (UTC)
  • Crossed out a few more at a glance. It's hard to say whether there is any notability from the list you linked above, because of how random all the websites are. I'd say any web page dedicated to giving answers to the quiz is out, as are all user-generated pages and all of the official websites. What we're left with is judging whether something is some low-level blog or a reliable source. Googling around, I found two sources that may be of use, but it's hard to say because I don't really know the websites: [30] [31]. Add the Wired article to it and we may have the bare minimum of notability. I would advance against creating the article. I can imagine a one-line mention in The Impossible Game assuming the two are in any way related. ~Mable (chat) 07:50, 8 September 2016 (UTC)
  • Re: contacting the game's developer: Could an editor not interview a game developer and publish that interview online, thereby creating a primary source for information on the game's development? It couldn't be used to prove notability, but the information could supplement a notable article.--Coin945 (talk) 08:48, 8 September 2016 (UTC)
  • Letting a Wikipedia editor purposefully interview a person in order to create new encyclopedic information is probably the best example of original research I've ever heard. Interviews generally still need to come from reliable sources, though. Anyone could write a fictional interview on one's blog. ~Mable (chat) 10:04, 8 September 2016 (UTC)
  • However, a possible similar option if that (whether prompted by a WP editor or not) if they wrote a development blog and had that posted through Gamasutra (which generally reviews for significance and some editorial control) or similar game site, that's fine. We just need that 3rd party source to be the publisher. --MASEM (t) 14:05, 8 September 2016 (UTC)
  • Well, yeah, but that's because it was speedy deleted 5 times over the course of 2007. That's...probably worse - each time it was deemed so bad that discussion wasn't even necessary. Looking at some of the past deleted version, I probably would have done the same... Sergecross73 msg me 15:54, 8 September 2016 (UTC)
  • Can we just get a quick list of all the secondary sources that exist for the work that are considered reliable? It's hard to know how much there is exactly, but I'm guessing ~3 sources. ~Mable (chat) 19:14, 8 September 2016 (UTC)
  • Again, I think Masem nailed it - probably only the Wired one. A vast majority of these sources are not WP:RS material and/or 1st party accounts. For example, 148Apps is a usable website in theory, but not in this instance. Its just a database entry, which either sounds like, or just is, the game's App Store listing. That doesn't help prove independent notability. Normally I'd argue it'd be easier to have Coin argue which ones he thought was reliable and usable to prove notability, but if he felt most of these were even in consideration, then that may be taking the long road as well... Sergecross73 msg me 19:44, 8 September 2016 (UTC)
  • However, please keep in mind that there's enough primary or DB pages out there that I think you can safely create a redirect to inXile Entertainment and include a brief para or two about the game there with the Wired source. We can document it, it just doesn't get a standalone. --MASEM (t) 20:39, 9 September 2016 (UTC)

Xbox One system software

A dispute at Xbox One system software needs outside editors. These system software pages were originally nominated for deletion as coatracks for creating system update logs (see "Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information"). The tables were removed and supposed to be rewritten as prose, but we forget so easily... czar 04:05, 9 September 2016 (UTC)

Hello, as you may have noticed, there is a dispute over at the Xbox One system software page regarding the use of changelogs. After this article was nominated for deletion in July 2015 with no consensus, it was agreed on the article's talk page that we should use prose coupled with third party sources instead of lists both to avoid copyright infringement, and to give the reader details on why the changes were made. After revamping the article, the table was removed and a link added to the footnote to direct users to Microsoft's official changelogs. In March 2016, one user reinstated the tables, stating that this time users should adhere to the WP:NOTCHANGELOG policy, referencing to the discussion held in July/August 2015. Despite their efforts, a number of users chose to ignore them, thus copying/pasting information directly from Microsoft's official changelog page, without rewriting it. In August 2016, one user (User A) decided to remove these tables, citing Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information for the intent of removal. As you are aware, point 4 of this states that Exhaustive logs of software updates. Use reliable third-party (not self-published or official) sources in articles dealing with software updates to describe the versions listed or discussed in the article. A day later, another user (User B) reinstated these tables stating that There is no consensus to remove this information and you are deleting over 50 sources with one major and uncalled for edit. Also, lose the insults. User A had previously been accused of section blanking and vandalism, for enforcing these rules. User B then stated that User B had deleted over 50 sources with one major and uncalled for edit, which is not technically true as most of these sources linked back to Microsoft's official changelogs. I then proceeded to have a discussion with Czar about how to deal with the case, as I got accused when deleting these lists for calling out users for plagiarism, as they were copying/pasting information directly without rewriting it and not giving enough detail to the reader about why these changes happened. My argument is simply this, why do we need duplicate information, when I posted the link to Microsoft's official changelogs in the footnote of the article for reference? I would welcome input from both sides. Wagnerp16 (talk) 09:27, 11 September 2016 (UTC)

Madeline (video game series)

@Aoba47: and I (@Coin945:) have worked tirelessly on this article. We'd love for you to check it out and perhaps give it a copyedit or feedback in the wake of the pending GA review. :)--Coin945 (talk) 07:14, 10 September 2016 (UTC)

  • I'm particularly impressed by the inclusion of a fair-use audio clip - I don't think I've seen that in any other VG article, and in this case it is fully justified by the critical commentary of the voice acting. Props! ☺ · Salvidrim! · ✉ 09:01, 10 September 2016 (UTC)
    • For the record, audio clips have been included in various VG articles, like Undertale and Shovel Kni- wait, this is voice acting?? Wow, that's awesome! Just in general, this article is highly impressive. Great work, Aoba47! ~Mable (chat) 16:05, 10 September 2016 (UTC)
      • Thank you @Salvidrim: and @Maplestrip: for your kind words. It's consumed me for the past 3 days, but I've had an amazing collaboration with Aoba47 over that time. My extensive and comprehensive research has buffed up his core article in exciting directions, given the expected lack of sources from that era. We have full commercial performance, promotion, and corporate history sections. It's now only inches away from a GA, and (dare I say), an FA! I'm glad you both liked that audio clip - I knew it was a little bit unconventional to have a sample of voice acting, but I thought it was a very valuable and justified piece of media to include, given the critical commentary. I sincerely hope more edutainment articles get their due in the future. Their corporate histories are fascinating due to all the mergers and acquisitions of the late 90's. :)--Coin945 (talk) 16:20, 10 September 2016 (UTC)
  • A section titled "Corporate history" is in the wrong article (by definition), so that needs trimming/recombobulation or even to be removed. The reception leans a little too heavily on the particular games's reception, but that's not too worrisome--perhaps that information could also be trimmed. --Izno (talk) 22:40, 10 September 2016 (UTC)
    • I will address this right now. Thank you for pointing this out. Aoba47 (talk) 21:48, 10 September 2016 (UTC)
      • @Izno: I have adjusted this section so it should read more about the development of the actual game series. It may still need to be reworked, but I got rid of the extraneous information regarding the companies' histories as that is more appropriate for a page about those specific companies. Aoba47 (talk) 22:45, 10 September 2016 (UTC)
  • I wasn't pinged, but I'll give my opinion because I'm bored. I see no reason to have the logos of all the companies on the page. It looks cluttered and isn't done anywhere else (that I know of). Anarchyte (work | talk) 11:09, 11 September 2016 (UTC)
  • Thank you for your comments @Anarchyte:. You are more than welcome to give your 2 cents to improve the article; it is most welcome. I understand your point of view, and want to explain my rationale which is that 1) it helps to add clarity to a dense history caused by a series acquisitions and merges and 2) it adds a bit of colour to an otherwise text-filled section.--Coin945 (talk) 11:19, 11 September 2016 (UTC)
  • I don't think using an image of three Japanese women in an arcade is very proper in this case. The difference in culture and the age of the subjects are obvious reasons why the image seems unfit, but the use currently seems to suggest that women playing a shooter game in an arcade (twitch gameplay) is somehow unfit and 'wrong'. Either way, I don't see the point. The logo of a company may be fine to use, but I'd like to see it limited to companies that (1) had a clear impact on the game series, and (2) have a logo that is free to use due to its simplicity. Showing the logo of seven different companies that had somekind of influence over the games results in a reader really just ignoring the logos. ~Mable (chat) 12:44, 11 September 2016 (UTC)
  • Thank you for your comments Mable. I have a few comments in response. 1) I used the image because the critical commentary in the article suggests an innate difference between "girl's" games (skill-based) and "boy's games" (kill-based) for better or for worse, and this was the only one on the Wikipedia page Woman and video gaming so I thought it would suffice. I will change the image to younger Anglo gaymers playing edutainment. 2) @Aoba47: and I will reassess the logos in the article.--Coin945 (talk) 13:21, 11 September 2016 (UTC)
  • The point of the image is to show the types of games (edutainment, skill-based) that the creators and many critics thought were "for girls". That image is probably what was in the creator's minds when they were designing the Madeline video games for their target audience.--Coin945 (talk) 14:28, 11 September 2016 (UTC)
  • @Maplestrip: I am also on the fence about the image. I understand that the article emphasizes how the series was marketed towards girls and can see @Coin945:'s point, but I am also uncertain if an image is really necessary to illustrate this point as the actual article's text seems to cover it without the need for an image. Aoba47 (talk) 17:20, 11 September 2016 (UTC)

This conversation should be happening on the article's talk page so that it won't be buried in a different talk page's history for future readers. Talk:Madeline (video game series)#Images czar 16:40, 11 September 2016 (UTC)

  • I agree with this point, I will make sure to put any points of discussion in the article's talk page in the future.
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