Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Video games/Archive 83

Page contents not supported in other languages.
Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Archive 80 Archive 81 Archive 82 Archive 83 Archive 84 Archive 85 → Archive 90

"mixed" reception

Hi. Now I've read about one game too many getting a "mixed" reception when it's, well, crap.

Let me ask a question: what does it take for a game's reception to be characterized as "poor"? That each and every source is universally negative and that there is not a single supporter to be found?

Come on, it's getting ridiculous what receptions are called "mixed" by Wikipedia.

If you don't believe me, watch me! Visit the Elemental: War of Magic page, which I am about to edit. Let's see how long it takes before some fanboy retracts my edit, and when, I contest that revert, the Wikipedians descending to justify a "mixed" tag on yet another bomb.

Do note that when I replace "mixed", I will use language used by the developer himself. I won't use this defence over at the E:WoM talk page, but you guys will be able to see if I can get away with another phrase than the uselessly non-commital, even when it comes straight out of the horse's mouth...

Cheers,

CapnZapp (talk
) 14:31, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

"Mixed" fits perfectly here. Some decent, some poor reviews. See the Metacritic scores. Mixed means nothing more than a broad range of scores. --Teancum (talk) 15:30, 7 September 2010 (UTC)
(
original research – something we don't want to do. For example, on an article I'm currently working on Wonder Boy in Monster Land
, the Amiga version got ratings from magazines as high as 73% and 80% and as low as 41% and 36% respectively. Poor game? Not by the slightest IMO, especially when figuring in the other console versions.
I wouldn't go by mere numerical ratings as far as classifying reception of a game as "poor" is concerned, but I would go by what the reviews actually say. An obvious example of this would be Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing, in which most of the reviews had virtually nothing but cons and criticism about the game. –MuZemike 15:38, 7 September 2010 (UTC)
I would argue that we aren't engaging in OR when we look at the distribution of scores to judge this, though still careful consideration of the reviews themselves are helpful and necessary to fill out the prose. There is a vast difference between a game with an MC agg. rating of 70 based on 10 scores that range from 65 to 75, and a MC agg. rating of 70 with 10 scores that range from 40 to 100. One still needs to be careful, but I think in "obvious" cases where there are a lot of positive reviews, and a similar number of negative reviews (the second case above), "mixed" can be used without question. But if it difficult to say that there's a large split, it is better to simply come off and say if it was generally positive, average, or negative. --MASEM (t) 15:46, 7 September 2010 (UTC)
One reason "mixed" is commonly used is that this is the terminology used by Metacritic, a neutral review aggregator. It's preferable per NPOV to use "X game received a mixed reception[metacritic cite]", rather than to say "X received positive/negative reviews", using our own assessment or one from a given individual. Referring to Elemental specifically, to say it received poor grades is inaccurate: from the reviews cited in the article, the game received 6.5/10, 70%, 2/5 and 4/10. In other words, one okay grade, one average grade, two poor grades. --Muchness (talk) 19:11, 7 September 2010 (UTC)
There's a problem though when Metacritic assigns a score of 57% to the "mixed or average" category[1], when in fact that score is well below average and really closer to "fail".
 Talk 
 02:29, 8 September 2010 (UTC)
I've been thinking about this because I also used to think that the phrase was confusing and used frequently. I believe an issue arises from "mixed review" being a term for a review that has both positive and negative criticism. Thus, receiving "mixed reviews" can be interpreted as a receiving multiple mixed reviews or receiving both positive reviews and negative reviews. —Ost (talk) 20:33, 7 September 2010 (UTC)
Regardless of the suitability of "mixed", I feel it's premature to use the past tense for the Metacritic rating. The game has only been out a fortnight, and in that time several patches have been published which significantly alter the users' experience, resulting in at least two major sources not reviewing it at all yet. Today's score is based on only six data points and is liable to change if other reviews are published. If used at all, it should probably be dated ("as of ....") until further reviews are unlikely to change it. (Note: I am a Stardock employee, hence I've avoided editing that section myself.) GreenReaper (talk) 02:10, 8 September 2010 (UTC)
I agree with this and added an {{as of}} qualifier for the rating. --Muchness (talk) 17:48, 14 September 2010 (UTC)
After a few weeks that really doesn't matter unless your the next The Legend of Zelda (video game) where even without a remake commentary on it continues to be spawned.陣内Jinnai 06:53, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

Other options

Given prose I used in some of my articles with "mixed" reviews I go into a bit more depth. For example, something like "The

problematic words or phrases.陣内Jinnai
07:03, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind

The Elder Scrolls 3 will be on TFA September 15th (or tomarrow).

GamerPro64 (talk
) 18:53, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

I guess this calls for a celebratory playthrough.—  
TALK
 19:11, 14 September 2010 (UTC)
Heh, the community will always have general gripes against Main Page requests for video game articles. However, that does not stop Raul (as he has done many times before) from adding them in on-the-fly. –MuZemike 22:55, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

Alone in the Dark (2008) cover art

So there is a discussion between me and User:Mr Wesker for the use of the cover art of Alone in the Dark (2008 video game). He insists to use the "Inferno" cover art as it's, according to him, the definite version. And I say that the original release cover should be used because it's the original cover and the one that's used on pretty much all other versions. I don't know if there's something about this on the guidelines, but shouldn't the most common (or the original) cover be used on the article? nickin/conversation/contribution 00:07, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

I'd go with the non-inferno box art. The inferno box art appears to be only for one system and is a special edition-- it warrants a mention in the prose of the article but it shouldn't be used as the infobox's picture. Nomader (Talk) 01:49, 15 September 2010 (UTC)
Same answer as Nomander from me too. - X201 (talk) 08:55, 15 September 2010 (UTC)
Likewise. The original box art is the one to go for; it's used on the most platforms and is the one of release. The idea of a definite version of cover art is far too subjective anyway. -- Sabre (talk) 09:52, 15 September 2010 (UTC)
I've notified User:Mr Wesker about this discussion here. Nomader (Talk) 15:49, 15 September 2010 (UTC)
The ideal would be to use both, the original in the infobox and the Inferno in the article as it was until now, but some guys just don't like to have both covers in the same article for some weird reason. As such, if there's this necessity to choose just one, I feel that the Inferno cover is the one that should go because: 1.- It's the definite version of the game and the one intended from the beginning by the creators, if it wasn't released in more platforms it's because of a Atari business decission 2.- This way we disambiguate better with the original Alone in the Dark game. 3.- I consider it a better cover art. I'll respect the resulting consensus here, though, even I feel this way and I stay with the Inferno cover art. But I insist that the better option would be to have both covers, so if there isn't a way to have both in the article, then maybe we could do a mix of both in the same image file to be put in the infobox. I think that would be the best and it would be also tolerated by those guys who don't want both covers to be present in the article in a separate way. (Mr Wesker (talk) 00:48, 16 September 2010 (UTC))
Using both could be a violation of Wikipedia policy
WP:NFCC. --Teancum (talk
) 01:07, 16 September 2010 (UTC)
We can't use both covers per Wikipedia's policy on fair use. We should use the original release version (the one that was most widely released, the original cover); the inferno one, though most likely representing the complete game, wasn't available for all the consoles like the original was and was released after the original came out. If the Inferno version was the most important version, you should make the prose reflect that and stress how it was the complete version of the game through the text. Nomader (Talk) 03:05, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

Input needed about roster lists for wrestling video games

See this discussion: Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Professional_wrestling#Roster_Listings_in_Video_Games for the discussion. RobJ1981 (talk) 15:45, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

Keep the current situation as-is. If anything, games should list who is absent from the game using prose as that might make more sense. An entire roster is unnecessary, but I could see how someone who is expected to be in the game and isn't -might- be of note. --Teancum (talk) 15:52, 15 September 2010 (UTC)
I've responded at Wikipedia:WikiProject Professional wrestling– I figure we should keep the discussion in one place. I agree with Teancum though, only notable roster members or absences should be put into prose. Nomader (Talk) 16:09, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

Revision to {{Cite video game}}

I suggest adding a "scene" field to supplement the current "level" one. Often, things appear in a specific scene that could not be grouped in with a level or area. For example, the official translation Concerto of Midnight Sun appears both in the prologue after the title screen and in the staff credits of the game. But without the reference mentioning it, it is hard to verify by other editors – and quotes are also fairly useless in such a situation. Could also be used for pointing people to the game's staff credits, rather than giving just a general citation for the video game. Prime Blue (talk) 17:06, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

Really the who cite template needs to revamped from the ground up and brought into line with core with a few additions like level, disc and scene.陣内Jinnai 18:15, 10 September 2010 (UTC)
I'm not really seeing the utility of the "scene" field, as opposed to level/area... perhaps you'd mind explaining how the "scene" field would specifically help in the example above, Prime? Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs(talk) 18:18, 10 September 2010 (UTC)
Well i think scene is meant for cutscene. The problem with just level/araa is something like Persona 4 trying to FE, cite the day the fog starts making people sick. Noting the area where it happens doesn't explain when it happens because you transverse the same area the entire game. Moreover they have seperate "levels" and its not inside a "level" so you can't use that. Level/area is only good for games that don't have you constantly revisiting the same level/area throughout the game.
I tried doing this, but i cannot script something that complex and I don't know anyone who can. I had a list of fields we should change:
current
  • title - keep
  • developer - keep
  • publisher - keep
  • date - keep and link year field to this as alternative
  • platform - keep
  • version - keep
  • level - keep
  • language - keep
  • isolang - remove and add deprecation
  • quote - keep
from core
  • others - add (for other notable team members) with dependency to creator
  • url - add (for web-based games
  • archiveurl - add
  • archivedate - add with dependency to archiveurl
  • accessdate - add with dependency to url
  • series - add
  • volume - add and link part filed to this - there are a few games released in parts that aren't considered sequals
  • location - add
  • id - add (any other custom id here)
  • chapter - add (some games divide themselves by chapters)
unique
  • creator - add and link author field to this
  • jan - add (Japanese article number) considering how many games are released in Japan, this should be added
  • isan - ??? Not sure. I don't know what code US uses offhand. One for the US should be added as it is still the second largest producer of commercial video games
  • scene - add
  • disc - add (surprised its not there actually)
陣内Jinnai 18:41, 10 September 2010 (UTC)
Your descriptions of what it is you want are kind of terse. Try explaining in greater detail using complete sentences and proper capitalization and punctuation. It seems to me that {{
 Talk 
01:35, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
David Fuchs: The article currently uses the template to make the reference "Konami TYO. Castlevania: Byakuya no Concerto. (Konami). Game Boy Advance. Level/area: prologue, staff credits. (2002-06-06)" – however, neither the prologue nor the staff credits can be seen as a specific level or area in the game. The scene where the translation is shown still has to be included, though, to give editors an indication of how to verify the information. With a "scene" field, it would look like "Konami TYO. Castlevania: Byakuya no Concerto. (Konami). Game Boy Advance. Scene: prologue, staff credits. (2002-06-06)". Prime Blue (talk) 19:13, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

Mobile Game Boy Adaptor

Find video game sources: "Mobile" GameBoy Adapter – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR · free images · free news sources · TWL · NYT · WP reference · VG/RS · VG/RL · WPVG/Talk

I can't find anything mentioned on the Mobile Game Boy Adaptor. The Mobile Game Boy Adaptor was a Game Boy Color accessory released only in Japan. It allowed players to battle and trade and connect with the N64 somehow with certain games against others via a telecommunications network with your mobile phone. The only games I'm aware that it was compatiable with are

Mobile Golf and Pokémon Crystal. Someone has uploaded a commercial for it on YouTube which I found here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QWetTVvd7IE
Could we please have something mentioned about it? --Victory93 (talk) 04:22, 11 September 2010 (UTC)

Hopefully the template I just added will help.
 Talk 
 06:10, 12 September 2010 (UTC)
That's cool but I meant was that in any way could information about it be added to Wikipedia either somewhere like about the Game Boy accessories. --Victory93 (talk) 00:44, 13 September 2010 (UTC)
You can use those sources to create a new section describing the device, yes.
 Talk 
 01:43, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

APB: All Points Bulletin / Realtime Worlds

You may have heard about the untimely demise of this game and its developer. Anyhow, attention to the articles would be appreciated in advance of what-may-come. –xenotalk 22:09, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

Table format for "List of best-selling video games" articles

See

 Talk 
01:57, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

FAC copy editing

proof for Limbo needed

Could someone proofread through Limbo (video game) for any awkward language as part of its FAC process? --MASEM (t) 03:42, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

Nathan Drake peer review

talk
) 07:16, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

Miss Croft too

I'd like to add Lara Croft to this list. I'd also like to propose a quid pro quo among the three of us: I'll give Limbo and Nathan Drake a swept if you two give Lara Croft one. What do you say? (Guyinblack25 talk 19:29, 8 September 2010 (UTC))

I'll try and get to all of these tomorrow (EST). Give me a ping if I forget. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs(talk) 23:58, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

killer7

Is it too late to add killer7 to the list? It recently failed FAC due to lack of people giving a crap and bothering to comment so I'd like to get it a copyedit so I can resubmit. Axem Titanium (talk) 03:53, 11 September 2010 (UTC)

Tales of Monkey Island

Whilst we're at it, I've just opened a peer review for Tales of Monkey Island with the same FAC objective, and since prose is my weakest area I might as well mention it here. I'll see if I can pitch in with these other articles too. -- Sabre (talk) 15:42, 11 September 2010 (UTC)

GLaDOS

Well, it's not for FAC, and it's way inferior to all these other articles, but I don't have much in the way of other hands who have worked on this article so it's way under par. If anyone gets a chance, any help would be much appreciated, especially in the form of a copy edit. A peer review has been opened. - The New Age Retro Hippie used Ruler! Now, he can figure out the length of things easily. 18:24, 11 September 2010 (UTC)

Dragon Quest

Well if we're adding non-FACs, I'll add that as its been up for A-class assement and the one big problem the one reviewer has seems to be prose. I've tried to get someone to copyedit it, but to no avail.陣内Jinnai 19:30, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

Other comments

I will add that our project has been receiving more and more criticism for our articles getting consistently featured on the Main Page. We need to make sure these articles we put up for FAC are of high quality and can stand up to the scrutiny of the general community, whose resentment against video game articles has been growing. At the same time, we need to continue to internally and aggressively scrutinize our own best work and make sure that we have only the best out there that are ready to be featured on the Main Page, should the community happen to have a change of heart. –MuZemike 05:24, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

I have to say though, I feel we are rather ridiculous overrepresented at TFA from what I've seen lately, but I don't want us being blocked out of having articles on the main page because of the project's opposition to our topic. We should find some way of encouraging more people to participate in project peer review-- could we make some sort of incentive? Maybe a kind of "Video Game Reviewer Barnstar"? I don't want to encourage lax PRs, but I think if we could find a way to revitalize our peer review process, it could really encourage more people to submit their articles there and would therefore encourage better quality articles. Nomader (Talk) 14:15, 14 September 2010 (UTC)
I agree. I think its just an anti-popculture (possibly anti-Japanese popculture) thing as when
WP:Anime proposed Tokyo Mew Mew, the first anime/manga article to be listed on the main page there was an immediate no vote because they didn't want to see a manga article on the main page.陣内Jinnai
03:48, 21 September 2010 (UTC)
Most of the VG articles that go up at TFA are simply due to the random selection from the available pool that Raul maes. I don't think there's a lot of push for people to get specific VG articles up, so we are not intentionally overloading it. --MASEM (t) 03:55, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

Sonic and the Secret Rings

Yes, I know I've been going on too much about this article. But I think this is the best opportunity I'll have for a long time to get a copyedit. It was a former FAC, if that counts. Tezero (talk) 17:48, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

Dead link time! Metacritic

So yeah, it appears all platforms, save for PS3, 360, Wii, DS, PSP, PC, and PS2, have been removed from the web site. So any and all ratings for the N64, DC, GBA, PS1, Xbox, and GameCube are now dead links. - The New Age Retro Hippie used Ruler! Now, he can figure out the length of things easily. 19:22, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

God... I'm getting really tired of this crap. Can we use archive.org to retrieve all the ratings? Nomader (Talk) 19:31, 14 September 2010 (UTC)
That appears to work, yes. - The New Age Retro Hippie used Ruler! Now, he can figure out the length of things easily. 19:39, 14 September 2010 (UTC)
(
TALK
 19:40, 14 September 2010 (UTC)
Start with FAs of older systems, and work downwards to GA and then the rest of the classification. --MASEM (t) 19:41, 14 September 2010 (UTC)
I would almost suggest archiving PS2, since it is on its last legs. - The New Age Retro Hippie used Ruler! Now, he can figure out the length of things easily. 19:44, 14 September 2010 (UTC)
We use Metacritic for a ton of articles– if we decide to do PS2, we should wait until we've finished all the other categories. Nomader (Talk) 19:48, 14 September 2010 (UTC)
From what I see, it looks like they took it down so they could revamp it. There were probably way too many pages for them to fix during the layout change, so they axed them. It says "Grey platforms will be available at a later date."
Talk·Edits
) 19:48, 14 September 2010 (UTC)
Yeah I see it too. The question is, should we replace the links with archive.org links in the meantime? "A later date" could extend for quite some time. Nomader (Talk) 01:45, 15 September 2010 (UTC)
Can someone please link to an article with some dead links? Thanks. —  
TALK
 16:19, 15 September 2010 (UTC)
To answer Nomader's question you would put the archive.org link in the the "archiveurl" field, eg |archiveurl= |archivedate= |deadurl=yes and leave the original link in place. Salavat (talk) 16:46, 15 September 2010 (UTC)
Not |deadurl= though, just the first two :) —  
TALK
 16:55, 15 September 2010 (UTC)
DASHbot appears to have archived the links for Metacritic for 1080° Snowboarding ([2]). Has this happened at any other articles? Nomader (Talk) 17:15, 15 September 2010 (UTC)
We should create a project page as a part of
 Talk 
18:44, 16 September 2010 (UTC)
As long as there is an archive copy, a bot can handle these. Unfortunately, there is no way to get a list of pages with metacritic urls. —  
TALK
 10:47, 17 September 2010 (UTC)
This is just another reason why we should really start archiving everything for our video game FAs. H3llbot recently came through and marked a whole bunch in my watchlisted FAs that have fallen silent, including ones from Microsoft, et al. Webciting this stuff once the content's to a stable format will make everyone's lives easier. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs(talk) 14:17, 17 September 2010 (UTC)
I had the same idea. I've already webcited everything in
SNES that isn't already available at archive.org. Anomie⚔
14:53, 17 September 2010 (UTC)
I just added WebCites for all online refs for my lone FA,
Ninja Gaiden (NES). –MuZemike
20:15, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
Special:LinkSearch/www.metacritic.com, or more specific searches such as Special:LinkSearch/www.metacritic.com/games/platforms/n64/? You can do the same with the API's list=exturlusage query module. Anomie⚔ 14:53, 17 September 2010 (UTC)
How on earth did I miss that? I guess failing to hit Ballmer Peak too many times. I guess I'll queue all those. —  
TALK
 15:45, 17 September 2010 (UTC)
The bot is not going to help you when doing new research. It only fixes existing refs. For new content we need instructions on how to properly crawl archived sites and articles.
 Talk 
 01:45, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
OK, I created a page for how to navigate archived sites, here:
 Talk 
04:08, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

I recently encountered this problem as well. It seems all the original pages are still accessible if you replace "com" with "org", though. That's how I got that one here, at least. Note that the "org" links seem to load slower, but they still work. Prime Blue (talk) 17:17, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

The link didn't work for me.
 Talk 
 01:48, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
Yep, that link didn't work for me either. Nomader (Talk) 21:26, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
Weird. For me, it works (just tried it again). It takes about 20 seconds, but the page will eventually load fully in the old Metacritic design. Do you two get a 404? Prime Blue (talk) 15:26, 19 September 2010 (UTC)
Works for me. - The New Age Retro Hippie used Ruler! Now, he can figure out the length of things easily. 16:38, 19 September 2010 (UTC)
No, I get a 110 "Connection Timed Out" notice from the Metacritic website. Nomader (Talk) 16:56, 19 September 2010 (UTC)
That's the message I got, too.
 Talk 
 03:55, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

EQOA Citing

(EverQuest Online Adventures)
I have made several changes to the EQOA page, but I'm no editor. I didn't cite anything. However, I have left comments in the talk page of what I edited and where to find the sources. Some links I gave link to the exact page where the info can be found, but most of them (if not all but one) I just gave a link to a semi-general place (such as the game's forums) and told the general area of the forum to find the info. All the info I edited in I have personally read, so it all should be citeable.

If just one person were to add the page to their watchlist, I would greatly appreciate it. The edits I make are more to get the info in there rather than to make it look/read good. That and I don't like hunting down my sources, but I wouldn't mind looking for the hard to find stuff if somebody else can't (though it may be awhile before I make the time to).

(I don't watchlist articles) 
 Mofuggin bob (talk) 13:51, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

Newsletter

Is it just me, or is the newsletter defunct? The current issue should have been released back in July, but it hasn't been particularly updated since then. I'd be up for updating it, but I'm not exactly sure what process was used before for updating it and getting a tally of video game DYKs and such– this was brought up before back in August. Either way, I think it'd be good if we could establish consensus to put this on hiatus until the necessary editors and bots come back online, or if we could all agree to taking up a certain portion of its writing. Nomader (Talk) 23:50, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

I was part of the newsletter for a while. The reason I stopped was because of the Article Bot being down. If it goes back up, I can work on the Featured Editor and Featured Content sections again.
GamerPro64 (talk
) 00:16, 17 September 2010 (UTC)
There were a few comments on this issue a month ago. --Mika1h (talk) 00:18, 17 September 2010 (UTC)
And I'll help out any way I can if you guys get it back up.
lover
00:25, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

I'll have some time this weekend to catch up on some actual VG-related stuff; if you need anything during that time, let me know. –MuZemike 06:36, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

Sorry MuZemike, looks like I didn't check back in time to give you anything to do, my mistake. With regards to the newsletter, I think we should send out an issue to people as soon as possible listing the interview that we have completed, and maybe things that need to be done around the project-- we can say that for the DYKs and the such that the Alertbot is currently not functioning, and as such, it is unable to be updated at this time? I think as long as we send out something it's better than nothing in this case. Nomader (Talk) 04:35, 21 September 2010 (UTC)
Here, I updated the list of new FAs, GAs, etc since April, and I have a list of VG articles featured on DYK except April and May, which I still need to get to. I have been trying to keep
WP:VG/N
updated as much as I can, so you could at least give a good estimate as to how many new articles appeared over the last few months at least; that is not a huge priority, however. Probably the other big thing regards, as you said, the present interview that we have, and we need a rough list of any new developments in the project.
While I am at it, this also serves as a good opportunity to have another interview of a project member set up and ready to go for the next newsletter, so we're not scrounging around as such. –MuZemike 21:03, 21 September 2010 (UTC)
Great work on listing the featured work, MuZemike. Hrm... I made a small list of editors to myself that would be good interviewing candidates. Off the top of my head, possible candidates would be you (
MuZemike), Axem Titanium, Guyinblack25, New Age Retro Hippie, and Xeno– that's just going off of my mind right now, not really based on any formula or anything. Those are all people who have been here for at least awhile and have in the past or continue to actively participate in the project. On a separate issue, should we just exclude the new articles page for this release of the newsletter? Nomader (Talk
) 04:50, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

Eyes on Good Old Games please

The old PC games DRM-free site Good Old Games went to a standard message that suggests its shutting down but there's a lot of validated reports that are coming up suggesting this is only temporary (possibly part of a marketing ploy) and that forthcoming news on Sept 22. As such, it would be improper to call "GOG was a site..." as some are trying to do. Right now, we don't know details and only can wait until the 22nd to fill in, thus we need to just keep acting like it is available. Eyes to watch for such changes would be helpful. --MASEM (t) 19:41, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

Added to my watchlist. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs(talk) 19:42, 19 September 2010 (UTC)
Oh! Better back up all my games to CD, then.
 Talk 
 03:54, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
It was a prank: [3] --Mika1h (talk) 17:41, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

Development info for OutRun Online Arcade?

I've recently been working to try and bring

Sega Chihiro hardware (which was based on the Xbox). It was then ported to the Xbox, then updated to OutRun 2 SP (new tracks), then Coast 2 Coast combined the two games. Arcade was then built from Coast 2 Coast's code and assets. Trouble is if I did this I'd have to find sourcing on the Chihiro and its history, but I can't find anything reliable on the net. Thoughts? I've removed the expansion tag from the Development section of the article since I don't think I can fill it in much more, but I'd really like to. --Teancum (talk
) 13:18, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Considering it's a plot-free game, the number of sources used and that the three main sections needed are in place, it's C-class already, rated as such. There's an interview with the developer Sumo Digital here posted a month after the game was released, looks to be some usable info there. Someoneanother 21:13, 23 September 2010 (UTC)
Thanks for the rating and the interview. I'll check it out. --Teancum (talk)

FF template edit war

I'm trying to add a link to the

books
} 23:39, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

i did originally confuse it for the game, either way, these need to be in the ivalice template, not in the FF. NOw that i take a careful look at the sreies article i doubt it merits it's own article. it's too small and has more specific information that could fall in it's respected articles.

talk
) 23:44, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

I full-protected the template 6 hours for the edit war. Please hash it out on the template's talk page. We're better than this, folks. –MuZemike 23:47, 23 September 2010 (UTC)
It's out of place in the Ivalice template since it deals with individual games. As for the article itself, it should
books
} 23:48, 23 September 2010 (UTC)
There's not much expansion, still nothing about it is helping merit it's own article. Plus i doubt their is a legit series of "ff tactics" considering ff tactics: war of the lions is part of the ivalice alliance subseries.
talk
) 23:55, 23 September 2010 (UTC)
ALso you wanted to add crystal defenders in the ff template and that was in the ivalice template.
talk
) 00:04, 24 September 2010 (UTC)
No I did not. I removed it and you reverted me! Stop fabricating scenarios.
books
} 00:57, 24 September 2010 (UTC)
sorry, the reverts previous page gets confusing....anyways....there is no official series of final fantasy tactics, they are just there. So i don't tihnk it deserves to merit it's own article because there is no reception of ff tactics as a whole series (because it isn't).PLus the series article holds no new information.
talk
) 01:03, 24 September 2010 (UTC)
Again not true, see "Final Fantasy Tactics series first impressions" by Eurogamer or "'Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions' – Not Being Released On September 15th After All" by TouchArcade, both of which acknowledges the series.


you mean they acknowledge it as a series. still eurogamer still did reception individually, i dooubt the "FF tactics" series merits it's own article especially where grimoire of the riftand war of the lions are part of the ivalice alliance series. there isn't much information justifying the article.

talk
) 01:34, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

I'm with BreadNinja on this one. Ivalice Alliance is a more legitimate article than the little acknowledged series of Final Fantasy Tactics. — Blue。 14:09, 24 September 2010 (UTC)
As for the series, I have to side with books looking a bit deeper. SE sources confirm it also:

There is also usage by other reliable sites than just eurogamer:

And that's just a few minutes of searching.陣内Jinnai 15:07, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

I seee. wel i guess i'm wrong, still i don't think the tactics sreies should be part of the main ff template.
talk
) 15:09, 24 September 2010 (UTC)
SE doesn't explicitly say which title encompass the series, afaik in the case of Crystal Defenders, the series they refer to in regards to jobs would be Tactics Advance and A2, but not Tactics WotL. As for the 1UP interview, they refer to the "Final Fantasy Tactics series released for the PlayStation". As far as I'm concerned, there's no series of Tactics games released for the Playstation, just one title. — Blue。 18:03, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Japanese media and the tilde

There is currently discussion on whether or not to use the tilde/hyphen/etc. as found in titles of Japanese media as it appears in the Japanese media rather than modifying it into another punctuation format on the English Wikipedia. As articles in this WikiProject's purview may be affected, users here are requested to contribute to the discussion

here.—Ryūlóng (竜龙
) 21:00, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Ace Combat: Joint Assault

I've expanded the plot a bit, but since the game is already out, help is needed here. Thanks. --Eaglestorm (talk) 08:10, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

What are you wanting/needing help with? Just the plot? --Teancum (talk) 13:19, 23 September 2010 (UTC)
A general expansion, to be at least on par with the other AC articles. --Eaglestorm (talk) 14:31, 23 September 2010 (UTC)
Well, my first suggestion would be to add
Wikiproject Video games reliable sources. --Teancum (talk
) 15:32, 23 September 2010 (UTC)
I've made a reception section,but still I'd appreciate the help of editors who have worked in the other AC articles before. --Eaglestorm (talk) 13:11, 26 September 2010 (UTC)

FF template edit war, take two

Alright, again there's an edit war involving this template. This time it's over the addition of the traditional Book/Cat/Portal at the bottom of the template, as is customary to do (see {{

books
} 20:37, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

Don't forget the best looking one:
Megata Sanshiro (talk) 20:52, 25 September 2010 (UTC)
I like how it includes the portal and interwiki links in it. Pretty slick, IMO.
 Talk 
 21:40, 25 September 2010 (UTC)
Red links should be avoided, unless the article is very likely to be created soon. --Mika1h (talk) 22:21, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

Verb tense for MMOs that have closed.

I've requested clarification on this article guideline. Opinions welcome at the following link location

WT:WikiProject_Video_games/Article_guidelines#Verb_tense_for_MMOs_that_have_closed - X201 (talk
) 14:05, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

Mario lists

I think we need to address the plethora of Mario lists that we currently have. We have five right now (

Sports games in the Mario series). I'd advocate moving "Mario media" to "Mario video games" and creating a new Mario media list in the same vein as List of Final Fantasy media and List of Final Fantasy video games due to the extent of the series, keeping the sports game list which was created as a split-off of the Mario media list, and deleting the other three lists. I'd like consensus to delete them though from the project, as I feel they're all sort of redundant to each other. Nomader (Talk
) 02:48, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

Oh, goodness gracious; I didn't realize all those lists were there. I suppose I support that merge; delete if completely redundant. I mean, let's have some sense of organization to the Mario articles as is done well with the Final Fantasy articles. –MuZemike 04:25, 28 September 2010 (UTC)
Good lord. Merge is in order. NativeForeigner Talk/Contribs 04:31, 28 September 2010 (UTC)
Well, I and
List of Mario media (though not recently). It'd be awesome if someone could take care of "finishing" media, that'd be awesome. - The New Age Retro Hippie used Ruler! Now, he can figure out the length of things easily.
04:57, 28 September 2010 (UTC)
Yeah the separate lists are kind of disgusting– the Mario media list serves as an outstanding video game list, and I really commend
List of Mario television series), the television episodes, any notable mangas or comics... it adds up to a gigantic article if we put in the video games with them. I think following the Final Fantasy example would probably be best in this case. Nomader (Talk
) 05:33, 28 September 2010 (UTC)
Thanks for the commendations, and I have no objectionsto splitting up the media list as much as humanly necessary. - The New Age Retro Hippie used Ruler! Now, he can figure out the length of things easily. 05:35, 28 September 2010 (UTC)
Yeah, no problem and neither do I. I think we should start though by deleting the lists of
Mario games by genre as it seems all of their content is already redundant to the media list and the sports list that we have right now... does anyone have any objections to that? Nomader (Talk
) 05:55, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

Standards for an arcade-only title?

I've been thinking about creating an H2Overdrive article -- but I'm wondering if there are any standards that might deviate a bit from other articles. For instance - in the infobox do we show the entire arcade cabinet? A logo? I just thought I'd take it up here before actually looking further into it. --Teancum (talk) 11:42, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

Well, this was discussed in the past, but I objected to the outcome, but I'll pass it on here. It was decided that if a poster for the game is available, it should go in the infobox. Barring that, an image of the game cabinet is fine, or a screenshot of gameplay. A shot of the title screen is generally not preferred since it doesn't necessarily convey gameplay. — Frεcklεfσσt | Talk 11:53, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

Dealing with weird rating distributions

The bulk of Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock reviews are expected to arrive today (media block until release, it seems, not a good sign to begin with). But going on what the UK release has generated, I'm seeing a funky score distribution. All the sites that I would consider reliable for review inclusion are giving them game very low scores and I expect that to continue with most US outlets judging by the complaints of the existing reviews. But as Metacritic shows, [7] there is a number of 90+ reviews from non-reliable gaming sources.

Now this may be way too early but lets assume this hyptothetical situation where all the reliable reviews fall under 70 on metacritic but with all the non-reliable sources, it brings the average to 80-85. That will look weird to have the vg review table be full of 60-70s, and an average 10 points above that. I'm thinking the best way to address this is to point that that several "smaller gaming sites" (aka unreliable sources) rated the game high and include some quotes or summary that is obvious on the main MC page, before delving into our reliable sources.

Again, this could be a non-problem. However, I can see this happening for other games in the future as well. --MASEM (t) 14:01, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

I think in this instance you could mention a
median in the intro to your Reception section. I've come across this recently too, but more with outlying scores. I dealt with something similar at Monday Night Combat and OutRun Online Arcade, mentioning the majority of reviews. Perhaps those ideas might help. --Teancum (talk
) 14:47, 28 September 2010 (UTC)
This is a non-problem. Metacritic has always weighted review sources in terms of their popularity/influence/reliability, this is not a new thing. It makes it stronger than those that do just take an average. -
n
19:02, 28 September 2010 (UTC)
Well, in this case, its not even that. Here [8] is the current page (as of when I write this); of 15 scores they have, the top 7 only include one reliable source, and the bottom 7 include 4. It's the blog-like sources ranking this high while established journalists are having a yawn. But we're only one day out of release, it could change. --MASEM (t) 12:50, 29 September 2010 (UTC)
On a related question: right now, same game, the 360 version has 15 review scores, PS3 10, and Wii 8. When you look at the averages, they improve with fewer reviews (in part that some reviews like IGN's, having propagated to the other scores); this can make the game look like a 74 or an 84 if I pick the 360 or Wii version (respectively). As there should not be major differences between platforms for this specific game (there may be Wii variants due to one extra gameplay feature but presently nothing to compare again), I would think these scores should be relatively close by the end of the day; I shouldn't have to include all three. As this is like still watching the stock market, the averages will likely move closer to each either by weeks end, but in the meantime, and in future cases, I would suggest that if one is choosing one aggregater score out of all release platforms (working on the assumption there are no differences between platform releases), it should be the console that has the most data points for a summary point from the aggregater (360 in this case), regardless how that drags the score up or down. --MASEM (t) 12:50, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

Dragon's Kingdom MUD

This article was recently undeleted (copyvio) and is up on AfD (Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Dragon's Kingdom). I became involved by responding to an OTRS request with regard to the copyright issue.

The deletion discussion could do with comments from someone knowledgeable on the development of these games in the 1990s/2000s. The MUD script is claimed to be based on freeware code originally a 'tribute' to

Dragon Warrior. Though the end result of the deletion discussion may be to delete, there seems to be scope for an article on the evolution of the similar family of websites/browser based MUDs which probably derived from an original text-based MUD. Fæ (talk
) 07:43, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

Members page

Is there really any real purpose to this page? It just seems to me that it's an arbitrary list of signatures that isn't terribly informative to anyone. The fact that people need to list themselves as inactive also detracts from its usefulness. I'm just seriously wondering if there is any point in keeping it around? --Dorsal Axe 08:58, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

well almost every project has a members list, it's merely to show who has commited themselves to the project. i also see it as a reference list of members. though inactive/active is unnecessary.

talk
) 11:14, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

Actually I think it's really useful if we needed to contact our members for any reason, or if we want to browse through editors who are active in the project. With regards to active/inactive, I know that
WP:NINTENDO periodically purges their member list-- they move all their users to the inactive list, and then leave a note to their members notifying them that they should move themselves to the active list if they're still active in the project. Don't recall if that's what we do here though. Anyways, I think it's a great way to sort of do a head count about how many people are active in a certain subject area and I fully support the retention of our member list. Nomader (Talk
) 13:51, 14 September 2010 (UTC)
I'd have to say in regards to the peer review and assessment process that too many of us focus only on our own articles and don't spend time reviewing others. I've brought three articles to peer review, only one of them ever received any comments, so I don't even bother anymore. I just get most of my articles to B-Class and stop due to lack of participation. And yet many members who don't review others articles put several up for GAN/PR/FAC. --Teancum (talk) 14:55, 14 September 2010 (UTC)
I usually get one or two basic comments but nothing too extensive. I usually write shorter articles so I don't really need it that much, but I really think we should find some way of encouraging WP:VG members to help in the PR process for the members who tackle more extensive articles. I suggested
above that we might want to create some sort of incentive for quality reviews, like maybe a barnstar (we video game people do tend to be achievement oriented, after all). I've always noticed how relatively inactive our PR is and I think it'd be a great asset to our project if we could get it active again. Nomader (Talk
) 18:22, 14 September 2010 (UTC)
I usually do PRs when I post up something to get PRed, usually 2 for everyone I post. I admit though I'm not perfect about it. Sometimes there just isn't a second one I really care to PR.

I think the big problem is i, and everyone else, doesn't get a newsletter updating me on what articles could use review (i usually skim past the top section notice on this page unless I've been gone a few days). However, i probably wouldn't recieve the newletter anyway as i'm not listed as a member because the VG member list doesn't collect member lists who post they are members of specific TFs rather than the project as a whole (imo by stating i'm a member of a TF, I'm also saying i'm a member of the project as a whole and feel its redudant to also say i'm a member of the project).陣内Jinnai 04:12, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

Good point, but the problem is that you may want to be part of a task force but not part of the project as a whole. What if you were only interested in editing articles about
Sims task force, but you could care less about video games as a whole so you didn't join the main membership list? However, signing up to get the newsletter is actually through a different page where you sign up specifically for the newsletter. Nomader (Talk
) 04:58, 22 September 2010 (UTC)
How about the VG barnstar with a magnifying glass over it? A reviewer's barnstar for work at PR, FAC, GAN, etc. I'm sure {{
VG Barnstar}} could be tweaked to use the original version and others with a parameter. Any thoughts? (Guyinblack25 talk
17:02, 30 September 2010 (UTC))

WP:PLOTSUM a template for WP:GAMEPLOT
 ?

We've never had a full-out standard for game plots, but some game plots are ridiculously long. In the past we've used

WP:PLOTSUM as a general guideline, but users occasionally point out that it doesn't mention games in the plot. Is there any interest in having an actual standard? Yes, some games are longer than others, but any game's plot can be summarized in ~800 words or less. --Teancum (talk
) 18:05, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

This was an issue in the past and a lot of the issue comes around the JRPG genre where a game that has 30-40 hours of gameplay is going to have a long, rambling plot. It can be done - I know I helped to contribute to the reduction that was Chrono Trigger's rambling plot. But there will likely remain plots that make it very difficult to trim down below a set threshold. Then on the opposite side of the coin you have plots that can be summarized in a few words or two. In general, I would argue that we should aim the same as movies 700-900 words or less, but need to be a bit more reasonable if the plot does ramble; I would though also argue that if a plot starts edging to 1200 words or more, there's likely a problem to be fixed. --MASEM (t) 18:13, 28 September 2010 (UTC)
I'd agree with that for the most part. I think you're right about the long RPGs not being easily summarized, but in that instance perhaps an "oversummarization" might be in order. If a plot would be 1,000 or so plus words, why not break it down to its simplest format and limit it to 1-2 paragraphs, giving an extremely basic overview? It's likely that elements of the plot will spill out into the inevitable Setting and Characters section of those games anyway. I suppose there would have to be a standard given on the length of the game. For instance, there's a {{
plot}} tag on Final Fantasy XIII, but its 881 words and probably takes 20+ hours to complete. I'd say games that are 15+ hours can be safe at under 1,000 words, whilst those under 15 hours should be below 800. --Teancum (talk
) 18:39, 28 September 2010 (UTC)
Some can, but let's take FF7, where you have a death of a major character, a complete reveal about the bg of the other major character, and the like. Now, I am all for pushing character-driven quests to character articles if they don't contribute to the larger plot to help trim down but I don't think either can be done here. Instead, in such cases, a "setting" subsection and a "character" subsection is helpful to establish details that would otherwise bulk down the plot. --MASEM (t) 03:15, 29 September 2010 (UTC)
Problem is if we just do that, but don't set standards you get results like Final Fantasy XIII where the character section is enormous.

I think a general guideline for prose length is fine while giving deference to more narrative intensive works like RPGs and visual novels which by their nature are going to be more complex than most platform and fighting games. However, we should really define some limits on characters because it seems that people are loading up those sections and then when they get large enough demanding they be split.陣内Jinnai 15:59, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

I think that list has both the size and the references to allow a spinout to
Characters of Final Fantasy XIII, and crop the rest down to a prose paragraph that IDs the 6 main playables. --MASEM (t
) 16:03, 29 September 2010 (UTC)
I'd agree with Jinnai here.
WP:TRIVIA. Personally speaking far too many articles get a character spinout article simply because folks choose to list much more then they should - see the brand new article List of characters in Red Dead Redemption. Many character list articles are like this. If they can't fit into a List of characters in NAME OF GAME series, there's probably not a need for a separate article, unless one character them self is notable, such as Cloud Strife. Perhaps a better WP:VG policy would be WP:GAMESYNOPSIS, which could cover standards for setting, plot and characters combined. This way standards can be created based on genre and game length (I.E. a racing game generally needs no setting or synopsis, shooters need a "medium sized" section and RPGs a somewhat larger one. --Teancum (talk
) 16:48, 29 September 2010 (UTC)
Note that Sjones23 is (slowly) splitting off the characters section into
User:Sjones23/Characters of Final Fantasy XIII. We all know that it's too long right now. --PresN
17:02, 29 September 2010 (UTC)
Frankly, if an article's plot is getting too long, let the sources be our guide. If reliable sources aren't spending a lot of time in reviews, previews, or special features on the twists and turns of the story, that's a good indication that we shouldn't either. We don't need "A to B, which causes C into D" in all cases; "A over time leads to D" will work fine. Smashing mentions of every character or every mission just kills readability. Take Halo: Reach for example: In two missions, players are sent on recon missions, discover a large force, regroup, assault the aforementioned large force, destroy the landing zone, and clear a way for bombardment, which leads to the discovery of a big honkin' spaceship. In the plot, it's currently condensed to "As the Covenant arrive on the planet in force, Noble Team is dispatched on various defensive missions such as assaulting a Covenant ground base and removing fortified Covenant defenses. " Yes, it's an FPS, but if you're telling me that you can't condense a video game story into less than nine paragraphs, I'll just laugh at you. Hell, I could shrink all of Shakespeare's synopses into far smaller bits. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs(talk) 21:37, 29 September 2010 (UTC)
All well and good to say here, but I think it needs to be spelled out better, especially for characters.陣内Jinnai 05:21, 30 September 2010 (UTC)
Okami plot is 2 paragraphs long for a 30-40hr game and yet still captures the essence of it without being overly terse). Sometimes it is easy to reduce past that point, other times its not. Often it is best to think non-linearly with respect to the actual plot, just because the player goes from A to B to C to D in that order doesn't mean it is necessary to state it in that order; perhaps the player learns something significant about a character at point B, then B could be highlighted first "The villain is really the player character's best friend, but this not revealed to the player until later in the game", if it allows us to jump from A to D where critical plot events really occur. --MASEM (t
) 15:58, 30 September 2010 (UTC)
Here's a previous thread where actual numbered restrictions were discussed. Perhaps we can build off that. Also, I believe much of that discussion and related ones guided this section of the "How to write a good video game article" draft. (Guyinblack25 talk 16:49, 30 September 2010 (UTC))
I'm in favor of plot summaries for very long plot sections. Ideally the summaries should contain as few as possible spoilers as well.
 Talk 
 19:06, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

F1 2010

Could someone keep an eye on F1 2010 (video game) please. Looks like it may be heading in the same direction as Civilization V did earlier in the week (IP editor re-adding uncited forum complaints). Thanks - X201 (talk) 07:54, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

RPS has some coverage on issues, namely the AI allegations, perhaps you might find them useful in dealing with such user complaints in the article. -- Sabre (talk) 10:58, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

Something is wrong with this page

Carmen Sandiego: The Secret of the Stolen Drums article page a previous user or users put references on the page but it doesn't appear when edited. Dwanyewest (talk) 02:24, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

The only section that contained references was commented out in this revision. It is still commented out, but it is visible while editing in case you want to expand that section or even just bring back the reflist for other references. Reach Out to the Truth 02:37, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

Donkey Kong
 template

Not an edit war, but it seems it better be discussed since we went throught three different revisions recently. The current version is from me, I found that a bit too many articles were removed last time. I am not convinced this is the best format, though. Feel free to make improvements. Prime Blue (talk) 16:30, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

I'd like to ask to include the Nintendo v. Universal article in the template if that's all right. It was pretty controversial and a landmark period in the early history of Donkey Kong. Sincerely Subzerosmokerain (talk) 16:37, 27 September 2010 (UTC)
I think they should be listed by "Main" and "Spin off" like this There aren't enough games in each category. Too much whitespace is a bad thing.
Talk·Edits
) 16:49, 27 September 2010 (UTC)
I think it would be hard to draw the line. Some titles like Donkey Kong 3 and Mario vs. Donkey Kong are pretty ambiguous as to its status as a "main" title. Prime Blue (talk) 17:48, 27 September 2010 (UTC)
I agree that Universal City Studios, Inc. v. Nintendo Co., Ltd. should probably be included as the court case directly dealt with Donkey Kong. –MuZemike 18:22, 27 September 2010 (UTC)
Genre format is the best one. There really isn't any "main series" in Donkey Kong games. And the current revision divides the series into too many subseries. --Mika1h (talk) 19:53, 27 September 2010 (UTC)
I agree with Mika1h, the genre format seems to be the best way of organizing it. Nomader (Talk) 21:03, 27 September 2010 (UTC)
But
Mario vs. Donkey Kong 2 and subsequent sequels are not "arcade-style" but fully-fledged puzzle games. Also, what is the definition of "arcade-style" here? Prime Blue (talk
) 11:42, 28 September 2010 (UTC)
Games that fall under
arcade (genre). --Mika1h (talk
) 22:00, 28 September 2010 (UTC)
The MvDK series fits because it's basically a spiritual follow-up to the original arcade DKs. - The New Age Retro Hippie used Ruler! Now, he can figure out the length of things easily. 22:11, 28 September 2010 (UTC)
The
Game Boy Donkey Kong and Mario vs. Donkey Kong most certainly are based on the original arcade Donkey Kong. But that can not be said for the other sequels, they are just too different to classify them as such. I still think the original platform grouping is the least "controversial" and most evident way to go – with the excessive line breaking removed from the handheld section, it does not even look that bad. Prime Blue (talk
) 14:31, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

I think it's confusing how some links have the full title and how some are shortened. The link titled "Game Boy" is especially awkward. I would expect it to link to the console. Megata Sanshiro (talk) 10:24, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

Having the full titles would look like that. It's a bit more confusing and harder to find a title without delay, though. Prime Blue (talk) 13:58, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

Adding Giant Bomb to reviews template

Is it possible to add Giant Bomb to Template: Video game reviews? Is there a good reason why they're not there already? sdornan (talk) 18:36, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

There were discussions about this in the past. Since Giant Bomb has large portions of it that can be user-contributed, the thought was that it would not be placed as a parameter in the template. It can be added as a custom reviewer on a case-by-case basis. --Teancum (talk) 00:48, 4 October 2010 (UTC)
The wikis are user contributed but not the staff reviews, which can all be found on one page at [9]. Those are all staff reviews written by staff members. sdornan (talk) 00:53, 4 October 2010 (UTC)
For reference here is the consensus that members came to. --Teancum (talk) 01:05, 4 October 2010 (UTC)
So, if I interpreted the discussion correctly, the consensus was that Giant Bomb was a glorified blog with not enough readership. That might have been true two years ago when the site was created, but I don't think that's true now. Alexa gives Giant Bomb a traffic rank of 4,660. A few other websites in the template are Eurogamer with a rank of 4,753, and, for some reason, Game Revolution with a rank of 23,499. Giant Bomb even has a higher rank than G4, which is at 4,839. sdornan (talk) 15:54, 4 October 2010 (UTC)
It's not about popularity so much as reputation. Game Revolution has never been a hugely popular site, but it's an established web site of more than a decade. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs(talk) 17:40, 4 October 2010 (UTC)
Well, I believe this sort of thing is what scares off most of WP:VG members. To a casual reader that looks like a professional review. I memory serves an audit was done long ago and lots of these user reviews that looked professional had to be manually removed. It comes down to the fact that it's tough for IP users to look at that review and say "oh, that's a user review" whereas on most other sites user reviews and scores are much more limited. For example, Eurogamer only lets users enter a score and IGN only allows a one paragraph review. As IP users typically only do the easiest thing, leaving it out of pre-defined parameters can help to alleviate the issue of Giant Bomb user reviews. Giant Bomb can still easily be added under the custom reviewers and the reader will not know the difference. --Teancum (talk) 16:13, 4 October 2010 (UTC)
I think listing them as a situational reviewer, but put the onus of the user to show they are staff reviews, that's fine. If there is a clear way to do so, like mania where we can tell users "articles with numbers at the end of the url link are by staff members and those without are user reviews" - which they are - then that's a way that it can be done.陣内Jinnai 20:00, 4 October 2010 (UTC)
The way Giant Bomb handles user reviews is similar to the way GameSpot does it (which isn't really surprising considering the site's origins) but I don't think anyone would argue against GameSpot's inclusion in the template just because someone might mistake this for a staff review. Someone unfamiliar with the differences between a staff review and a user review could make that mistake with any site. The difference should be clear enough, but if it's not then we can use the external link search, which currently lists 434 links to the site. The only occurrences of user reviews are on talk pages, and only one of those talk pages is for an actual article. There are also links to staff reviews which are fine, and links to the wiki which I plan to investigate further. If adding Giant Bomb to the template does result in people adding user reviews, they can be removed just as if someone added a user review from another site. I intend to monitor the link search regardless, to identify and remove uses of the GB wiki as a source. Identifying user reviews would actually be easier. Reach Out to the Truth 21:07, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

3ds as eighth gen

People are trying to argue that the 3DS an 8th gen console (and thus starting

History of video game consoles (seventh generation)) would be great. --MASEM (t
) 00:41, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

It's not even a console; it's a handheld. Nintendo's yet-to-be-named 3D gaming sytem to replace the Wii would be a better contender, but even that's OR. There has been some talk about rewriting that section to remove generations as they no longer seem as relevant due to technology convergence.陣内Jinnai 20:02, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

Nintendo Power issues 169-171

Anyone got? I'd like to get some information on Ruby & Sapphire from them. - The New Age Retro Hippie used Ruler! Now, he can figure out the length of things easily. 01:41, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

Check the reference library for Nintendo Power. --—Mitaphane Contribs | Talk 20:31, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

Sono Hanabira article development

Hello I was trying to

Talk, My master
02:50, 5 October 2010 (UTC)

Problems at Phantasy Star Universe articles

i'm pretty sure you are family with Uegene Crabs who was once Zang He, Donald Duck and now, Zhou yu. in the past we had some confilicts with him, but now i'm questioning whether he knows the rules to wikipedia at all.

the first problem i'm having is the PS2/PC servers closing. he keeps removing the "English" releases simply because it's implied due to this being English wikipedia, which is ubsurd. we have to be specific to which servers are closed.

another one is adding PSUpedia to the external links even though a while back we already confirmed through consensus with on remember breaking the tie. unforutnately this member retired so i can't ask for her help again. the only reason he said was that it there for a certain ammount of days so why not.

this is really getting ridiculous and if anyone notices the article's previous format, you could see how badly and how unwiki-like the article was before. I'm not only asking to help the article under these circumstances but i also request some attention from other members in order to at least get these articles in B-class.

talk
) 17:52, 5 October 2010 (UTC)

"Mouse perspective" games/levels?

Do we have an article or section of an article related to levels which are played from a "mouse perspective"? A good example is the Vigilante 8 Arcade level Garage. The garage is sized up greatly to make the cars feel as though they are radio controlled. This is semi-common in shooters and other games (but more so with mods) -- I'm just looking for something to wikilink to so I can explain the setting of the level further. --Teancum (talk) 17:57, 5 October 2010 (UTC)

Counting a "bonus game" as a release on a platform?

This is about the inclusion of a platform and release date in the infobox if a game did not see a standalone release but was rather just included as a "bonus game" in another game. I have seen this added to quite a few articles ([10], [11], [12]) and thought it might be good to get some opinions to form a definite guideline.

Personally, I think this should be mentioned somewhere in the article itself but not in the infobox. If the game is just a "gimmick" in another game, it is not really to be considered a release on a platform. On the contrary, I consider a real release to be a standalone game published as such in physical or download form, or as part of a collection of games marketed as such (e.g.

The Legend of Zelda: Collector's Edition). Prime Blue (talk
) 18:25, 5 October 2010 (UTC)

Some Mirror's Edge facts

I'm posting this here instead of Talk:Mirror's Edge, because I'm not sure how active that page is. If you're not aware, EA is fighting an ongoing battle with notorious trademark troll Edge Games. Tim Langdell, owner of Edge games filed for a preliminary injunction to stop sales of Mirror's Edge, that injunction has been denied, you can read the court order at http://docs.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/california/candce/3:2010cv02614/228647/67/0.pdf

There are some interesting points which could go into the Mirror's Edge article, but I don't have the time to edit it into the prose -

  • Mirror's Edge is coming out on Mac this year.
  • Marketing cost of $9 million in the US
  • 3 year development time, team of over 60 people
  • 2 million copies sold worldwide, 750,000 of which were in North America
  • Mirror's Edge 2D for iOS has sold 37,000 copies on the iPad
    • n
      19:36, 5 October 2010 (UTC)
That lawsuit's going to be really interesting to watch, since the judge called out Langdell for falsifying evidence to support his trademark claim. Torinir ( Ding my phone My support calls E-Support Options ) 19:50, 5 October 2010 (UTC)

NTSC-uk as a reliable source

Currently there's a discussion on NTSC-uk as a reliable source at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Video games/Sources#NTSC-uk. If we could get some editors chiming in on their opinions and thoughts that would be great. --Teancum (talk) 00:46, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

We've had a user assist in responding, but I don't feel comfortable closing this one just yet. Could one or two more users please take a second and chime in at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Video games/Sources#NTSC-uk to help reach a consensus? Thanks much. --Teancum (talk) 11:57, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

Use of British Isles on Quarth