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Re: Klobb edit warring

Can I get some admin eyes on this article please? A group of editors are basically attempting to subvert the AfD process by converting the article to a bare redirect. A day after it became a Good Article no less. I'm fine with the article going to AfD if people think it's not notable, I'd be happy to defend it there. But this kind of thing is just WP:GAMING behavior.ZXCVBNM (TALK) 19:35, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

After the first redirect was contested, it should have become an AfD. I didn't care much for the article when it was pointed out to me, but for now the article should be restored until the nominator initiates a discussion and consensus is established. Edit warring over this is really silly; come on... there are better uses of time than this. ImaginesTigers (talk) 21:09, 23 December 2020 (UTC)
No it shouldn't. WP:REDIRECT says: "Somebody made a page for a non-notable weapon in a game. It gets redirected for failing WP:N, then the article creator reverts it, then somebody reverts them, etc." Redirecting is a suitable alternative to deletion. An AfD seems unnecessary here. Namcokid47 (Contribs) 21:25, 23 December 2020 (UTC)
The third revert didn't even have an edit summary no less. At this point people are just trying to bruteforce to get their way.ZXCVBNM (TALK) 21:21, 23 December 2020 (UTC)
Yeah, there should definitely be be a talk page discussion to see where consensus is, but our redirect policies do not necessitate an AFD discussion. In fact, while AFDs often do end in a consensus to redirect, the primary purpose is to see if an article should be removed entirely as opposed to merely redirected. A talk page discussion is the better way. Also, four editors taking the same position is a consensus, not a brute force attack. Its how Wikipedia works, though I agree its better to gain that consensus through a discussion rather than a small edit war. However, you are the one continually undoing the edits of others ZXCVBNM, so the onus is really on you to present your views and gain a consensus for your edit. Indrian (talk) 21:28, 23 December 2020 (UTC)
Let's discuss it at Talk:Klobb. ImaginesTigers (talk) 21:30, 23 December 2020 (UTC)
No, an AfD discussion isn't required. But containing the discussion solely to the talk page when it's essentially a !vote on soft deletion seems to me like WP:GAMING and avoiding the wider array of users who view AfDs as opposed to localized talk page discussions. Right now everyone linked to this bombardment of redirection seems to be voting for deletion, so why not go through the proper pathway for that?ZXCVBNM (TALK) 21:52, 23 December 2020 (UTC)
Except I do not think any of us wants the article deleted, which is the point of AFD. Klobb is a term that could be reasonably searched for by people interested in Goldeneye even if its not significant enough for its own article. Therefore, a redirect is appropriate rather than an outright removal that would cause such a search to come up empty. It would be a flagrant example of gaming the system if people interested in a redirect went to AFD when deletion is not what they are seeking. Indrian (talk) 22:14, 23 December 2020 (UTC)
That is incorrect, redirects are perfectly legitimate outcomes of an AfD, and I have seen hundreds of AfD discussions were the nominator wants the article redirected, hell, I have nominated a couple of articles for deletion when I wanted them redirected, both because I determined that they might be contested and to get more eyes on the article in case more sourcing was out there that I hadn't found. Devonian Wombat (talk) 09:08, 24 December 2020 (UTC)
Sadly you are confusing outcome with process. When a person brings an article to AFD, they are asking to have the article deleted from the name space. The consensus can form around several outcomes, one of which is to redirect the article. However, the person bringing the article there is making a deletion argument. If you are going to engage in technical policy discussion get to know those policies before making ignorant statements about correctness. Note that this is not just my interpretation, but that of several other veteran editors commenting on this topic as well. Indrian (talk) 17:33, 24 December 2020 (UTC)

Hello. I was wondering if anyone wanted to help reduce the amount of demoted video games topics that are at Wikipedia:Former featured topics. Broken Sword, Final Fantasy X/X-2, MedEvil, Ni No Kuni, Star Wars Jedi Knight and Super Smash Bros. are all 1 short from becoming a featured topic again. Similarily: Half Life 2, Key video games, The Legend of Zelda, Metroid, and The Orange Box all have 2 articles that need to be worked on to help become featured topics again. Thought I ask here in case anyone was interested. Thanks! --MrLinkinPark333 (talk) 04:14, 25 December 2020 (UTC)

Metroid is definitely one I want to see back to GT/FT again. I'll try and start working on it after I finish up the articles I'm currently working on.--AlexandraIDV 15:14, 25 December 2020 (UTC)

Have a Happy Holidays for the rest of days!

Hello my fellow Gaming Wikipedians and Happy Holidays! I hope today is great to hopefully wash out the bad taste that is this year, and make your time on here as merry as ever! I understand not everyone will be on today to spend time with their families (assuming you can meet with them), and also know this has nothing to do with gaming, but hope to spread the holiday cheer. Happy Holidays to all and to all a good night! CaptainGalaxy 10:54, 25 December 2020 (UTC)

Captain Galaxy, Did you know calories don't count on Christmas? Merry Christmas, and a happy new year too! Le Panini [🥪] 14:49, 25 December 2020 (UTC)

Image request / assistance needed at The Ur-Quan Masters

Happy Holidays everyone. The Ur-Quan Masters is under review for good article status, and is more or less there. It needs an image of the game and for some reason I've always had trouble with the uploading interface. It's an open source game and there are tons of pics that are licensed to the public for non-commercial use. There's also some great images of the semi-notable HD mod (which is mentioned in the article several times, with citations to notable game journalists), and might better illustrate the community-driven nature of the project and its modifications. Adding an image would do me a big favor and help make the article better. Shooterwalker (talk) 17:23, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

Article just made GA. I was planning on doing some GA reviews myself as I wrap these up. Hoping for some help with the image and upload, and happy to return the favor somehow. Thanks in advance, Shooterwalker (talk) 17:55, 24 December 2020 (UTC)
Which uploading interface are you having trouble with? Does the bare form at Special: Upload work? Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs talk 18:08, 25 December 2020 (UTC)

What should Pac-Man's recognised release date be on Wikipedia?

When I was editing on List of longest-running video game franchises, I notice it listed Pac-Man as released on July 1980, which I found curious because when I worked on the Pac-Man 40th Anniversary article, I found out that Namco celebrated the release of game as May 22, 1980. That got me curious so I started looking and apparently while the arcade cabinets were available to everyone in July 1980, the original Puck-Man cabinets were available in arcades in Shibuya, Tokyo on May 22. Additionally, sources such CNN list the release date as May 22 when asking for the original release date on Google. It seems on other articles, the release date is mixed, in fact List of Pac-Man video games list the release date as July in the infobox but as May 22 in the section about the first game. I'm wondering what you guys think we should list Pac-Man's release date as across Wikipedia. Whilst I think it should be May 22, I would also be fine with July instead. CaptainGalaxy 12:38, 26 December 2020 (UTC)

  • If both the Tokyo release on May 22 and the wide release in July are known and we have solid sourcing for them, then we should mention both and explain the situation. In contexts where only a single release would be mentioned (like on that longest-running franchises list) I would go for the earliest one.--AlexandraIDV 13:19, 26 December 2020 (UTC)
  • May 22, was when it went out on test. Putting a coin-op game out on test is a pre-release exercise to measure coin drop and see if the game is shaping up to be a hit. Often times, games are tweaked based on this feedback. Sometimes, a company will even decide not to release a game if it does not earn enough. Motion pictures go through a similar process with pre-screenings with test audiences. A pre-release screening is not considered the release date of a movie, nor is a market test considered the release date of a coin-operated game. Indrian (talk) 15:09, 26 December 2020 (UTC)
    • Indrian The problem is while it's still a test, Namco still says that May 22, 1980 was the birth of the game instead of a date in July. This is an excerpt from the official Pac-Man website "Born on May 22, 1980, PAC-MAN immediately rose to meteoric popularity, first in video game arcades, then through an array of branding and entertainment appearances." Granted they do also mention it being a test, "On May 22, the first focus test was held for PAC-MAN.", however I've never seen a company prefer a test date for a product over a stated release date unless they consider the test date the actual release date. CaptainGalaxy 15:29, 26 December 2020 (UTC)
      • They can say whatever they want, but if it contradicts actual fact, it really does not matter. The game was released in July. By way of counter example, the Cincinnati Reds baseball team claims they were established in 1869, which is completely inaccurate. The current Reds are the third professional team based in Cincinnati and were founded in 1881. The St. Louis Cardinals celebrated their 100th anniversary in 1992, but 1892 was the year they moved to the National League; the team was established in 1882 and played its first decade in the American Association. Corporations promoting their own past choose commemoration dates for their own reasons, which are not necessarily in step with historical fact. Therefore, they are often not reliable sources of information for this kind of thing. Indrian (talk) 15:46, 26 December 2020 (UTC)
        • By the way, the best source for Japanese coin-operated video game release dates is this book edited by Masumi Akagi, who was the founder and editor of Game Machine, the primary trade publication that covered the Japanese coin-operated amusement industry. You will find Pac-Man listed as a July 1980 release on page 51. Indrian (talk)
      • Pac-Man was released in July 1980 — that's the "release date", not the test market date. It really doesn't matter at all what Bandai Namco has to say, because the test market date isn't the date for the full, nationwide release. Their claim contradicts sources from both at the time and retrospectively, which say "Pac-Man was test-marketed in May 1980 and given a nationwide release in July". We should not be using May 22 as the release date because that's not the release date. Namcokid47 (Contribs) 15:55, 26 December 2020 (UTC)
  • (ftr I didn't realize it was a "test-screening", and do agree with Indrian)--AlexandraIDV 16:13, 26 December 2020 (UTC)
Ok that's fair. CaptainGalaxy 17:55, 26 December 2020 (UTC)

Category question

CS:GO just got added to Category:Video game leaks, which confused me a little bit. The category says it's for games that have been fully leaked, and I'm not sure that's clear from the category name. I don't know anything about category naming norms but it seems like this might be better with a name that doesnt suggest the category contains articles about leaks themselves. Anyone here have more experience with this? Alyo (chat·edits) 16:14, 25 December 2020 (UTC)

Alyo, The title says "video games that have been partially or fully leaked", so I don't see any issue here. Le Panini [🥪] 16:56, 25 December 2020 (UTC)
Le Panini, gotcha, as I said I'm not too familiar with category conventions so I didn't realize the descriptor on that page is considered part of the title. Thanks for answering, Alyo (chat·edits) 04:57, 26 December 2020 (UTC)
It's not, the description is the description, not the title. The description defines what should be in the category, if the name alone does not suffice. That said, I think the name is a little off- none of the articles in that category are specifically about "video game leaks". It would be more clear as "Category:Video games that have been leaked" or "Category:Leaked video games", since it's a cat of game articles. That's assuming, of course, that "being leaked on the internet" is a defining characteristic of these games, which I'd argue it isn't, but there's a thousand more useless categories out there. --PresN 06:14, 26 December 2020 (UTC)
Hm, using "title" instead of "description" was not a good phrasing, huh? I'm not good at answering questions. Yes, what defines "video game leaks"? Like, the game was illegally released and playable? The fact that it exists was leaked (which would then include Paper Mario: The Origami King)? A small amount content was revealed (like skins in Fortnite: Battle Royale), or a small amount of content was accidentally playable (so Among Us)? There should be more specification, or, in my opinion, multiple categories. Le Panini [🥪] 06:31, 26 December 2020 (UTC)
I'm also inclined to think that this category is a little unnecessary, but if there's any value to having one for games whose entire source code has been leaked, I think the name could at least be a little clearer. I'll figure out how to nominate this for renaming. Alyo (chat·edits) 15:39, 26 December 2020 (UTC)

Nom'd for renaming. Alyo (chat·edits) 19:09, 26 December 2020 (UTC)

List of best-selling PlayStation 4 video games

I don't see many of our more experienced project members in the page history of List of best-selling PlayStation 4 video games. I'm not really a PS gamer and I've only recently started to look at this list as it is being used as justification to try to update other lists that I do watchlist. There's two on going issues right now.

1) An updated sales figure for Spider-man keeps being added. The figure is sourced to an unreliable anonymous Twitter account, who quotes the LinkedIn profile of a former executive. This is completely unofficial and unusable. 2) The list is FULL of Statista sourcing. Statista is known to quote VGChartz and to essentially laundry unreliable sources like them. Unfortunately, Statista now hides their sourcing behind a paywall so I cannot confirm any individual usages, but all usages I have seen in the past before the paywall were cited to VGChartz.

The list needs some serious work by an experienced editor with PlayStation 4 interest. -- ferret (talk) 16:07, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

I can add it to my watchlist as one of my “don’t let this degrade even further” projects, but I won’t likely have the time to do the initial overhaul. Sergecross73 msg me 16:26, 22 December 2020 (UTC)
Yeah that's usually where I end up. I have a multitude of lists on my watchlist that are there mostly to prevent further degradation. -- ferret (talk) 16:29, 22 December 2020 (UTC)
Can someone who uses visual editor delete the “exclusivity” column? That’s not usually the type of thing we track on a sales list (or anywhere on Wikipedia.) Sergecross73 msg me 18:16, 26 December 2020 (UTC)
Done. Terribly formatted, besides our established precedences. -- ferret (talk) 18:58, 26 December 2020 (UTC)
  • Why would you not list whether or not it was exclusive for that system? I think that is relevant information. Otherwise you might think that is the total sales figures for the game, which is quite misleading, it should clarify which ones are released on other systems. The first thing listed is Grand Theft Auto V which sold 20 million on the PS4 but 135 million total. Dream Focus 19:11, 26 December 2020 (UTC)
Worth reiterating that GTA V should be removed from there. It’s from an unreliable source; no figures have actually been released by Rockstar or Take Two to either the press or via their financial publications. They delineate PC and console, but not within the console label. ImaginesTigers (talk) 19:27, 26 December 2020 (UTC)
Such lists should already be curated to reporting sales specific the platform, not in total. They are not lists of games available on "Platform" that are best-selling, but lists of "top-selling for platform". None of the other lists denote exclusivity. And it's long been deemed as something NOTCATALOG for the main game lists. -- ferret (talk) 20:36, 26 December 2020 (UTC)
They’re not doing it to help people understand sales figures, they’re doing it because that how gamerz on the internet love to boast while they play their role in the “console warz”. It doesn’t help illustrate anything because ps4 sales are already the only thing documented. Sergecross73 msg me 20:53, 26 December 2020 (UTC)
I don't see how that qualifies as a catalog. Knowing how many of the most popular games on a system were exclusives for it does help to understand why it sold as well as it did. Many consoles do sell well because of the exclusive games for them, that the main reason people choose them. We have an article for system sellers at Killer application. Dream Focus 21:51, 26 December 2020 (UTC)
I mean, sounds like some fascinating prose for the killer apps article, but the concept really wouldn’t be (and can’t be) explored in a list like this. Furthermore, before we had a consensus against it, I tried maintaining it at an article before. It’s a real pain to maintain. So many odd scenarios arise. “Exclusive” is easy when it’s just a Mario game only on the Wii. But it gets complicated with all the various scenarios that happen. (What if a game is released on Switch in 2018, iOS in 2019, and PS4 in 2020? What do you call a game that or PS4 exclusive except for in Japan, where it’s on ps3 and Switch too? Etc etc.) Sergecross73 msg me 23:31, 26 December 2020 (UTC)
Agree with Sergecross73. In addition to that, it’s a problematic term. Horizon: Zero Dawn may have eventually released on PC, but calling it a "timed exclusive" implies something that isn't true (that it was always known as such). Deathloop is a timed exclusive; it was announced as such, and known as such for a long time. HZD... not so much. ImaginesTigers (talk) 23:42, 26 December 2020 (UTC)

Wii FAR review

I've pinged for help before, but the Wii article is in danger of being delisted as a Featured Article. I've tried to fix most of the mechanical issues with it, but its been pointed out at the FAR review that there's content gaps (which I agree) related to development factors and its legacy given its Nintendo's best selling console. The article was originally in a state at the start of the FAR that had far too much "fanboy" level of detail and coverage which I've removed and replaced with better sourcing, but on these content gaps I would need help. It is likely this will be delisted if we can't fill those out; not that it cannot be repromoted but unless there's more help on it real soon here, it will be delisted. --Masem (t) 01:06, 27 December 2020 (UTC)

Masem, What specific parts of the article have history gaps? I'll do some rummaging for this. Le Panini [🥪] 05:49, 27 December 2020 (UTC)
From the comments at the FAR, there should be more on the development and there should definitely be more of a legacy section. --Masem (t) 05:51, 27 December 2020 (UTC)
Masem, Okay, It's gonna be much easier for me to list development facts that I find on the article's talk page, rather than trying to implement it myself with no knowledge of the article's structure. From there, you can implement the info as you see fit. Le Panini [🥪] 06:10, 27 December 2020 (UTC)
I've made a little plan of action on the Talk page. If anyone is willing to help, it'd be really appreciated. At this stage, Masem has already done a lot of the ground work. I think this is really manageable with a couple extra people, and much quicker than Masem working alone. This project is one of the bigger ones, so hopefully we can use that. — ImaginesTigers (talk) 06:46, 27 December 2020 (UTC)

Requested move: Simulation video game -> Simulation game

Following the recent renaming of racing video game to racing game, I propose we rename simulation video game too. Discussion here. Popcornfud (talk) 21:08, 27 December 2020 (UTC)

Statista/SuperData for video game sales.

Can we stop using these for video game sales from here on out? These are unreliable sources. Especially Statista who quotes VGChartz. Timur9008 (talk) 20:27, 27 December 2020 (UTC)

Have these sources been widely used? I haven't seen them myself. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs talk 18:38, 27 December 2020 (UTC)
Of the top of my head: List of highest-grossing video game franchises and List of best-selling PlayStation 4 video games + some new game releases I've noticed. Timur9008 (talk) 21:18, 27 December 2020 (UTC)
SuperData is a Nielsen company so I don't think we can rule that unreliable in the same manner Statista should be due to their use of VGChartz. --Masem (t) 18:43, 27 December 2020 (UTC)
Masem The SuperData thing was sparked by this [1] but yeah you're right, I forgot they are a Nielsen company. Timur9008 (talk) 20:53, 27 December 2020 (UTC)
In a case like this I’m not sure if we should be talking Epic’s world for it.--65.92.160.124 (talk) 20:39, 27 December 2020 (UTC)
That isn't really our call to make. If reliable, third-party sources are treating Epic's data without scepticism, we should be, too. Regarding the PS4 list, I've tagged a bunch of the unreliable sources, but the reality is the list needs to be nuked and started over. ImaginesTigers (talk) 20:46, 27 December 2020 (UTC)
That's... not really true. We should still treat such things we skepticism unless we have evidence that the journalist did the work to verify the claimed number otherwise (rare in this industry). Usually the way to do so is in-text attribution; even though we can cite to RS, it should still be framed as "Epic claimed X sales<ref>2ary RS</ref>". --Izno (talk) 21:09, 27 December 2020 (UTC)
MOS says, here, that "claimed" is a word to watch because it calls a statement into question: To write that someone asserted or claimed something can call their statement's credibility into question, by emphasizing any potential contradiction or implying a disregard for evidence. Are you saying that we should be using 'claimed' specifically to call out their statement's veracity? I think in-text attribution is fine, but I wouldn't say claimed. I'd say something like, "Using figures provided by Epic Games, Polygon said that [...]". ImaginesTigers (talk) 23:36, 27 December 2020 (UTC)
Yeah, that seems fine too. --Izno (talk) 06:38, 28 December 2020 (UTC)
You can also use "reported" as an alternate that's not going to raise hackles. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs talk 19:46, 28 December 2020 (UTC)

Possible FA Submission, feedback request: League of Legends

Hey everyone. I think I'm going to tackle my first submission for FA in the next few weeks. I raised League of Legends to GA a few months back, because it was in a really bad spot. There was a lot of cruft, and very little proper referencing, so I added sections about the game in other media, spin-offs, its reputation for toxicity (important), and rewrote most of the article. If anyone would be willing to offer any feedback on the article as it currently stands, I'd be really thankful. It doesn't matter if you haven't been involved in FA promotion — everyone can vote, so everyone's views would be welcome (although obviously anyone with experience would be great). There's a few obvious pain points right now:

  1. I want to remove every citation from Dot Esports. Although it’s valuable for sourcing some smaller games like Teamfight Tactics, and it’s part of our reliable sources, it’s really borderline to me. By the time I submit, claims solely sourced to that website should have their citations replaced or the statement removed.
  2. The section about champions. There's very little reliable coverage about the characters of the game, and their kits. As a result, I'm going to (as I have started to do) focus on coverage related to them, instead of their in-game representation. So, for example, a recent marketing campaign for a champion gone wrong.
  3. The section about esports is underdeveloped. I didn't do too much work to this section for the GA review, thinking at the time that it had its own article. Now, a thorough edit seems prudent, which I don't think should be difficult. Most of League's major representation in the mainstream media (like from The New York Times) tends to be about esports, given that it’s something of a novelty.

I saw Le Panini's recent nomination for Paper Mario: The Origami King, and some if it has been kind of brutal. One editor in particular seemed out of line to me, and I really hope that isn't the norm for FAC, but I just want to be as thorough as possible. Like I said, any feedback you have would be really welcome. ImaginesTigers (talk) 01:51, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

I would highly recommend a Peer Review before you come in swinging at FAC. Makes things easier for people wanting feedback anyway. GamerPro64 02:02, 23 December 2020 (UTC)
I did get a WP:GOCE copy edit shortly before the GA nom, and I think they were pretty thorough. I thought they were maybe too generous about reliable sourcing, so a lot has been changed since then, too. Do you think there are any glaring problems that only a PR could fix? I won't object to it if it needs it, for sure. ImaginesTigers (talk) 03:05, 23 December 2020 (UTC)
Think of it this way: Give FAC reviewers reason to feel confident in the article's quality before nominating. Remember that FA is the highest award of quality an article can get, and because there is pressure to "support" or "oppose" that promotion when reviewing, some may not review the article at all if they don't have confidence its been looked over by a few others. GAN is only one person's opinion on a vague set of criteria, and GOCE is more technical/grammar fixes. PRs are good because it's a casual invite to get more eyes looking at the article and offering comments, and the reviewers are not bound to "support" or "oppose" anything. TarkusABtalk/contrib 04:29, 23 December 2020 (UTC)
PRs can also be good because you'll (hopefully) get reviews by people outside of the video game area- FAC soft-enforces this (the coordinators usually won't promote a media article that's only been reviewed by editors who work in that area, they'll wait for at least one outside review), so it's helpful to see what kind of things a non-subject matter expert would get tripped up on. There's often jargon or explanations (mainly in gameplay sections) that rely on prior video game knowledge, and that can be hard to see yourself sometimes.
Also, no, that one reviewer at Paper Mario was a very odd anomaly. For a better recent example, see Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Sonic the Hedgehog/archive1 - if it's brutal it's because the reviewers really want to make sure that the article is as good as possible. GAN is about clearing a minimum bar; FAC is about not only clearing a bar but making everything as perfect as possible. My #1 advice for FAC (I moonlight as an FAC mentor sometimes) is to go into it expecting to get a ton of feedback, and not to take it personally- no matter how good you think an article is, you're guaranteed to get some strong or lengthy callouts. PRs help mostly by moving some of that feedback to pre-FAC, but most of all take it as a critique of the article, not of your editing skills, and critique coming from a place of wanting the article to be as good as possible, not to tear it down. --PresN 05:43, 23 December 2020 (UTC)
I would also say with the exception of that one editor who’s oppose was dismissed as not being actionable in the Origami King discussion the rest of it doesn’t appear to be all the brutal.--65.92.160.124 (talk) 07:01, 23 December 2020 (UTC)
Thanks TarkusAB, PresN and GamerPro94. I think you're right — PR is a good idea here, so I've submitted it for review, asking specifically for someone unfamiliar with the game. Obviously, though, I will take whoever comes my way, and be thankful for the feedback. I totally understand wanting the article to be as good as possible — that's the goal here! I'll try not be worn down by the process, but I'm confident it'll be rewarding. Thanks for all the great advice. ImaginesTigers (talk) 15:34, 23 December 2020 (UTC)
I think after the peer review is finished it would be a good idea to have another copy edit since it’s quite likely that there he will be some significant rewrites which could cause spelling and grammar errors to sneak by.--65.92.160.124 (talk) 21:41, 28 December 2020 (UTC)

Discussion on the notability of All Ghillied Up

Hey all. I've started a discussion at the talk page for All Ghillied Up out of concern regarding its notability. Feel free to participate in this. Namcokid47 (Contribs) 01:12, 29 December 2020 (UTC)

New Articles (December 14 to December 20)

Main page: Wikipedia:WikiProject Video games/New article announcements
 A listing of all articles newly added to the Video Games Wikiproject (regardless of creation date). Generated by v3.5 of the RecentVGArticles script and posted by PresN. Bug reports and feature requests are appreciated. --PresN 23:28, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

December 14

December 15

December 17

December 18

December 19

December 20

Yes, Pretty Princess Party is GA up there- made on Dec 2, nominated for AfD the next day, then saved by Alexandra IDV who tagged it on the 15th while expanding it, and it became a GA today. --PresN 23:28, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

Masem, I'd say it's pure WP:GAMECRUFT anyway. ~ Dissident93 (talk) 00:01, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

I gotta say that the ammount of GAN articles waiting to be reviewed is getting ridiculous... Roberth Martinez (talk) 23:56, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

It may be necessary to make another Review Thread soon. GamerPro64 04:46, 23 December 2020 (UTC)
Agreed. ~ Dissident93 (talk) 23:42, 23 December 2020 (UTC)
Filed a CfD for them, discussion is here. Namcokid47 (Contribs) 16:53, 29 December 2020 (UTC)

Almost all of the Official UK PlayStation Magazine magazines from 1995 to 2004 have been removed from the Internet Archive!

Something dreadful has happened in the Internet Archive! Tonight, when I looked for magazine articles in Official UK PlayStation Magazine from 1995 to 2004, it seems that almost all of them have been removed from the face of the earth! I even noticed for example that Issue #29 is not there anymore! This stinks! Now what? It seems that somebody needs to restore the removed articles pronto. --Angeldeb82 (talk) 03:37, 29 December 2020 (UTC)

Look, I don’t mean to be mean, but don’t you remember like the last 20 times you reported similar issues, and how they then resolved themselves naturally? Sergecross73 msg me 03:40, 29 December 2020 (UTC)
Well, take a look at this link. Somebody must have removed almost all of the articles. --Angeldeb82 (talk) 04:09, 29 December 2020 (UTC)
Hmm, could there be some bug that needed to be fixed? Lord Sjones23 (talk - contributions) 04:10, 29 December 2020 (UTC)
(edit conflict) I clicked on some random issues, and with the exception of the one you linked, they all loaded, so either this was mostly a temporary problem with server downtime, or the OP is a little alarmist... Keep in mind that copyright holders can contact Archive.org and ask to have items taken down at any time, and that if you want to have guaranteed continued access to anything on the internet, you should make your own personal backups.--AlexandraIDV 04:17, 29 December 2020 (UTC)
Yup, that's why I have a small set of backed up magazines such as Game Machine, Shooting Gameside and Beep! MegaDrive, to name a few; 'cause they can get nuked from the Internet at any given moment without warning so, keep that in mind Angeldeb82. Look at what happened to all of those Retro Gamer issues at IA. They no longer exists at the site... Roberth Martinez (talk) 07:08, 29 December 2020 (UTC)
Uh, the Retro Gamer issues are still up, just not as individual issues. You can still access them through the collection. Namcokid47 (Contribs) 16:15, 29 December 2020 (UTC)
I think the ones you're referring might be the Spanish variant but, I could be wrong... Roberth Martinez (talk) 18:02, 29 December 2020 (UTC)
It does look like they were pulled from the Archive. Copyright content can be removed from it if challenged. --Masem (t) 04:15, 29 December 2020 (UTC)
[2] I think this is the set of interesting links. --Izno (talk) 19:24, 29 December 2020 (UTC)

Please stop making these threads. GamerPro64 04:22, 29 December 2020 (UTC)

List of Mario role-playing games

I've gotta get this article done sooner or later, and I choose sooner. I can't seem to find an article addressing my concerns, so I'm asking here. I'm concerned about the notes for each of the titles:

  1. What qualifies a note that's worth mentioning? Are they supposed to summarize what the game's key components are?
  2. Should I remove the Japanese names from the notes, as I won't be able to find citation for them?
  3. Do I need to cite each different release country date?
  4. How detailed should the top paragraph be? For the Paper Mario portion, it's one sentence long.

Le Panini [🥪] 08:07, 26 December 2020 (UTC)

Maybe you can take a look at the other video game FLs (i.e. List of Final Fantasy media, List of Final Fantasy video games) as a point of reference? Lord Sjones23 (talk - contributions) 08:11, 26 December 2020 (UTC)
(edit conflict)x2: I would suggest checking out PresN's "How to Write Featured Lists of Video Games" for some help. Regarding your questions:
  1. I would make annotations for developer, publisher, original title, genre (but all games here are RPGs so you can skip that) and [other noteworthy facts if any stand out, for example how Superstar Saga was remade for the 3DS]
  2. You absolutely can find citations for Japanese titles - these are major releases from Nintendo and will be covered by the Japanese gaming press. In fact, Famitsu has an online database covering (almost) all console games released in Japan.
  3. Yes, everything needs to be backed up by sources. Again, Famitsu's database is a godsend for Japanese releases, and NA/EU releases should be easy to find in English-language publications.
  4. The lead should typically be four paragraphs or less (I got List of World of Darkness video games through FLC, and it has two paragraphs). The FLC criteria states we should aim for an engaging lead that introduces the subject and defines the scope and inclusion criteria, which might be of help (feel free to look at my WoD list or other similar FLs to see how it may look)--AlexandraIDV 08:26, 26 December 2020 (UTC)
    Alexandra IDV, Got it. Thanks for your help! I'll have this done soon. Le Panini [🥪] 19:11, 26 December 2020 (UTC)
    Alexandra IDV, Another question that might be silly: Can the Paper Mario series be its own separate good topic? It's connected to all of the other Mario RPG's here, and I have to make those sections good as well to promote it to FT. Does that mean that all other games from the Mario and Luigi series as well as the standalone RPG games are included in this potential GT, or can it just be the Paper Mario series?
    Another question, is the Paper Mario series worthy enough of having its own list article? Le Panini [🥪] 06:10, 28 December 2020 (UTC)
At 6 items, it's too small to support a list. You could do an article if there's enough out there talking about the subseries itself, though I suspect that would be difficult. As far as a GT goes... maybe? It's been done before, having a topic that's well-defined but with a lead article/list that has a larger scope, but usually it's e.g. "the main Final Fantasy games" with a lead that covers the entire franchise; I suppose that's essentially the precedent you'd be going for here, though to be safe you should probably ask GamerPro64 or at WT:FTC once the Mario RPG list is done. --PresN 06:34, 28 December 2020 (UTC)
I'll ping @GamerPro64: here. Le Panini [🥪] 06:39, 28 December 2020 (UTC)
I was already pinged by Pres. I would like to see what the topic would encompass first to really see how viable this topic would be. GamerPro64 06:40, 28 December 2020 (UTC)
@GamerPro64: It would look like this. I'll put some notes on progress.
edit | discuss
Paper Mario series
7 articles
Paper Mario
Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door
Super Paper Mario
Paper Mario: Sticker Star
Paper Mario: Color Splash
Paper Mario: The Origami King
Le Panini [🥪] 07:37, 28 December 2020 (UTC)

PresN, AAAND do the Mario and Luigi and Paper Mario logos count as simple geometry for creative commons, or is there copyright? Le Panini [🥪] 06:43, 28 December 2020 (UTC)

Well, I'm certainly not an expert on that, but... given that the Super Mario logo is free-use on commons as text with simple shapes (File:Mario Series Logo.svg), and the Paper Mario logo seems to be the exact same thing but with the letters for "Paper" instead of "Super", I think so? I guess the same for Mario & Luigi, as again it's just the text "Mario & Luigi" in colors. --PresN 03:26, 29 December 2020 (UTC)
I think that the list should be split into two separate series articles (Mario & Luigi and Paper Mario). It didn't really make sense to combine two discrete series into one single list just because they feature Mario and are RPG. OceanHok (talk) 11:24, 29 December 2020 (UTC)
I don't think there are enough M&L or PM games to warrant separate lists for each series (and SMRPG is certainly discussed as a predecessor to Paper Mario... If possible to keep them all together, that's helpful to readers). I would advise against a split unless you're specifically intending to split it into Mario & Luigi (series) and Paper Mario (series), rather than into lists. If nothing else, FLC is likely to question a list with only 5 entries.--AlexandraIDV 15:18, 29 December 2020 (UTC)
Yes, Mario & Luigi (series) and Paper Mario (series) are precisely what I mean. A series overview article is probably what this GT needs rather than a Mario RPG list. OceanHok (talk) 16:28, 29 December 2020 (UTC)
Alexandra IDV, Is there an example of a video game list that combines multiple series like this, for reference? Le Panini [🥪] 19:30, 29 December 2020 (UTC)
@Le Panini: Sure - like these are sub-series of the Mario franchise, there are Mystery Dungeon's sub-series and World of Darkness's.--AlexandraIDV 19:35, 29 December 2020 (UTC)

Category:Fortnite Battle Royale guest characters

Category:Fortnite Battle Royale guest characters looks like a newly created category, is this one legit? 2601:249:8B80:4050:CDA8:9A60:4C11:2D72 (talk) 16:08, 29 December 2020 (UTC)

Sure sounds like miniscule trivia and not a defining characteristic. —  HELLKNOWZ   ▎TALK 16:12, 29 December 2020 (UTC)
It sure is filling in though! 2601:249:8B80:4050:2127:EEA4:864A:2E37 (talk) 23:52, 29 December 2020 (UTC)
Sent to xFD for categories. --Masem (t) 23:57, 29 December 2020 (UTC)

Abbreviated platforms in the Release infobox

Hello. There's something that has been bothering me a bit.

I have seen the infobox template documentation being referred to as the reason to abbreviate the platforms in the release section, but per the documentation: "Platforms can be abbreviated to fit in one line and should be listed as bolded section..."

I feel like the use of "can" only states that it's allowed, but often it's not neccessary at all. So does it have to fit?

I believe that many articles right now are perfectly fine and not cluttered as they are. What's more, it makes it look neater, consistent and easily readable. What are your opinions on this? MaksimFisher (talk) 03:11, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

What "example"? Ben · Salvidrim! ✉ 03:17, 21 December 2020 (UTC)
I wanted to make another point about the previous discussions on the topic, but forgot to delete that part when I decided against it. I have edited it out now, sorry for the confusion. MaksimFisher (talk) 03:28, 21 December 2020 (UTC)
I can't really think of any circumstances where it would not be preferable to try to keep the header as a single line...? Are you saying that you think something like this example is desirable?--AlexandraIDV 03:49, 21 December 2020 (UTC)
I believe that it looks fine. If it's too long it is desirable to change Microsoft Windows to just Windows, and PlayStation 4 to PS4, but definetly not Saturn to Sat, Dreamcast to DC and Nintendo Switch to NS.
Quite a few of discussions here in the past came to the conclusion that there isn't an official abbreviation for Xbox consoles either.
So, other than the Sony consoles that have official abbreviations (in the logos and everywhere, really), in my opinion it's better to keep it a full word: Sega Saturn > Saturn, Nintendo Switch > Switch, etc. MaksimFisher (talk) 06:06, 21 December 2020 (UTC)
I still wish we could somehow merge the platform and release parameters into one, which would help against having to list them twice. ~ Dissident93 (talk) 07:31, 21 December 2020 (UTC)
If we only cared about the first released date, delegating the "details" of the other releases (platform and region) to the lede and body, that would drastically simplify matters. --Masem (t) 23:43, 21 December 2020 (UTC)
Masem, yeah that's also something I've been a proponent of too. ~ Dissident93 (talk) 00:03, 22 December 2020 (UTC)
It would also solve the Wikidata issue, tracking only the single release date rather than the complicated mess we've sorta forced on ourselves (not that the VG infobox uses Wikidata much but this is probably one key step limiting that). --Masem (t) 00:06, 22 December 2020 (UTC)
Re: (not that the VG infobox uses Wikidata much but this is probably one key step limiting that). Every single field except Release is wikidataified. -- ferret (talk) 00:08, 22 December 2020 (UTC)
It pushes into Wikidata (good) but it doesn't pull from, as some infobox templates do, like the one for Arecibo Telescope. Whether this is good or bad, particularly for video games, I don't know, so whether we want that full feature is a question. --Masem (t) 00:27, 22 December 2020 (UTC)
@Masem: I don't know what you're talking about. Every field in IBVG except release will pull data from Wikidata if available and left unspecified locally. No infoboxes push into Wikidata, that's done by bots who are importing data from Enwiki. IBVG has supported pulling Wikidata since 2016, Special:Diff/733533269. -- ferret (talk) 14:20, 22 December 2020 (UTC)
My bad, I thought we had something different. --Masem (t) 15:25, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

"Only first date" continues to be something that I think might make sense in some cases ("came out in North America on December 1 and Europe on December 2") and not so much in others ("came out in Japan in 1992 and internationally in 2012"), and I know that as a reader I often want to know when a game was released in my region, and that I immediately look to the infobox as a place where I know I will find that information due to it being relatively uniform across articles. I can't see it being a service to readers to make that information less accessible.--AlexandraIDV 02:54, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

    • I know that's what we have done but we're the only media that does that. Films are the only other media to use multiple release dates - the first screening and the wide release in major English-speaking regions). We could limit our release dates to the key regions (NA, EU, AUS/NZ, and country-of-publication like JP) in the infobox and forgo platforms as to simply things but I feel as soon as we start that path, we'd have editors also wanting platforms designated too. Or if there was someway to designed the more complex release date from the simple "first release date" that would help too. --Masem (t) 14:39, 22 December 2020 (UTC)
  • Has it really been five years? I still recommend reducing the infobox to the first major release, creating a breakout template for the Development section if lists of release dates by region or platform are deemed necessary (table autopopulated from Wikidata, my liege?), and using relative terms (not lists of dates) when release windows warrant mention in prose. czar 06:07, 23 December 2020 (UTC)
    • If there was a clean way to do this for all existing game articles so that there would be two date parameters in the template, one for the first release date ignoring platform + regio (eg the one easily tied to Wikidata without extra work), and another to group the other releases as we normally do, then we can use the collapsible list format to show just the first release and expand to show the details, with the nice default that if there's only the one release date, there would be nothing to expand. But this would require editing/touching every infobox vg use to make sure it works correctly. --Masem (t) 18:44, 23 December 2020 (UTC)
      Masem, I'd be around to fix as many as I can if we ever do decide to do something like this, as I'm sure most members here would too. ~ Dissident93 (talk) 23:40, 23 December 2020 (UTC)
      • Well, the "least painful" way I could see would be the following steps:
        • The infobox template would add a field "first_released" that would pull from Wikidata property "publication date" (P577) for the game if not specified. The existing "released" data field should not be touched but would fall into what is going to be collapsed (This would not break anything to start). Sandbox versions of the template would be worked to make sure that this collapsed mechanism works with various argument cases.
        • Once we're happy that the sandbox template is working right, then we'd need to go through the existing uses of the template to deconstruct those that may use the collapsed list format already to remove that. There's probably on the order of tens to a hundred or so, only guessing on this, and I don't know if there's easy tools to identify these (like through AWB or the like, though it should be a matter of finding instances of the templates and checking the "released" parameter field). This is a manual step and would prep the "first_released" field but would not yet "activate" it since we'd still be working on the older version of the infobox template.
        • Once that is done, then we can transition the new infobox template over, and spot check for any live-issue problems.
        • Then after this switch, we want to catch any "release" fields that are less than 20 characters, which means only one date is included in it. In such a case, we should take out the "released" and just leave the "first-released" field (no need for anything collapsed). There may be obvious cleanup cases after the fact.
        But obviously we need project consensus to make such a radical change. --Masem (t) 23:56, 23 December 2020 (UTC)
This seems like a solid proposal to me.--Martin IIIa (talk) 23:29, 30 December 2020 (UTC)
If it can be solved on the technical side (I'm not a programmer), then I'm all for this.--AlexandraIDV 15:58, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

Have the best 2021 you can have!

As 2021 has either already happened or will happen for you wherever you live, I hope you have the best year you can possibly have! 2020 was atrocious for us all, but we managed to strive with big improvements to this WikiProject, so all I can say is let's work harder to make this place the best it can truly be! Let's go!!!!!!! CaptainGalaxy 00:22, 1 January 2021 (UTC)

Right back at ya, kudos, regards cheers bst, --, ~~~~, take care, uh... anything else I'm missing? Le Panini [🥪] 00:43, 1 January 2021 (UTC)
I second this. This year stink, stank, stunk. It's hard to imagine that this year is going to end. Like, we're done, cya kind of end. To all the new articles, promoted articles, featured articles, and Animal Crossing:New Horizons! Le Panini [🥪] 01:33, 1 January 2021 (UTC)

League of Legends — Request

Hi there!

I'm trying to expand the Reception section of League of Legends. Old sources are primarily what I'm looking for—I've been able to find a few from big outlets (IGN, Kotaku), but most are from smaller ones. I'm struggling to fill it out, though. Does anyone have any resources to point out for reviews of the game from around the time of the release? The official launch was October 2009, but anything into 2010 would be really great, too. Hell, anything that isn't currently on the article would be really helpful. If not, no big deal. Thanks for reading! — ImaginesTigers (talk) 16:43, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

ImaginesTigers, I'm no good with old reviews. Newer reviews are right up my alley. Here's some I found.

PCMag Review: [3]

PC Gamer Review: [4]

GameSpot Review: [5]

GamesRadar+ Review: [6]

And maybe you'll get something out of Eurogamer: [7]

Hope any of this helps. I found all of these using the Wikipedia:WikiProject Video games/Search engine, which only shows sites that are reliable. Le Panini [🥪] 04:27, 1 January 2021 (UTC)
This is great! Thank you so much! I completely forgot about that function. ImaginesTigers (talk) 06:16, 1 January 2021 (UTC)

What's in a stub?

So using some AWB-fu I went through the full list of articles in Category:Video game stubs, converted them all into their talk pages, and then removed the ones that didn't contain class=Stub or class=Star, just to see out of curiosity if there were any untagged pages that we should have tagged to the project or find articles that are unlikely to be assessed properly/need to be reassesed as a result. In the collapse is the data I found in case anyone was curious.

No one has to do anything with this data, but I thought it might be of interest to some of the people more knowledgeable about assessment than me and whether or not these articles should be in the video game stub category. For me it was mostly an experiment in regex. --Lightlowemon (talk) 08:24, 26 December 2020 (UTC)

Some of them are non-stubs where someone forgot to remove the tag. Others are stubs incorrectly assessed as C-class. So... it depends. Stub usually means it's just a few sentences. Even having a paragraph about the subject can elevate it to Start class unless the only part of it that's referenced is one or two sentences.ZXCVBNM (TALK) 09:55, 26 December 2020 (UTC)
I've gone through everything but the unassessed-class articles with stub tags and made them align- either removing the tag, changing the rating, often both, or redirecting a minor substub. There's a handful remaining like the Pokemon list where the subject isn't a video game but the stub category is under us (e.g. a couple Atari computers), which is an artifact of the wonky category system and nothing that needs fixed. Thanks for listing these, Lightlowemon --PresN 23:15, 30 December 2020 (UTC)
Much appreciated PresN, thanks for that, just trying to help out. --Lightlowemon (talk) 09:08, 1 January 2021 (UTC)

New Articles (December 21 to December 27)

Main page: Wikipedia:WikiProject Video games/New article announcements
 A listing of all articles newly added to the Video Games Wikiproject (regardless of creation date). Generated by v3.5 of the RecentVGArticles script and posted by PresN. Bug reports and feature requests are appreciated. --PresN 03:43, 29 December 2020 (UTC)

December 21

December 22

December 23

December 24

December 25

December 26

December 27

Finally, we have some proper categorization of video games by taxonomic ranks. --PresN 03:43, 29 December 2020 (UTC)
  • I'm a bit worried about Barone (The guy behind Stardew Valley). He's only known for that, and most of those details can be in the Stardew Valley article; just like the case of InnerSloth re: Among Us, devs with only one notable game really shouldn't have separate pages from those games. --Masem (t) 04:08, 29 December 2020 (UTC)
    Masem, please consider AfD'ing. IceWelder [✉] 22:51, 30 December 2020 (UTC)
    • Just my two cents. If this is considered for deletion or merge, it should be because of a perceived lack of significant coverage, not because he's only known for one game: that pretty much describes someone like Phil Fish, and to an extent Toby Fox, who are eminently notable. Haleth (talk) 15:49, 1 January 2021 (UTC)
      • Both Fish and Fox have significant other activities outside of the one game they developed, whereas Barone only has Stardew Valley to his name. --Masem (t) 17:06, 1 January 2021 (UTC)

Everlasting Summer

So, I've been intending to nominate Everlasting Summer for deletion at AfD, as it doesn't seem to meet WP:GNG. The references included in the article are all wikis, databases, WP:PRIMARY, store entries, and seemingly unreliable reviews (itndaily, LewdGamer and Thumbsticks). My WP:BEFORE searches didn't lead anywhere. Any opinions on this one? Thanks in advance! Jovanmilic97 (talk) 11:09, 1 January 2021 (UTC)

Thanks to both for the response, I've sent it to AfD. Jovanmilic97 (talk) 11:35, 2 January 2021 (UTC)

Timeline of release years - new parameter

A new parameter has been added to {{Timeline of release years}}, compressempty. When used, the template will compress year gaps into a single row. This can be used to shrink down timelines that are excessively long due to long gaps between entries. It should generally not be set for games with scattered 2 year gaps, like say God of War (franchise) and Warcraft, but it's would be great for timelines like Microsoft Flight Simulator or Ninja Gaiden. The parameter is optional and must be explicitly added. -- ferret (talk) 14:20, 2 January 2021 (UTC)

Just a suggestion, but wouldn't a simple "compress" suffice as the code too? At least it makes more intuitive sense. ~ Dissident93 (talk) 21:21, 2 January 2021 (UTC)
I don't see it as a big enough deal for another code change and have to go find any usages that have already occurred. It's intuitive as is, compress by itself doesn't really say whats being compressed. -- ferret (talk) 22:53, 2 January 2021 (UTC)
That's fine, I assumed it would have been a quick fix. ~ Dissident93 (talk) 00:05, 3 January 2021 (UTC)

Tank controls

I created the tank controls article a few years ago as it seemed like something that should be covered somewhere. But it remains a short stubby article. I feel we ought to be able to move it into another article - I tried putting it into Virtual_camera_system#Fixed, but that's about, well, camera systems, so a couple of paragraphs suddenly talking about a control system didn't feel like it fit, especially since you can have tank controls regardless of camera system. Any other suggestions? Popcornfud (talk) 14:53, 3 January 2021 (UTC)

  • Is there a possible parent article on "control schemes"? I'm not sure what other common ones there are but things like WADS-control, etc. As that way the full list has a better chance for notability than one type by itself. --Masem (t) 16:44, 3 January 2021 (UTC)
  • Isnt there a video game glossary/terms article out there somewhere? Could it be placed there? (I have no strong feelings on it, just throwing it out there.) Sergecross73 msg me 16:49, 3 January 2021 (UTC)
Sergecross73: Yeah, Zxcvbnm mentioned it -- Glossary of video game terms. But it’s used for colloquialisms like "rage quit" and descriptors ("PvP" etc), and "tank controls" is not exactly a phrase in common usage, nor ever likely to be looked up. I don't think that's the right place to put it. If it has to go somewhere (Haleth has noted that there are ways this article can be beefed up), then it'd be to something specific to the topic, like what Masem said (imo, anyway!). — ImaginesTigers (talk) 17:10, 3 January 2021 (UTC)
The article namedropped developmental info from Grim Fandango briefly, and passing mentions of Resident Evil and Tomb Raider but otherwise doesn't go into any detail about how and why they were implemented; the early games in both IP's are seminal works in the video game industry and there's plenty of contemporary and retrospective developmental info as well as commentary on gameplay. There have been articles written up about why tank controls were bad (or were good with the occasional dissenting opinion) and why that kind of control scheme was gradually abandoned over the years. Extracted information from a few of these articles could easily build a sizeable reception section. An entry on a glossary list which briefly states what the term means is not nearly as helpful or informative as a full article when there's coverage waiting to be used. Haleth (talk) 18:01, 3 January 2021 (UTC)
Haleth: Agreed! Popcornfud made a standard start-class article, with room for expansion. A similar question: why don't we have an article about swimming controls for underwater levels of games? I agree that tank controls are fine and can be notable enough, but underwater levels/swimming controls are a much more popular topic with, I expect, a lot more criticism. Does that currently exist? — ImaginesTigers (talk) 18:24, 3 January 2021 (UTC)
"Swimming controls" can really mean anything, since they are not clearly defined like tank controls are. They are definitely panned in some games, but that alone isn't really the basis of an article. And, well, swimming is supposed to be harder than just walking around, that's the point. Similarly, "underwater level" is too vague. A level full of water is not particularly unique.ZXCVBNM (TALK) 19:24, 3 January 2021 (UTC)
I haven't done any research to see if underwater levels and swimming controls have been discussed in an academic context, so you might be right! :] — ImaginesTigers (talk) 20:52, 3 January 2021 (UTC)
Water levels have certainly been exclusively discussed in a critical context like tank controls as a topic. Whether they are best written about as a standalone article or better off as a section on level (video games) is another matter to consider. I think the reason why tank controls get so much attention is because players have to put up with the control scheme for the entirety of the game that uses them, whereas swimming sections or ice levels (another frequently discussed control scheme/video game topic) are almost always transient and don't usually characterize the primary gameplay experience. And like rail shooters, they were very prevalent at one point if discussing video games within a historical context. Haleth (talk) 01:04, 4 January 2021 (UTC)

Is anyone familiar with these sources?

I'm attempting to take a look at the old FA Shadow of the Colossus for WP:URFA/2020, a project seeking to check up on pre-2015 FA promotions to make sure that they still meet the standards. Some of the sources used are very unfamiliar to me, and aren't listed at WP:VGRS or are listed as no consensus, so I'm wondering if any of y'all are familiar with them:

  • TrustedReviews
  • Press Start Online
  • The Gaming Intelligence Agency
  • Insert Credit (no consensus)
  • Cane and Rinse
  • Zone of the Gamers
  • GameChew
  • Find Articles
  • Games Industry
  • ControllerFreaks
  • Kikizo (no consensus)
  • Thunderbolt (no consensus)
  • Destructoid (situational, is Chad Concelmo a reliable author?)
  • Kotaku circe 2007 and 2009 (post-2010 is listed as okay, but two are from before then)
  • HeyUGuys

Sources that are listed as unreliable at VGRS and need replaced

  • Neoseeker
  • Nintendo Everything

My guess is most of those aren't FA-quality, so once reliability is determined, either these sources will need to be replaced, or a pre-FAR notice will need to be given on the article's talk page. Hog Farm Bacon 03:36, 4 January 2021 (UTC)

Hog Farm, I looked into Chad, he now works at GolinHarris writing for Nintendo. Other than that, I found nothing. He seems to be a silly blog writer. Le Panini [🥪] 03:59, 4 January 2021 (UTC)
Thanks. Do you agree that a pre-FAR notice might be warranted to be listed at Wikipedia:Featured article review/notices given? Not that a FAR would be very soon, especially if there's work done on it, but just as a record that the sourcing has been weighed on the scale and found wanting? Hog Farm Bacon 04:02, 4 January 2021 (UTC)
Hog Farm, I don't see why not. I bet the old featured article reviewers would address your concerns. If not, it may come to the point of FAR. Come to think of it, this transaction here is notifying the editors of the notice, too. Le Panini [🥪] 04:14, 4 January 2021 (UTC)
GamesIndustry.biz is a major website about the business of video games, and is a sister site to Eurogamer, one of the largest European video game news outlets - this is a high-quality RS. Aside from that one, and Kotaku (which as you say is pre-2010) and Destructoid, I'm unfamiliar with the listed sources.--AlexandraIDV 04:07, 4 January 2021 (UTC)
Thanks for responding, I'm striking that one from the list of questionable ones. Will be giving this one the pre-FAR notice, hopefully it can get cleaned up. (I know nothing about video games when it comes down to it). Hog Farm Bacon 04:17, 4 January 2021 (UTC)
I’ve used Trusted Reviews as a source before and I’ve found their content to be pretty good, plus they have an editorial team and other hallmarks of a reliable source, so I'd say they're reliable. Devonian Wombat (talk) 13:28, 4 January 2021 (UTC)
Yeah, Trusted Reviews are pretty reliable. CaptainGalaxy 16:36, 4 January 2021 (UTC)
Yeah, outside of GamesIndustry (very reliable), and maybe Trusted Reviews, I doubt any of the rest would generally be usable by our standards, let alone FA standards, which are often even higher due to the level of review they receive. Sergecross73 msg me 19:36, 4 January 2021 (UTC)
I've used GamesIndustry.biz, GIA, Destructoid and Kikizo in articles. GamesInd is golddust for press announcements and similar, while the others I use mainly for info otherwise unobtainable (intended Koudelka NGPC port), transcribed/translated creator comments (Shin Megami Tensei: Nine), or full interviews (Cursed Mountain, Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Ring of Fates). I don't use them for reviews or gameplay information in VG articles I've worked on unless reconfirmed by another source as those details can be rather spotty at best and downright untrue at worst. --ProtoDrake (talk) 20:01, 4 January 2021 (UTC)

Moving all "year in video games" articles

Is there any reason why articles like 2021 in video games have the topic as "video games" instead of the industry, "video gaming"? I think they should all be moved to "<year> in video gaming" as most articles like these on Wikipedia use the industry instead of the noun in the names.  Nixinova   T   C   22:57, 4 January 2021 (UTC)

A year or so ago, we moved them from "YYYY in video gaming" to the current, because "video gaming" is not the industry name, that refers to the act of playing video games. It is the "video game industry" that the entire field goes by. --Masem (t) 23:29, 4 January 2021 (UTC)
And what a great change it was. Goodbye to bad jargon. Popcornfud (talk) 23:37, 4 January 2021 (UTC)

Review Thread 50!

Here we are, ladies and gentlemen. This is the first review thread of 2021. And this is the fiftieth review thread at that. To commemorate the new year, now is the time to bring everything together and bring up all the articles needing reviews. So lets do this.

FAC
GAN
PR
Article assessments

And, as usual, we have a backlog at the Request board. And with it being at 2021, we now have five years of backlog that needs to be conquered. So please help out with our backlog. GamerPro64 00:56, 1 January 2021 (UTC)

In regards to the reception section of certain articles

Since I've started to now work on the reception section of video game articles fully (i.e. using them to explain what critics though of the title back in the day instead of just placing them and leaving it just like that), I'm going to commit myself though 2021 (don't know how long this process will last) to expand and fully finish the ones I previously worked on (those from the completed 1000 challenge to name an example). The scores were my main issue when it came to the reception section back when I was new to the WP:VG but now knowing that scores are not used in them is what led me to this self-imposed decision. So, if you see an article whose reception section was expanded by me (KGRAMR) then, let me know in my talk page and I'll get around it. Roberth Martinez (talk) 07:11, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

Is there something you need help with? Games articles, series or articles?Tintor2 (talk) 14:53, 31 December 2020 (UTC)
@Tintor2:No, what I'm saying is that I'll finish the reception section of game articles that I had a hand on. That's all... Roberth Martinez (talk) 15:36, 31 December 2020 (UTC)
I hope you don't mind if I expand a few of them myself. It may be foolish pride, but I feel like I've gotten to become an old hand at expanding reception sections.--Martin IIIa (talk) 03:36, 1 January 2021 (UTC)
@Martin IIIa:Hey! No problem at all! Roberth Martinez (talk) 16:18, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

Notability for video game items

Given the ongoing discussion about the Klobb in GoldenEye, I've been paying fairly close attention to what people have been saying as it relates to video game items generally. Take, for instance, PresN's suggestion that "[i]ndividual game elements are pretty much never notable on their own". OceanHok's takes it one step further, saying we must consider "if it remains notable when it is not discussed with the game".

I'd like to start a discussion about video game items and their notability, separate from the game in which they appear. Let's look at some examples.

  1. The Master Sword and Triforce from The Legend of Zelda series: exists within a list.
  2. The Metal Gear from the Metal Gear series: a full article.
  3. The Pip-Boy from the Fallout series: a full article.
  4. The Lancer Assault Rifle from the Gears of War series: a full article.
  5. The M6D Pistol from the Halo franchise: a full article.
  6. The Smart Pistol from the Titanfall series: a full article.

These articles all vary in size and quality. All are listed at C class on this Project's scale, except for the article on the Triforce, which is Start class. Many of these articles have references but — as we are seeing on Talk:Klobb) — references which simply mention the item are clearly not enough. With both PresN and OceanHok's words in mind, how do we establish if a game's individual elements are notable, detached from the context of the game? The WP:GNG are not really helpful. Might it be useful to establish our own sub-criteria, derived from the Wikipedia-wide policy, about video game elements? This could include items, but also characters. We currently have no existing policy; just a (very old) very old essay.

Interested to hear everyone's thoughts. – ImaginesTigers (talk) 20:10, 24 December 2020 (UTC)

My major concerns with applying the GNG as liberally as it has been to keeping these sorts of articles about video game items/components (I'd include a lot of the individual campaign mission articles I've been seeing as well) is I've yet to see ones that can actually be a good article, notability questions aside. The out-of-universe information for these things mostly is just minor lines out of reviews and maybe lists of best X-type stuff. Usually the objects are so minor that there's not a ton you could write about their design, either. So you end up with 600–800 word C-class articles because that's really the upper limit of it unless you start filling it with primary-source-cited in-universe content. We're creating game guide bloat targets.
I think people are resistant to getting rid of them in part because there's really no place in any Halo article for the M6D Pistol, the Lancer in Gears of War, etc; it doesn't make sense as a redirect or merge because the items themselves are generally trivial insofar as a general-purpose encyclopedia talking about the game, and might basically only merit a line or two. Personally, I think that's also an indication that this stuff is ultimately gamecruft.
Speaking practically, as long as the same number of limited voters and article creators show up at AfDs, these articles are going to be kept, and I don't see any way around that. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs talk 20:25, 24 December 2020 (UTC)
I'm currently making a "notability for video game characters" essay for the next newsletter. Le Panini [🥪] 20:35, 24 December 2020 (UTC)
Thanks for your input, David. I think the points you make are all very reasonable. I wish there was a better way forward, because these tiny C class articles are so borderline: they can never be made into anything else; their capacity for expansion (even by a willing and devoted editor)is nil because they are drawing from very spurious sources, with a liberal liberal application of the GNG. Le Panini, you might want to have a look at this, which failed to establish consensus in the past. — ImaginesTigers (talk) 20:42, 24 December 2020 (UTC)
I generally agree with David’s sentiments, outside of the bits he notes about the GA process. GA is great for motivating editors to improve articles, but it has no business being used as a metric in notability discussions or standards. Sergecross73 msg me 21:42, 24 December 2020 (UTC)
I probably should have clarified, but I'm using "good" in the sense of quality articles, not GAs. GAN and FAC criteria indeed don't actually mention or consider notability directly, and we've had plenty of GAs and FAs that have since been deleted or merged (Spoo will always come to mind, and apropos to this conversation as a fictional item, albeit one from television.) Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs talk 22:10, 24 December 2020 (UTC)
Okay, in that case, then I entirely agree with you then. I have run across (experienced) editors who have a mindset of “if it can’t be brought up to GA status then merge it” and I don’t agree with that sort of approach. Sergecross73 msg me 23:12, 24 December 2020 (UTC)
  • The issue is more WP:GAMEGUIDE and WP:VGSCOPE than WP:NOTABILITY. Wikipedia isn't supposed to be WP:PLOT summaries or other in-universe information. The in-universe information is always incidental to explaining a subject's real world significance. With very few exceptions, most video game items have no meaningful in universe information to write about. I don't think those articles become better when you can scroll to the bottom and see "this is the third best weapon in Fortnite according to a list of top ten weapons in Fortnite". And I'm not sure how to address the proliferation of clickbait journalism where sites have discovered you get fewer clicks covering a new indy game, and more clicks writing top 10 lists. But my hope is we can find some kind of consensus about how to stem the tide of problematic articles. It's going to be a tsunami considering that three of the examples were created in the last 3 months. Jontesta (talk) 22:58, 24 December 2020 (UTC)
I didn't note this in my original list, but Power Armor (Fallout) is probably worse than all the others on this list... — ImaginesTigers (talk) 23:45, 24 December 2020 (UTC)
What keeps jumping out at me is the amount of weight coming from a journalist's reactions to insignificant in-universe details. When I think of real-world impact, I think of an item's influence on the industry or at least a game genre. I don't think of an entire subjective paragraph about how one journalist thinks the weapon used to feel awesome but then they rebalanced it and it doesn't feel as awesome anymore. That type of overly subjective coverage damages Wikipedia as a source of objective knowledge. Jontesta (talk) 23:52, 24 December 2020 (UTC)
This is what I would call an artefact of what some reporters (eg. Jason Schreier) have dubbed the "enthusiast press". It's a style that games journalists often lapse into, even outlets with otherwise reliable coverage. It’s what is making these discussions so difficult, in a way — so much is invested into the outlet's name that the type of coverage they are giving is drowned out by it being a reliable source. Does it matter if it’s a reliable source, if their article is just fluff piece? I really do think a discussion about this needs to happen. Some of these articles are just... really bad for Wikipedia, and especially bad for this Project. — ImaginesTigers (talk) 00:29, 25 December 2020 (UTC)
  • As an example of an example of a VG item that is likely notable on its own is the gravity gun, in that it has been an influence in other games and not isolated to a single game or series. That might be a factor here. Same might be said of BFG (weapon) but I feel that's more possible to merge into Doom (franchise). --Masem (t) 23:14, 24 December 2020 (UTC)
  • Just registering that I agree with David Fuchs and Jontesta. -- ferret (talk) 00:06, 25 December 2020 (UTC)
  • While I don't necessarily disagree with the assessments about Klobb... I probably overestimated the notability there, declaring that all video game items are suddenly non-notable is absolutely a double standard. Pretty much no other Wikiproject has that standard - especially not film or comics. Imposing a different interpretation of GNG on the VG Wikiproject is problematic at best, and the lofty standard of what "can" be an article doesn't seem to be shared by most Wikipedians. And certainly by the typical interpretation of GNG, something like Power Armor is eminently notable (and has a ton of sources that have yet to be added to the article, but certainly could be).ZXCVBNM (TALK) 01:03, 25 December 2020 (UTC)
I should also add that whether it's only relevant "in-universe" or in the real world does not matter in terms of GNG, as long as it has a lot of coverage in RS. Much of the arguments I see revolve around the fact that a fictional item like a video game gun does not have real world relevance, but that absolutely would not fly in a deletion discussion. Clearly it has some kind of relevance if the press devoted time to writing about it. Particularly, I'd like to know what about a (notable) fictional item is "really bad" for Wikipedia. WP:NOTPAPER, so there is no limit on what articles can be made.ZXCVBNM (TALK) 01:06, 25 December 2020 (UTC)
My concern is not necessarily WP:GNG, but whether a completely separate page is needed. If the fictional item barely has any development information or an extensive reception section, or if it doesn't have multiple RS discussing only the fictional item, then I do not see the point of splitting them out. These fictional items may survive an AfD easily, but may not survive merge discussion because it makes more sense to put these information back to their parent article from a WP:MERGE POV given how short and limited they are. WP:NEXIST ultimately cannot save an article from a merge/redirect discussion because notability really isn't the issue. In my opinion, Normandy is a "good enough" video game item article with (1) a good standalone development section and (2) RS discusses the ship quite extensively. However, both Power Armor and Brotherhood of Steel having their own separate article is just a GAMECRUFT article split into two. OceanHok (talk) 06:51, 25 December 2020 (UTC)
From what I can tell, "keep" generally means "keep as a standalone article". "Merge" is of course a legitimate vote in an AfD, separate from "keep".ZXCVBNM (TALK) 07:26, 25 December 2020 (UTC)
Jontesta: This wasn't known to me at the time of writing (maybe ferret can elaborate if he feels like it) but there's nothing we can actually do about the policy here. It'd seemingly need to go through Village Pump... Until then... I don't know. We should talk more about some specific articles on their talk pages, but that hasn't happened yet. ImaginesTigers (talk) 17:49, 26 December 2020 (UTC)

Brainstorming solutions

  • Here are two potential/workshoppable solutions: (1) Extend WP:ORGCRIT to games content. Orgs and games have similar press issues: they're known for repackaging press releases and passing off promotional interviews as independent articles. The org criteria sets a higher bar for sources when evaluating notability to prevent marketing for being the basis for creating dedicated articles. I think the root issue David and Jontesta describe is when editors confuse amount of coverage for the context of coverage. Paraphrasing WP:ORGDEPTH, deep coverage will analyze or evaluate the topic beyond routine coverage. Covering an aspect of a game within a review or within pre-release coverage is routine, even if there's a lot of it. When the component itself is evaluated independently from the game and in depth, then it meets the bar discussed above. (2) Require standalone articles about game components to have out-of-universe coverage to justify its split from the game's article. This is straightforward to implement. If the component does not have a life of its own outside the game, cover it in proportionate context within the existing game article. This is the in-depth coverage I just discussed: non-routine, non-promotional coverage specific to the component discussed outside the context of the game itself. czar 04:29, 4 January 2021 (UTC)
  • @Czar: I agree completely. I don't think any of the "in-game item" articles I've made so far and cited at the top of this discussion violate the WP:ORGCRIT criteria for notability. I've specifically tried to avoid things like listicles and blog posts that could be sponsored or glorified press releases. The references are largely independent, secondary sources from articles by game journalists. I would definitely not support articles based on mere sponsored content and nor have I made any like that.ZXCVBNM (TALK) 05:22, 4 January 2021 (UTC)
  • Add me to the list of people who think this needs a solution. I'm actually relieved at how much agreement there is on that. And I think most of us are in the healthy middle, with very few extremes (e.g.: "Wikipedia should not cover Wikipedia items" vs "you can cobble together several articles about video game items by padding out quotes"). Up until recently, WP:VGSCOPE and WP:GAMEGUIDE have been really effective, and they could easily be updated to maintain our quality of coverage. I like Czar's suggestions, and I'd throw out a few others:
(3) State more explicitly what kinds of coverage do (or do not) establish something as notable enough for a stand-alone article. I've often felt that our notability guidelines are incentivizing people to pad together quantity over quality, leading people to game the system by quoting fluffy and empty paragraphs. It's all backwards. A brief quote that says "the purple boots were the first time a game allowed players to reverse gravity" explains how something is notable and important, and does so succinctly and clearly. But I actually see less value in a long quote that says "the purple boots feel awesome. Not just made of any old leather, the wizard of the mountain reveals that if you can find the scales of the density dragon, he will make you a magic item that will allow you to access the game's last three levels. And when the nemesis gets purple boots of his own, you see just how fantastical the world is, in an epic platforming battle that was one of the most memorable of the game." The first quote says something is historically important and influential, and the other (at best) only says that it makes the game feel some way.
(4) Related to that, we can be more specific about how we organize this content, as we'd have an easier time merging this stuff if we didn't have those long empty/in-universe/subjective quotes. There is a reason that merging is often the middle way between removing an article and keeping it. And it's common practice that we are less likely to merge a flawed article about a game because it's clearest to let it stand alone, whereas we're more likely to merge a flawed article about a game element because there is a clear merge target. So I have no problem saying that we strive to cover game items in the context of the game itself, unless the sources truly describe it in a wider context. "If multiple sources highlight a game item as important to a game or series, it can be mentioned in context at the article about the game or series. Consider a separate article if the game item has received coverage in a broader context for its importance to the game industry, game history, or game genre, in addition to the game itself."
I admit these suggestions might be too vague or too strict or both, but I see these suggestions as something to discuss and fiddle with as we work our way to a solution. Shooterwalker (talk) 16:19, 4 January 2021 (UTC)
I definitely agree with (4). It is fine to cover in-game elements, but a standalone article is not needed most of the time. OceanHok (talk) 05:08, 6 January 2021 (UTC)
I described our common practices at Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Video_games#What_is_appropriate?. I don't think there's substantial disagreement on the principle, and any wording can be tweaked to find the right balance. Shooterwalker (talk) 16:44, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

New Articles (December 28 to January 3)

Main page: Wikipedia:WikiProject Video games/New article announcements
 A listing of all articles newly added to the Video Games Wikiproject (regardless of creation date). Generated by v3.5 of the RecentVGArticles script and posted by PresN. Bug reports and feature requests are appreciated. --PresN 03:44, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

December 28

December 29

December 30

December 31

January 1

January 2

January 3

Not posted on Monday because apparently I've forgotten what time is. --PresN 03:44, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

Excellent work as usual. These are always useful. Phediuk (talk) 06:32, 8 January 2021 (UTC)
Oh wow, lots of old stubs getting tagged for the first time, with zero or very few sources cited. Wonder if all those meet GNG...--AlexandraIDV 06:47, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

These "list of cancelled X games", weren't these all being deleted? Like the "list of cancelled N-Gage games". Is this a problem? Le Panini [🥪] 04:54, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

The ones per manufacturer were (e.g. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of cancelled games for Sony consoles), but no one has made a move on the per-console ones. --PresN 14:09, 8 January 2021 (UTC)
Well, List of cancelled N-Gage games was deleted, while four others were kept (and List of cancelled X68000 games is still being discussed). IceWelder [✉] 14:54, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

Should developer in infobox show ports

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ultima_III:_Exodus&type=revision&diff=999558697&oldid=999119877&diffmode=source A game made in America now has a category claiming it was also made in Japan with the Developer bit in the infobox mentioning the name of a Japanese company that ported it to Nintendo years after it was made. Do you mention every nation a port was made at? Dream Focus 20:22, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

{{Infobox video game}} says no: "The popular name or names of the video game developers. This field is for the game development company (e.g., Nintendo) or, if confirmed by primary sources, the name of the team that developed the game (e.g., Nintendo EAD). The names can be wikilinked. Individual development tasks handled by different companies (e.g., scenario, programming) and ports should not be mentioned in the infobox but in the article text instead." -- ferret (talk) 20:31, 10 January 2021 (UTC)
I would say an acceptable practice would be to footnote additional port developers using {{efn}}, though this should also be mentioned in the body of the article --Masem (t) 21:07, 10 January 2021 (UTC)
Masem, agreed. We could also make this a part of the actual MOS since it's already done this way in several articles. ~ Dissident93 (talk) 00:07, 11 January 2021 (UTC)
I've added something for MOS:VG on this in the infobox section. --Masem (t) 01:47, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

GT/FT ideas

So, as part of our assessment drive regarding good and/o:r featured topics, I think we might need to brainstorm some ideas on which topics would be best suitable for it. Thoughts? Lord Sjones23 (talk - contributions) 19:31, 15 December 2020 (UTC)

The current rate of how the Paper Mario games are being worked on I could see a Paper Mario Good Topic being an idea. GamerPro64 19:55, 15 December 2020 (UTC)
I've been doing these games as a side project. Submitted Color Splash, working on Sticker Star. Then again, I've been working on the Kirby series but am still waiting on a response for Star Allies. Le Panini [🥪] 20:00, 15 December 2020 (UTC)
It also seems that Trauma Center has been being nominated for GA very rapidly. Although good, this rate of nominations does raise my eyebrow. A whopping three were put out today.Le Panini [🥪] 20:04, 15 December 2020 (UTC)
@Le Panini: I apologise if that was a bit much. I'm planning to make Trauma Center a GT, but I got carried away. I've taken down two of them for the time being (New Blood and Trauma Team). Really, I should've waited until at least Kuon's review was finished. --ProtoDrake (talk) 20:10, 15 December 2020 (UTC)
It's alright, if they're good, they're good. It just seemed to me you were using a TAS or something. Le Panini [🥪] 20:44, 15 December 2020 (UTC)
Mm, ProtoDrake does good work, and I don't think there's anything wrong with nominating multiple articles at once - it's not like he's spamming with tons of low-quality articles. I currently have two (non-VG) GANs up, myself.--AlexandraIDV 23:56, 15 December 2020 (UTC)
Yes, I agree, they have 130-ish good articles under their belt. Props to him, I was just sus on why so many articles from the same series popped up so quickly (note that I just skimmed the articles) Le Panini [🥪] 00:29, 16 December 2020 (UTC)
I have discussed this earlier, but both the Banjo-Kazooie series, and the Sonic the Hedgehog series are really close. (Oinkers42) (talk) 20:15, 15 December 2020 (UTC)
All right. Since Crash Bandicoot and Devil May Cry are reaching its 25th and 20th anniversaries in 2021, maybe we can start making them good or featured topics later on? Lord Sjones23 (talk - contributions) 20:32, 15 December 2020 (UTC)
(Oinkers42), All Banjo-Kazooie needs is for the main article to be promoted and then it's done. Le Panini [🥪] 22:12, 15 December 2020 (UTC)
If someone commits to a Devil May Cry GT, I can work on Ninja Theory's DmC. OceanHok (talk) 13:49, 16 December 2020 (UTC)
@Le Panini: I don't know much about the series itself but according to Wikipedia:WikiProject Video games/Nintendo/Franchises nearly every game in the Fire Emblem series besides Fire Emblem Heroes is a GA. That would make it the 3rd big Nintendo franchise to have all main article in a GA or higher, the others being Mother and Golden Sun. Additionally, ignoring Metroid Prime 4, only Federation Force isn't a GA in it's series. I'll see what I can do with it though. I appreciate what you are doing! CaptainGalaxy 22:50, 15 December 2020 (UTC)
@Captain Galaxy: Fire Emblem is already a good topic, with Fire Emblem Heroes being considered a spin-off, so an addition would be an addendum. Metroid was also a former good topic. (Oinkers42) (talk) 23:55, 15 December 2020 (UTC)

Ace Combat seems like it's fairly close to being a good topic. It has several B-class articles that just need slight improvement and one GA already. One article, Ace Combat 3, almost reached GA and failed due to lack of time (I assume) the nominator had to work on the article, so a concerted effort would easily put it over the edge as the suggestions already exist. The main issue is the portable games in the series, whose articles are really stubby.ZXCVBNM (TALK) 23:14, 15 December 2020 (UTC)

Sakura Wars is also close to being a GT, since all of the main series articles are at GA status. I'm still working on getting the 2019 article to GA as I speak. Lord Sjones23 (talk - contributions) 01:38, 16 December 2020 (UTC)
Paper Mario: Sticker Star is getting close too. I tend to write under the same style, and the three articles I've contributed to (PM:SS, PM:CS, PM:TOK) are all under the general format. After this is Super Paper Mario. I'll tale this topic under my wing. Le Panini [🥪] 02:09, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

Why Drakengard isn't a GT already? It seems that all articles (series, mainline entries, Nier games, music) are GA. The GT for Smash can be restored quite easily if someone worked on Ultimate, which is quite comprehensive already. OceanHok (talk) 13:49, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

Drakengard GT isn't possible because Nier Reincarnation is unreleased, and 2B isn't a GA or anything much close. --ProtoDrake (talk) 14:44, 16 December 2020 (UTC)
There is another title that could make a near-future GT. Shadow Hearts. The main series article's the only one left to do. --ProtoDrake (talk) 14:46, 16 December 2020 (UTC)
I did most of the 2B article and it is actually very close. It just needs some more ingame dialog sourcing for the fictional biography.ZXCVBNM (TALK) 16:04, 16 December 2020 (UTC)
The main entries of the Persona series is a totally plausable good topic, if we could get Persona 5 to good article status. (Oinkers42) (talk) 16:16, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

Now that there is a series article for Watch Dogs it is halfway to a possible GT, it needs the series article and Legion to become GA. Also Uncharted could be a potential topic I think about half the articles needed for the topic is good/featured though I am not sure how well the featured list on characters has held up since its promotion in 2010. Regards  Spy-cicle💥  Talk? 16:27, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

Here's a couple of the suggestions, for reference.

edit | discuss
Banjo-Kazooie
6 articles
Banjo-Kazooie (video game)
Banjo-Tooie
Banjo-Kazooie: Grunty's Revenge
Banjo-Pilot
Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts
edit | discuss
Sakura Wars
7 articles
Sakura Wars (1996 video game)
Sakura Wars 2: Thou Shalt Not Die
Sakura Wars 3: Is Paris Burning?
Sakura Wars 4: Fall in Love, Maidens
Sakura Wars: So Long, My Love
Sakura Wars (2019 video game)

This is my current project, and I'd say I'm about 65% done. Fix up Super Paper Mario, finish the Sticker Star and Color Splash nominations, polish TTYD, and I'll pretty much be on my way. Le Panini [🥪] 00:26, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

edit | discuss
Paper Mario series
7 articles
Paper Mario
Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door
Super Paper Mario
Paper Mario: Sticker Star
Paper Mario: Color Splash
Paper Mario: The Origami King
edit | discuss
Watch Dogs
4 articles
Watch Dogs (video game)
Watch Dogs 2
Watch Dogs: Legion

Le Panini [🥪] 22:08, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

I'm currently working on the following (main article that's gonna' need a lot of help is the series one.)

edit | discuss
BioShock (series)
7 articles
BioShock
BioShock 2
BioShock 2: Minerva's Den
BioShock Infinite
BioShock Infinite: Burial at Sea
BioShock: The Collection

Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs talk 22:53, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

This is mine that I'm working on at this moment.

edit | discuss
Trauma Center (video game series)
6 articles
Trauma Center: Under the Knife
Trauma Center: Second Opinion
Trauma Center: New Blood
Trauma Center: Under the Knife 2
Trauma Team

I was vaguely thinking of trying to get a Music article done as well, since there's four albums with music reviews together with reception of the music from game reviews. --ProtoDrake (talk) 23:05, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

Here's something I could do.

edit | discuss
The Legend of Zelda
3 articles
The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks
The Legend of Zelda: Tri Force Heroes

I wouldn't mind finishing off the main titles of The Legend of Zelda series for it's 35th anniversary next year. Only these 3 articles are not GA or higher. CaptainGalaxy 23:41, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

Maybe we can also try getting the Yakuza series up to GT/FT. Here's how it currently looks at the present.

edit | discuss
Main Yakuza series
11 articles
Yakuza
Yakuza 2
Yakuza 3
Yakuza 4
Yakuza 5
Yakuza 0
Yakuza Kiwami
Yakuza 6: The Song of Life
Yakuza Kiwami 2
Yakuza: Like a Dragon

Lord Sjones23 (talk - contributions) 01:14, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

I have been trying to get Lumines into a featured topic for a while if anyone wants to assist with the task.

edit | discuss
Lumines
7 articles
Lumines: Puzzle Fusion
Lumines II
Lumines Live!
Lumines Supernova
Lumines: Electronic Symphony
Lumines: Puzzle & Music

Blue Pumpkin Pie Chat Contribs 16:00, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

Late to the party, but Ace Combat is a long way from becoming a GT. Not only are the series article and portable spin-offs in dire need of work, such as basic reception and gameplay info, but lots of the ones marked as B-class are mostly filled with GAMECRUFT and likely need reassesment. Ace Combat 3 is a GAN and I think Air Combat is real close, but that's three out of fifteen pages done. It really needs more work. Namcokid47 (Contribs) 18:34, 19 December 2020 (UTC)
From what I understand, spin-offs don't actually necessarily count towards a good topic, so all the portable games can probably be excluded. If that is the case, it's a lot closer. AC5 honestly seems like it could be put up for GAR right now also, so it's not just Air Combat. The other games all need some work though.ZXCVBNM (TALK) 18:57, 19 December 2020 (UTC)
edit | discuss
Main Ace Combat series
7 articles
Air Combat
Ace Combat 2
Ace Combat 3: Electrosphere
Ace Combat 04: Shattered Skies
Ace Combat 5: The Unsung War
Ace Combat Zero: The Belkan War
Ace Combat 6: Fires of Liberation
Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown

This is more along the lines of what I was talking about.ZXCVBNM (TALK) 19:15, 19 December 2020 (UTC)

Something that just hit me as a possible GT that could be almost literally no work at all.
edit | discuss
United Game Artists
4 articles
Space Channel 5
Space Channel 5: Part 2
Rez
Not sure whether there are more games which would be the work of United Game Artists that need including in such a GT. --ProtoDrake (talk) 19:14, 19 December 2020 (UTC)
I would not consider that topic complete without Tetsuya Mizuguchi. TarkusABtalk/contrib 23:06, 19 December 2020 (UTC)
It’s worth noting too that some sources consider UGA to be the continuation of Sega AM Annex, whose first game was Sega Touring Car Championship and includes others. There’s an argument to be made that Sega Rosso could also be that inheritor, but I haven’t seen that in sources. Given that, I lean toward AM Annex games being needed as well. Red Phoenix talk 17:58, 23 December 2020 (UTC)
Ace Combat 5 still needs work if it wants to be a GA. Some sections are overly detailed, it needs more citations, and its reception is very weak and needs expansion. I can try doing some work on it today, but real life is preventing me from having as much time on Wikipedia as I'd want to. Ace Combat Zero is also a mainline entry and should be part of this template too, if we're only going for mainline installments. Namcokid47 (Contribs) 19:29, 19 December 2020 (UTC)
Oopsie, you're right. I've added that in also. (I also re-assessed AC4 as a "C". Granted, they're very low C's, but I wouldn't call them Start class anymore).ZXCVBNM (TALK) 19:36, 19 December 2020 (UTC)

There is also the FF7 series.

edit | discuss
Characters of the Final Fantasy VII series
4 articles
Cloud Strife
Barret Wallace
Tifa Lockhart
Aerith Gainsborough
Sephiroth
Vincent Valentine
Yuffie Kisaragi
Zack Fair
edit | discuss
Compilation of Final Fantasy VII
4 articles

Video games

Final Fantasy VII
Before Crisis: Final Fantasy VII
Dirge of Cerberus: Final Fantasy VII
Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII
Final Fantasy VII G-Bike
Final Fantasy VII Remake

Films

Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children
Last Order: Final Fantasy VII

Music

Music of the Final Fantasy VII series
Voices of the Lifestream

Blue Pumpkin Pie Chat Contribs 16:13, 24 December 2020 (UTC)

How about Shenmue?

edit | discuss
Shenmue series
4 articles
Shenmue
Shenmue II
Shenmue III

Lord Sjones23 (talk - contributions) 21:10, 27 December 2020 (UTC)

@Popcornfud: pinging our resident Shenmue guy to see what he thinks JOEBRO64 21:12, 27 December 2020 (UTC)
Not to blow my own trumpet, but IMO the Shenmue articles are in very good shape and think they could pass GA or FAC without a lot of work. I don't care about article awards any more, but I probably wouldn't mind helping out if anyone wanted to nom these. Popcornfud (talk) 21:18, 27 December 2020 (UTC)
(edit conflict) Very doable - aside from some underdeveloped reception sections I would guess these are all mostly ready for GA already. Considering how small the series is I would expect Shenmue Online, Shenmue City, and Shenmue (TV series) to be part of a GT, too, though.--AlexandraIDV 21:16, 27 December 2020 (UTC)
Alexandra IDV, oh yeah, I forgot about all those spin-offs. Those articles probably suck. Popcornfud (talk) 21:19, 27 December 2020 (UTC)
I like to think of myself as someone who specialises in getting articles in good shape through the GA process, so if you'd like some help getting these through, drop me a ping. They all seem like they could be fixed to GA in a few hours editing. Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 11:59, 4 January 2021 (UTC)
Would it be better to create a section a page dedicated to the Wikiproject for potential good/featured topics? We can also set goals as to how many good topics we can meet to.Blue Pumpkin Pie Chat Contribs 15:57, 31 December 2020 (UTC)
@Blue Pumpkin Pie: I have no objections to it. Lord Sjones23 (talk - contributions) 03:28, 7 January 2021 (UTC)
  • Something I've been working on over the last year:
edit | discuss
Serious Sam series
15 articles
Serious Sam: The First Encounter
Serious Sam: The Second Encounter
Serious Sam 2
Serious Sam 3: BFE
Serious Sam 4
Serious Sam Advance
Serious Sam: Next Encounter
Serious Sam Double D
Serious Sam: Kamikaze Attack!
Serious Sam: The Random Encounter
Serious Sam's Bogus Detour
Serious Sam VR: The Last Hope
I Hate Running Backwards
Serious Sam: Tormental
I was planning to get it done by the series' 20th anniversary (21 March 2021), but exams might hinder this. Plus, Serious Sam: Tormental is in early access. Can I actually take it to GA at this stage? IceWelder [✉] 17:14, 9 January 2021 (UTC)
@IceWelder: I believe Tormental is ineligible for GA due to its early access status, but that doesn't make the topic ineligible; per criteria 3(c) here, the article can undergo a peer review and still be eligible for a good topic. – Rhain ☔ 01:06, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

The Xenoblade Chronicles series could be another one of our GT/FT ideas. As of this moment, only the first video game article is a GA.

edit | discuss
Xenoblade Chronicles series
5 articles
Xenoblade Chronicles
Xenoblade Chronicles X
Xenoblade Chronicles 2
Xenoblade Chronicles 2: Torna – The Golden Country

Lord Sjones23 (talk - contributions) 05:09, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

Two new Navbars for USERG awards

Created by AntonioMDA, we now have {{Indie DB Indie of the Year recipients}} and {{Steam Awards GOTY}}, both I believe being USERG/user voted awards. MOS:VG tells us to exclude these from award tables/prose so I'm not sure why we'd have navbars for them. Thoughts before I TfD? -- ferret (talk) 18:01, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

Agree with promoting for deletion. They fall under the purview of the WP:USERG, too (which I suppose MOS:VG is drawing from). — — ImaginesTigers (talk) 18:51, 8 January 2021 (UTC)
I saw these too and was wondering about WP:NAVBOX criteria for something like this. I think they fail their "mentioned in articles" criteria because these mentions will be excluded from articles per WP:VG/AWARDS due to the award not being suitable -- not notable for IndieDB and WP:USERG for otherwise-notable Steam Awards even though reliable sources do cover it, even if briefly (e.g. [8]). VG/AWARDS specifically says that a notable body of awards is okay to include and doesn't really say anything about it being WP:USERG or not. My first reaction is that awards stemming from user votes should not be used anywhere. But it is a notable award as a whole and is covered by sources, and may appear in the articles, so there is some argument there although I think it's pretty weak. —  HELLKNOWZ   ▎TALK 20:23, 8 January 2021 (UTC)
My issue with these is giving precedent for people to create ones for GameFAQs and other fan voted ones. These navboxes should follow the same guidelines that articles do in regards to WP:USERG, even if it doesn't explicitly say so. ~ Dissident93 (talk) 21:37, 8 January 2021 (UTC)
As an extension of this, I would also generally exclude fan-voted awards from accolade tables. IceWelder [✉] 12:29, 10 January 2021 (UTC)
I believe that's already part of MOS:VG. IN any case, Steam Awards is fan voted, and Indie DB I believe is as well. I'll TfD these shortly if no real support to keep them appears. -- ferret (talk) 14:01, 10 January 2021 (UTC)
I support deletion for the same reasons already mentioned. Sergecross73 msg me 16:46, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

These have been nominated at Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2021 January 11 -- ferret (talk) 15:29, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

New Articles (January 4 to January 10)

Main page: Wikipedia:WikiProject Video games/New article announcements
 A listing of all articles newly added to the Video Games Wikiproject (regardless of creation date). Generated by v3.5 of the RecentVGArticles script and posted by PresN. Bug reports and feature requests are appreciated. --PresN 16:14, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

January 4

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What defines a game that should belong in the "Shovelware video games" category? This category is super vague. To me, this looks like a Scott the Woz fan at work (considering Chicken Shoot is in here). But that could just be coincidence. Le Panini [🥪] 16:26, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

  • We should have sources calling it shovelware. But I would suspect given the distain for shovelware by the games media in general that any GNG-meeting game that we'd think should be called shovelware would be readily called this in the sources that are providing for the GNG coverage. --Masem (t) 16:36, 11 January 2021 (UTC)
  • I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that the whole category is POV. Even if one or two sources call them that it doesn't warrant the game being called that. We should avoid pejorative categories in general. Shooterwalker (talk) 16:57, 11 January 2021 (UTC)
  • This is a good point. It is not like "vaporware" or "abandonware' where there's a more objective (though somewhat subjective) metric. A list would be reasonable as we can source titles to this, as this would be comparible to List of video games notable for negative reception (if this list cannot fit into Shovelware already) But I would stress we should only document notable games on said list if that's done, as the potential list of titles is far too large. --Masem (t) 17:07, 11 January 2021 (UTC)
  • I've been listing articles that say "shovelware" in prose, but then again, this means Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing won't be on here, but that makes no sense. Le Panini [🥪] 17:33, 11 January 2021 (UTC)
  • Agree that vaporware and abandonware are at least objectively defined, if still pejorative. I won't nitpick names. But shovelware isn't a clear criteria at all, even if one or two journalists throw it out as an insult. The terminology always ends up misused as an insult by some zealous game critic. The category should be deleted as indiscriminate. Shooterwalker (talk) 17:47, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

Review-less AllGame scores

An IP user has recently added several ratings by AllGame to various VG articles. I did a few spot checks and, in many cases, these ratings have no reviews attached, meaning reasoning and attribution for these reviews are lacking. As @Indrian noted, some of these ratings are for games decades older than AllGame, making it unlikely that the ratings were not produced in an orderly fashion. Technically, these also fail the requirement of being used in the prose, as there is no review text to process. Should these ratings be removed where no review is present? IceWelder [✉] 14:12, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

If you want my two cens in the matter then yes. However, i want to point out that some of the review-less AllGame page do have stuff such as release dates for more obscure titles such as Freefall 3050 A.D. (1) so, it's something to keep in mind... Roberth Martinez (talk) 14:40, 11 January 2021 (UTC)
If these dates are reliable, they can surely be used. That is independent of the review table, though. IceWelder [✉] 15:50, 11 January 2021 (UTC)
I think we had a discussion/consensus years ago to not include the contextless review scores. Sergecross73 msg me 14:58, 11 January 2021 (UTC)
(edit conflict) Reception section is for summarizing reviews, i.e. real-world analysis of the work. Scores alone don't and can't do that. If those ratings never had a review attached, then they are basically useless without context. —  HELLKNOWZ   ▎TALK 15:02, 11 January 2021 (UTC)
Whenever I improve an article, I cut sources that are only in the table, due to them not serving importance. I see other users catch this and ask for the sources to be removed as well. Le Panini [🥪] 15:05, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

If everyone is in agreement over this, I would give AWB a spin later today. IceWelder [✉] 15:50, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

Gone through most of them, but I might have missed individual ones. If the IP(range) in question recently edited a page on your watchlist, please check whether there is actually a review or just a useless rating. IceWelder [✉] 21:19, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

List of cancelled games

Hello. Not too long ago, most of the lists of cancelled games by publisher were deleted. Should we consider taking the rest of the list of cancelled games by system to AFD? Lord Sjones23 (talk - contributions) 21:25, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

No. The concern was list of cancelled games by console manufacturer. Some by platform lists were nominated but nearly all were closed as "keep". TarkusABtalk/contrib 21:42, 11 January 2021 (UTC)
I see. I’m just doing my best to help, as usual. Lord Sjones23 (talk - contributions) 21:57, 11 January 2021 (UTC)
No problem. A recent AFD nominator made the same mistake too. Thanks for checking up, but yeah, all of the "by platform" have generally been kept. Except the NGage one. But that tilted to merge more because it was very shortly and poorly put together and sourced more than anything.) Sergecross73 msg me 22:07, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

Modern Warfare Remastered article status

I have been heavily contributing to the Modern Warfare Remastered article since it's inception in early 2017, where I subsequently helped to get it to good article status not long after. As it's remained a GA for almost 4 years now and has continued to be improved, I was wondering if an admin could advise whether it sufficiently met criteria to be considered a featured article? Going by what I've read at WP:GACR, however, I'm inclined to think there are several standards it might not comply with, such as article length. Wikibenboy94 (talk) 00:47, 5 January 2021 (UTC)

@Wikibenboy94: Admins don't carry out FAC reviews. Well, some do, but it’s not because they're admins. All editors are welcome to contribute to the FA process! I'd recommend firstly that you read some other successful and unsuccessful candidates; get a feel for what gets through and what doesn't. The article is a bit long, and there's likely a lot of things on there that could be simplified (especially in Development).
Another thing to remember is that your sourcing must be completely reliable for the article to become Featured. This means every website used as a source should appear on either the Wikipedia-wide source list, or be one of this project's reliable sources. There's a lot of Eurogamer in there, which is good. But there's also some I don't recognise (and some that are unreliable): New Game Network, Twinfinite, GearNuke, Twitter. You'll need to think really carefully about these. I just skimmed, so give the sources a look.
I recommend you polish the article up and try to bring the length down, and then nominate it at WP:Peer review. That'll give you some idea as to how the article would be received at FAC. You don't want to nominate the article and then have someone recommend you withdraw it. Wishing you the best, Ben! — ImaginesTigers (talk) 09:41, 5 January 2021 (UTC)
I also want to say that, by and large, the article is structurally good, the plot section is (I think) under the 700 words. It isn't looking back. You've good a good job (and it has been you -- you are by far the largest contributor). ImaginesTigers (talk) 09:54, 5 January 2021 (UTC)
As IT says, the Featured article process has not much to do with administrators, but some admins work on this area. I'd say the article is reasonably close to being suitable. Might I suggest posting this at WT:FAC and getting a mentor if this is your first FA nomination? It's certainly a very good article, with a few minor points that I would bring up at FAC. You might also wish to pursue the peer review process. Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 11:46, 5 January 2021 (UTC)
If you do go with the Peer review route I would recommended asking someone who isn’t familiar with video games to review it since they would be more likely to find things that could be confusing to general reader that someone more knowledgeable of the subject might consider to be general knowledge.--65.92.160.124 (talk) 23:35, 5 January 2021 (UTC)

@Popcornfud: @Rhain: @Masem: Hello all. I have nominated the article Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Remastered today for a WP:Peer review as I am hoping to get it to GA status, and I was wondering if any of you could kindly take the time out to give me feedback? I've pinged you as I've been familiar with your veteran work focusing on pop culture, including video games, for a while now, and am positive the article would greatly benefit from your expertise. If any of you no longer focus on FA's anymore please let me know. Wikibenboy94 (talk) 23:03, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

Wikibenboy94, I looked through the sources, and listed out some that could be considered unreliable. Le Panini [🥪] 00:26, 12 January 2021 (UTC)

"Wikipedia:MK" listed at Redirects for discussion

A discussion is taking place to address the redirect Wikipedia:MK. The discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2021 January 12#Wikipedia:MK until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. Elliot321 (talk | contribs) 22:37, 12 January 2021 (UTC)

Are primary sources allowed if they're from unreliable sources?

I'm working on Good Job! right now (totally not for the Wikicup or anything), and found a developer interview perfect for the development section. However, its from Nintendo Everything, an unreliable source according to WP:VG/RS. This is an interview, though, so this would be a primary source nonetheless. Their info came straight from the developers in-person. Would I still be allowed to use this? I can't find other secondary sources responding to this, due to the game being a small release. Would I still be allowed to say this? Le Panini [🥪] 22:32, 12 January 2021 (UTC)

I’m not sure but I believe in this case there may be a argument for an exception as the developers would be the actual source. This of course is assuming the source isn’t so bad that they have a history of faking interviews for clicks or something of that nature. The one other issue I could see would be if this is only covered by one source it could be a WP:WEIGHT issue but without knowing the content I can’t offer an opinion.--65.92.160.124 (talk) 22:58, 12 January 2021 (UTC)
I read through the past discussions about Nintendo Everything and there weren't any concerns about faking interviews—but there were about pseudonymous writers and the editorial process. So without knowing more, this interview could have been done by anyone and published as-is. On top of that, we'd need to know more about the claims being made. Personally, I rarely find interviews useful for VG content, because they spend a lot of time highlighting cool new game features—an area where we should follow third-party sources. But that's all general, we'd really need to see the source to say something definitive. Woodroar (talk) 23:54, 12 January 2021 (UTC)
Here [9]. It's pretty much entirely about the development process, and covers pretty much only development. Le Panini [🥪] 00:27, 13 January 2021 (UTC)
The name of the interviewer is Brian Richards by the way, one of the guys who runs Nintendo Everything... Roberth Martinez (talk) 00:52, 13 January 2021 (UTC)
It’s fine in theory. Be willing to remove it if you nom the article for GA, and make sure it’s gone if you ever approach FAC. — ImaginesTigers (talk) 02:02, 13 January 2021 (UTC)

Sourcing on "List of highest-grossing mobile games"

After going through List of highest-grossing video game franchises and List of highest-grossing media franchises, I decided to take a look at the other "highest-grossing" pages too, and found that List of highest-grossing mobile games is also littered with suspect citations. One of the chief sources cited (in fact, the majority of the entries cite it) is http://game-i.daa.jp , a site which is not listed as a RS here, nor is it cited anywhere else on Wikipedia. I see no evidence that its figures are anything more than machine-generated estimates based on, well, who knows. I'm also having trouble finding where, exactly, the figures in the citations appear on each page; I'm not seeing them. The second-most-used source is the http://sensortower.com blog, which, again, has few citations on Wikipedia (though more than game-i.daa.jp). I notice that Tetris uses the same bogus price-multiplying method as on the other "Highest-grossing (x)" pages, too. Phediuk (talk) 02:19, 14 January 2021 (UTC)

Sensor Tower is a reliable research firm that is routinely referenced by numerous reliable mobile publications. That's where numerous reliable sources get their mobile revenue data from, such as Pocket Gamer, for example. As for game-i.daa.jp, we might need to have a look through Japanese sources to see if it's referenced by reliable Japanese sources. The figures can quite easily be found on the cited pages if you use Google Translate, and search for the games or years. But fair point about Tetris. Maestro2016 (talk) 04:10, 14 January 2021 (UTC)
I'll go ahead and remove every entry that incorporates the dubious game-i.daa.jp numbers, since there is no evidence of its reliability. EDIT: Nevermind, already done. Phediuk (talk) 04:34, 14 January 2021 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Paper Mario: The Origami King/archive1

Gog the Mild suggested seeking out someone for a source review, and was wondering if anyone would be up to do so. It would be much appreciated.

And, while I'm at it, League of Legends needs an image review. Wikicup, anyone? Le Panini [🥪] 13:26, 14 January 2021 (UTC)

GameRevolution rating change

Just found out that GameRevolution changed their score system again. So not sure if this will be retroactive but just a heads up to all. https://www.gamerevolution.com/features/671666-letter-from-the-editor-gamerevolution-review-scale GamerPro64 05:29, 15 January 2021 (UTC)

Existing review scores shouldn't be changed just because they are changing their scale. Just use archived versions of the reviews and list the original review score. I spot-checked the Tonic Trouble review and that one seemingly lost its rating (formerly "F") altogether. IceWelder [✉] 07:12, 15 January 2021 (UTC)

Help with Makoto Naegi

Today I created Makoto Naegi but I won't be able to edit during the two weeks due to a break I'll be taking. I'm not familiar with all of Danganronpa series so I wonder if somebody could look over it. In regards to the voice actors, I have been finding these commentaries by the staff but I still haven't found anything about Ogata's work or Makoto's role in the sequels. Cheers.Tintor2 (talk) 01:44, 16 January 2021 (UTC)

Requests for Unity Technologies article

Hi, My name is Matthew and I work for Unity Software. I've disclosed this on my profile and at Talk:Unity Technologies, where I am proposing updates to the article with current information. Specifically, I've requested the addition of some information about how Unity is being used in filmmaking and updated usage statistics. My proposed changes have been added to the edit , but I thought I'd reach out here to see if any editors are interested in taking a look at my requests. Thanks! Matthewpruitt (talk) 18:51, 15 January 2021 (UTC)

 Done. — ImaginesTigers (talk) 19:30, 15 January 2021 (UTC)
I removed some coding that was embedded in the text above. I think the coding was triggering a request edit ticket and the AnomieBot was listing this page as an open request. Since the concern has been addressed I removed the coding that I think was causing the issue. Please let me know if you have any questions. Z1720 (talk) 20:20, 16 January 2021 (UTC)

Sourcing problems at "List of highest-grossing video game franchises"

I don’t know if anyone here has looked at List of highest-grossing video game franchises, but it contains a huge number of spurious entries.

For instance, consider the entry for Pokemon. It arrives at the impressively precise figure of $19.533 billion dollars in revenue for the franchise across its entire history. Surely there would be a rock-solid reliable source for this figure, or at least a source that would allow such a figure to be deduced in a straightforward fashion. There is not.

Let us take a look at the sources that are cited:

For “1996–2000 Game Boy releases”, the list cites some page called "Gamegyokai", from which it calculates 25,410,000 units sold, and then, based on their “average ¥3,679 price”, it arrives at a figure of ¥93,484,600,000. There are several problems with this method. The page does not say that ¥3,679 was the “average” price of anything; it has a column that translates to “price”, but who knows what that means – the price in a catalog listing? The MSRP? Just this guy’s estimate? Who knows. Second, what even is this source? It appears to be just some guy’s webpage. A cursory search on Wikipedia indicates that “gamegyokai” is cited only on this and a couple of other pages, certainly nothing whatsoever that shows this is accepted as a RS.

The page makes another leap of logic when the time comes to add everything up: the page lumps in the ¥93,484,600,000, which it invented, with all “1996–2012 releases” of Pokemon games to arrive at a sum of ¥300,462,849,600 ($3,765,670,505). Leaving aside the fact that these sales figures are cited to a no-name site called “Japan Game Sales Database” (which doesn’t seem to be cited anywhere else on Wikipedia), the page takes its “average” prices (which are not actually stated to be “average”), multiplies them by sales figures, combines them, and then converts the sum to USD based on the exchange rate of, well, I don’t know, it doesn’t say. Is it just a single constant exchange rate for all of the games, even though they were released up to 16 years apart? Who knows.

The page’s problems are not limited just to Japanese figures; American figures are just as dubious. It offers a total Pokemon overseas revenue figure of $9.265 billion by taking a figure of 200,006,810 units (where it got this number from, the page doesn’t say) and multiplying it by an “average price” of $39.95. One of its chief sources for the “overseas” Pokemon figures is the ‘‘Destructoid’‘ review of HeartGold and SoulSilver. The review does not say that $39.99 is the “average” price, but only that $39.99 is the MSRP—that is, the manufacturer’s suggested retail price. It is not evidence that games were actually sold at that price, and even less evidence that it was the "average" price, and still less evidence to conclude that (x) game made (y) amount of money based on it. To make matters worse, the page even applies the MSRP to the entire retail life of the games, and applies the US price to every country except Japan! Also, the aforementioned review cited for the price of “Pokémon console software … up to 2015” applies the $39.99 price to Pokemon HeartGold and SoulSilver only; it make no claim that the MSRP is for anything but that specific game, let alone for all Pokemon games up to 2015.

Let us, for another example, take a look at the Super Mario entry. The page states, “Worldwide retail sales up until September 2010 – 240 million units[1][2] – $12,988,043,606”. Both cited sources do indeed mention the 240 million figure; however, neither of them mention anywhere, whatsoever, the $12,988,043,606 figure this page somehow arrives at. This is, quite simply, not supported by the sources. The page then cites “Overseas” figures for the Super Mario series, determining them to be “198,757,148 units, average $50 price[2] – $9,937,857,400”. The citation given is Jeff Ryan’s Super Mario: How Nintendo Conquered America. The cited source plainly does not include the “198,757,148 units”. It is not there, period. The page appears to arrive at this number by taking the 240 million figure cited above, subtracting 41 million Japanese sales that it added up from a separate (non-reliable) source, and then taking the 198,757,148 remainder from that and multiplying it by $50, based on nothing more than an offhand comment from Ryan’s book about video games being $50. To top it all off, the “Japanese sales” section extrapolates all of its revenue figures by taking a sales figure from a dubious source, multiplying it by the price, lumping all the yen revenue figures together, and then converting the sum to USD, even though the games in question were released decades apart and therefore would be at different exchange rates (which the page ignores.) This is some of the most tangled WP:SYNTH that I think I’ve ever seen here.

I wish I could say that these problems were restricted to the Pokemon and Super Mario entries, but they are not. In fact, a massive swathe of entries invent revenue numbers in the same fashion, by taking a citation of a price from one source, declaring that to be the "average" price, and then multiplying that "average" by a sales figure from another source (often itself having portions added/subtracted based on figures from still other sources), to arrive at a new number, not stated by any source. There are very few “Lifetime revenue” numbers on the page that are actually stated in a source; almost all are the invention of the page.

List of highest-grossing media franchises appears to have been calculated in the same specious manner, though someone at least put a warning at the top of that one. What to do here? Remove everything that isn’t an explicit overall franchise revenue figure from a reliable source?

Also, a final warning: I notice that List of highest-grossing media franchises’s fabricated numbers have been cited numerous times by media outlets, and the same is probably true of the video game franchises page, so we must be extra-cautious of WP:Citogenesis when finding legitimate sources for revenue figures. Phediuk (talk) 02:16, 13 January 2021 (UTC)

Well, looking at the first section, containing franchises with supposedly over 10 Billion in revenue, I can identify only a select few entries that are good, namely, FIFA, League of Legends, Dungeon Fighter Online, and Space Invaders. Everything else is either clearly WP:SYNTH, or so confusingly cited I cannot tell. Since the vast majority of the article is almost certainly SYNTH, removing the entries is probably not feasible, so just removing the unreliable citations and adding a "More citations needed" tag at the top as well is likely the best option.
There are also a bunch of other problems throughout the article, the entry for Counter-Strike only includes numbers from three years of CS:GO revenue, the entry for Angry Birds includes the Box Office of the films, and other problems of that sort. Devonian Wombat (talk) 04:40, 13 January 2021 (UTC)
I think that article needs to be nuked, or limited to where the sourcing is impecable and there is no SYNTH involved outside WP:CALC. (Compare to List of best-selling video game franchises which at best is adding total sales of games in a franchise). This may leave "obvious" gaps which is why it may be better to delete where we can't fill in. --Masem (t) 04:46, 13 January 2021 (UTC)
It needs to be nuked. The list is simply not feasible- at least with the highest-selling list we have a reasonable belief that the games that should be on there are, in roughly the right order, even if the sourcing is uneven; for this list it's a few rows where we have a half-decent source and a bunch of rows where the revenue number is entirely garbage. And if you remove the ridiculous calculations, then what do you do, leave in unsourced franchises with a made-up number? Delete the rows even though it's obvious that Super Mario would be on the list somewhere? Either way you have a list that purports to be an accurate ordering that's almost certainly- or 100% definitely- highly inaccurate. There's not much point to it then. --PresN 05:44, 13 January 2021 (UTC)
Agreed with previous replies and would absolutely recommend removing it from mainspace asap - either deletion or moving to a WPVG subpage for reworking.--AlexandraIDV 06:38, 13 January 2021 (UTC)
Hi all, thanks for the comments. I just want to add that if we're going to nuke the video game franchise list, we should do something about the media franchise list too, which is considerably more damaging, seeing as how the media have cited it repeatedly. Phediuk (talk) 06:44, 13 January 2021 (UTC)
The Highest-grossing media franchises page should be easy enough to correct. Just use the older sources that were once used in the article + franchises that are no longer there because anything below $4 billion was removed.Timur9008 (talk) 11:12, 13 January 2021 (UTC)
This article is now at AFD. --Masem (t) 06:46, 13 January 2021 (UTC)

Given I've created both pages. It's only fair for me to comment. Both pages looked way different when I created them. Maestro2016 is the one who expanded both pages. So we should ask him for comment. And yes I agree the highest-grossing video game franchise list needs to be put to draft phase.Timur9008 (talk) 10:57, 13 January 2021 (UTC)

I have gone through List of highest-grossing media franchises and removed all entries that fabricated numbers using the methods like those the video game franchises page (multiplying prices etc.) There's still probably more to remove, though; I just deleted the obvious cases. Phediuk (talk) 01:42, 14 January 2021 (UTC)

Phediuk can the discussion be closed now since the majority voted to delete the article? Timur9008 (talk) 10:50, 17 January 2021 (UTC)

New Articles (January 11 to January 17)

Main page: Wikipedia:WikiProject Video games/New article announcements
 A listing of all articles newly added to the Video Games Wikiproject (regardless of creation date). Generated by v3.5 of the RecentVGArticles script and posted by PresN. Bug reports and feature requests are appreciated. --PresN 15:00, 18 January 2021 (UTC)

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Hmm, noticed a bug- if you move a page and then recreate the old title (e.g. move Blaster Master -> Blaster Master (video game) and then remake Blaster Master as a series page) the script is "fixing" the creation as if Blaster Master (video game) is the new article due to the page move. It weirdly happened twice this week (List of PlayStation 3 games released on disc), so let me know if I missed any others while I think of how to fix it. --PresN 15:00, 18 January 2021 (UTC)

Source question

I've been doing research into a potential expansion of the article Sudeki. In the course of that, I've come across a now-dead page authored by Shaun Pearson, one of the "Technical Artists" for the game. It contains interesting information regarding its name change, but where that information is also includes some potentially inflammatory remarks on Pearson's part about some internal Climax staff dispute. Can this source still be used? The game's name change from "Symphony of Light" to "Sudeki", and even the fact that "Suteki" was intended as the original title are sourced elsewhere, just not with this insider detail. --ProtoDrake (talk) 21:14, 18 January 2021 (UTC)

Whether a source is "potentially inflammatory" does not matter, per WP:NOTCENSORED, Wikipedia is only responsible for stating what can reasonably determined to be reliable facts. Since outside sources corroborate it, it seems reasonable enough to accept it as a primary source. With the caveat that it must be written in encyclopedic language. So you can't just write, say, "Jeff said that Jim was a total jerk", but you could write "Jeff stated his disagreements with Jim in every aspect of the development process".ZXCVBNM (TALK) 23:49, 18 January 2021 (UTC)

Question of whether we need certain articles

I have doubts that we need List of PlayStation 3 games released on disc or any of its alphabetical subdivision since that doesn’t sound like a particularly defining feature not does the 360 appear to have a similar list. For similar reasons I’m also not sure about List of Wii games with traditional control schemes. I noticed it was previously up for deletion under its old title in 2009 Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of Wii games that use the Nintendo GameCube controller but I’m curious if there should be a second go since the last discussion was over a decade old.--65.92.160.124 (talk) 02:49, 19 January 2021 (UTC)

This article needs retained simply because it's the PRIMARY game list for PS3. The PS3 list is (stupidly) divided between "games on disc" and "downloadable games". They need merged into one like basically every other platform list of games. This current arrangement goes against the consensus that other lists should not denote "physical release" on the basis of NOTCATALOG. -- ferret (talk) 02:54, 19 January 2021 (UTC)
(edit conflict) Probably not. There used to be ton of these trivial PS3 lists, and I wonder if that one just slipped through the cracks. I find this one to be particularly baffling though - the title is "games released on disc" but a good portion of the article is "cancelled games". That doesn't even make any sense - cancelled games wouldn't generally even be produced to disc. Sergecross73 msg me 02:55, 19 January 2021 (UTC)
FWIW, I came across the List of Wii games with traditional control schemes article the other day and strongly considered nominating it for AFD but didn't because (1) I knew it would provoke controversy that I didn't want to deal with and (2) I didn't feel like I could persuasively articulate the rationale for deletion (particularly given the 2009 discussion). If someone feels like they can come up with a cogent argument for deletion, I'd probably support it given that it just seems kind of silly to have a page on what is, IMHO, fairly run-of-the-mill, non-notable information. DocFreeman24 (talk) 03:27, 19 January 2021 (UTC)
So my original comment was focused on the PS3 list, because it really can't be deleted. It needs moved to List of PlayStation 3 games, then List of download-only PlayStation 3 games needs merged into it. Additionally, List of PlayStation 3 games with 3D support needs merged in, and can be a column (or legend, as we've started doing). Guess what? Merge in and columnize List of PlayStation Move games too, which fascinatingly enough has a column that denotes every single entry as move only and denotes 3D too! As for List of Wii games with traditional control schemes, same thing. Merge it, and if any of the control schemes are noteworthy, add one of the legend columns. -- ferret (talk) 12:54, 19 January 2021 (UTC)
I may begin boldly working on the PS3 mergers. It's just dumb and clearly out of alignment with all of the other lists. -- ferret (talk) 12:55, 19 January 2021 (UTC)
I say go for it. I had thought it had fallen through the cracks, but reading your explanation, I imagine its more that no ones ever put in the effort to untangle this web... Sergecross73 msg me 13:45, 19 January 2021 (UTC)
I started. -- ferret (talk) 13:51, 19 January 2021 (UTC)
The main lists have been moved to List of PlayStation 3 games (A–C). It looks like as a freak coincidence, someone split the list for size just a few days ago. Some 3-4 PS3 related lists have been merged/redirected now, and I've done a lot of cleanup of redundant Lists of pages and navbars. The next big step is merging in List of download-only PlayStation 3 games. -- ferret (talk) 17:38, 19 January 2021 (UTC)
 Done PS3 now follows the pattern of other platforms. Bunch o' redirecting and merging, but it's done. -- ferret (talk) 00:53, 20 January 2021 (UTC)
So about List of Wii games with traditional control schemes.... -- ferret (talk) 00:53, 20 January 2021 (UTC)
Are you asking permission or assistance? ;) --Izno (talk) 20:15, 20 January 2021 (UTC)
I'd say nuke it. That a Wii game may not opt to use the motion controls of the Wii Remote is not a defining feature of a game. If anything, it would be games that require the unique peripherals - Wii Fit and the balance board, for example, that should be noted in the full Wii list game list as a feature, but that's it. --Masem (t) 20:18, 20 January 2021 (UTC)

Plants vs. Zombies

I have worked on this article for two months and have expanded the article by a lot, especially the critical reception section. The article is almost ready for being submitted for a GA review. Right now, it is pending a copyedit, peer review, and reassessment. If there is anything more I could do for the article right now, please say so. Thanks Lazman321 (talk) 19:20, 20 January 2021 (UTC)

Lazman321, I've reassessed for you. However, there is not much point of a copyediting if the article is going to undergo drastic changes from the peer review. I say you take it one step at a time. Panini🥪 20:52, 20 January 2021 (UTC)
Honestly, looking at the article... just nominate it for GA. I don't think you really need to go through GOCE and PR for this. It’s looking pretty ready. Any minor quibbles can be sorted out within the GA process. — ImaginesTigers (talk) 21:04, 20 January 2021 (UTC)
Okay, I have nominated the peer review request for speedy deletion, withdrawn the copyedit request, and have nominated the article for GAN. Lazman321 (talk) 22:43, 20 January 2021 (UTC)

Requests for Unity Technologies article

Hi, My name is Matthew and I work for Unity Software. I've disclosed this on my profile and at Talk:Unity Technologies, where I am proposing updates to the article with current information. Specifically, I've requested the addition of some information about how Unity is being used in filmmaking and updated usage statistics. My proposed changes have been added to the edit Request log, but I thought I'd reach out here to see if any editors are interested in taking a look at my requests. Thanks! Matthewpruitt (talk) 19:35, 21 January 2021 (UTC)

Paprium

So, i recently started a draft about the infamous Sega Mega Drive/Genesis homebrew game Paprium by WaterMelon. If any members of the WP:VG come across with reviews of the game (i have two already on the draft) then let me know on my talk page and i'll add it onto the draft. I have a list of sources about the game's history already so i have that area covered. Roberth Martinez (talk) 04:35, 21 January 2021 (UTC)

KGRAMR, Looking around, I couldn't find much review wise. There's a lot about its history and announcement, however. Panini🥪 11:41, 21 January 2021 (UTC)
Paprium came on December 2020 so, there's that and as I've said before, I have the history area covered already and I'll place those references as soon as I can... Roberth Martinez (talk) 12:22, 21 January 2021 (UTC)
Per WPVG/S, Sega-16 is only acceptable if the articles are from Ken Horowitz or are developer interviews. Anything else is user-submitted and should not be used — in this case, the review is from somebody named Sebastian Sponsel, which should be removed. That leaves this article with one review, and since I haven't seen anything else for this game, I doubt this will ever become an article. Namcokid47 (Contribs) 19:09, 21 January 2021 (UTC)
Just give it time. There will be more eventually and besides, i don't think this will become an article soon enough (given to the sheer clusterf**k of its development process i need to work on). I'm currently working on finding references about the troubled release history (announcement, delays, the "launch party" and the eventual release on December 2020). Roberth Martinez (talk) 20:04, 21 January 2021 (UTC)
I feel this is WP:TOOSOON then. This seems like a very niche game so I don't expect any coverage from sites like IGN or the likes, but surely enough time has passed for at least a few reviews to exist? I'd worry more about it meeting WP:GNG than anything else right now, since that's the make-or-break for this. Namcokid47 (Contribs) 20:39, 21 January 2021 (UTC)
I repeat that i don't think this draft will become an article soon (maybe not this year) due to the amount of history i need to work on (development and release). Not to mention that probably more reviews will pop up somewhere so, i'm keeping my eyes on them. I'm just currently searching sources about the game (including those back when it was know as Projecy Y) just to get that tedious process done before starting to work on my draft... Roberth Martinez (talk) 20:51, 21 January 2021 (UTC)
By the way and this is a question for everybody: Is Retro Gamer still reviewing games on their more recent issues? That's probably where another Paprium review could potentially appear... Roberth Martinez (talk) 20:54, 21 January 2021 (UTC)

"Wikipedia:BW" listed at Redirects for discussion

A discussion is taking place to address the redirect Wikipedia:BW. The discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2021 January 23#Wikipedia:BW until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. --C o r t e x 💬talk 11:34, 23 January 2021 (UTC)

Pirates! Gold

I restored this previously redirected article and added a bunch of sources, as you can see in this version of the article, and yet the article was reverted to a redirect; can anyone help me find additional sources to help assert notability so that it can be restored? 98.32.192.121 (talk) 19:00, 24 January 2021 (UTC)

It's the policy to only have separate articles if the game has been significantly changed from the original. According to the sources the game was "not significantly revised" so it may not merit its own article.ZXCVBNM (TALK) 00:07, 25 January 2021 (UTC)

Hobbit help

Hi, I'm currently reviewing the GAN The Hobbit (2003 video game). I have received no responses since putting the article on hold. Is someone willing to actually address the issues raised, since the nominator appears not to be available? --ProtoDrake (talk) 21:00, 24 January 2021 (UTC)

I have little experience with this game (I saw a speedrun of it at GDQ, and that's pretty much it...), but I'll try.--AlexandraIDV 01:44, 25 January 2021 (UTC)
Okay, no, I'm sorry - I did some work on the plot summary and the reception section, but I'm just not knowledgeable enough on this game to handle the rest without having to do a bunch of research on a game I don't personally care about. Leave a note on the nominator's talk page imo, and if they (or someone else who wants to step in) haven't responded in a few days, fail the review.--AlexandraIDV 02:43, 25 January 2021 (UTC)
I really do not like drive-by GA nominations. Contributor has under 2% of page authorship... Alexandra had almost 20% after, what, an hour of work? — ImaginesTigers (talk) 09:59, 26 January 2021 (UTC)
This user generally seems to be semi-active. I would fail it. Panini🥪 10:36, 26 January 2021 (UTC)
Their activity doesn't bother me as much as their reply of Don't think I can continue this. It's hard to figure out how to do it. — ImaginesTigers (talk) 13:56, 26 January 2021 (UTC)
Given general activity there, I've opted to fail the article. --ProtoDrake (talk) 13:59, 26 January 2021 (UTC)

I think that List of The Legend of Zelda media should be nominated for Today's featured list for February 22, 2021. This would be one day after the 35th anniversary of the series (Featured lists could only be used on either a Monday or a Friday. If you are wondering, it is already a featured list. Do you think that this is a good idea? (Oinkers42) (talk) 18:03, 23 January 2021 (UTC)

This makes sense to me --haha169 (talk) 02:17, 24 January 2021 (UTC)
All you need is the blurb. The hard work has already been done. Panini🥪 02:39, 24 January 2021 (UTC)
@(Oinkers42): The soundtrack section is tagged as outdated - might want to take a look at that before nominating for TFL.--AlexandraIDV 14:16, 26 January 2021 (UTC)

Games with 10 year anniversaries this year - aka potential TFA targets

Gamespot's list

Quantifying that (and ignoring the ones that they ignored the first release in other regions), the 10th anniversary is usually a good reason to request an FA to be on Today's Featured Article so here's what we have and their state:

So Bastion and Batman: AC are effectively ready to go though recommend a review in a 2 month window prior to their anniversary dates and adding to the TFA queue. of the others, it would be nice (IMO) to see Portal 2, LA Noire, Dark Souls, and Skyrim - four extremely key games - to TFA, but all would need to be pushed through the FA process. I know I had gotten some of the way through on Portal 2 closer on is release side, but didn't complete it then. --Masem (t) 17:44, 23 January 2021 (UTC)

I plan to nominate Sonic the Hedgehog for June 23rd, since it's the franchise's 30th anniversary. I'd be interested in helping a bit at Skyward Sword, if ProtoDrake was interested in collaborating. JOEBRO64 01:18, 24 January 2021 (UTC)
  • The TFA for those isn't listed at the top of talk page (they should be). And while FAs can sometimes be featured twice, this is highly highly discouraged there, so this should be not considered if that is the case. --Masem (t) 07:05, 24 January 2021 (UTC)
I still plan to nominate Sakura Wars (1996 video game) for FA and feature it on the main page on September 27, since it's the franchise's 25th anniversary. Lord Sjones23 (talk - contributions) 03:20, 24 January 2021 (UTC)
Yes, I point out the 10 yr anniversary, but you can fairly argue any of 15, 20, or 25 yr anniversary for games that haven't been featured yet as well. --Masem (t) 07:05, 24 January 2021 (UTC)
Computer Space is an FA, hasn't been on main page, and it's the 50th anniversary. --Mika1h (talk) 13:49, 24 January 2021 (UTC)
That's definitely a good target, and you have a bit of flex since there's no hard known release date beyond the Nov/Dec '71 window. --Masem (t) 15:00, 24 January 2021 (UTC)

Skyrim is on my radar. I've been speaking about it with ferret. If he's still keen, that's something we will be tackling towards the middle of the year (plenty of time for the anniversary). Thanks for posting this, though! Good idea to try and get it at TFA on that day. — ImaginesTigers (talk) 13:58, 24 January 2021 (UTC)

  • Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney (currently GA) turns 20 in October this year (which is wild to me, even when keeping in mind that the English release came four years after that), and I kind of want to work toward that... but I don't know if I'm ready for it. Noting that the gameplay section (written by me, years back) probably relies too much on the game's manual for an FA.--AlexandraIDV 14:28, 26 January 2021 (UTC)

New assessment drive?

So, over the past few weeks or so, I've been assessing quite a bit of unassessed video game articles using the Rater template. That said, I have a question: do you guys think we should start a new assessment drive for the video games project if no one objects to it? Lord Sjones23 (talk - contributions) 04:37, 28 January 2021 (UTC)

GA status for Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga

Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga passed its GAN review about thirteen years ago, in 2008, but I really don't think it is at a level that we would expect from a GA in 2021. I've outlined some issues on its talk page; I don't think this is insurmountable or anything, it just needs some research and editing work. I am personally interested in making sure this article keeps its GA status - it is no secret that MLSS is my personal favorite video game - but if you're interested and have the time, I would appreciate any help with it!--AlexandraIDV 06:06, 28 January 2021 (UTC)

Alexandra IDV, It's a shame that present games in this series have really poor articles; I'll stop by and help out. Panini🥪 11:47, 28 January 2021 (UTC)

Rugal Bernstein

An AfD for Rugal Bernstein was closed as Merge on November 28, 2020... but no one's actually merged it. Is there anyone here familiar with the series who can do it? --PresN 14:53, 28 January 2021 (UTC)

Regarding Indian Esport Article’s

Hello, I was exploring wikipedia/video games and i was surprised to find that there are none india related esport articles, for eg. esport teams/organisations in india while as india has a very huge esport industry and worth being on wikipedia, like indian teams/organisations who have played major and notable tournaments, while as other countries which are less notable have these articles present on wikipedia, also since my first article’s subject was related to esports i have had done some research so i would like to contribute, looking for someone who can guide me with the writing style. Thanks. Hums4r (Let's Talk) 08:00, 30 January 2021 (UTC)

Citing Behind the Voice Actors data

This may be applicable to other related WikiProjects, especially those that cover the animated film/television genres, but for now I'll start the discussion here because it's the project most relevant to the article that's currently my focus, List of Resident Evil characters. I did look over Talk:List of Resident Evil characters and its archive, but this was never brought up.

The issue is game-performance credits that have been cited to the Behind the Voice Actors website, and specifically how that's being done by some editors. (I didn't do any research into edit histories on this, because my intent here isn't to assign blame or call any individual out. I'm generally of the mind that if I observe one person doing something, then they're most likely not alone, nor is it limited to the specific instances I know about. If it turns out that's not the case here, and this really doesn't go beyond an isolated editor's contributions to a single article, then this discussion probably isn't necessary and I'll apologize for wasting everyone's time.)

It seems that there are citations being made to BtVA with an included "disclaimer" attached to them. Presumably this is intended as an establishment of reliability, since BtVA has a crowdsourced element to its data and at times will therefore be branded as unreliable. "Not so!" our intrepid editor(s) assert, via a {{Cite web}} transclusion containing the following parameter:

{{Cite web|...|postscript=. A green check mark indicates that a role has been confirmed using a screenshot (or collage of screenshots) of the title's list of voice actors and their respective characters found in its closing credits and/or other reliable sources of information.}}

Here are my issues with that:

  1. It's a massive abuse of the |postscript= parameter, first and foremost. As documented, |postscript= is intended only to configure the ending punctuation for the citation — it defaults to just a period, and it's primarily configurable so that it can be set to nothing (e.g. {{Cite web|...|postscript=}}) when necessary. Not so that it can be used to attach a long-winded justification to the cite. In fact, I'm tempted to propose that all transclusions of {{Cite web}} with a |postscript= argument longer than 1 character be added to a new tracking category, as it's likely they're all similarly abusing the parameter and should be cleaned up. But that's tangential.
  2. The problem with asserting reliability directly in the citation like that is, it only covers that single citation. So how do you address that? Why, by including the disclaimer in every citation to BtVA, of course! End result? I count eighteen such disclaimers at List of Resident Evil characters alone. That's an awful lot of repetition and wasted space in an article that is already distressingly long and excessively detailed.
  3. The thing of it is, the article body (including the list of references) is not the place to establish a source's (or citation's) reliability. If the source is reliable, it's reliable without the disclaimer. If it's not reliable, the disclaimer doesn't somehow make it reliable. Providing an explanation for other Wikipedians, so they won't remove a source in some knee-jerk assumption of unreliability, is what edit messages, talk page discussions, and HTML source comments are for — it's not what the content of the {{Cite web}} template is for, and its |postscript= parameter least of all. Granted, those other methods won't prevent another editor removing the citation, but neither will (or should) an in-article explanation of how, "No, it's OK, this time it's a reliable source."

I'm going to remove the disclaimers, no question about that, purely based on my point #1 above. Even if the consensus is that they're useful and should remain a part of the visible citation text, abusing |postscript= is not how that's accomplished, so we should come up with a better approach to replace it.

So that's the thing I wanted to seek consensus on: what should be done with these "disclaimers"?

  • Just delete |postscript= and its appended text from the transclusions, full stop?
  • Convert the text to an HTML source comment following the transclusion?
  • Remove all of those citations completely, because even green-check-marked BtVA entries aren't sufficiently reliable?
  • Or, something else?

All input would be welcome other than "just leave them they way they are", which I don't view as an option unless we want to completely rewrite the definition of |postscript= at Template:Cite web/doc#Display options. (But if that's your view and you feel you can convince me, go for it. I am not immune to strong counterarguments.) (Please {{ping}} on any replies.) -- FeRDNYC (talk) 07:56, 30 January 2021 (UTC)

Prior WikiProject discussion of BtVA as a source (but nothing directly relevant): Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Video games/Sources/Archive 13#Behind_the_Voice_Actors. -- FeRDNYC (talk) 08:18, 30 January 2021 (UTC)
More (and greater) recent chatter. --Izno (talk) 10:28, 30 January 2021 (UTC)
@Izno: I see you beat me to adding a link to that discussion next to the BtVA entry at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Video_games/Sources#Unreliable_sources as well, so thanks doubly! -- FeRDNYC (talk) 11:46, 30 January 2021 (UTC)

New Articles (January 25 to January 31)

Main page: Wikipedia:WikiProject Video games/New article announcements
 A listing of all articles newly added to the Video Games Wikiproject (regardless of creation date). Generated by v3.5 of the RecentVGArticles script and posted by PresN. Bug reports and feature requests are appreciated. --PresN 15:12, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

January 25

January 26

January 27

January 28

January 29

January 30

January 31

It says the Pauline article was redirected but it's still there. Panini🥪 15:18, 1 February 2021 (UTC)
The Pauline page was moved, so this output is reporting the redirect left behind by the move. --Masem (t) 15:21, 1 February 2021 (UTC)
Ah, I see. Panini🥪 15:33, 1 February 2021 (UTC)
Yeah, looks like it didn't handle the round-robin page move well; in the history log it shows up as "Pauline (character) changed from redirect to C" and "Pauline (Nintendo) changed from C to Redirect" separately, and when the script double-checks the article it does redirect, so it stops there and lists it; for the new page name the article history has a clear "page was moved" line, so it doesn't list that as a creation. Removed the redirect. --PresN 16:27, 1 February 2021 (UTC)
Yesterday, I tagged the Power Pad article, but it is not showing up. (Oinkers42) (talk) 15:57, 1 February 2021 (UTC)
Looks like you missed the cutoff time by a few hours, it's technically dates in UTC, not your local. It'll show up as February 1 next week. --PresN 16:27, 1 February 2021 (UTC)
Is GameStop short squeeze part of the project? The talk page banner was removed but it has Category:2021 in video gaming (which was removed at least once but is now added back in). --Mika1h (talk) 16:37, 1 February 2021 (UTC)
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