Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Video games/Archive 86

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the

Corrected. It's a template, not an article.陣内_Jinnai 00:56, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

Seeing as Elite (video game) is our Collaboration of the Week, I'm wondering if anyone is interested in working on it. It's honestly one of the most important games ever released—more influential than all but maybe a half-dozen other titles—but our article on it is pitiful. It's been covered so heavily over the years that finding sources would be a breeze; all we lack is the drive. It's always been too daunting for me to do alone, even though I've considered working on it several times in the past. If we collaborated, however, I think we could do some good work. Anyone interested? JimmyBlackwing (talk) 10:34, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

Jimmy- I'm surprised we haven't done a full blown collaboration before. We both very much have a desire to work on important retro games. Just as test, do you find the ratings at Wikipedia:WikiProject Video games/Essential articles somewhat sad?

I got the urge to work on this article a while ago after seeing it pop up in issues of Retro Gamer. But I typically lack the time to dedicate to the article writing I'd like to see done. Perhaps we could work out a time line of projects to do together considering that we already have two articles we're both interested in. (Guyinblack25 ^talk 21:43, 24 January 2011 (UTC))

I am, indeed, very unhappy about the ratings at Essential articles. I've looked at them over the last few years, and they've been a constant source of disappointment for me. I'd definitely be interested in collaborating with you to improve a few. PoP '89, Elite, Fallout, Populous, King's Quest I—these games and their histories fascinate me, and I believe that they deserve better articles. Those aren't the only ones, though; a large amount of the Essential articles interest me enough to get me motivated. Whenever you have the time, we'll figure out what to work on first. JimmyBlackwing (talk) 00:39, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

I was wondering if we were considering the improvement of the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. articles, eventually prepare them for the PediaPress. Considering S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl is mid-importance, it should be improved above "starter class." Halofanatic333 (talk) 12:45, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

Reminder : as a GSC Game World game, STALKER screenshots are freely available. Means you can take those you want as much as you want and use as many as you want in as many articles as you want. Yeah, I am kinda repeating myself here, but I am always amazed to notice how few GSC screenshots we have and how little these are used (especially on en.wp).

Jean-Fred (talk) 14:41, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

Soooo, I can take my own?Halofanatic333 (talk) 16:40, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

They would have to be uploaded to commons:Category:Images from GSC Game World - not Wikipedia itself - and would have to contain all the same licensing info as the other screenshots, but yes. --Teancum (talk) 19:22, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

In light of that earlier discussion about using free images in genre- and gameplay-related articles, perhaps a STALKER image (like this one) could be used to replace this lead image. And this could be used to provide Real-time strategy with an image. Any thoughts? JimmyBlackwing (talk) 22:13, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

RTS sure! However, Doom is iconic with FPS and should stay there.Halofanatic333 (talk) 01:01, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

Yes, you can. As Teancum indicates, please use the relevant template {Attribution-GSC Game World} when uploading files to Commons. Jean-Fred (talk) 15:38, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

Right now, I think the structure of S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat's gameplay section needs a major rehaul before we start worrying about screenshots.Halofanatic333 (talk) 12:46, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

As an incentive to jumpstart this, I added both S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl and S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky to the reassessment page, as they are both beyond start class (in my opinion at least).Halofanatic333 (talk) 20:10, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

Because of the above discussion, I looked at

Well, the NES game was made by a separate company (

Bugs Bunny Crazy Castle in America. –MuZemike

21:12, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

How about Who Framed Roger Rabbit (video games) (note the "s")? We could add the Gameboy version. It's just that these are sad stub articles that will probably never be anything more than that, and are borderline notable as it stands.LedRush (talk) 21:18, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

Another possibility may be Video Games based Who Framed Roger Rabbit.--76.66.180.54 (talk) 22:31, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

See above. I thought it was a different game.陣内_Jinnai 00:49, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

Hi, I would like your input at Talk:The Legend of Zelda#"__ is the #th installment in The Legend of Zelda series.". Thanks, _Blake ^{(Talk·Edits)} 03:21, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

They just announced an 11-lecture series of postmortems from various games, given by their key developers, will be at the GDC, with the information put up online after the event. [1]

Games include:

• Prince of Persia
• Pac-Man
• Elite
• Another World/Out of this World
• Marble Madness
• Doom
• Pitfall!
• Bejeweled
• Populous
• Raid on Bungling Bay
• Maniac Mansion

Clearly going to be a good source of dev information for these game articles. --MASEM (t) 15:00, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

Sweet. I've wanted to work on about half of those games (just need the time to do so). Thanks for the heads up. (Guyinblack25 ^talk 15:58, 20 January 2011 (UTC))

I have some paper sources from various magazines about Maniac Mansion if anyone wishes to work on that; I would just have to dig for them. The same applies to Prince of Persia (which I am assuming is referring to the original Prince of Persia (1989 video game)). –MuZemike 21:28, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

I'm absolutely interested in working on those. I have print sources as well. Though I'm sure we have some overlap, I'd imagine that combined we'd have a good bunch of sources for the articles. (Guyinblack25 ^talk 23:48, 20 January 2011 (UTC))

Given the status that these games enjoy, I'm sure a lot of this has been covered already. What we really need are postmortems of games no one has ever played or cares about. Remember to keep an eye out at the GDC Flickr Feed for free images too. -

n

00:52, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

I'd definitely be up for a Prince of Persia '89 collaboration, if anyone else is interested. JimmyBlackwing (talk) 01:57, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

I'm about to work on a list of Pac-Man games with Nomader. I can work on the article after that. (Guyinblack25 ^talk 15:23, 21 January 2011 (UTC))

Sounds good. I don't have any print sources, but I do have knowledge of the online print archive at my disposal. Plus, I know about a few interviews with Mechner that you and MuZemike might not have; I should be able to keep up on the research front. I've always thought that PoP 89's low quality article was a shame, so it'll be great to help improve it. JimmyBlackwing (talk) 22:24, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

I've commented on Talk:Maniac Mansion. I can provide sources, but I don't know how good I'll be on actually building the article as I have never really played the game. –MuZemike 18:52, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

Over on

I would point those who doubt the game's notability to the Amiga Magazine Rack for plenty of reliable sources. –MuZemike 21:22, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

Well it doesn't automatically fail, but without reception or other similar real-world impact, yes it does and if its brought up to AfD will likely get redirected or merged. The development info is not nessasary for this game though.陣内_Jinnai 00:52, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

Shouldn't the article be merged into the NES one?LedRush (talk) 21:03, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

This is a remake? I thought it was a new game. If so, then yes, even if it passes notability, it shouldn't have its own article without a good development section.陣内_Jinnai 00:48, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

None of these games are remakes, but are based on the film of the same name. However, I would agree that a merge per the discussion below would be best. No need to separate the articles since they will likely be never more than stubs. --Teancum (talk) 21:46, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

I recently found this gem of a game (Total conversion of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion), and I was appalled that there was no article on it. So I created it and gave it my best shot. However, I'm not really used to write VG articles, so I thought I'd drop you people a line and ask for help. The universe section could use some expanding, which I can't do right now because I'm about 20 hours in the game and have yet to discover much about the universe and of the story. Mainstream coverage (IGN, Gamespot, etc...) of this is surprisingly low considering how big this is in the modding community, and it won Mod DB's mod of the year award for singleplayer.

So yeah, any help you can give would be much appreciated.

Usually, it's fairly difficult writing about mods, due to lack of sourcing. But the PC PowerPlay and PC Gamer sources are good. The article's decent already. -

n

20:41, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

I'm currently working on

 Sep: Elder scrolls
 Oct: NinjaGarden
 Nov: Golden Sun
 Dec: The Simpsons Game
 Jan: Sacrifice
 Feb: Kingdom Hearts

Yeah, not trying to be a buzzkiller but we already discussed this article.

GamerPro64 (talk

) 20:45, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

Oh. Well... um, that's depressing. Nomader ^(Talk) 21:04, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

News to me, Nomader, so thanks! - The New Age Retro Hippie used Ruler! Now, he can figure out the length of things easily. 21:08, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

Yeah. No worries. Classic Gamefaqs user here can't take repeat compliments. I hadn't heard about it, and positive remarks are positive remarks.--BeastSystem (talk) 21:09, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

Maybe we should have a section dedicated to what news sources say about us just to show how "notable" we are. Isn't that what you call ironic? « ₣M₣ » 21:30, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia in culture - I think the MUD issue is at the very least worthy of mention here among others. I think there's enough out there for an entire video game section.陣内_Jinnai 21:52, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

Glad to post it, guys. It was weird to see our stuff up in the New York Times, I just sort of did a double-take-- sometimes I forget that people actually visit Wikipedia and read it. The MUD issue doesn't have a note? Huh, I remember there was a lot of Signpost coverage about it. Nomader ^(Talk) 22:54, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

I had the same response Nomander. And her quote of "Hundreds of thousands of unnamed Wikipedia editors have made a hobby of perfecting the descriptions of objects whose sales don’t enrich them." made me laugh to myself as I thought about it, since to my knowledge none of us are being paid by the video game companies to create such detailed summaries on their works. Personally, I edit on Wikipedia simply because I like the subjects of the articles I work on (with some borderline "obsessions" with some of the topics). It never really dawned on me that we as editors are marketing the games for free, and taking pleasure in doing so until she said so. And i'll keep working for free as long as Wikipedia is public domain. Sincerely Subzerosmokerain (talk) 23:41, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

I'll keep it short myself, but I came here in May 2008 after years of reading and always stumbling upon WP and months of contemplating editing. I found some articles on some of my favorite video games which I thought really needed some improvement in prose and structure; after having just finished my undergraduate study in college, stuff like citing material with reliable sources, verifiability, etc. came more natural to me (as with others who would normally spend their time writing many papers), so I figured I'd give WP a shot. Well, I really haven't looked back since. –MuZemike 05:13, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

I was blown away by the NYT article when it was first posted. The quoted lines from Halo: Combat Evolved were largely unchanged from the version that User:TKD and I concocted several years ago. I remember stealing that line about the "character's eye view" from a brilliant old version of Geuiwogbil's once-incredible The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind FA. I'd never seen an introductory gameplay description so clear and helpful. I've used similar gameplay introductions in basically every article I've worked on since then. JimmyBlackwing (talk) 20:24, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

I'd be happy to review this if someone would do the GAN review of Trials HD for me. Any takers? --Teancum (talk) 13:33, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Looks like User:Jappalang fixed the problem, in that the Template:GAN doesn't like that one parameter one bit. Removing that caused the article to properly classify under "Video games". Disregard the above message, or at least get the older nominations, first. –MuZemike 13:52, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Does anyone have an answer for me at Talk:Neverwinter (video game)#Part of the Neverwinter Nights series? - I'm trying to halt a potential edit war. BOZ (talk) 12:45, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

There's a

Many of you have probably heard that the Smithsonian is going to have a display for the art of video games next year. Presently they are running a poll for which games they will actually show [12]; there are 76 categories based on eras, platforms, and type of game, each with 3 games that users can vote from. But, clearly, there's been some pre-vetting to the initial 3 choices.

I am considering making an article about this (the display clearly has gotten attention for notability purposes) but including the games that have been selected as part of a list, eg about 220 games roughly. Once they actually say which games will be shown that can be marked in the short list, but it seems as I read it this is not disparaging the other games as non-art, simply that there's little room to show 220 games in the exhibit.

Any comments on this before I proceed? --MASEM (t) 16:21, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

I was actually going to create this article myself in the next few days, but looks like you're going to beat me to it. I have no objection to its creation, there definitely seems to have been sufficient coverage about it. Nomader ^(Talk) 16:33, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

It's probably a valid article considering others like Game On (exhibition) exist. ~ Hibana (talk) 16:35, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Article is up The Art of Video Games, working my way through the eras for the games. --MASEM (t) 21:55, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

A discussion in Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (Japan-related articles)#Breakpoint 8. Anthony Appleyard (talk ) 09:34, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

I'm trying to find a little more real-world content for Kronos Digital Entertainment aside from what's contained in this interview, so the article can survive AfD. At one point in the interview, Stan Lui mentioned that they were developing a fighting game for Sony based on a comic book character, and "we were asked to come up with some game concepts based on that license. We worked feverishly and came up with the idea of a fighting game (the rage back then), to which the characters can learn new moves, change physically and raise their attributes through time. Eventually, for political reasons (at least that’s what we were told), the local Sony division we were dealing with had to give up the license to one of their European subsidiaries." They then used what they had already developed to make Criticom, which was first released on November 29, 1995. So, what game was released for the PlayStation in 1995 or 1996, based on a comic book character, possibly a fighting game, and developed by Sony in Europe? I realize that correctly guessing is OR, but I can hopefully track down some reliable source if I can just figure out what game it was. And ideas? ▫ JohnnyMrNinja 09:41, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

My first reaction was "A Sony Europe fighting game!!!!!?". But upon re-reading the text I noticed that it might not be a fighting game that you're looking for. It says that Kronos were developing the comic book license as a fighting game, the Sony Europe game may have been developed as a different genre. - X201 (talk) 10:40, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

There's no implication that the license was actually used for another game (that's what I assume was meant by "political reasons", as in, there was no business reason for it). All it says from that interview is that the license was transferred. Even if there was a game, there's no assurance that it came out in the same time frame as Criticom. Ham Pastrami (talk) 10:26, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

I was hoping that someone could help give it a good copyediting, so that I could get that oh-so-necessary second set of eyes on it. - The New Age Retro Hippie used Ruler! Now, he can figure out the length of things easily. 00:28, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

There should be some sort of deligation of what character is what. IE: protagonist/antagonist/other, main/secondary/other or player characters/various non-player character divisions.陣内_Jinnai 00:32, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

It would be really helpful if that characters article was more integrated in the main game page. I'm not seeing a lot that talks anything beyond the character aspect for development, and if you trim down on reiteration of plots and summarize the reception better, there's only one article there (As I see at least two separate character articles for the lead characters, that's even more indication to me that it would be better in this manner.) Should there be a sequel and that sequel should follow all or some of the same characters (how I don't know, but let's not worry about that) then maybe larger character article is warranted to start. --MASEM (t) 00:47, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

I see your point, Masem. I wouldn't object to a merge/summarisation of the content. Even without a future for the series, however, I feel that a split could be warranted if the article were to come to a sufficient size where it can become featured without the characters section. - The New Age Retro Hippie used Ruler! Now, he can figure out the length of things easily. 05:48, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

Input is needed for

• Isometric
• 3D modeling (vs sprites or whatever)
• X, Y, and
  Z-axis
  movement
• Stereoscopic

Maybe there are other uses I'm not thinking about. So far it's been unchecked because nobody thought that stereoscopic games would come back, but we should really hammer out terms. The big problem is that Nintendo, Sony, etc. are making no attempt to differentiate. This is a 3D game, a 3D system, etc. Obviously we can refer to 3DS as

Make a disambig page 3D video gamess and be certain to make certain nothing takes that.陣内_Jinnai 23:51, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

Start by quickly scanning

 Talk 

03:22, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

Minor point but I believe that Star Fox actually was in 3d although in a very rudimentary form due to the Super FX Microchip. At least one source, ironically enough IGN XOBX 360 [[13]] explicitly states the the game was legitamely 3D (and is currently used in the article). In short, If we do change how we use the term 3d Star Fox should not be changed to pseudo 3d unless we can find evidence to conterdict the existing sources.--76.66.180.54 (talk) 03:33, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

I also have another related question. For some time there is an unsourced section of the 2.5D article mentioning that the term is also used for 3d polygonal games that are restricted to a 2d plain. Games such a Donkey Kong Country Returns and Kirby 64 and many more are mentioned. I am not sure if this is an accurate assessment (ie do reliable sources use the term in that way). Either way the section could use some attention since at the very least it needs so sourcing if not outright removal.--76.66.180.54 (talk) 03:44, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

I don't believe those games are 3D. 3D requires a camera that is not fixed in one location and can move around the models. Games like Donkey Kong Country use 2D sprites. The sprites just happen to have been created with 3D modeling software. At any result that Xbox 360 Magazine article is an editorial and does not cite any sources for where the information that Star Fox is a true 3D game is coming from. Unless you can find a quote from one of the designers or reliable Nintendo rep (not a marketing person; in the 90s lots of games were marketed as having features they actually didn't have; "blast processing" anyone?) who can explain why the game is 3D then it's not reliable. --Therpgfanatic (talk) 05:18, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

@76.66.180.54 - The games you listed would definitely be considered 2.5D. It's a very common term for both developers and journalists to use when 3D engines run a game with movement restricted to two dimensions. I'm not really feeling like digging up sources for the article, but the sources are out there. Caution should be used, obviously. While Donkey Kong Country Returns and Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards are 2.5D, being rendered in a 3D engine, Donkey Kong Country and Kirby games prior to Kirby 64 are not, being sprite-based as Therpgfanatic pointed out. It definitely needs sourced, but it's not a focus of mine, so I'll leave it to someone else as it doesn't bother me, being a common term. --Teancum (talk) 12:49, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

"For some time there is an unsourced section of the 2.5D article mentioning that the term is also used for 3d polygonal games that are restricted to a 2d plain." This particular passage refers to 3D games whose movement is restricted to a 2D plane. For instance, a game that doesn't allow you to move vertically or along the z-axis. Don't know, however, whether there are sources to verify it.

 Talk 

23:02, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

The 3D of the 3Ds and peddled by the movie industry are stereoscopic; the current use of 3D here as it relates to graphics makes much more sense. In other words, when talking about the graphics link to the present ones. When talking about the 3D effect use stereoscopic. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs^(talk) 22:39, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

The industry is pretty clear on this. I've been a 3D graphics programming specialist for close to 30 years and seen most of these techniques come and go. While we might have come up with better terminology if we'd known the way things are going - we're really stuck with what we have:

• 3D games are computed and rendered in three dimensions although they are typically presented on 2D display surface. The occlusion, lighting and motion is all performed in three dimensions inside the game - it's only the limitations of the display medium (ie the GPU and the screen) that prevents them from 'popping out of the screen'.

• Games that may appear to be 3D - whilst in reality are rendered in 2D are usually called "two-and-a-half-D" - 2.5D for short. It's quite possible that the sprites and other game elements may have been created as 3D models by the artist - and rendered offline into a 2D sprite - but that doesn't change the terminology. Sometimes it can be tough to tell the difference between a really well done 2.5D game and a 3D game - but under the hood, the distinction is very clear.

• Games that are either 3D or 2.5D but which do not use the trick of rendering more distant objects at a smaller size to simulate the effects of perspective are "orthographic" - it's rare to find a 2.5D game that's not orthographic - but there have been a few.

• Games that seem to "pop out of the screen" are "stereoscopic" - or possibly "stereoscopic 3D" if both 3D and stereoscopic. You can make 2.5D (and even 2D!) games that are stereoscopic too - so it's important to keep a distinction.

• 2D games that scroll sideways sometimes use the trick of rendering multiple layers of images and scrolling the distant clouds and mountains more slowly than the nearby stuff. This is called "parallax" rendering - and it's neither 2.5D nor 3D.

• There are of course grey areas. The original Mario64 and MarioKart64 on the Nintendo 64 were a mixture of 3D rendered buildings and scenery with 2.5D sprites for Mario himself and many of the enemy characters. The games on the VirtualBoy system were stereographic...but always in either 2D or 2.5D.

• Note though that some 3D games that were never intended to be stereographic have been made to work that way by the graphics card vendors. The device driver intercepts each object on the way to the graphics card - renders it twice - once with the eyepoint a little to the left of where the game told the driver to put it - and again with it a little to the right. That doesn't always work - but it works often enough and well enough for several graphics cards to ship with that capability. This is a powerful reason to call the game "3D" - the graphics card couldn't by any means take a 2D or 2.5D game and make it work stereographically. In that sense, it's not necessarily the game itself that's "stereographic"...so one should be careful to distinguish between games that were specifically written with stereography in mind and those that weren't.

• Within the realms of stereographic systems, there are many ways to produce the effect:
  • The Red/Cyan or Green/Magenta glasses. These cost about $1 and it's very simple to add support for them into most 3D games (it takes precisely 5 lines of code to do it in my Bar fight Indie game). The fact that so few games do it is a reflection on the fact that it sucks! Mostly, you have to be very careful with your color palettes and use desaturated colors. In my game, we have some bright green card tables that look very odd in stereoscopic mode.
  • LCD shutter-glasses. These are also pretty simple to deal with - if the graphics hardware supports "quad-buffering" and has a way to flash an infrared LED at the glasses somehow. From a software perspective, it's very simple - and the hardware is getting more common with the rise of 3D televisions that use this technology.
  • Virtual reality headsets. With a separate screen for each eye. Very hard and expensive to do well because you need fancy optics to allow your eyes to focus out to a comfortable distance instead of three inches away. That's why the VirtualBoy was an unmitigated disaster! Doing this "right" so as to avoid people getting headaches or worse is horribly costly. Military flight simulators do this - and the helmet displays cost between $30,000 and $70,000 each!
  • Prismatic displays. You render the left and right eye views in alternating vertical stripes and stick a bunch of triangular prisms in front of the display - this works tolerably well for hand-held games - but it only works well when you're sitting in just the right position relative to the display - so more or less a bust for televisions and computer monitors.

Personally, I think the stereographic thing is a fad. There are many physiological reasons why it doesn't (nor can ever) work well - and the dismal sales of "3D televisions" reflects that. In the real world, your brain only uses the "stereo" nature of having two eyes for objects that are between about 1 meter and 10 meters away. Closer than that, depth-of-field becomes dominant (and none of the available techniques can simulate that) - further than that, conventional 3D graphics on a 2D display are as realistically "3D" as stereography. Even over that range, we still try to focus our eyes at the "correct" distance - and that results in things being out of focus or inappropriately in focus most of the time...which is why 3D television gives people headaches too.

The logic behind this nomenclature is often flawed - but that's how it is. We can't change the nomenclature for the convenience of Wikipedia editors. It is what it is.

SteveBaker (talk) 00:05, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

Couple of points:

1. "Games that are either 3D or 2.5D but which do not use the trick of rendering more distant objects at a smaller size to simulate the effects of perspective are "orthographic" - it's rare to find a 2.5D game that's not orthographic - but there have been a few." "
   Isometric graphics in video games
   .
2. The first generation of FPSs commonly used sprites for characters. Think Doom, Doom II, Dark Forces, etc.
3. "2D games that scroll sideways sometimes use the trick of rendering multiple layers of images and scrolling the distant clouds and mountains more slowly than the nearby stuff. This is called "parallax" rendering - and it's neither 2.5D nor 3D." I agree that it's weird to call parallax scrolling "2.5D". This also goes for things like bump-mapping and normal-mapping. Yet they are all covered for some reason in 2.5D.

I added the image at right to help clarify all the different projections.

 Talk 

01:07, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

What about cases like several of the Dragon Quest games which have 3D environment for dungeons, 2D for overworld maps and character sprites? It's not really 2D, but it's not really 3D nor does it seem "2.5D"?

Also what about games like Rune Factory which use overhead 2D world, but all the characters and monsters are rendered in 3D?陣内_Jinnai 05:49, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

Some of the Dragon Quest games you're talking about (like 7) are more difficult to classify, but the engine they use is definitely a 3D one. They are using the same technique as Ragnarok Online and Xenogear's engine, where the levels may be created with 3D models but the sprites themselves are 2D, and the camera swaps the 2D images based on the position of the camera.

The way 3D is used in films is different than how it is used in games; for the most part games with 3D are talking about how the engine animates the graphics (the same way 3D animation is used), whereas film 3D is referring to a very particular kind of processing the film goes through to cause a visual trick. --Therpgfanatic (talk) 17:08, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

I think we can break down "3D" use into 3 specific uses:

Gameplay: if the game's world (regardless of how its rendered) is based on three-dimensional concepts (this would include numerous Tactics games like Disgaea, FF Tactics, etc., even sprite based games like Xevious could qualify here).

Graphics Generation: if the game's engine generates the game in 3D, regardless if it plays out in three dimensions: even old games like Battletank would be this.

Display: if the game is capable of stereoscopic graphics at the display side (eg 3DS games, even Virtual Boy games) --MASEM (t) 17:16, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

I think it'd be really nice if we could hammer out an editing practice from this. I agree that we cannot change the fact that 3D means rendered, but what about a standard practice of saying 3D rendered, stereoscopic 3D, 2D raster, 2D vector, etc. (BTW, is stereoscopic even exactly right? What about similar effects with holograms, like Time Traveler?) ▫ JohnnyMrNinja 22:29, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

Trust me, I fully understand the subtle distinctions between isometric, orthographic and other terms - that's what I do for a living! However, I was explaining how (rightly or wrongly) these terms are used in the computer games business. In all likelyhood, the culprit is the fact that common graphics API's have functions to set up the "camera transform" that are called "ortho" and "perspective" - even though that may not strictly be the case. Many graphics people pick up on that terminology - (rightly or wrongly) and it sticks. At any rate, common usage is that any rendering that doesn't make things smaller in the distance is called "ortho".

As for these complicated mixed cases, I think we just have to explain that in more detail in the body of the article and go with the overall impression that the game gives. Certainly everyone describes Mario64 as a "3D platformer" - even though Mario is drawn as a 2D sprite. It does get MUCH more complicated if you really, really insist on a perfect description. For example - look at Microsoft Flight Sim 2000 - it has clouds that look incredibly 3D - but they are really "imposters" - they are 2D sprites, just like Mario in Mario64 - except that they are not rendered offline in some art program - but in realtime in the actual game. So the game uses full 3D techniques to re-render a 2D sprite for (maybe) one cloud every frame - and then displays that 2D sprite for the next few seconds until it's time to re-render the cloud because its orientation to the camera has change in the meantime. So is that "2D" or "3D"?

Frankly, nobody gives a damn about the precise language - in the business, we'd just say that the clouds are "impostered" and that's that - and unless you know how it's done behind the scenes - it might as well just be "3D". In other cases (like the trees in MarioKart64) the 3D-rendered-into-2D is called a "billboard" because it rotates to face the camera...but Mario himself (who is also 3D-rendered-into-2D) is more likely to be described as a "sprite". The language we use is complex and often hard to pin down because it depends on the context. There are also cultural differences - what I call a "sprite", some of my artists call a "card". They come from a different corporate culture with different dialects of the same vocabulary.

When I look at a competitor's game, I'm much more interested in whether it does post-effect lighting or whether it has procedural terrain. SteveBaker (talk) 00:57, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

"I think we can break down "3D" use into 3 specific uses: (...)" I like how this narrows things down to three categories, with each category being judged independently. Definitely makes things much clearer than what we have now.

 Talk 

01:19, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

"However, I was explaining how (rightly or wrongly) these terms are used in the computer games business." Yeah, I know. I was just pointing out that "industry" terms don't necessarily reflect the terminology used and adopted within/by academia. This needs to at least be clarified within whatever article we write.

 Talk 

01:27, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

"What about similar effects with holograms, like Time Traveler?" This would fall under the "display device" category, AFAIK. As far as "graphics creation" goes, it's just a mix of various different motion picture techniques, isn't it?

 Talk 

01:31, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

"I agree that we cannot change the fact that 3D means rendered, but what about a standard practice of saying 3D rendered, stereoscopic 3D, 2D raster, 2D vector, etc." Accurate, two-or-less-word terms for all the possible cases/combinations just don't exist. We have to start dealing with things like lists and bullet points unless we want to start inventing our own terminology.

 Talk 

01:46, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

Wouldn't this be a case of Wikipedia attempting to define terminology, something that has just recently opened a can of worms with regard to console generations? Strange as it is, all of the types of games mentioned are legitimately "3D" in the context that they were using to differentiate themselves from "2D" games. Old RPG dungeon crawls were "3D" because they had (fixed tile-based) first-person views. Wolfenstein was 3D because it had real-time 3D rendering. Doom was "more" 3D because it actually had different floor and ceiling heights, and Duke was more 3D because it could stack one room on top of another. Quake was still more 3D because it had 3D models instead of sprites, and so on. 3D is a relative term that is synonymous with "graphic realism". I don't think there is really a problem with the way the term is commonly used, with an implicit context, as long as there is a qualifier that states what that context is. Ham Pastrami (talk) 07:15, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

It's not this - what I think this comes down to is recognizing that when one mentions "3D" in relation to a game, there's several possible and indistinguishing meanings for that. If we break it down to 3D-ness of the game world (regardless of rendering), 3D-ness of rendering, and 3D-ness of display (see my points above), we should make sure that we have core articles for each of these 3 areas, as well as any lower dimensions of importances (eg, while there's a 2.5D article that's more about display with a brief section on 2.5D gameplay, which should be brought out to its own article; and of course by default all games are display devices of 2D and thus not really necessary to have a dedicated article like there would be for 3D display (stereoscopic) games)). No terms are being made up, simply making sure that when an article mentions "3D" it is linking and using the right intent of that term. --MASEM (t) 13:55, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

I agree that this is a problem, but I think it's something that's a problem well beyond wikipedia. I notice these types of things when reading about video games from all sorts of sources. I kind of hope the "world of video games" comes up with something, and then wikipedia could follow suit... Sergecross73 msg me 19:51, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

Gran Turismo Wii. >_> Obviously fake. I'm not real familiar with the AFD process, I usually only explain my stance in them, not get them started...and I'm short on time at the moment. But I'm just pointing out that this obviously needs to be deleted... Sergecross73 msg me 19:53, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

Obvious hoax, qualifies for Speedy Deletion which I have done. --MASEM (t) 20:06, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

Even better, thanks. I cleaned up a lot of the other messes that user made (like renamed the NGP, or adding things like "xbox 370" to a Microsoft template), but I needed help with that one. Sergecross73 msg me 21:07, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

There are two issues here. Firstly, should consumer game magazines and blogs with strong financial ties to the subjects they are reporting on be regarded as reliable sources of information? Secondly, should entire subsections consist of opinion piece editorials from these types of magazines when they do not cite any evidence for the statements; basically, should original research that does not follow the scientific method be used as a source on Wikipedia? --Therpgfanatic (talk) 00:00, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

There is too much nonsense in the various videogame related articles that stems from videogame review magazines, which are NOT credible sources! Videogame magazines should not automatically be considered reliable because they are NOT held to the same journalistic standards as those of other journalism industries.

For example, it is well known that videogame reviewers accept bribes from videogame developers http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2010/09/scared-to-open-the-package-adventures-in-game-writer-bribery.ars

A lot of the sources, such as those used in the Computer RPG article for "cultural differences" ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Role-playing_video_game#Reception_of_cultural_differences ) stems entirely from opinion pieces written by game reviewers who simply make statements and don't actually back them up with evidence (on the contrary, even a little bit of research into computer rpgs shows there are just as many American created computer rpgs with religious references and deities as there are Japanese ones, just look at the Ultima and D&D related games).

Secondly, many major videogame magazines have direct financial ties to game developers and publishers (example: Nintendo Power, Official Playstation Magazine) and game retailers (example: Game Informer). IGN once fired an editor for giving a bad review to a game being heavily promoted on the website http://www.gamezone.com/editorials/item/the_fallout_of_the_kane_lynch_debacle/ and later tried to cover the fiasco up through press releases http://www.joystiq.com/2007/12/05/gamespot-addresses-gerstmann-gate-concerns-in-depth/

Thirdly, many game journalists acknowledge that the industry doesn't follow the journalism standards that other industries hold themselves to:

http://massively.joystiq.com/2011/01/11/the-soapbox-game-journalism-is-not-journalism-yet

http://gamrfeed.vgchartz.com/story/82886/how-broken-is-game-journalism-an-analysis-of-three-gaming-sites/

http://www.1up.com/do/blogEntry?bId=6228583

http://nukezilla.com/2008/12/19/game-reviewers-journalist-or-slave-to-the-hype/

http://www.ojr.org/ojr/ethics/1049994303.php

Fourthly, very few of the sources used in the videogame Wikipedia articles stem from interviews or books written by actual game designers which can actually be considered credible sources. Game reviewers are not established industry experts on anything but writing PR articles about videogames and perhaps how the game journalism industry works. Unless they have backed up their claims with proof they should not be used as sources for articles pertaining to what defines a game genre or "cultural differences" of different cultures, or anything that basically extends outside their realm of knowledge. Because of the notoriously poor journalism standards rampant in this industry we cannot automatically assume they have actually researched the articles they have written.

I move for every single addition to a page that comes from a game review magazine, especially a blog, to be re-reviewed for credibility. If the article was not written to comply with ethical journalism standards the information should be removed. --Therpgfanatic (talk) 08:33, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

But of course, we'd have to consider all of the websites you posted links to as being instantly reliable in order to prove your point that magazines are unreliable. Are you connected to the website The RPG Fanatic? as it is common practice here to alert others to any allegiances to a particular site/company during a discussion.- X201 (talk) 09:07, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

I linked to instances where the game journalists themselves acknowledged they received bribes (example: Jim Sterling posting up that picture of himself accepting the Darksiders sword, of which there was only two made). I also linked to articles written by game journalists about how their industry should not be considered journalism, citing that they do not follow the ethical standards of journalism. When the people who have been working in that industry for 10+ years admit they shouldn't be considered true journalism then yes, they are reliable sources for proving a case that game journalists should not automatically be considered reliable sources for information about videogames. And yes, I am the creator and host of the Youtube Partner show The Rpg Fanatic and associated with a gaming press site, Original-Gamer.com. I've attended gaming events with a game press pass (the last one I did was GDC Online 2010 and I have videos on my channel where I conducted interviews at GDC Online 2010, so you can verify my claim). I don't think that should change my point; I'm not requesting that my game journalism or my videos to be used as a source. I'm asking for game journalism magazines to not automatically be regarded as reliable sources like they currently are. I have no sinister motivations behind this; I'm just tired of Wikipedia constantly citing editorials in game journalism magazines as facts when they often aren't anything more than the personal opinions of the particular reviewer despite them having done little research into the topic or were written to help promote a game. --Therpgfanatic (talk) 10:44, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

If you have a contention with the process of choosing which video game-specific journalism is reliable or not, you should take it up with Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Video games/Sources. I'm certain that they can explain to you what is wrong with your points.

Also, IGN was not involved in the firing of Jeff Gerstmann, GameSpot was. And they are a web site, not a magazine. - The New Age Retro Hippie used Ruler! Now, he can figure out the length of things easily. 11:10, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

I made a typo concerning IGN. The point still stands. Gamespot is still a magazine, even if it's an online one. And it and many other online magazines have opinion piece editorials cited in numerous articles concerning videogamess. The point stands that they are not reliable sources as specified by Wikipedia's policy on questionable sources http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Identifying_reliable_sources#Questionable_sources --Therpgfanatic (talk) 11:18, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

You're describing issues with all video game publications, not just magazines. We use the best sources we can find; we certainly can't create more reliable sources out of whole cloth. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs^(talk) 12:33, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

That's not an acceptable excuse for using unreliable sources. Would you quote Star magazine for biographical details about Britney Spears just because nobody else is reporting it? --Therpgfanatic (talk) 12:43, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

I'm just going to point out that the VGChartz article is a blatant attack on Kotaku, Joystiq, and Destructoid, all of which point out that they are gaming blogs, and thus make additional posts aside from "common journalism". On top of that it talks itself around in circles. I understand the point that's trying to be conveyed here, but the sources listed to back that statement are strong enough to do so. In regards to bribe-takers, how in the world are we supposed to police something like that? Destructoid already is considered a situational source, but we can't follow every journalist's Twitter and Facebook, watching for signs of dastardly deeds. If you'd like to, be our guest. We're a group of volunteers that do the best we can with what we have. Besides, I guarantee the same problems you describe here exist in other areas of journalism. It's just a fact of life. We do scrutinize our sources. If we missed something, you need to tell us rather than overgeneralizing everything. There's no way we're going to quadruple check every source. What do we have to check against besides other sites in the end (which we already do)? This seems more like a generalization that stems from specific criticisms somewhere. --Teancum (talk) 12:52, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Also, Rpgfanatic, you do realize the irony of linking to an article written by VGChartz, don't you? Namely that their sales numbers on their site are often completely made up with no indication this is so[14]. It's the reason they aren't allowed as a reliable source. So Teancum has pretty much said all we need to, I think. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs^(talk) 12:57, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

David Fuchs, you are missing the point. You are also associating one flawed article as being representative of another article. This same flawed kind of thinking is why you guys are using other game magazines as "reliable sources".

I can see from the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Video_games/Sources#Promoting_Kotaku page there is some ridiculous logic being used to determine whether a source is reliable. For example, Kotaku was determined to be reliable because Brian Ashcraft wrote a book about arcades that was published by Kodansha International. However that does NOT make Kotaku more reliable; Kodansha International does not edit Kotaku, so how can that establish Kotaku as being more credible in news reporting or editorial pieces? The same goes for the rest of the reasons given; someone appearing as a guest panelist in a reality series like The Tester doesn't make them an expert, it makes them a reality TV star. And like Brian Ashcraft's case, just because they have written articles for more credible journalism magazines doesn't mean the standards of Kotaku are identical to those other magazines. Kotaku doesn't automatically become as credible as The New York Times just because one of their writers wrote an article for NYT. Playstation Blog is another example of poor justification; it was pointed out that it was owned by Sony but that was reasoned to not be a problem. But the problem is Playstation Blog is owned by Sony who has a vested interest in pushing their products; they aren't running game magazines because they want to publish news, but because they want to inform their consumers of upcoming products they are selling. Unless you're only talking about things like release dates, you might as well use the Sears catalog as a reliable source. Then you have the case of VG247 which is found reliable because the site has won several awards. Never-mind that the site's articles are not peer reviewed and the majority of their news feeds are just links to other larger websites like IGN; they are clearly a reliable source because other people said so, even those people didn't explain how they settled on those decisions. --Therpgfanatic (talk) 13:09, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

You seem to be tilting your sources to lean towards the view you want. You list only Ashcraft in the above statement, but nothing of Crecente or Tolito's long list of credentials. Well we're not going to sit here and argue with you about opinions. Reliable sources are chosen by a consensus of editors, just like everything else is. You are welcome (and encouraged) to sit in on future discussions on reliable sources. It's not worth our energy to go back and forth on this. If you want to nominate a site as reliable or seek to deem it as unreliable, you can do so at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Video games/Sources - just be aware that we run by consensus, and not spirited opinion. So if a site is promoted (or demoted) we all have to live with it. --Teancum (talk) 13:17, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

To add to the above, by your own reasoning we shouldn't listen to one more wit from you, since as a contributor to http://original-gamer.com/ you are clearly a partial source trying to discredit others. Give it a rest. I'm done arguing with you. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs^(talk) 13:19, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Excuse me, you are "done with me"? You are trying to divert attention away from facts; first of all, simply being associated to another gaming source of news does not in any way reduce the validity of my statements. I am not trying to supplant one game magazine for another. I am pointing out that articles in game magazines should not automatically be considered reliable sources. The "consensus of editors" for deciding whether these magazines are reliable sources comes down to three people, including both of you. It seems to me we are having a conflict of interest as established by http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Conflict_of_interest. You do not seem interested in producing neutral, reliably sourced articles. I have pointed out why they aren't reliable and rather than prove how they are you have simply focused on my own occupation (which is irrelevant because I'm not trying to advance any outside interest; again, I am NOT trying to replace existing sources with my own, I am trying to have unreliable sources no longer used as reliable ones!) and you have also shrugged your shoulders, saying you're just a volunteer so it doesn't really matter. If you are unwilling to be mature about this I will take it to the next level. --Therpgfanatic (talk) 13:45, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

I don't appreciate the accusation. Consensus comes from anyone who wishes to participate, and we try to get everyone possible involved. If you feel going up the chain necessary, please do so at

And I think we're well aware that these sources are driven by advertising dollars. As long as those dollars aren't going towards discrediting other games or developers by factually lying about games, we just have to be aware that games with major financial advertising backing are going to get considerably more attention and positive reception. Which is why our review sections are written from the standpoint "Here's what the gaming scores say, and here's what reviewers said. You figure out the answer", thus avoiding any promotion ourselves of a source that may have been influenced by promotion. --MASEM (t) 14:39, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

And I'm going to echo the sentiments of the other editors who have posted before me; we do the best that we can to get comments on all new sources brought up for comment. You're more than free to participate in any future discussions or bring up sources for new discussions. I'm probably opening a Pandora's box, but I really don't feel any of the articles you link to discredit the sources. All of the sources that we have deemed reliable have been done based on the reliability of the websites and their editorial standards. Should media sources be discredited because Michael Gerson of the Washington Post states that traditional sources have become more partisan ([15]), and thus, we shouldn't trust them anymore? Your logic seems rather flawed, but I invite you to actively participate at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Video games/Sources. Nomader ^(Talk) 23:00, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

As Masem said, the argument would basically destroy most of journalism because they have to get funding from somewhere and that funding can always be viewed as being a bit wary of criticizes that hand that feeds too much. If there are specific cases where an actual bribe is thought to have influenced a review or someone just made stuff up, that can be handled on a case-by-case basis.陣内_Jinnai 23:14, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

You're just making excuses. You don't HAVE to include the statements from the magazines in the articles. You are too focused on trying to find a source for everything even if the source isn't entirely reliable. The fact of the matter is game journalism is not held to the same standards as more respectable news agencies like The New York Times. The fact of the matter is game journalists openly acknowledge that companies bribe them-- not with advertising dollars, but with gifts like flight lessons, expensive prop weaponry, food, hotel rooms and such. And I'm not talking about review scores; I'm talking about using them as sources for statements they are not reliable sources for. For an example of what I mean, as I pointed out before the entire "cultural differences" section of roleplaying videogames articles comes from videogame magazine reviewers who wrote editorials. They simply stated their opinions. They have not produced any actual sources for their statements; for example, they have not produced any case study of all the Japanese and non-Japanese made computer RPGs to compare them to one another to see what the differences are. So you are listing them as reliable sources when they actually aren't entirely reliable. As an example of what a reliable source is, I point to Designing Virtual Worlds by Dr. Richard Bartle. It's a PEER REVIEWED book that cites other studies and books. There is no reason in the world that consumer magazines whose primary purpose is to write marketing pieces for game publishers should be considered reliable sources when there are indeed other more reliable sources out there. And if you can't find a reliable source commenting on something (for example, the cultural differences between Japanese and American computer rpgs) then the entire section should not be included, period, because it cannot be proven to be based on factual information. As it stands right now many of the videogame articles are simply re-regurgitating press releases and that is NOT what an encyclopedia is supposed to be doing. --Therpgfanatic (talk) 04:15, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

You are absolutely wrong and making gross assumptions. Look at some of our featured content. It is based on interviews with developers, commentary by (what we have come to consider as) experts in the field, and review and critical commentary from major sources. If you take these out, our coverage of video games would basically be nil because there's very few other sources beyond these sites. That's why we've reviewed them carefully for editorial controls and expertise to assure they are good sites. --MASEM (t) 04:26, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Peer reviewed studies are a perspective coming from an academic point of view, while editorials from reliable sources can show more mainstream opinion about a game. Both are useful in their own right, much as editorials can be useful to color an encyclopedia article about a political event. I have yet to see where a game journalist has openly acknowledged that a company has bribed them, only accusations from a couple blog posts that this has occurred, and if this has happened to one review of a game, the source can be challenged on a case by case basis. Therpgfanatic, I'm beginning to question exactly where you see a problem in our articles. You continue to talk in general brushstrokes without providing concrete areas where our articles could improve. Could you show us an example from a well-written article of ours that you claim "regurgitate press releases" so we can correct the issue? And maybe also explain what an encyclopedia is actually supposed to be doing (in response to your last statement)? Nomader ^(Talk) 04:31, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

I have already made it clear that my opinion of what an encyclopedia should be is identical to that of Wikipedia's policy. I am not going to continually repeat myself as you attempt to misdirect. I have also pointed out one section of an article that is composed entirely of unreliable sources but I will point out another version of this article appearing on a different page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_differences_in_role-playing_video_games#cite_note-barton_evw-3 this citation comes from Armchair Arcade and is written by Matt Barton. Matt Barton has written a book called Dungeons and Desktops, which uses websites like GameSpot as a source even though these websites who DO NOT CITE THEIR SOURCES. At the very bottom of every edit page is a line of text that says "Encyclopedic content must be verifiable.". The text includes a link to what Wikipedia considers verifiable information to be. The page states very clearly that any information that might be challenged needs to be reliable and just because it was published doesn't automatically make it reliable; Gamespot is not known to cite their sources, making their editorials original research. I suggest that, rather than circle the wagons to defend your decisions you correct the mistakes you guys have been making in editing these pages. --Therpgfanatic (talk) 05:14, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

WP:V. If the reliable source is actually flat out wrong, then we need to figure out how to fix that, but in that article, there's clearly nothing going on. This sounds more like a personal vendetta than any specific complaint at this point. --MASEM (t

) 05:30, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

It says very clearly that "encyclopedic content must be verifiable". It does not say "add whatever content you want, reader beware!", which is what you are trying to suggest. It also does not say Wikipedia is a democracy; quite the opposite, in fact, so the argument that sources were decided as reliable by consensus means nothing. They are not reliable under Wikipedia's policies, period. You cannot justify their inclusion just because you can't find reliable sources to back up statements made by unreliable sources. I would also appreciate if you could stop accusing me of having ulterior motive for drawing attention to the fact the sources are not reliable and should not be included in articles as facts.--Therpgfanatic (talk) 07:28, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

If you could explain how we could determine verifiability without using our best judgment and consensus, I'm sure that we would welcome them. Until then, consensus is a vital process in figuring out what web sites are usable as reliable sources, just like how consensus is almost always used when determining what is to be done with every aspect of the site. No one has argued that Wikipedia is a democracy, and no one has argued that it was determined on the basis of a vote. If it is your contention that a consensus is a vote, then that is an unpopular opinion to have. Consensus indicates that those involved are making a decision based on a verifiable certain number of people agreeing on something based on sound reasoning. Like has been said, you are using examples of unreliability in the industry that can be found in many other industries. - The New Age Retro Hippie used Ruler! Now, he can figure out the length of things easily. 07:57, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

These articles are actually all based on something-- the products they're talking about, the ideas that they're bringing up. Peer reviewed histories rely on primary sources in order to provide a glimpse at what the time showed; so do we, as our reviews give a picture to the reader of the reception a game has received at the time it was released from critics. To make a point, I'd like to point you to peer reviewed articles which you've been aching for. Here's an article from Game Studies, a peer reviewed journal which is, "the international journal of computer game research". Yet, a copious amount of articles in the journal site a website which you would consider unreliable because it is "based on nothing", GameSpot ([16] [17] [18] [19] [20]). But if peer reviewed journals are based on sources which are based on "nothing", they can't be reliable either, can they? This is a really silly logic string, rpgfanatic... honestly, the only answer I can come up with is that you want every article on Wikipedia about video games to be deleted. Or every article on Wikipedia for that matter. Nomader ^(Talk) 07:57, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

If they are citing something from Gamespot that isn't reliable, then even if it's peer reviewed, it's still not reliable. Nobody seems to be arguing that the sources are reliable, only that they are the most reliable you can find. But no one is denying they have reliability problems, so why are you defending the decisions? They aren't reliable and should be removed. --Therpgfanatic (talk) 09:05, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Such a concept completely ignores the verifiability. The fact that they are peer reviewed indicates that they are able to judge the usability of content. Being peer reviewed means that this source is reliable - one of the most common ways of discerning reliability in web sites, video game or not, is whether a reliable source cites them for information. Fact of the matter is that we have argued that they are reliable, in our discussions of what sites are and are not reliable. Your argument seems to rely on the notion that video game articles being less reliable than, say, The New York Times, is synonymous with being unreliable. - The New Age Retro Hippie used Ruler! Now, he can figure out the length of things easily. 09:33, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

• WP:undue might apply here. Dream Focus
  08:19, 8 February 2011 (UTC)
  • You can re-phrase your arguments as many times as you like, it's not going to change that you're just making excuses for why you approved unreliable sources for citation. The statement that it doesn't matter if editors think it is true is a separate discussion from whether the information has been published by a RELIABLE SOURCE. We are not talking about what editors think is true or not. We are ONLY talking about whether these consumer magazines and blogs who, I again stress, DO NOT CITE THEIR SOURCES IN THEIR EDITORIALS ABOUT THEIR PERSONAL OPINIONS ON VIDEOGAME RELATED MATTERS which are being used to justify the inclusion of information like the previously mentioned "cultural differences in computer RPGs" article. The consumer magazines and blogs are not measuring up to the requirements of reliability. The best counter-arguments you have against this fact is that you can't find better sources but that is irrelevant. You do not "need" the information to be there unless you have some personal vested interest in that information being presented in the articles. If you cannot find a reliable source it should not be included. This should not be debatable, especially when you guys openly acknowledge they aren't very reliable sources. --Therpgfanatic (talk) 09:05, 8 February 2011 (UTC)
    • Then discuss it at the reliable sources talk page. Regular newspapers are more likely to review books whose companies buy ads, giving them more coverage than others. Its a horrible and idiotic system we use in Wikipedia, where we rely on the opinions of others, provided they are published somewhere, to determine what is notable. Of course all game magazines and review sites are bias, and even television shows. If someone has a crap game but their company buys ads, the worse score they are allowed to get is a 3 out of 5. But they are the only ones giving any coverage at all, so if we ignore them, then we won't meet the ridiculous Wikipedia guidelines for inclusion, and every single video game article will be deleted. Dream Focus 01:43, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

@Therpgfanatic - Clearly we're going in circles here, as the consensus seems to be against your thoughts. At this point if you still want to discuss it, please take it to

I was pointed to this blog [21] which I'm pretty sure is the same therpgfanatic posting above (apologies if not).

Reading this, I think I see more exactly what he's trying to say about in a direct method: this section:

...but then you have to read the WP section carefully or you miss this: Western games often tend to feature darker graphics, older characters, and focus more on roaming freedom and realism; whereas Eastern games often tend to feature brighter, anime-like graphics, younger characters, and focus more on scripted linear storylines. (emphasis mine). "Tend" is meant to grossly summarize everything without going to exasperated details about the exceptional cases. There are western games that follow the stated Japanese trend (Anachronox); there are Japanese games that follow the Western trend (which I'm lacking examples ATM (Maybe .hack?) but the point's there).

That's true throughout this section: it never at any time says "All Japanese RPGs are linear plots", it says they tend to have this. This is not only supported by our sources, but it's also common sense if you actually played the games - eg that point is verifiable. We are a tertiary source, so we're summarizing these, and thus while one could likely construct a whole section to pinpoint every single difference and every single game that deviates, we just need to grossly compare and contrast. Again, since this compare and contrast is verifiable to any person that can play the games from both regions, we're looking at sources that reiterate these.

I'm not saying this section is perfect, and thus to therpgfanatic - ignoring the source issue, which statement of any in that section are wrong as a gross overview of the differences? Again, I'm not talking about detailing the one game from Japan that features Western-mechanics or vice versa, I'm talking about the generalized statements of the differences. If it is clear that there is a factual error that we cannot see by common sense and using awkward sources, then lets resolve that. --MASEM (t) 14:53, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Comment Anyone else notice the fact that

just for this discussion? ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk

) 14:58, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Not a concern (of yet): he's not edit warring in mainspace to get his point across, and no problem for an IP that's tried to contribute before to join up to vent frustrations as long as its useful discussion. --MASEM (t) 15:02, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Had the more specific issue come out it would have been a lot easier to possibly do something about. The original point seemed like an attack on all gaming sites and articles with things like talk of bribery rather than more of a 'wording opinion as fact' on the Role-playing video game page. It's ironic because that page is Start-class and has maintenance tags, so clearly it's a major work in progress. The talk page even has {{Controversial-issues}} on it. He would have better served the issue to contribute and help clean the page up rather than ranting. Bummer. --Teancum (talk) 18:06, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Assuming good faith, he did said in the offsite article he was trying to contest that but then they moved that section from one page to another. Little too busy to research the IPs to see what's comparable but I assume he did discuss on those pages and found no help or cooperation to resolve it. --MASEM (t) 18:14, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Not to sound like a pessimist, but I doubt we're in any position to give the article the treatment it deserves. (Unless there's an RPG expert reading this with access to some good print sources.) Like so many other important video game articles, the bulk of the prose was initially written years ago when sourcing wasn't as enforced. Because of that and the relative difficulty of writing about genres compared to individual games, they are sorely under-developed. Without the sources and editors knowledgeable about the topic as well as Wikipedia's practices, the article will probably stay in its current form for a long while. :-\ (Guyinblack25 ^talk 21:18, 8 February 2011 (UTC))

I guess my point is this: reading through the article: I'm not seeing anything glaringly wrong; the states are decent generalizations, simply going off my experience of playing JRPG vs WRPG. There's probably a few things we could fix to reflect more recent trends, but the general statements are true. So the implication that therpgfanatic is said that there's huge factual errors because of the "bad" sources really doesn't hold up. It of course can be written better and be true to newer sources that have come, but at it stands now, I see no rush to have to fix this as no WP policy is being broken. --MASEM (t) 21:25, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Just because I pointed to one particular section appearing in two related articles doesn't mean there aren't others in other gaming articles. The Megaman article has the following, "Capcom's handling of the Mega Man franchise has been criticized at various times, with many citing the frequent creation of new series which are discontinued without proper closure." which is cited from a Gamespot article (which is largely broken, btw). I would personally like to know which Megaman series has "discontinued without proper closure" because I know of none who have officially ended, let alone without closure to the story. The statement is entirely subjective and this is the kind of nonsense (not game review scores) I am referring to when I say the sources need to be scrutinized more. The statements that are purely opinion and not based on any facts. And if you think the WRPG vs JRPG argument has merit then you have not played many of these games. The only reason that many JRPGs have cute graphics is because of the target age demographic they are made for. Game developers, regardless of nation, make games targeted at kids have cuter graphics and games meant for older audiences have more realistic, grittier graphics. Hell, the concept and promotional artwork for most of the early Final Fantasy games were done by Yoshitaka Amano who can hardly be considered to have a "cute" art style. The section also talks about "WRPGs" focusing on character customization moreso than "JRPGs" do but what kind of customization are we talking about? Aesthetic changes, like changing hair color? Sure, that is less common among JRPG made games but it's not universal among WRPGs either (just look at the Diablo series, or look at Might and Magic, or Wizardry, or Ultima). Character aesthetic customization is more common among MMORPGs than single-player games, and that goes for the genre as a whole. And if it's about customizing characters abilities, even if you can't choose a class in the game a large number of "JRPGs" offer unique character customization systems; as a well known example, every Final Fantasy offers a different system to customize character abilities. Some games even like the original .hack games allow customization of character abilities by having abilities tied to the equipment. So this particular section expresses extreme bias that may represent the opinion some people have but it simply does not represent reality.

And realize this is just one example. There are more examples in other gaming articles. From the fighting game article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fighting_game#cite_note-MK3-26 "In the new millennium, fighting games are less popular and plentiful than in the mid 1990s, with multiplayer competition shifting towards other genres." The source for the statement is Jeff Gertsmann's Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 review, probably this particular section of his review:

"The halcyon days of arcades are way behind us now, and the 2D fighting game has all but gone with them. The burgeoning retrogaming movement, combined with the power of the Internet, offers a lot of potential for the fighting genre, but there haven't been very many fighting games with online play at all, and those that do have it usually haven't worked very well."

Unfortunately you'd have to know nothing about the fighting game tournament scene to believe this. Nor has Jeff Gertsmann's put forth any evidence to prove that there are less fighting games being made than in the 1990s. This is certainly not true in the Japanese arcades and even in the US these games get imported (a local example here in Texas is Arcade UFO in Austin). All Jeff Gertsmann did was express opinion yet it is being cited as unquestionable fact in the Wikipedia article.

I do not buy the argument that gaming magazine reviewers represent legions of gamers when they express their own personal opinions, especially when they do not cite any source while making extraordinary claims. Especially when game journalists frequently behave more like propagandists than journalists. --Therpgfanatic (talk) 22:47, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Don't take offense, but that's why we have the policy

WP:SOFIXIT. If you feel there's issue, make the change. It's easy to accuse of using poor sourcing, it's another to actually jump in and fix it. --Teancum (talk

) 22:55, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

I am tired of edit waring with people when I delete sections that are obviously statements of opinion not fact. And it's because the sources have been deemed "reliable". So the first step to being able to delete them is to get those sources to not be unquestionably reliable. --Therpgfanatic (talk) 00:57, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

Austin has a strong arcade scene with fighting games? You should try going to Einstein's on the drag... well, using a time machine, because it couldn't sustain itself even next to a university campus and went out of business. Anyways, yes, that's an opinion of a game journalist and should be attributed to him rather than left as fact. It's not the strongest source for that statement, and using the SSB sales data to corroborate is verging on systhesis. You have a valid argument that that sentence is not well-verified. I can follow your logic from there that our genre articles are often weakly sourced and aren't as strong as they should be. I don't follow your logic to go from there to say that all video game journalism is bunk and should not ever be used as sources. We know that the genre articles have problems- if they were all more solid, they'd be GAs, and if they were great, they'd be FAs.

History of role-playing video games is B-class, and they both have cleanup tags at the top. We know. You can't jump from there to say that Gamespot isn't a reliable source. --PresN

01:00, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

You need to read what I am saying closer. I never said to never use them as a source. I said to stop using them as reliable sources without having checked to see if their claims are verifiable. Their editorials are being assumed to be reliable sources without any kind of investigating to see if they even cite their sources. If they do not cite sources or so much as prove their case using sound logic (for example, to argue that JRPGs and WRPGs have distinct differences you have to compare a large pool of them together; which to my knowledge has NEVER been done), how can they be reliable? You have to accept their statements at face value and that is not how Wikipedia supposed to work. --Therpgfanatic (talk) 01:12, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

That Mega Man GameSpot source looks questionable. Or more specifically, it seems to be cited inappropriately. Claims are attributed to that source that I simply could not find anywhere. Our article also claims that "many" have made this claim, while citing only one source. That one source makes up half the sources in the Criticism section. Based on what I'm seeing there, this is a problem with that article. Nowhere in Wikipedia's policies and guidelines is that sort of sloppy sourcing encouraged, but it does happen. If you can help fix it, by all means do so. Reach Out to the Truth 00:53, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

You sound kind of like a JRPG apologist in your post-- you argue that, "And if you think the WRPG vs JRPG argument has merit then you have not played many of these games. The only reason that many JRPGs have cute graphics is because of the target age demographic they are made for." However, as pointed out to you before,

WP:V dictates that we report what is verifiable, not what we personally believe. And if there are sources that back-up what's stated in the article, then they're there because someone wrote them. If you feel that we are not adequately representing the issue, feel free to add your own sources to the articles. If we aren't going to cite the sources in these articles that we currently are using, what would you propose that we use as an alternative for accurate JRPG coverage? Nomader ^(Talk

) 23:21, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

I am not an "apologist"; I am pointing out indisputable facts . It is a fact that the cultural differences article is making sweeping statements that do not hold up under scrutiny. You claim you must report what is verifiable; the only thing verifiable is that someone made the claim. The problem is the claim itself is not verifiable. The latter is what must be verifiable in order to be included, not the former. Just because it was published by a magazine with a large subscriber base does not mean they should get a free ride for reliability; the article itself needs to hold up under scrutiny. Again, I have never found any kind of study that compared "JRPGs" and "WRPGs" together to see if they have differences. Until one can be produced the section should be removed. Someone whose only notability is they work for a magazine with a lot of subscribers only proves they work for a magazine that has a lot of subscribers-- you can draw no further conclusions from that fact. Unfortunately simply having lots of subscribers is the only proof being showcased for why they are reliable sources. --Therpgfanatic (talk) 00:57, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

Therpgfanatic - I don't think your arguments are flawed but I think you're trying to paint too big a stroke to say that problems extend throughout the project, or that our sources are unreliable, because of a few bad apples in specific articles. I reiterate what others have said:

We do want to make sure we establish the different between a source claiming something as a fact (which we need to be careful about for reliable sourcing), and a source stating their opinion (at which point we only need to care if that person is considered an "expert" in the field). However, if we're dealing with someone stating their opinion, we don't need to worry if they have it right or wrong - as long as we're saying "Soandso said..."; that leaves the reader the ability to evaluate the claim on their own. As for when source report something as fact and it is clearly wrong, we should fix that with a better source. Do keep in mind VGs move quickly - what was true a year ago may no longer be true now (which may be the program with that WRPG/JRPG comparison). But that only means we should write to show the effects of time on the issue. --MASEM (t) 01:22, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

Even by leaving the articles to merely say, "Bob the Game Reviewer said..." it is still too much. Merely by including their statements in the article you award credibility to the statements. Again, I do not buy into the idea that readers must verify every statement themselves. Realistically most people are not going to do that. The articles should be factual and neutral, not subjective. Including editorials (which are OPINIONS) does not make the articles have a neutral point of view. And it is a problem with many videogame articles which is why I asked for them to be re-reviewed. I personally don't feel like having edit wars with every single page when I try to remove statements that simply are not true, especially when the project is currently listing those sources as being reliable. --Therpgfanatic (talk) 03:17, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

OK give us concrete fact, that they aren't credible. NOt like "they said this, they said that". we need some hardcore fact. I agree we should be a little careful on choosing reviewers, but at the same time. Some of these people review for a while. it's hard to just say hey, you're not credible for the manner of your speech.

I have posted articles written by prominent game journalists (such as Dan Hsu) who have worked for several different game magazines who openly admit the business does not follow traditional journalism ethics used by other media. I have posted pictures of game reviewers accepting bribes. What more do you want? Do you think they would openly make these statements if they felt they were making themselves open to libel cases? I have also pointed out that game magazine editorials do not cite their sources when making statements of fact, which violates Wikipedia's verifiability policies. When they do not cite sources, the only thing you can verify is that the reviewer wrote something down; you cannot verify that they actually researched and found evidence for what they claimed in their articles. "Articles should be based on reliable, third-party, published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy." Game journalists publications and blogs are not reliable, third party publishes sources with a reputation for fact checking and accuracy. And based on this account of an ex-Kotaku intern, a lot of their material is scavenged from other blogs,

http://otakujournalist.com/2010/05/my-life-as-a-kotaku-intern/ (look at the comments where he explains what he did)

Then there are cases where major gaming sites and blogs have printed stories that were fake (you can check the links yourself, the printed fake news is still up)

http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2007/04/square_enix_rem/

They were caught these times but how much stuff probably doesn't get caught? We'll never know since they rarely ever cite sources.

Raph Koster (a prominent game designer) demonstrates the unreliability of game journalism with something gravely misquoted from his own blog,

http://www.raphkoster.com/2008/12/19/anatomy-of-a-meme-or-why-games-journalism-is-iffy/

It was mentioned earlier that VGCharts accuracy is in dispute. I find that interesting to know considering game journalists do, in fact, rely heavily on VGChart, or at least according to The Videogame Style Guide and Reference Manual, endorsed by the International Game Journalists Association http://www.igja.org/guide/index.php/Main_Page and Games Press (who, btw, openly admits they also handle PR for game publishers like NcSoft and Microsoft) http://www.gamespress.com/about.asp

Then of course there is this article from Simon Carles who says that Game Developer Magazine and Gamasutra have their own style guide but don't use it ,

"Now, having said that, we do, somewhere, have an official style guide for Game Developer magazine - which extends to Gamasutra. But it's simply never referred to - everyone who works on the mag has a pretty damn clear of what is what."

The problem, for those who have never actually studied journalism before, is that following a style guide is a very basic editorial procedure for the major reputable news sources like The New York Times (which I point out because some gaming sites have been approved as reliable because some of their authors have written articles for the NYT). If articles are not written to conform to a style guide then you can pretty much guarantee they are not being edited.

So you can sit there and point out how some major news organizations for other fields get things wrong but what you can't do is say that game journalism magazines follow the same journalism standards that those magazines follow. And that is part of the reason for why they are not reliable sources. That and the bribes, the publishing of editorials and few reports with any citations or sources listed, heavy usage of unreliable third party sources (such as rival blogs) and the list goes on and on. --Therpgfanatic (talk) 08:27, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

We verify ONLY what they say because that's all we are verifying: their opinion. what research must be taken in order for an opinion to go down of someone's experience? true the possibility of someone basing it off completely off blogs is there, but i doubt that's a serious problem as the reviewer would at least have to look at the game (at least)... Even if they were bribed, we would have to prove extensively that they were bribed and defraud them. Basically we aren't here to post the truth, only things that can be verified through people who are part of a reliable source (such bringing interviews, and inside look before the game releases). And you only state opinion, but we don't know how much blogs they take in, how much inside they actually have and how much first-looks and demos they get. the review over the satisfaction of the game is based on one person and that's the reviewer. But i would say this would be harder to do if there were such reviews that didn't depend on his opinion only. Such as a reviewer saying "Game A has been praised by many popular teens today and is still one of the greatest games to come out of japan" would be difficult because the reviewer is trying to state information that would actually need to be verified.

Just because not every game magazine has the same standard doesn't mean we can't use what they say. but beside the point, you mentioned gamedeveloper has a standard and they dont use it, so maybe thats one we can avoid when looking for reviews.

talk

) 09:05, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

If we are going to give merit to the opinions of game journalists merely because they are expressing their opinion, you should ask yourself why we should not also do the same for everyone who expresses their opinion about a game? Why don't we cite GameFAQs user contributed reviews? Why don't we quote forum posts? There is a point behind this question. --Therpgfanatic (talk) 21:32, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

cultural differences in RPVGs

Okay, as someone whose worked on the RPVG article and the cultural differences section specifically I can say that its not perfect. Their is

verify that though.陣内_Jinnai

07:11, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

still it seems like he went to broad to begin with. For games such as japan, a japanese reviewer, or a japanese review site that covered both, would be enough i suppose. so we get both sides, no?

talk

) 07:18, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

Jinnai those are your personal and unsupported opinions. There is no evidence to support the idea rogue-likes are more popular in Japan than elsewhere in the world, NetHack has, afterall, been in constant development for about a decade and a half and has a huge fanbase. The Diablo series, which to this day is incredibly popular in North America, can be considered a rogue-like. There isn't any evidence to support rogue-likes being more popular anywhere. There is also no evidence to support the idea religious symbolism or deities are featured more in JRPGs than WRPGs. Anyone who has played the Elder Scrolls, Fallout, EverQuest or anything D&D based like Neverwinter Nights or the Baldur's Gate series could tell you that. Heck, D&D religions and their deities are all based on real world religions and a lot of computer RPGs derive their basic mythology from D&D. Even "Western RPGs" like WoW and EverQuest have players fighting deities and religion is a heavy part of their game lore. Ultima 7 has the Avatar fighting against a pseudo-Christianity cult. Also, the idea that Nintendo's old censorship policies on games would impact games released on other console systems or home computers is just silly. Many computer RPGs have a fantasy narrative and fighting against gods is common to the entire genre of fantasy literature-- obviously it's going to appear in fantasy games, regardless of the game's genre (God of War, anyone?)

Even "cute graphics" is pure nonsense; you see "cute graphics" used in games from both Japan and American developers. World of Warcraft is a great example, but there is also Adventure Quest and Farmville. And then there is tons of indie stuff made by companies like Rampant Games http://rampantgames.com/blog/ and of course Zeboyd Games. And Pier Solar and the Great Architects. Again, whether a game has "cute" graphics or not has to do with its target demographic.

The entire section does not hold up under scrutiny. There is nothing of fact in it; it's 100% opinion based and should be removed. --Therpgfanatic (talk) 09:08, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

You didn't even provide anything just now....sure some things you say could be true. and you are misreading things again. as long as put in "reviewer A said etc." it wouldn't be opinion. it would be fact. for example

therpgfantaic has said "Even "cute graphics" is pure nonsense; you see "cute graphics" used in games from both Japan and American developers."

Did you or did you not say it? yes you did. it's right above. the same applies. You want truth, not verifiability.

talk

) 09:44, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

It is nonsense in that the article says only cute / kawaii graphics appear in Japanese made computer rpgs and this is some kind of significant cultural difference. --Therpgfanatic (talk) 21:02, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

I think this needs RFC. The specific point covers more than just videogame magazines. If any source used by WP should in itself state its own sources, and failure to do so means that it fails the sourcing requirements, then that ruling would cover the whole gamut of the encyclopaedia and so needs to be discussed by the whole of the WP community, and especially the people who keep

This is I think symptomatic of a problem simply in terms of "is X a good research topic?" For genre articles there is relatively little analysis outside of generalizations by the media (and oh look I'm generalizing too), which is problematic from a verifying-the-facts standpoint. Thus, those articles are propped up by essentially, "Here's how the media has generalized this genre". I think this is fine because genres are, themselves, essentially generalizations of bunches of individual games, so knowing the media's generalizations (even if they're wrong under scrutiny) is immensely useful for providing a picture of how the genre is viewed. Nifboy (talk) 12:41, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, I think I can see Therpgfanatic's point in relation to the articles he's talking about, but I would much rather someone get "in the trenches" and fix it. Now I only say that because our numbers are minuscule compared to the number of articles we have on video games and the fact that most (hey, I'll generalize too!) WP:VG members have a specific area they want to focus on. For instance, I'll never be interested in the particular articles he's mentioned, but I've always tried to follow the practice he's describing with the articles I focus on. This seems to be more affected in game series and genre articles which luckily I steer clear from - everyone has their opinion in these types of articles (particularly genre articles) and it comes out as he mentioned.

I will say, however that I don't appreciate the group being "publicly" slandered. We have

368 "Active" members (of which I'm sure more than a few are inactive and never listed themselves as such) and over 31,000 articles, which equates to 80+ articles per person if we divide it evenly among active personnel. I understand when people think something is wrong, but fix it instead of asking us to. We're busy enough as it is, and this is only a hobby. --Teancum (talk

) 13:39, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

If you are going to accuse me of slandering you then it would help to point out what you think I am saying that is not true. I assume you are referring to the claim that very few people are involved in the decisions to re-name article pages or approve sources as reliable. If so then you may want to count the number of people who vote in each decision. From what I've seen it has not been anywhere near 368 members, or even 10. --Therpgfanatic (talk) 21:02, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

As do I. I invite rpgfanatic to

WP:BEBOLD and fix these genre articles himself, and I feel we should call a community-wide RfC to discuss these. Nomader ^(Talk

) 15:41, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

This sounds very related to the previous discussion about how we interpret article content from sites like IGN, GameSpot, etc. It also sounds like a symptom of the bigger problem stated above: too much work and too little work force.

RPGfanatic- I can certainly appreciate your distaste with some of the video game coverage on Wikipedia. I, and I know others, am not satisfied with the quality level in many of our important articles. To re-iterate what others have said, you are welcome (and encouraged) to work on the articles yourself. I know Wikipedia's guidelines and policies can be a hindrance to new editors. But there are those here that can help you navigate them so you can improve the article. I suggest you start a draft of the article from scratch as a

draft in your userspace. If you have any questions about the editing process, please feel free to ask. (Guyinblack25 ^talk

15:56, 9 February 2011 (UTC))

I have requested temporary FPP for RPVG and may for history article too. This is a huge issue and I've already seen edits, though not by Therpgfanatic to remove it since this debate began with removal of sources without reason and removal of content because someone thinks its untrue.

As for the claims, what Therpgfanatic is claiming is that even academics sources should not be used here because there are academic-level sources used in that section to support some of the ideas there. He's saying no source anywhere is essentially good enough to support cultural differences by the sound of it, a very extreme veiwpoint we don't have to adhere to (

WP:CANVASSed

to all the major relevant policy/guideline pages that are affected and possibly the major wikiprojects that get much of their info from these type of sources (probably most of Wikipedia).

EDIT:Also as there was an attack on what I said, I feel that I must respond. If you notice the article has nothing on roguelikes and stuff - that's because I can't verify it. So I don't add it; for the religious one, that needs some clarrification. I should say JRPGs tend to use religion iconography that is similar to Christianity and WRPGs don't. That is verifiable and thus not merely my opinion. Also you have not given one example of a source claiming the opposite. Citing specific examples isn't the same as a trend because there are always exceptions to the rule; that doesn't mean there isn't a trend. I mean that's like saying something like "Most volcanoes form along subduction zones" cannot be supported by showing that Hawaii doesn't and saying that because it exists a claim that there is a trend cannot be made by any reliable source.陣内_Jinnai 19:54, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

As I have repeatedly said, simply deleting the offending content causes an edit war. In the past Jinnai has immediately reverted the edits to that article in order to preserve his cultural differences essay. In fact Jinnai is the one who directed me to complain here when I recently tried again to point out the section should be deleted on the talk page. He claims I have not given any sources to dispute the editorials while his sources are valid. As you can see whenever I point out examples directly from games (easily provable by playing the game), he claims they are exceptions to some kind of rule --established by who? I don't know. Again, there is no study which compares such things in "JRPGs" and "WRPGs"; it's purely opinion. The idea there are trends is complete opinion because there simply has never been any study done in a logical and scientific way -- which requires pooling a large sample and investigating them, not just pointing to one or two games then proclaiming there is a trend.

And this is exactly why game reviewer magazine editorials should not be deemed reliable sources when they do not cite their sources. Pointing to Xenogears and Final Fantasy Tactics does not mean it is anymore common to see religious antagonists in "JRPGs" than "WRPGs", especially when you can list several "WRPGs" that have the same kind of theme but because some shoddy game journalists wrote an opinion piece, that makes it okay. Which is why editorial pieces in game reviewer magazines need to changed from reliable sources to unreliable sources. It's really ridiculous that we are even having this argument; I cannot imagine many journalism professors would accept citations from an editorial that make extraordinary claims but provide no source for where they are getting their facts. Editorials and reports are two separate things.

I've certainly not played every computer RPG ever made but I've played enough of them to know the editorials are bogus but that doesn't even matter because they do not cite any reliable sources. Again there has never been any comparison of games to see what the "cultural differences" are. It's purely speculation. And if there is no reliable source for statements then those statements should not be in an encyclopedia. --Therpgfanatic (talk) 20:55, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

And as I've pointed out these bad sources appear in other game related articles, not just the ones related to computer RPGs. I do not feel like having to constantly repeat myself in discussions like this every single time I delete statements inserted into Wikipedia that are supported by editorials which are purely speculative and opinion based, citing no reliable sources. The root of the problem is the game magazines being given undue amounts of reliability. The door to removing the offending content cannot open until this door closes. --Therpgfanatic (talk) 21:14, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

Lastly if Jinnai believes that Vintage Games: An Insider Look at the History of Grand Theft Auto, Super Mario, and the Most Influential Games of All Time, is an academic book then he needs to do some research into how academic publishing works. The book is not peer reviewed, which is a necessary part of the process of scholarly papers. The book is also written by game journalists who work for Armchair Arcade, a blog. But perhaps he or someone else can point out where in that book they cite or show the results of a study comparing a large pool of these games to see their differences. --Therpgfanatic (talk) 21:26, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

• Please see the related deletion discussion at Wikipedia:Stub types for deletion/Log/2011/February/9. ▫ JohnnyMrNinja 20:22, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

The book is cited by at least 3 academic papers. At least because that's only the online ones. Please stop making attacks on myself.陣内_Jinnai 22:03, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

Did you even look at the Google Scholar results before you claimed the book was cited by academic papers? Anyone who does can clearly see they are not academic papers. One of the sites isn't even secure. --Therpgfanatic (talk) 05:01, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

And finding a copy of the paper listed on the non-secure site, I can see the paper has nothing to do with RPGs and is focused on discussing the programming of games. Actually none of the Google Scholar results have anything to do with RPGs, and none of the papers appear to be peer reviewed either. Also, even if they were reliable sources does a reliable source quoting an unreliable source make the unreliable source reliable or does it mean someone didn't do their research properly? When a "reliable source" like Kotaku reports on hoaxes, does that make the hoax real? --Therpgfanatic (talk) 05:04, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

Well they are citing a reliable source so it doesn't matter.

Even if they are, Wikipedia has in general given deference to a reliable source that quotes an unreliable source as being an expert enough in the field to know what they're talking about. I asked this because it came up in an unrelated case. It doesn't make the unreliable source reliable, but we don't assume they are suddenly unreliable except for extraordinary claims.陣内_Jinnai 05:52, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

[22] There are the authors cridentials. If you're going to start saying they're not reliable sources, then your standards are not supported anywhere in Wikipedia. In addition, I think I just found another at least situational RS we can add per

WP:SPS.陣内_Jinnai

05:58, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

[policies concerning reliable sources states very clearly that in order to be a reliable source they must have a proven record for fact checking.] Please tell me how in the world they can have a reputation for fact checking if they do not show where their facts are coming from when they make wild assumptions about thousands of games they have probably never even played?

[the way, third party sources who are not independent of organizations with interest in promoting something (such as Game Informer, owned by GameStop) are supposed to be scrutinized closer than they currently are being.]

Since you seem to have skipped past the start of that page on what the policies and guidelines required of third party sources are, I will reproduce them here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Third-party_sources#Policies_and_guidelines_requiring_third-party_sources

* Wikipedia's policy on both Verifiability and No original research states that "If no reliable, third-party sources can be found for an article topic, Wikipedia should not have an article on it."

* Wikipedia's policy on Verifiability states that "Articles should be based upon reliable, third-party published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy."

* Wikipedia's guideline on Reliable sources states that "Wikipedia articles should rely primarily on reliable, third-party, published sources".

* Wikipedia's guideline on Notability states that "If a topic has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject, it is presumed to satisfy the inclusion criteria for a stand-alone article."

This is not a request to delete every citation from a game journalist. Rather, this is a request to not automatically deem everything they say as having notability and reliability, and to scrutinize them closer on a case by case basis. This is a request for the articles to comply with Wikipedia's own policies. --Therpgfanatic (talk) 12:44, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

One thing to consider that several of these "unsourced" claims that you are suggesting game journalists make are effectively attributed to the video games themselves. Their status as "experts" in the field allow us to use their collective knowledge to make the wider assumptions about video games in general (eg the cultural differences section). In such cases, there is no need for them to cite their sources as their sources are obvious, the games themselves. The types of statements that you appear to be focused on are where there are nuanced statements that aren't quite accurate or probably made some years ago. Take the customization issue: I would agree that the differences cited between customization in WRPG and JRPG was true in 2005 (pre PS2) but not today. That doesn't mean our sources are wrong, they're just out of date. Everything can be reflected to talk about "early games" for customization, and then update sources for newer examples. So here, when it is talking about games in general and nothing specific to the industry, we look to their "expert" opinion to use to make generalizations we can build on. These can be verified by the reader

Where we do need to watch for sources are things like industry reports - closures, buyouts, game sales, new titles, etc. Most of our sources don't specific "link" to any work for these but do start with "Today, CompanyX announced...". So they've named a source, and, at least how the VG industry works, news gets corroborated quickly. These might beat press releases to the door, or simple not be mentioned. Again, in this type of situation, not a problem if they aren't listing explicit sources as long as they aren't pulling data from thin air. (yesterday's news of Guitar Hero is an example of this type of sourcing working well - news broke from Eurogamer, at least two other sites contacted Activision to confirm, and then Activision formally announced it.) These also catch hoaxes too, given time. (case I'm aware of is the rumor of a PC/PS3 port of Limbo, which was listed by the ESRB, but nixed a day or so later by the publisher)

But, if say, Stephan Tolito of Kotaku comes along tomorrow and says "I've heard that Deadly Premonition sold 5 million copies" and doesn't say where or how he got that number, then, hey, flame on. That's a piece of data that needs to be challenged if only one person without any source makes that claim. Maybe they're right, maybe they're wrong. This is where we do need to strongly evaluate the RS of the work and the expert making claim, and a general BS test to make sure it makes any sense, and then just to consider if it is a useful piece of questionable information to include. In this fake example, I would call foul and ignore that statement until it was proven by another source otherwise (and more than just, "Kotaku said that...", which is one thing to watch for).

Basically, a lot of your problems with how we treat video game magazines and web sites as reliable sources is because the journalism field for this area doesn't run itself like academic sources; they rarely cite sources and as most are online rely on hyperlinking for references back older articles. But at the same time, there's nothing wrong with that per

Really, I think most of your complaint is either 1) very naunced claims that really don't apply well when we're summarizing the field - we can't spend time to identify every exception to a rule and 2) sections that are outdated and liking need some TLC to get up to date. The cultural differences section does need modern refs from the last few years to show how the WRPG and JRPG sections have become less distinct from each other. I don't know if such exists. If we can't find them, there's some options for rewriting that to indicate the material there is outdated, but outright removal is not warranted. --MASEM (t) 14:35, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

Masem, you are not seeming to grasp the plain English ness of the rules. You cannot simply say all game journalists' statements are sourced by the games themselves. That is not how citations work. And when a game journalist writes an editorial (which by its very nature is an expression of the journalist's opinion) and makes a statement about trends in thousands of games but does not use the scientific method to prove the case, it cannot be included as a statement of fact. That you personally agree with some statement made by a game journalist about thousands of games you undoubtedly have not played (Have you played every computer rpg made before 2005? If not, how can you know the statements about customization differences are true based on your own experience? You obviously can't) is also not a valid reason to defend the information as being included in Wikipedia.

Game journalists are also not experts at videogame knowledge. What establishes them as an expert? Because they write for blogs and magazines that many people read? That does not make them an expert. It's irrelevant anyway because being an expert is not part of Wikipedia's requirements for whether something is verifiable.

Wikipedia is also not a source of news. Wikipedia is a source of information; information that is supposed to be reliable and accurate. So the argument about reporting on press releases and rumors is also without support by Wikipedia's rules. Just because the game magazines and blogs have sloppy investigative standards does not justify Wikipedia relaxing its rules so their information can be included in articles and no where in any of Wikipedia's policies that I have read is that deemed to be acceptable to do.

You can also not claim they have a history of editorial oversight and reporting factual news 99% of the time unless you can produce a scientifically created report that proves such. Otherwise it is a number you made up and if that is what you did I now further question whether you fully understand how Wikipedia is supposed to work. --Therpgfanatic (talk) 16:48, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

You also don't seem to understand that entire subsections should not be composed of the personal opinions of game journalists, many of whose employers are either wholly owned by game publishers or have strong financial ties to them (because of the ads). It makes them less credible than other mainstream news sources; you don't know how many opinion pieces were written for marketing purposes but because the ties are so strong it is possible that some have been. So when they do not even backup their claims in editorials they should be deemed unreliable and not included in Wikipedia. Especially when an entire subsection (like the cultural differences in computer RPGs) is composed of nothing but opinion piece editorials that do not cite any scientifically created studies about trends in computer RPGs. --Therpgfanatic (talk) 16:55, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

I'm sorry but this last statement seems like you're just being difficult. By that reasoning, we need scientifically reported facts that

WP:CONSENSUS, or do without. --Teancum (talk

) 17:00, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

(ec)I understand what you're trying to say, but this is again coming down to understanding how this field is covered. You're asking for academic/scientific standards in a field that has little coverage in that area. But this is also true for many contemporary topics like television and movies. It's also true of current events and the like.

I can totally appreciate a source that goes through all X number of RPGs, cataloging them as WRPG or JRPG, and then identifying which features they have and then making a graph or chart to show the difference, and to come out with a statement like "65.3% of JRPG has anime-like characters, while only 12.9% of WRPG have these". (These are obviously false #s). But obviously there is no such study, and likely never will be. At the same time, people that are considered experts in journalism may say "More JRPGs have anime-like characters compared to WRPG" based on their own experience and a general common-sense. As long as we are assured these are experts and that the statement makes sense from a common-sense standpoint, that is acceptable per WP:V and WP:OR. If someone next month came out with a study to disprove that, then we replace that statement.

The problem that I'm having with what you're saying now is that you're not saying these are "wrong" statements, only that they are too generalized or don't reflect updated common sense. You have commented about the customization options, and I agree, this statement, possibly made in 2005, in not as true today. That is ok, as long as we establish that that difference existed then, and possibly another statement to say that that difference is not as evidence today. But even without these, it is not a "wrong" statement - it is generally "right", technically "wrong". We can remove the technical wrongness by the dating of information. If it were the case that the statements are so wrong that even dating the statements or limiting the types of games they cover wouldn't make the wrongness go away (eg a statement like "WRPGs never have used a turn-based system" (eg Fallout 1/Anachronix as counterexamples) ) then yes, question the sources, rewrite the text, do whatever to get rid of the outright error. But if the statement is generally correct with some exceptions to the case (eg "WRPGs usually do not use turn-based systems"), that's perfectly fine.

But I think again it comes down to understanding that you're asking for sources that are not the type generated by this field, and/or that we shouldn't be using the more casual sources over academic ones. However, WP-wise, this is a perfectly acceptable situation: WP:V and others call for using the best sources available in the field of interest, and for VG, that is our gaming magazines and major web sites. We never should overlook the academic sources, of course, and use them over causal ones, but WP:V and WP:OR can still be met by these casual sources as proven by our body of Featured works and the fact that other contemporary topics have similar source use. What you seem to be asking for at the core is fundamentally against how the rest of WP works, and if you want that changed, you need to go up higher. Now, instead, if you're just looking to make some sections be more correct due to outdated information, be our guest and

WP:OWNership, because what you are saying about the factual accuracy of the statements is probably something that needs fixing. --MASEM (t

) 17:09, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

History of role-playing video games. I gave him a 4im warning as he was already well aware that he was alone in his position and aware that we weren't doing anything because he wasn't edit warring (just having a heated debate). He's also raised some issues on Talk:Role-playing video game, which while legitimate in and of themselves, are not so much with the way he is claiming some sources are unreliable.陣内_Jinnai

18:03, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

As you can see this is why I posted here about needing to re-evaluate the pages. What I said was proven to be true. I cannot simply "fix it" when Jinnai has decided he owns the page and can insert whatever of his own essays he likes even if the statements are not verifiable under Wikipedia's guidelines. It seems to me this needs to go into whatever the next step of the dispute process is, so people with more authority and not involved in the arguments can decide whether these articles are complying with the guidelines or not. I personally do not believe they are and the Wikipedia guidelines for verifiability are being ignored simply because some editors believe the only sources they can find to prove statements should be used, even if they fail reliability tests. --Therpgfanatic (talk) 18:43, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

Deletion is not the same as improvement. If you question the statement (truly, doubting its factuality) add a {{

WP:NOT - is frowned upon, which is why you are being met with resistance there. If you feel the section should be deleted, and you get reverted once, explain your reasonings on the talk page. But if instead you positively improved the section by fixing statement you find questionable with more reliable sources, and you still get reverted, that's a problem. --MASEM (t

) 19:00, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

If you had read the talk page you would see when I attempted to do so Jinnai told me to come here. We're going around in circles. --Therpgfanatic (talk) 19:22, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

I put in a request for mediation, which seems to be the next step in this process. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_mediation/Role-playing_video_game --Therpgfanatic (talk) 19:43, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

Since the majority rejected the mediation request I am now putting it into the next step of dispute resolution, especially since Jinnai threatened to ban me for removing the material and has pretty much rejected any effort to resolve it another way (again, he directed me to come here even though he has admitted the section is bias and relies entirely on opinion pieces rather than facts). Also that the majority of people here seem to think game magazines have the same journalistic integrity as other media outlets that lack the close financial ties that game magazines do is problematic and obviously needs to be something that requires someone with more authority explaining why my points have merit. Then we have David Fuchs, an Arbitrator, whose attitude is, to paraphrase, that it's okay to use bad sources if editors can't find any better ones. Basically, even though Wikipedia is meant to be an encyclopedia you guys believe it's perfectly okay to cite opinions as being facts and give undue weight to magazines that are essentially propaganda. I don't see this getting resolved unless it goes to a higher level. --Therpgfanatic (talk) 23:45, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

I begin to find it hard to

prove your point. That's considered vandalism here and you were well aware that your point-of-view, that all those sources are not reliable, was soundly rejected when you section blanked those sections.陣内_Jinnai

23:59, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

(

WP:Ban. If you'd like to take this to a higher level, please do so as it can't be resolved here. Reach Out to the Truth

00:01, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

You know full well that other editors in this discussion told me to just remove the information. I was not "edit warring". Anyone who reads this thread can see it. Jinnai is also directly involved in this entire dispute. The section we are arguing over is something Jinnai has pushed and pushed to keep through all the many incarnations of the page and if I remember correctly is something Jinnai had a significant part in creating. If you think for half a second there is no conflict of interest, you're wrong. Jinnai can call it "blanking" a page; I call it removing bias information that comes from editorial pieces and that even Jinnai admits is not a neutral point of view. --Therpgfanatic (talk) 00:05, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Most non-academic journals - which include Time, Newsweek, Popular Mechanics, Entertainment Weekly - and a host of other journals, as well as most reliable newspapers and online news websites do not cite sources. Instead, we evaluate their reliability based on if they have editorial oversight and a history of fact checking. There is zero difference from these and gaming sources. And yes, advertising dollars have to be considered too. If you want to challenge that, you need to challenge all such sources at

WP:RS (which is an argument I think you would lose). Personally, everything you've said points to trying to win a specific battle at selected sections of specific articles, and there, instead of fighting the established systems, you should be communicating and trying to improve there. Blanking is not improvement. --MASEM (t

) 00:08, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict)No one told you to remove the whole section. I even checked your talk page and no one told you to do it there. You have no basis for that statement.Indeed quite the opposite - people supported its inclusion, albeit maybe with some edits as Masem pointed out. That is not the same as wholsale removing.陣内_Jinnai 00:12, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Massem, why don't you focus on the issue at hand instead of trying to justify one wrong by pointing to several other wrongs? Wikipedia very clearly states its purpose is to spread facts not opinions. It's policies stress again and again what a verifiable source is. And what you and others don't seem to comprehend is that you cannot compare Kotaku, IGN and GamePro to Time Magazine, the NYT or Newsweek; those consumer news magazines that aren't outright owned by the subjects they report, are not internet blogs written by amateur journalists and by the way, when editorials are concerned they aren't considered reliable sources for inclusion in academic papers either. I honestly don't believe it is an issue with Wikipedia's policies. I believe it is an issue with editors ignoring the policies.