Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Video games/Archive 94

This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Archive 90

←

Archive 92

→

PlayStation 2 Network Play

A user who goes by the name Gaming&Computing has just created an article about "PlayStation 2 Network Play", where the network connectivity features of the PS2 are portrayed as a service and/or brand. A similar edit by Gaming&Computing to the PS2 article resulted in a small edit war last week (see the article's edit history). I personally don't think this really deserves its own article, but I can see a case for it being a split of content from PlayStation 2. My question is basically this: should the article be retained but rewritten or removed entirely (or am I simply wrong that it isn't a branding/service)? Alphathon /'æɫfə.θɒn/ ^(talk) 23:14, 28 May 2012 (UTC)

I'd take it to AfD. The PS2 online play system is not a service. Sony provided the hardware, yes, but online play was different on a per-game basis. EA had their own servers, GameSpy was used, etc. Unnecessary article spinout, and it portrays things incorrectly. --Teancum (talk) 23:44, 28 May 2012 (UTC)

I agree. It's not a service, and I've had numerous problems with this user before, but he does his own thing regardless. Sergecross73 msg me 00:18, 29 May 2012 (UTC)

It seems the real problem stems from the PlayStation 2 article, which uses the trademark-y "Network Play" moniker. Perhaps this was a recent addition to the PS2 article, but in any case it is unwarranted because I find 0 sources indicating this was ever known by the term "Network Play." The only notable usage is in regards to "PlayStation Network PLAY" for the PS3, an unrelated sales promotion. It wouldn't hurt to have a page on PS2 network / networking features, as they weren't entirely insignificant. Just so long as we don't Portray Them As Official Sony Brands Using All Capitals And Catchy Names. CaseyPenk (talk) 02:36, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

I went ahead and moved the "Network Play" page and list to "online" page titles. CaseyPenk (talk) 03:01, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

Those trademarky mentions were added by the same user (in this edit) when they pseudo-split the content; prior to that, the article didn't give it a name or call it a service. As for the move, I think given the state of the article its probably better off being discussed along with the Network Adapter, in the PS2 article or in the list of online-enabled games. However, I wouldn't be averse to keeping it (honestly I have no strong feelings either way, I'm just slightly more on the "doesn't need an article" side of the fence). Alphathon /'æɫfə.θɒn/ ^(talk) 03:15, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

EA Task Force

Not too long ago, I originally thought of creating an EA WikiProject (discussion: Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Proposals/Electronic Arts), but I'm starting to think that a task force of this project would be more resonable, like the Nintendo task force. What do you guys think? Zappa O Mati 22:38, 29 May 2012 (UTC)

I'm thinking the scope may be unreasonably large... I don't see any compelling reason for games to be specifically worked on on the basis of them being published by such a huge studio. Taskforces generally stick to narrower scopes, or at least more consistent ones; Nintendo may be very large too, but generally very self-contained... EA on the other hand is much more "all over the place" and I'm not sure the publishing studio is a strong enough connection to link all games under an all-encompassing taskforce. But that's just me. I just feel taskforces should have some sort of a cohesive scope and EA doesn't feel like one cohesive entity. :) Salvidrim! 22:43, 29 May 2012 (UTC)

Well, how about maybe something like a Madden NFL or Battlefield task force? Or pretty much any major franchise that EA makes? Zappa O Mati 22:46, 29 May 2012 (UTC)

Just Madden or just Battlefiels may be too limited a scope. I don't see any harm in it, but anything that could be in a single Featured Topic generally is too small to generate enough interest for a full-fledged taskforce. Do we have a Sports Games taskforce? THAT'D be a superb idea. :) Salvidrim! 22:58, 29 May 2012 (UTC)

Now that you mention it, that'd be a great idea! Zappa O Mati 23:18, 29 May 2012 (UTC)

I'll just create a new section for this new proposal.Zappa O Mati 22:01, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

Proposal: Deperecate the Wowwiki template

A discussion has started at Template talk:Wowwiki#Deprecating the template to determine if it would be appropriate to deprecate the Wowwiki template and encourage users to use the Wowpedia template. Please give your thoughts Hasteur (talk) 02:59, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

Fiscal Year Updates

Can we update the fiscal year earnings for every video game company in 2012? Lacon432 (talk) 21:21, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

I'm not entirely sure what you're asking. Are you requesting help from users to go through the articles and do it, or are you asking permission to do it, or something else entirely? I don't think anyone here is going to object to it being done if you have the data and sources. It might also be worth asking about it at WikiProject Companies, since this sort of thing seems more their purview. Alphathon /'æɫfə.θɒn/ ^(talk) 15:34, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

Sports games task force

Following Salvidrim's above mentioned suggestion of a sports game task force, what do you guys think of the idea? Zappa O Mati 22:01, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

Makes complete sense. --MASEM (t) 22:09, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

Strongly agreed. I would further suggest it sticks to "true" sports games (IE: not Mario Tennis), but I'm not even convinced it would really be preferable. However, one will have to define what a sport it. Does it include Racing games? Chess games? Sports franchise management games? Sports-based browser games? I foresee long, but fulfilling discussions. :) Salvidrim! 22:21, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

IMO, I think it should stick to, like Salvidrim said, "true" sports games, like those simulation games (i.e. Madden, NBA 2K, NASCAR Thunder, Top Spin, etc.). Zappa O Mati 23:33, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

It sounds like it boils down, more or less, to professional, single-sport games with realistic graphics. Professional meaning there is an established industry or economy formed around the sport and it's not strictly a hobby endeavor such as darts. Single-sport meaning the name of the sport is mentioned or directly implied in the title of the game; mini-game compilations such as Wii Sports or Wii Play that focus on a variety of sports would be excluded. Realistic meaning reasonably photorealistic at the time the game was produced; cartoon or cell-shaded games would be excluded (this criteria would apply mostly to polygon-based and possibly isometric games).

To be honest, I think only "serious" sports games deserve inclusion but everyone has their own thoughts on the matter. And to be fair, any division is going to somewhat arbitrary, because for example NCAA Football has evolved to include franchise management, player recruitment, etc. In any case, I think it would be helpful to develop some predictable, systematic criteria so there's no subjective interpretation as to which games to include. Do you all support the criteria I outlined; do you have others in mind? CaseyPenk (talk) 05:21, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

Support: Sounds reasonable. Besides, games like Wii Sports are usually covered by the Nintendo task force. Zappa O Mati 05:51, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

Keep in mind there are games like the Kinect and PS Move sports titles that are more tech demos than "serious" sports games but aren't obviously covered by that task force. I think there is a defining line but how to state it, I'm not sure... --MASEM (t) 05:57, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

MW2's Ghost

Looking for more input over at Simon "Ghost" Riley (talk). The article was originally a redirect to the Modern Warfare 2 article. Couple weeks ago, an editor replaced it with a lengthy article based heavily off of user generated content from Wikia and Giantbomb. I had notified the editor that copying Wikia, etc, may be copyvio and that Wikia is not an RS, as well as that he had not established notability. The editor replied that I needed to "open my eyes brah." in regards to notability.

I'm not really debating that the article is notable or not, but that references must be used establish notability. The currently available references do not appear to do so in my view. -- ferret (talk) 19:32, 1 June 2012 (UTC)

It's that time of year again...

E3 is next week. Billions of games will be announced.

As a reminder: do not create articles for new games if the only information available is the title, developer/publisher, platforms, and release date. Salting redirects to series or developer pages, sure.

On the other hand, if the new game announced comes with a plethora of information (I use the example of The Cave where there was pre-press impressions and some development background on the day of its announcement), be our guest to create the new article. --MASEM (t) 16:08, 1 June 2012 (UTC)

Agreed, however - I'd also go out and say don't bother bringing announced E3 articles that other folks create to AfD, either. If it exists and was announced at E3, focus on improving it since it will undoubtedly just get recreated. --Teancum (talk) 17:09, 1 June 2012 (UTC)

Yes, AFD is bothersome when the game is announced (particularly those in the big 3 presentations). And it does sometimes take a day or so for real news on a game to come out at E3. That said, say next Friday comes and all that is well known about a game is its title and expected release, I would strongly recommend boldly redirecting appropriately. --MASEM (t) 17:11, 1 June 2012 (UTC)

Regarding the AFD statement another idea could be to merge and redirect to a series page if the announced game is from a major series but there is not enough coverage for a separate article.--174.93.167.177 (talk) 23:46, 2 June 2012 (UTC)

Also Please don't add Category:2013 video games (or any other year) to a video game unless it has a full, date month and year, release date + reliable source. Add all unreleased games to Category:Upcoming video games and if there is a general target date like "Late 2013" or "November 2012" and a source for it, please also add it to Category:Upcoming video games scheduled for 2013. Thanks. - X201 (talk) 14:42, 2 June 2012 (UTC)

I kind of doubt that the type of user that would do these things are the same type of users that are hanging out at WPVG. But then again, no harm in warning I guess... Sergecross73 msg me 03:00, 3 June 2012 (UTC)

Sales database.

Can I use garaph.info and geimin.net in the article as references? They said they using Famitsu and Media Create's DB. However, they aren't mainstream websites like IGN.--Jack soly (talk) 12:18, 2 June 2012 (UTC)

I'm tempted to say that it's ok, but it would be nice to know how they are getting the numbers from Famitsu/Media Create. I do not know personally if those are open databases anyone can get - and thus these sites are simply aiding in data analysis, or if they have special access to the numbers. If it is the former, it might be likely to use them; if they are accessing closed databases we probably need more affirmation on who these sites are to being with. --MASEM (t) 12:37, 2 June 2012 (UTC)

Geimin told me before in an email exchange that the Famitsu annual sales rankings on the website are transcribed from the annual Famitsu Game Hakusho white papers (with the volume published in 2005 covering the rankings for 1996–2004). I have no clue about the Media Create data on the site or the rankings on garaph.info, though. -- クラウド６６８ 14:08, 3 June 2012 (UTC)

RFC on GAMEGUIDE

Your input is requested at WT:NOT#Formalized proposal: Changing GAMEGUIDE. --MASEM (t) 21:51, 6 June 2012 (UTC)

June 2012's TFA

Resident Evil 2 will be on the main page as Today's Featured Article on June 8th. Also, if you can, vote here to have killer7 up on the main page on July 7th. GamerPro64 01:45, 7 June 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the shout out GamerPro. Cave Story's FAC also might need some love too! :P Axem Titanium (talk) 02:12, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

Samus Aran and damsel in distress

Several IPs attempted to add information in favor of "reducing heroines to damsel in distresses" to Samus Aran. Here are the examples: [1][2][3][4][5] Those edits are reverted because they are unsourced information and original research. Anyone with suggestions or comments on this should respond to here or Talk:Samus_Aran#Feminist_Backlash. Hounder4 (Talk) 13:33, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

It seems that one of the IPs is discussing, and reluctantly cooperating with me at the moment. I don't know if I've only gotten through to "one of many", or if he's responsible for most or all of these edits though, so I guess it's debatable how much has been accomplished. If it gets too bad for too long though, we can always seek page protection too... Sergecross73 msg me 15:38, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

the usage of the word exclusive

Should we avoid the word "exclusive" on articles? It seems so unnecesary and adds a hint of bias to use the word when we could say it was released on said video game console without needing the "exclusice". To me it seems excessive. What do you all think?Lucia Black (talk) 05:30, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, I believe that is discouraged. It also seems a bit WP:PEACOCK'ish. :) CyanGardevoir ^{(used EDIT!)} 06:25, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

YES, YES, YES YES and YES. Kill on sight. I think I made views on the subject clear :-) "Exclusive" always ends up as a tautology because we list the platforms in the lead, if there is only one platform then its obviously exclusive by definition. - X201 (talk) 07:52, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

There are times where "exclusive" is important, specifically if the developer/publisher signed a deal for exclusive release on a specific platform. If it is the case where the dev/pub decided only to release on one platform without any other influence, that's definitely not "exclusive" but take the case of LIMBO where there's plenty of sources that say that the first year was an exclusive deal with MS to be on the 360. But like with most things, this has to be stated in sources. I'd also say that its not appropriate in the case of, say, a known platform's in-house studio. --MASEM (t) 12:35, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Call of Duty has been started. Does it make sense as a taskforce of WPVG?

I've suggested in on the project's talk page but got no response. So I'm bringing it here. As of right now, WikiProject Call of Duty has two members and was started by a new user. Would this make more sense as a taskforce of this project? elektrik SHOOS (talk) 15:31, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

Possibly, though I am doubtful given that it's not been proposed anywhere, much less here. Moreso as a task force than as a wikiproject, but I don't think we'd see much activity if it's being started by a new user, anyway. --Izno (talk) 16:00, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

I had written a depressing and jaded response, I've seen this Wikiproject track lapped too many times. But I'll just give you the short version; the answer to your question will almost certainly end up as yes. - X201 (talk) 16:15, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

I'd leave it be, too. The creator has less than 150 edits. Odds are it'll die off as quickly as it was created. --Teancum (talk) 16:18, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

Its the poor sods who end up having to tidy it all up I feel most sorry for. - X201 (talk) 18:12, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

WP:VG/IPC... I.e., this guy. --> --Izno (talk) 18:21, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

Call of Duty is a popular series, but because of the fact that it's started by a new user, as well as the lack of interest (as of 17:40, 14 June 2012 (UTC), there's only 2 people), I'll answer in one word: Yes. Zappa O Mati 17:40, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

Just because it's started by a new user is not an issue for me...but with only that few members, that's the real problem. So a yes from me. CyanGardevoir ^{(used EDIT!)} 06:25, 19 June 2012 (UTC)

Character rosters on upcoming fighting games

Hey guys. I'm not a member of this WikiProject, but I am interested in the MoS when it comes to upcoming game releases. The game in question that I'm concerned about is WWE '13. A character roster has been added and is being updated as the official website adds new characters. Judging by various leaks, we can expect the final character roster to be about 77 in number. My question is: is it encyclopaedic to have a character roster on a video game article, particularly one so large? Looking around, I can find some articles that have no character roster, even when it's much smaller (such as Mortal Kombat: Deception, which has been promoted to good article status), while some articles do. I'm inclined to believe there shouldn't be a character roster, given that Mortal Kombat's good article status is possibly owed to not having a clumsy and unnecessary character roster hanging around: especially given that it is very easy to predict the roster, as it will always be composed of superstars who are currently signed to the company. – Richard BB 11:18, 16 June 2012 (UTC)

This issue in wrestling articles has come up a lovely number of times (including this discussion project at the Wrestling WikiProject). Currently, I think WikiProject consensus based on these discussions leans towards not including wrestling rosters in these sorts of articles based on WP:GAMEGUIDE which states that articles are "not an instruction manual, guidebook, or textbook", and "should not read like ... tutorials, walk-throughs, instruction manuals, game guides or recipes." It's always been disputed however, so if people would like to re-discuss consensus (or feel that I've read into the discussions wrong) then I think it would be perfectly appropriate. Nomader (talk) 18:40, 18 June 2012 (UTC)

I don't really deal with Wrestling articles, but I do freqently remove character list/grids on the grounds of WP:GAMECRUFT/WP:NOTAGAMEGUIDE. So, I'd be against including the chart. Sergecross73 msg me 18:51, 18 June 2012 (UTC)

There's no hard and fast rule, but there's a trend that follows a basic premise. If the game's character cast is central to the understanding of the game and/or varies greatly between games in the series folks don't usually tear the list down. That being said Wrestling games always have the current roster of real-world wrestlers, and exceptions can be listed in the prose. It's expected to be consistent. On the other hand games like Marvel: Ultimate Alliance, Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe and DC Universe Online rely heavily on a unique cast, and thus there's a bit of inherent notability. On a personal note, however, I'm often less inclined to remove a non-notable character roster if it's presented in a professional, eye-pleasing way. But in regards to a wrestling roster I steer far away from sports games just for this reason. Take the utter mess of an article that is FIFA 12 for example. Even with previous precedence those that edit these articles want to do so in their own way and it's not worth going to fisticuffs over as even if consensus is reached it's never followed with sports games articles. --Teancum (talk) 20:43, 18 June 2012 (UTC)

Hmmm, sometimes it varies as WP:GAMECRUFT and WP:GAMEGUIDE does not explicitly state that lists of characters a discouraged - it merely mentions "gameplay weapons, items, or concepts". I'm still new to this but I believe that lists should only be added if it is particularily notable for some reason, or if it is vital in order to understand this article. In this case, since they are all real-world wrestlers and the way it is presented is not very encyclopedic, I'd say no in this case. (But leaving it to the experts is a much better option ;) ) CyanGardevoir ^{(used EDIT!)} 06:32, 19 June 2012 (UTC)

This can be done in a simple line of prose, so should be done that way. "The game features the full roster of wrestlers from the 2012 season including additional special characters such as etc." No need for a character list. - X201 (talk) 09:29, 19 June 2012 (UTC)

Thanks very much for all of the advice. I think the general consensus between myself and other editors on the article is that there shouldn't be a roster. Thanks again. – Richard BB 13:50, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

Atari arcade game list

I'm thinking about creating a list of Atari arcade games, starting with Pong all the way down to... well, whatever their last game was. Good idea or am I duplicating something that already exists? — Frεcklεfσσt | Talk 16:57, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

Correction: Computer Space was their first game; Pong was their first really successful arcade game. — Frεcklεfσσt | Talk 17:00, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

I'm not sure if that is accurate. The Computer Space article sates that the game was created by the founders of Atari before they formed the company. The article also credits a a completely unrelated company Nutting Associates as the developer and producer. The article for that company also states that as a fact though it not sourced. In short, unless both articles are completely wrong I don't see this as being an Atari game since the game is older than the company.--174.93.167.177 (talk) 00:25, 21 June 2012 (UTC)

Also while it may not be the best source Gamefaqs also lists Nutting Associates as the publisher and does not even mention Atari.--174.93.167.177 (talk) 00:30, 21 June 2012 (UTC)

You are correct. Computer Space preceded Pong and Atari. While it was developed by one of the founders of Atari, it was not an Atari game. I accidentally attributed it as their first product. It wouldn't be included in the list. So would a list be worthwhile? — Frεcklεfσσt | Talk 13:37, 21 June 2012 (UTC)

It seems like a good idea to me.--174.93.167.177 (talk) 21:50, 21 June 2012 (UTC)

B-Class review of Super Mario (series)

Hello, I requested a B-Class review of Super Mario (series) about a month ago. I was requested by the GA reviewer to obtain this before the GAN could go through. Could someone who doesn't actively edit this article please give it a B-Class review? Thanks in advance, Nathan2055^{talk - contribs} 15:57, 21 June 2012 (UTC)

I don't qualify, as I clean up/work on the page here and there, but I wouldn't think the article's in that great of shape really. For instance, there's 5 "citation needed" tags out there, there's no prose in the "Origins" section, and there's lots of "crufty" interludes here and there.

That being said, it's hard for me to form much of a reference of what a good "series" article would look like, as a vast majority of them that I've come by are much worse than this article too... Sergecross73 msg me 16:05, 21 June 2012 (UTC)

I see a few major issues here which will prevent this from being rated GA, and probably should keep it from being rated B right now too. The biggest problem is the lack of citations. There are some cite needed tags scattered throughout, and the Recurring gameplay elements, Settings, Music, and Games sections are almost entirely lacking citations. That won't be acceptable for a GA, since one of the quick-fail reasons is any article tagging. I suggest looking for sources, and rewriting those sections around what the sources say. —Torchiest ^talk_edits 16:15, 21 June 2012 (UTC)

For reference, here is the B-Class criteria. I keep it in my userspace for quick reference, but if anyone ever needs it you can find it at WP:BCLASS --Teancum (talk) 16:27, 21 June 2012 (UTC)

B-Class Criteria

Taken from WP:BCLASS

The article is suitably referenced, with inline citations where necessary.
It has reliable sources, and any important or controversial material which is likely to be challenged is cited. The use of citation templates such as {{cite web}} is not required, but the use of <ref></ref> tags is encouraged.
The article reasonably covers the topic, and does not contain obvious omissions or inaccuracies.
It contains a large proportion of the material necessary for an A-Class article, although some sections may need expansion, and some less important topics may be missing.
The article has a defined structure.
Content should be organized into groups of related material, including a lead section and all the sections that can reasonably be included in an article of its kind.
The article is reasonably well-written.
The prose contains no major grammatical errors and flows sensibly, but it certainly need not be "brilliant". The Manual of Style need not be followed rigorously.
The article contains supporting materials where appropriate.
Illustrations are encouraged, though not required. Diagrams and an infobox etc. should be included where they are relevant and useful to the content.
The article presents its content in an appropriately accessible way.
It is written with as broad an audience in mind as possible. Although Wikipedia is more than just a general encyclopedia, the article should not assume unnecessary technical background and technical terms should be explained or avoided where possible.

For the record, I'm the one who Quick-Failed it without an actual review of the article, even a brief one, requesting a B-Class assessment beforehand. From what I can see, it was a prudent decision, as it seems that opinions have been expressed saying the article may not meet B-Class criterias (let alone GA criterias). Salvidrim! 01:47, 22 June 2012 (UTC)

it could be better and referenced especially in the in-universe areas. there are many names for the in game elements. super star, star kid, super mushroom, power mushroom, mushroom. etc. it would be great to put references on the names. and maybe not explain in detail for each. instead summarize it all. Also there are some blank sections. well referenced, but could be better organized and better.Lucia Black (talk) 03:14, 22 June 2012 (UTC)

Suggestion re: Games and Kickstarter

Double Fine Adventure presently has a hefty section that is about the meta-influences of the success of that Kickstarter on the VG market (most for Double Fine, of course, but progressing on others). In the months since, there's been reports that have shown that while there's a few highlighted projects, KS is not all that for fledging developers.

Considering that, the size of the current Kickstarter article, and that once information about the Double Fine Adventure trickles in, the present section in that article starts to seem out of place and primed for a separate article. I am trying to figure out that separate article, and seeing if there's a possibly wider scope than just "Kickstarter video game projects". I'm trying to wrack my brain if there's been other crowd-sourced efforts of note before, or perhaps even a larger article about the funding of video game development (at which point we can point to notable examples of stuff like the mess at 38 Studios, Playdead/Limbo, the Indie Fund, etc. etc. A section on Kickstarter, starting from the DFAdventure success, would be an appropriate subsection there.

I'm considering any suggestions for this that could be offered. --MASEM (t) 00:16, 22 June 2012 (UTC)

OnLive and its status as a platform (yes, again)

Relevant previous discussions Feb 2011, Jan 2011,March 2009, July 2011,August 2011 and Febuary 2012

Today I was doing some minor clear up on the OnLive article and as the first sentence says "OnLive Is A Cloud Gaming Platform" I appended Platform next to "Cloud Gaming" in the infobox, only for it to be instantly reverted. Considering we have developers, publishers and gaming new sites that refer to OnLive as a platform, why on earth can we not call it a platform on Wikipedia? Heck Eurogamer list it fourth in their list of Platforms and as illustrated in previous discussions I can provide citations for several developers and publishers calling it such.

Titles require specific development for OnLive, It has its own SDK, multiplayer is restricted to OnLive users with other OnLive users only, it enables games to be played on a wide range of devices including Android tablets, they have their own console, store front, social aspects, accessories and all sort of things that you would usually associate with a gaming platform yet there seems to be a continuing divide on if we can or cannot call it such. Heck as referenced above we have people reverting the word "Platform" from an infobox but leaving it in the article. The same issues seem to be occuring on individual title pages too, Borderlands states OnLive under platforms, where as it gets instantly reverted from other titles.

At the end of this discussion last time, the following comment was made: It looks like something solid is forming regarding OnLive, Steam, Gaikai etc. Anyone care to create a passage of text for the guidelines?, that we can vote on and point to in future. - X201 (talk) 09:06, 13 February 2012 (UTC)Which seems not to have occurred in any form.

Can we please come up with some kind of consensus on what to do here, while there ARE similarities to Gaikai it is clearly grey label middleware, Steam is a distribution platform with social and multiplayer aspects which prides itself on providing "PC Gaming" (predominantly) and if I buy a retail version of a title I can play with owners who bought it via Steam and so forth. While OnLive is to my eyes (and multiple citable sources) a separate platform.

Adycarter (talk) 17:48, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

"Platform" for our purposes of listing within the infobox has to be some piece of hardward; Onlive does not require that, and thus acts at the middleware like Steam. We don't list Steam in a list of platforms unless the game is exclusive to it for PC/Mac versions, as to avoid to giving issues of storefront/middleware favoritism. Hence, we have to treat Onlive as a storefront (even though they do offer a piece of hardware it is not required to use it). --MASEM (t) 17:57, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

I think he means in the actual OnLive article: [6], not in game articles. — HELLKNOWZ ▎TALK 18:00, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

Pretty much yes. The OnLive article recognising it as a Platform is my desired outcome. The game article infoboxes are a whole other can of worms (and massively inconsistent as it is anyway) and as previous discussions covered considering the "Hardware for Infobox status" argument I can live with OnLive living in "Distribution Method" on most game articles for now. Adycarter (talk) 18:04, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

In the OnLive article, "platform" is fine, understanding that the english word "platform" has a broad range of meanings, but includes the hardware platform and the software platform aspects. It's important that just because "platform" is used on the Onlive article to describe it, that point is not used to push OnLive as an entry in "platform" for the infobox template. --MASEM (t) 18:06, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

I am in agreement with Masem. There is not movement from my February position. - hahnch e n 20:44, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

I think we can get consensus on two things. One, OnLive is widely described as a platform, though what kind of platform is rarely if ever rigorously defined. And two, we are operating without a reliable source to define what constitutes a video game platform. It seems a consensus (or maybe just a status quo) was reached at some point to say that a video game platform is a computing platform that videogames run on, but that to me seems arbitrary and ripe for review. Can someone provide an RS for that definition or a rationale for why it cannot or should not be something else? ButOnMethItIs (talk) 01:21, 7 April 2012 (UTC)

I'm gonna have to go with ButOnMethItIs here. Unless we have a solid set of reliable sources as to the specifics of what we define as a platform there's no reason to keep up with the current borderline synthesis. I realize we need to draw a line somewhere, but if reliable sources recognize it as a platform and not a service (which seems to be what we categorize it as) then we need to follow the industry. --Teancum (talk) 02:23, 7 April 2012 (UTC)

This is a primary source but how does it factor into the discussion? http://support.onlive.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/178/~/onlive-app-available-platforms ... Here OnLive refers to it's offering repeatedly as a service, available on platforms that are more familiar to what we already use in infoboxes, i.e., operating systems. Also a quick google without verifying the results too indepth has 9 million hits for "Onlive platform", and 32 million for "Onlive service". While I understand some media outlets say platform, this idea of a platform-on-a-platform messes with my head. How do you unravel the inconsistent use of both "platform" and "service" between various RS's and the primary source itself? -- ferret (talk) 02:34, 7 April 2012 (UTC)

If you click on "service", you'll see that they define the service as a "a groundbreaking on-demand video game platform". And there's no reason that services and platforms should be mutually exclusive or that platform-on-a-platform shouldn't be treated as a proper platform. But you do bring up an important point: our reliable sources are less reliable than any of us would like. If our reliable sources conflict or are too vague to be helpful, I think it becomes a matter of editor consensus. ButOnMethItIs (talk) 03:22, 7 April 2012 (UTC)

Wouldn't OnLine be comparable to Famicom Disk System, Satellaview, Steam, PSN, Virtual Console, Nintendo Power (cartridge), etc., in that it's a distribution system on a platform? The platform is "Computer" (or Windows/Mac), the distribution system is OnLive. Just like Satellaview games are SNES games, distributed by Satellaview; they may be exclusive to a specific distribution system, but the platform is the required hardware to play. You cannot play games on OnLive without a computer; thus the platform is the computer, not OnLive. If OnLive was a platform, I could get OnLive and play games on it with no other equipment or software. Salvidrim! 03:34, 7 April 2012 (UTC)

I direct you to this, which is a hard box. A computer is in fact not required, but is one of the many methods to do cloud gaming via the system. I also should publicly state I'm not pro-platform here, but the fact is OnLive is going to be the first of many cloud-based platforms in the future; it's just where things are headed. --Teancum (talk) 11:24, 7 April 2012 (UTC)

The "platform" in that context also extends to iPads, Android devices, GoogleTV, certain TVs and BluRay players though, it may be a platform on a platform as someone above me stated, but the platform it runs on is a bit wider in scope that just one platform or "computers". Adycarter (talk) 10:58, 7 April 2012 (UTC)

I'll clarify a bit: what matters is not the hardware itself, but the OS. In the case of classic consoles, the hardware & OS are not distinguishable (a SNES & a SNES's OS are basically one entity). Thus, in the case of games being playable on one OS, on many physical pieces of hardware (iOS is an easy example), the OS is the platform. Same goes with, say, PSP, or GBA, where many versions of the hardware sport the same basic OS. We never differentiate a game as being playable on DS or DS Lite, because the OS (a DS's OS) is the same; same with PS3 & PS3 Slim. In the case of games being playable on different OS (not different games on different OS, as was common in the 80's), then the platform is Windows/Mac/Etc. As for OnLive, in light of the above, I would say it is a piece of distribution system software for computer games (where the platform still is the OS) AND a cloud-based home console platform; the two products are completely different both in how they work and what they are. Salvidrim! 18:47, 7 April 2012 (UTC)

But the end result is the same? Classing it as two separate things would surely just over complicate this madness even further? Its apparent there is no actual set of rules around what counts as a platform as others have mentioned, I don't see why people can't realise that OnLive is just the first of many "Platforms on Multiple other Platforms" and come up with a sane consistent way for dealing with this and other future similar platforms. Adycarter (talk) 14:54, 8 April 2012 (UTC)

Why is this discussion still taking place? The platform-on-a-platform argument is correct, but pretty much every distribution method can be described that way. Xbox Live Indie Games is a platform-on-a-platform, so is Steam, so is iTunes. OnLive is unambiguously a service, so why not describe it as such? - hahnch e n 13:07, 8 April 2012 (UTC)

Because there are multiple reputable sources calling it a platform, other "platforms on a platform" also tend to be on one platform not a dozen and tend to be just a distribution method rather than something that games requiring porting to, featuring specific platform only multiplayer and friends lists along with specific hardware available just for it (Both the Microconsole and the OnLive Universal Wireless Controller). OnLive has its own hardware, its own OS/User layer, its own porting process, its own SDK, its own market place, its own multiplayer community and is called a "Platform" by multiple reputable gaming sites. Adycarter (talk) 14:54, 8 April 2012 (UTC)

So what? It is unambiguously a service, so why don't you describe it as such instead of repeating this discussion every month? - hahnch e n 15:38, 8 April 2012 (UTC)

Black Paint is unambiguously black, it doesn't stop it also getting called paint. I've got involved in this discussion once before, where no outcome was reached so I've raised it again, I'm hardly raising it every month. You say its a service, myself, others in this discussion and reliable sources disagree Adycarter (talk) 16:20, 8 April 2012 (UTC)

Do you disagree that it's a service? Why do you suggest on not-White Paint? I don't think that any reliable source disagrees that OnLive is a service. http://onlive.com, what is the big word next to the name? - hahnch e n 16:28, 8 April 2012 (UTC)

I don't disagree it is a service, I've never said I do. However the OnLive Gaming Service and the OnLive Desktop Service are both facets of the OnLive Platform, as stated above by the user ButOnMethItIs "If you click on "service", you'll see that they define the service as a "a groundbreaking on-demand video game platform". IMO the whole thing is a pile of confusion not helped by the fact everything, even the company shares the name "OnLive", All I want is some consistency about how I can refer to it in the main OnLive article and in the infoboxes of titles, as opposed to the current seemingly random approach that varies from title to title and half the time gets reverted seconds later. We can call it the "OnLive Turnip" for all I care, as long as we get something consistent that isn't reverted every 5 seconds. Adycarter (talk) 16:35, 8 April 2012 (UTC)

Just to add more confusion to this, it was announced last night that Assault Heroes 2 is coming to OnLive in the next couple of weeks, this game is only available on the 360 and has no PC version. (The XNA version has been ported to the OnLive SDK, as is the case with the upcoming FortressCraft) How do we deal with this in regards to the listing of platforms the game is on? We surely can't list "PC" because its not on the PC or if we are doing that do we have to list every platform the OnLive Platform/Service/Whatever is available on? These two are speculated to be the first of many games where there is no PC version but instead an OnLive version Adycarter (talk) 12:52, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

I think the clarifying point we'll have to figure out is just what the OnLive SDK is. Everyone says it's an emulated Windows service, and that may be right, but I've never actually seen a reference of that. It could be very well that OnLive servers use a custom OS. Anyone know/have a source? *edit* OnLive's VP is quoted as calling it an "open PC platform" on Gamasutra, but that could be simply hardware. *edit 2* Here's the OnLive Developer Conference (seven parts) on YouTube. Kinda long, but it might be insightful. --Teancum (talk) 13:31, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

Even if it is an emulated windows service though (which it could well be) that doesn't really address the issues caused by OnLive "exclusive" titles, even if its found to be Windows its not like the titles are *really* on the Windows / PC platform and labelling them as such would surely lead to confusion? I'll see if I can dig any sources up that are definitive either way. Thinking about it whatever the SDK is based onits probably similar to the way the Dreamcast OS was done, the article freely admits it was a customised Windows CE yet obviously the Dreamcast was a platform. Adycarter (talk) 13:42, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

I agree that the hardware and software OnLive uses for its backend is not relevant to whether or not OnLive is a platform in its own right. No one disputes that Amazon has a cloud platform and the two are very similar in this respect. Software that's available on Amazon's platform is generally described as being on a "web" or "SaaS" platform and I'm hopeful that a catch-all term might cover OnLive and all of its competitors. If that doesn't happen and we decide to list them individually, lists of platforms will get very crowded. ButOnMethItIs (talk) 15:45, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

Agreed. Everywhere I've looked OnLive personnel describe it as a PC, but they seem very set on not saying it's a Windows-based platform. Regardless they did specify it's rack-mount PC hardware running multiple virtual instances of machines on one physical platform, that much I can confirm from their developer's conference. The Computing platform article that is linked to in our infoboxes specifically states "A computing platform includes a hardware architecture and a software framework (including application frameworks), where the combination allows software, particularly application software, to run." Cloud computing is certainly a part of that. The hardware is present on both ends, with the servers running the software and streaming data to the user. By comparison Steam (since that's what everyone draws for comparison) is a service that allows you to download the game to run on a given platform (Windows, Mac), and thus is only a service. --Teancum (talk) 17:55, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

I don't think the infoboxes would become massively cluttered if we do deem OnLive to be a platform, the other services are very much designed as middleware or for demos only, as opposed to including all of the other platform facets mentioned above (SDK, Hardware, Features, Exclusive Titles etc etc) Gaikai for example freely states it is simply using the PC versions on a PC in a data centre with no code modifications where as we know full well OnLive is using a different code base and specific hardware. As mentioned earlier several game articles already merrily have OnLive as a platform in the infobox there just seems to be a lack of consensus around its state and I'm hoping to negate future revert wars by forming a solid rule or at based some degree of consensus around it. Also that explantion of why Steam isn't a platform and OnLive is has to be the best way of putting it I've seen, thank you. Further more I just noticed that the Bastion (video game) article lists Google Chrome in the infobox as a platform, considering that title is also on OnLive it seems strange to me that Google Chrome can merrily be there as a platform yet historically OnLive cannot. Adycarter (talk) 10:54, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

I would put forth another example (albeit a bit silly): OnLive's processing hardware is off in some set of offices somewhere in the world, while the player uses their device merely as a monitor, speakers and a gamepad. This is no different than the Xbox 360 in my living room hooked up to my TV, surround sound and with a wireless gamepad. I could, theoretically, store the 360 miles away and run cables back to my house, hooking them up to my TV, stereo and gamepad. The Xbox 360 is still a console, even though the processing power isn't local. It's the same with OnLive -- players use whatever peripheral as their monitor, speakers and gamepad, but said peripheral does not power the game. --Teancum (talk) 10:48, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

Okay, this topic seems to be winding down and showing a degree of consensus towards "Yes its a platform", I'm going to start amending relevant infoboxes Adycarter (talk) 12:51, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

Too bold, too soon. ButOnMethItIs (talk) 13:16, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

Perhaps, but it already is on half of them and has been for ages Adycarter (talk) 13:20, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

That does not mean that you should go and add it to more of them. And since you started this discussion, I think we can all agree that you are not qualified to judge consensus. So stop implementing what you think is consensus, let the discussion run for a few more days and then let someone impartial judge whether there is consensus or not. Regards So Why 13:25, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

Fine, I'll stop, Wikipedia doesn't exactly make it easy to know what you are and aren't supposed to do though :/ Last time (as mentioned above) someone was supposed to be coming up with some form of rules or whatever and nothing happened, the conversation died and the talk got archived so I figured I'd run with what we've got so far. Obviously thats not the right plan Adycarter (talk) 13:29, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

Actually, it does. It's called "common sense": Someone actively involved in a discussion on one side cannot impartially determine which side "won" and thus cannot determine consensus correctly. That means that you can argue for a certain outcome but the task of judging whether you were able to sway consensus to this outcome falls to someone not involved. If the discussion is in threat of being archived without consensus being determined, you can always request a neutral third-party to judge consensus, for example at WP:AN. Regards So Why 13:40, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

Perhaps naively I didn't realise these discussions had to be "won", Its listed on some titles, it gets insta-reverted from others, I was told this was the right place to try and get "back up" on if I was acting correctly, people seemed to agree so I figured I was good to edit further pages without the hope of revert wars. I've clearly totally underestimated the amount of bureaucracy required. I'll sit back now and let whatever is supposed to occur next happen Adycarter (talk) 13:46, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

They don't, which is why I used quotation marks. But I think you can agree with me that you, as the one arguing for this change, cannot also be the one impartially judging whether there is consensus to implement this change? Regards So Why 13:55, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

I grasp that yeah, I just didn't feel I was arguing for a change as much as I was asking for some kind of agreement, if it wasn't on any infoboxes it would be one thing, but as it was under platform on some, distribution method on others and such all I was trying to do was get a consensus on where it should be and some back up that it *should* be for those articles someone seems to defend vehemently and not want it on. From my POV it wasn't an argument for change or a discussion to "win" just me looking for some clarification, I think I say as much above "_{All I want is some consistency about how I can refer to it in the main OnLive article and in the infoboxes of titles, as opposed to the current seemingly random approach that varies from title to title and half the time gets reverted seconds later. We can call it the "OnLive Turnip" for all I care, as long as we get something consistent that isn't reverted every 5 seconds.} " thats really all I was here looking for Adycarter (talk) 13:59, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

On the subject at hand: I don't think OnLive qualifies as a platform in the sense it's used in the infoboxes. Above discussion shows imho a mix-up of the term "platform" as in "what you use to play the game on" and "platform" as in "what you use to get the game". Onlive, despite using a somewhat different method, belongs in the second category, as does Steam or the Xbob marketplace for example. I think one of the reasons for this confusion is that we list "Microsoft Windows" as a platform in the infobox while the correct way would be to list "PC" (maybe in the form of "PC (Microsoft Windows)"). Based on that, I'd propose that we list OnLive, like Steam or similar, in a field called "distribution method" and keep the "platform"-field for the actual hardware platform the game is run on (which would include changing Windows to PC (Windows)). Regards So Why 13:50, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

Your definition of platform that excludes OnLive is not only arbitrary, but without reliable sources and maybe even consensus. It seems that all it has going for it is that it's worked so far. Can we not use a different definition? Should we not? That's the direction this discussion needs to go in. ButOnMethItIs (talk) 14:09, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

No, it's not arbitrary - I have taken it from our own article computing platform#Hardware examples. We'd just need to agree to adopt this definition as the one to use in the infobox. That also corresponds to the definition of platform as "a particular environment for running other software". Regards So Why 17:00, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

Why should we adopt that definition? Is it backed by reliable sources? Is it consistent with the way "platform" is used in the industry? As for platform, a definition that includes environments as platforms a la X Windows would make OnLive a platform. ButOnMethItIs (talk) 17:21, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

I'd like to reiterate that this isn't a distributor. A distributor is a software-only application. OnLive runs its own dedicated hardware, to which a given player's monitor/speakers/controller are hooked up. Steam merely serves as a storefront, while OnLive powers the games, thus fitting the definition of a platform: "A computing platform includes a hardware architecture and a software framework (including application frameworks), where the combination allows software, particularly application software, to run." --Teancum (talk) 22:11, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

OnLive is a service that allows you to access PC games on other platforms. It's like the example above where you run your Xbox cables 3 miles across town. It's still an Xbox. You build the games for PC, and then you hook into OnLive in order to grant access through their service. You can wrangle the word platform to mean anything, it can mean Steam or the App Store, but we've limited the infobox field essentially to operating systems and virtual machines. OnLive is neither. On platforms, you can build and run anything you want, and it might require homebrew channels or breaching your warranty, but you have complete freedom. OnLive is not like that, it has significantly more constraints borne purely out of commercial agreements. You can't build anything unless they let you. You can't run anything unless they let you. - hahnch e n 23:25, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

Show me somewhere reliable that says OnLive doesn't run a platform-specific operating system. I have never, ever seen it say it runs Windows. It runs PC hardware, but everything I've ever seen emphasizes more that it's custom. Unless you can prove via a reliable source that says it runs someone else's OS then there's no proof. --Teancum (talk) 00:25, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

You seem awfully certain that OnLive isn't a platform considering that you can't say with much certainty what a platform is. See my comments above. ButOnMethItIs (talk) 00:35, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

I said a platform was an Operating System (ie Windows) or Virtual Machine (ie Java). I don't have a copy of the OnLive SDK, so I can't tell for certain whether its Windows. Only that it's an SDK and not an NDK. - hahnch e n 18:33, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

Who else says that a platform is an OS or VM such that it would exclude OnLive? If you have neither a reliable source nor a clear consensus on what a platform is in this context, don't you think you're having the wrong conversation? ButOnMethItIs (talk) 20:38, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

This is what Wikipedia has done. It's not me coming up with a radical new definition of platform, but stating what we currently do. This is what we currently do. That is the context. - hahnch e n 21:58, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

So OnLive isn't a platform because it's not included in our definition of a platform, but we don't actually have a definition of what a platform is, we just have "what we currently do". Is that about right? And from what I can gather, "what we currently do" involves everyone pretending they know what a platform is, lord knows how, and arguing and sometimes editing accordingly. ButOnMethItIs (talk) 23:02, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

I see edits adding this to Platform in infobox of VG articles, citing this talk as "concluded" in favor of such. This is a really long and rambling section and I haven't followed every edit. Has such a concensus been reached? -- ferret (talk) 15:31, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

No that was my bad and I've been told to stop. Adycarter (talk) 15:32, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

Just put OnLive in the distribution field. I said this last time, saying it again. - hahnch e n 23:25, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

That's a reasonable idea. The previous discussions on infobox decided to use only the method of delivery, e.g. online, dvd, cartridge. Therefore, should we include OnLive, we would say among the lines of "cloud" or something and not mention the specific company that does it. That said, we need consensus that "online" and "cloud" (or something) warrant separate values. — HELLKNOWZ ▎TALK 08:16, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

I think though that much as there's talk above of "twisting" the definition of platform there is a danger of twisting the definition of distribution method here. Surely the point is to be informative and encyclopaedic and as such relegating the fact that hundreds of titles are available way beyond a "PC" and in multiple cases were completely rewritten for OnLive (RockStar made a gesture based LA Noire for OnLive to offer on Tablets, far beyond the touch overlay used on other titles) to a simple comment of "Cloud" in the Distribution method doesn't seem all that informative. I appreciate OnLive might not meet whatever the current definition of Platform is, but as commented above perhaps that definition needs reviewing and enforcing consistently (such as the fact Google Chrome is showing as Platform on Bastion) Adycarter (talk) 09:33, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

I'm not saying to put "Cloud" in the distribution field. I'm saying to put "OnLive" in the distribution field. Regarding LA Noire's tablet support, you can build a Windows executable with WiiMote support, it's still a Windows executable. - hahnch e n 18:33, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

Well, Chrome shouldn't be listed in |platform= until consensus forms. It's not a fact, rather an exception lacking discussion. It's been a year since a pretty overwhelming consensus not to list OnLive as computing platform. I guess we can pose the same question again, or indeed simply ask what |platform= should list. — HELLKNOWZ ▎TALK 09:59, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

Chrome is an OS. It unambiguously meets the platform infobox criteria. Even when on top of another OS, it has it's own native code and sandbox where it does its thing. - hahnch e n 18:33, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

I meant Google Chrome browser, not Google Chrome OS, as currently in Bastion's article. Of course, the OS is a platform. — HELLKNOWZ ▎TALK 21:57, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

Considering that most of the reverts state "OnLive is PC Only" or similar its not really surprising that consensus was against it last time, and probably will be again there seems to be a general lack of understanding regarding it but that's a whole other story. It would be nice to see a consistent and policed infobox though, the present ones are so incredibly varied from title to title Adycarter (talk) 10:04, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

As varied as the games they're designed for.. a heavily policed infobox would work fairly well for 80% (figure courtesy of the Institute for Studies) of games but the rest would left in the cold. Яehevkor ✉ 10:18, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

Well, I don't see any other solution for you than asking "what should |platform= contain?" without a bias to OnLive per se. If the reason to oppose is "general lack of understanding" then an accompanying argument should educate everyone fairly, such as prominence of other methods besides computing platforms. The you have consensus, and we don't have to judge the issue on things like current usage and reverts, which are heavily subjective. — HELLKNOWZ ▎TALK 10:51, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

Based on what I've read so far it appears to me that OnLive does in fact meet the definition of a "platform". The infobox links the "platform" parameter to the article "computing platform". That article definition is as follows: "[a] computing platform includes a hardware architecture and a software framework (including application frameworks), where the combination allows software, particularly application software, to run." OnLive is a unique "hardware architecture and a software framework" on which applications can run. Games that run on OnLive are specifically designed to be compatible with the hardware and software; OnLive does not just run the retail version of PC games on remote Windows computers. Specifically, OnLive runs a proprietary virtual machine manager called Olives to manage the various operating systems (Windows- and Linux-based) that it runs on its custom servers (see here). Am I wrong to assume OnLive meets the criteria of a "computing platform"? If it does then it should be listed as a platform in the infoboxes. – Zntrip 17:44, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

The difference is that application cannot run on OnLive if the supporting OS doesn't run. So if Microsoft decides to forbid using Windows, close to all Windows-based games won't run on OnLive at its present form. OnLive cannot be used as a stand-alone, whereas computing platform can. That's the main difference. — HELLKNOWZ ▎TALK 17:57, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

Might I ask you to consider the OnLive Micro-Console--71.235.9.161 (talk) 18:33, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

An operating system is not the same as a computing platform. I assume that almost all platforms incorporate proprietary software, operating systems or otherwise. The PlayStation 3 probably incorporates non-Sony proprietary software that it could not do without, so how is that different from OnLive? – Zntrip 18:09, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

Because, if you remove OnLive from equation and the changes they made, then (in this example) there is still PC hardware and Windows OS underneath, which supports the games. You can (roughly speaking) play the game without OnLive. OnLive does not natively support the games, it acts as an intermediately that brings its own adjustments. I wouldn't call my laptop a platform even if I was playing a game remotely on my friend's PC (laptop - hardware, remote viewer - software), even if he had to apply a special patch to get it working. — HELLKNOWZ ▎TALK 18:26, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

You have yet to provide a reliable source that it runs under someone else's operating system. --Teancum (talk) 20:19, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

A hypervisor is unsuitable for the platform field. You do not build apps and executables for a hypervisor, you build it for the OS. - hahnch e n 18:33, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

OnLive uses a hypervisor, but it isn't in itself a hypervisor. OnLive is also not a cloud PC and it isn't just Windows running remotely. It uses unique software and hardware configurations and is therefor a unique computing platform. Is this last sentence not true? – Zntrip 19:06, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

My PC uses unique hardware and software configurations. This doesn't make it a platform. The way we've used the platform field in the infobox has been for Operating Systems (like iOS) and Virtual Machines (like Java). I may hook an Windows executable into a variety of SDKs, but its still a Windows executable. - hahnch e n 21:58, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

OnLive is a service, this is indisputable. OnLive is not defined by its operating system or it's back end or it's SDK. What OnLive offers is a service, it allows you to access games and apps running remotely on any device. I've been asked for a reliable sourcing stating that it isn't an operating system. This is ridiculous. Proponents for the platform designation should have a reliable source stating that it is an operating system. OnLive could completely alter their back end and business model, they could start offering Atari Lynx games run on Atari Lynxes synced up to a webcam. Those Atari Lynx games would be available on OnLive. The Atari Lynx is still the platform. To put OnLive as the platform would be misleading, OnLive is merely distributing the game (or access to the game depending on how you see it), it belongs in the distribution column. Just write "OnLive" in the distribution column, I'm not sure why this is so difficult. I said this last time. - hahnch e n 21:58, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

Here's what is still confusing me: if a game's platform isn't OnLive, what is it? Would we list "server" or whatever OS the game is running on (which is unknown to the end user)? All computing devices obviously have different hardware and software settings, but to what extent do those differences constitute different platforms? At the end of the day all video game platforms are computers. Also, if virtual machines are included in the platform parameter, then OnLive should be included because it uses a proprietary hypervisor (which is a type of virtual machine) called Olives (see my first comment in the section). – Zntrip 07:54, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

If we some day get an exclusive Onlive-title things get even weirder. Should the platform field then be blank? That would mean that the game isn't running on any platform. But that's of course not possible. So something has to be listed in the platform field (and PC may be confusing if there isn't an actual PC version available to buy. And we also don't know if the servers Onlive uses can be called a PC.) --141.84.69.20 (talk) 08:04, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

Um sorry: I of course meant Microsoft Windows and not PC --141.84.69.20 (talk) 08:11, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

In OnLive's case, the virtual machine sits on top of Olives. But why does this matter? They can change the back end however they want. Just put "OnLive" in the distribution field. - hahnch e n 18:35, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

So if a game is distributed through OnLive, what is the computing platform? – Zntrip 22:59, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

Assume it's Windows, but you can't tell unless you have the SDK documentation. But they could change it next week. - hahnch e n 23:23, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

And that's exactly why that doesn't work. Making assumptions. I'm not sure what the issue is here. Having done more research it fits Wikipedia's definition of a computing platform. It's not a distributor, either. A distributor is only a storefront. OnLive powers the games, regardless of operating system. --Teancum (talk) 00:28, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

You needn't have done that research, because the Wikipedia article states that it includes things like software frameworks, such as Steam. We don't list Steam in the platform field, because our criteria in the infobox is stricter than that - we've generally limited it to operating systems and virtual machines. A distributor is not just a store front, cloud streaming is a form of distribution. - hahnch e n 19:35, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

This interview is particularly informative. In his answer to the first question, OnLive CEO Steve Perlman states that for some older games OnLive constructs custom virtual machines to run them in. In that case, I don't see how it would be practical to list the platform as anything other than "OnLive". – Zntrip 05:43, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

That video explicitly states that they run the original Deus Ex in a virtualised Windows 98 environment. The Deus Ex executable is a Windows executable. I would place OnLive in the distribution field. - hahnch e n 19:35, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

A virtualized Windows 98 environment is not the same as Windows 98. OnLive builds custom virtual machines for older games. – Zntrip 21:54, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

No, it is the same. Nothing has changed regarding Deus Ex, it sits on a Windows 98 machine, which sits on top of some hypervisor. If I run Android apps on BlueStacks, it's still an Android app, regardless of where it is and what bells and whistles have been placed around it. - hahnch e n 00:39, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

And on that note (that a VM is irrelevant) consider that games like The Simpsons Arcade Game are simply the arcade ROMs with an emulator wrapper around them--effectively the same thing. The fact remains that it runs on platform-specific hardware. The virtual machine that runs it doesn't change anything. --Teancum (talk) 00:15, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

I was going to raise this in a further discussion. What caught my eye wasn't The Simpsons, but Virtual Console games which fall into the same bucket. I think we should move that into the distribution field too. The platform field should be developer focused - what was this app built for? The distribution field should be for end users - how can I access this? I was going to start a separate conversation once this one had finished. - hahnch e n 00:39, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

Normalizing to avoid marketing

After a lot of thought there is probably some rationale to include games-via-cloud (eg OnLive) and games-via-browser (eg Bastion on Chrome) in the platform field. What I don't think we should be doing is naming specific services unless they are uniquely offered by one specific service (due to exclusive rights, software requirements, etc.). So, Bastion would be available on Xbox 360 (via XBLA), PC (via Steam), and browser (via Google Chrome); this is as opposed to saying that it is X360, PC, and Google Chrome.

Basically, what I think I'm saying is that for the "platform" field in the infobox, it should take the form <platform> [<service>], where:

"platform" is any of the standard game console hardware platforms; or for personal computer games, the name of the operating system (eg Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, Linux); or for mobile games, the name of the operating system (eg iOS, Android); or "browser" (for web-browser based games) and "cloud" (for cloud/streaming games).
"service" should be used only if the game on that platform is offered through a specific singular service and no other - and this should be an assurance that only that service will ever offer the game (eg FortressCraft, if I understand that situation accurately, would list OnLive; on the other hand, Batman: AC would not since (as best I can tell) both Gaikai and OnLive offer it.) The service shouldn't be added just because that service got the game a month ahead of another, for example.

We can't normalize away specific hardware like the Xbox 360 and the like, but we can normalize when there's more ambiguity in how the game is played at the end to avoid giving any specific service vendor more priority than others. No, we can't get away from the situation like Steam where games that use Steamworks are required to played via the Steam client even if you can buy the titles from other services; the service is still "Steam"), but with the platforms like Onlive, Gaikai, and Chrome, we can do some steps. --MASEM (t) 17:00, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

How would one write OnLive -- "cloud (OnLive)" or separately as "OnLive"? What about multiple cloud gaming platforms -- just "cloud"? Are you saying we list "PC (Steam)", even if available from Desura or somewhere, because of Steamworks? What about when Steam is offered on both PC and Mac, how would that be written? — HELLKNOWZ ▎TALK 20:19, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

At the moment Gaikai only offers demo versions of games. But that may change later this year. --141.84.69.20 (talk) 20:53, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

Steam goes in the distribution field. XBLA could as well, although I'd probably just omit it. I would put OnLive and Gaikai in the distribution field. Chrome is an OS, it runs its own native code, it's not just some SDK. - hahnch e n 21:58, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

The above example for Bastion is Google Chrome browser, not Google Chrome OS. — HELLKNOWZ ▎TALK 07:50, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

There's no difference. The browser runs its own native code within a sandbox. - hahnch e n 18:28, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

If a game is only available via cloud gaming through Onlive, it would be written as "Cloud (OnLive)". If multiple cloud platforms exist, then "Cloud" is all that is said (to avoid store favoritism).

If the game is a PC game that requires Steamworks - which means that you generally are getting a code to plug into Steam to activate the game regardless of which vendor you use - it is "Microsoft Windows (Steam)". Similarly, Battlefield 3 would be "Microsoft Windows (Origin)" since it requires Origin to run and is activated the same way, even though multiple vendors sell the game to be activated on the series. On the other hand, something like the Witcher 2 which has the CD Projekt DRM-free version and the Steam version, would just be "Microsoft Windows"; there's probably lots of indie titles from the various Indie Bundles that also work this same way with a steam code and a DRM-free version from a different service, and in such cases we give no favoritism in the infobox to one service or another. I compare this to how you can buy XBLA games from Amazon but you are basically getting the activation code to dl the game from the XBL service, ergo that would still be "Xbox 360 (XBLA)" for platform.

The Bastion in Chrome OS would be the case where the platform is "Browser game (Google Chrome)" since it (presently) the only browser that supports it. --MASEM (t) 19:50, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

Assault Heroes 2 is now available on Onlive. What shall we now add on it's infobox? "Cloud(Onlive)" in the distribution field, or just add "Cloud" or "Onlive"? And what do we do in the platform field? Presumably it's running on Windows, so we could add that but on the other hand we don't know that for sure (and again: it might be confusing to add it if people have no way to really play it on any of their windows devices natively without using Onlive). --141.84.69.20 (talk) 08:27, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

This was about to get bot archived so I'm typing some text in the vain hope of a resolution Adycarter (talk) 23:00, 8 May 2012 (UTC)

You can add

<!-- [[User:DoNotArchiveUntil]] 00:00 1 January 2200 (UTC) -->

At the top of the discussion to prevent archiving, or to add a set extension to a specific date. - X201 (talk) 15:12, 12 May 2012 (UTC)

Attempt at a summary

So this went round in circles for a bit, then this fell dead, just like every other time. If we can't agree its a platform (because seemingly as proven above we don't know how Wikipedia deemed anything a Platform) can we agree it goes in the distribution method field? If so can someone get a bot to do it? Last time I tried to make changes to a multitude of articles I was told to use a bot, which I don't have. Assumption would be we place "OnLive" in the distribution method because "Cloud" is even less useful in most of these cases. Of course this is going to look weird for those Xbox 360 games OnLive has in regards to the Platform still only listing Xbox but nevermind... Adycarter (talk) 18:02, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

I think there was at least some agreement on listing "Cloud (OnLive)" as a platform. This seems reasonable to me. – Zntrip 18:49, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

I'm now listing services games are available on in the distribution field. Such as XLIG in Weapon of Choice (video game). Would do the same with OnLive. - hahnch e n 21:19, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

That seems sensible to me Adycarter (talk) 07:39, 18 May 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, I think there wasn't a clear consensus on its status as a platform, but all parties seemed to concede it would be appropriate to list it as a distributor. --Teancum (talk) 21:32, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

I for one am very much opposed to putting OnLive as a distributor in the infobox. If the idea is that OnLive is merely a storefront like Steam, why not list Steam, Gamestop, Wal-Mart, and Amazon.com as well? What, exactly, is the difference as far as distribution goes? If you're thinking that Steam qualifies while Gamestop does not because Steam is required to authenticate a game license, that authentication is minimally related to distribution. The correct field for that would be DRM (a surprisingly unpopular proposal) and even requirements would be a better fit under that rationale. And while I'm not crazy about "XBLA" or "Xbox Live Indie Games", at least they tend to have a monopoly and tight integration with the platform (a platform which is increasingly indistinguishable from the distribution channel, I might add).

Whatever the case, I'd like to see a well organized discussion and !vote before anyone takes action. I would not like to see a repeat of the above mess. ButOnMethItIs (talk) 01:28, 18 May 2012 (UTC)

If thats your feeling then how exactly would we deal with FortressCraft, Tec3000 and Assault Heroes 2 for example? They are available on the Xbox and on OnLive, no PC versions exist? Cloud(OnLive) is clearly a distribution method at the very least. Adycarter (talk) 07:37, 18 May 2012 (UTC)

Firstly I need to point out that there's a difference between distribution method and distributor. I see now that no one was actually suggesting that OnLive, Inc acts as a distributor, but some of my above objection applies to OnLive being listed as a distribution method as well. As per the template documentation, the correct label would be "cloud computing" (one of the "only values possible", no less) and that's exactly what I would put in those articles. I can think of precisely one good reason to append "(OnLive)" to that label: it would clarify that it is not the Xbox 360 version that is distributed via cloud but rather the OnLive platform version. But if OnLive's status as a platform is hotly contested, then it stands to reason that this rationale should be hotly contested. Do you have a different reason? ButOnMethItIs (talk) 13:40, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

If you simply list "Cloud Computing" under distribution method then how exactly would we deal with FortressCraft, Tec3000 and Assault Heroes 2 for example? They are available on the Xbox and on OnLive only. If OnLive isn't a platform and it isn't a distribution method and all we're going to list anywhere is cloud computing then it just seems a bit strange to me, its akin to just listing "Consoles" or "DVDs" on titles instead of what they're actually available on. Seems a bit encyclopaedic/uninformative to me. Adycarter (talk) 07:56, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

I think "Cloud computing" is too vague for a distribution method. Gaikai and OnLive have significant differences between the two, but they're both cloud. I would keep the distribution field for specific services that the developer has to alter the game for, so I'd place Steam in there if it were Steamworks enabled. But if it's just a generic download through Steam, then I would just note "download". - hahnch e n 21:41, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

As we've already established every title has to be altered for OnLive, different SDK, 'platform' specific features and adding touch input etc etc, so what do we do? With regards to Gaikai its still only "distributing" demos so thats surely as irrelevant as listing magazine cover discs? Adycarter (talk) 21:59, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

I was just pointing out my rationale as to place OnLive, Steam, Gaikai and other such services in the distribution field. That's the "different reason" that Meth asks. The whole point was that these services are not necessarily platforms, but aren't just straight distribution channels. - hahnch e n 12:00, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

Which I concur with, I was just pre-empting the inevitable "they just sell things like anyone else" claim which keeps coming back up. As we both seem to agree that they aren't perhaps platforms but are worth more than just a generic "cloud" distribtuion method list I feel this is probably the sanest approach to be taking and the one we need to probably get a !VOTE going on if thats indeed the correct process Adycarter (talk) 12:47, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

Anyone? I don't have a clue how to progress this, whatever I do will result in someone getting annoyed Adycarter (talk) 16:49, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

I don't actually see any agreement on that. ButOnMethItIs (talk) 01:28, 18 May 2012 (UTC)

ButOnMethItIs: your general premise that "OnLive is merely a storefront like Steam" is false. It is both a platform and a distributor and is therefore a unique case (hence the protracted discussion). If you read through the comments you will find that many points were raised and that the consensus appears to be "Cloud (OnLive)" at the very least. However, the definition of "platform" for the purposes of a video game infobox have greatly been relaxed and I see no reason to preclude listing just "OnLive" since I am increasingly seeing "Facebook", "Adobe Flash", "HTML5", and "Google Chrome" listed. – Zntrip 03:56, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

The ""Facebook", "Adobe Flash", "HTML5", and "Google Chrome"" stuff is WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS, just because its in another article doesn't mean its the accepted norm. - X201 (talk) 08:08, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

That's not MY premise. That's a view that's been expressed by many editors, none of which are me, in many discussions over the past few years. As to consensus above, I found none when discussions were ongoing and I find none now. I think you're confused and that you should re-read everything more carefully. Personally, I wouldn't start adding OnLive or similar items to the infobox without consensus, given the history of reversion. ButOnMethItIs (talk) 10:11, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

X201: My argument was that the definition of "platform" is being relaxed and that list was just a few examples. I'm simply pointing to a developing norm of including things other than consumer-end hardware for "platform". That has nothing to do with WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS, and please remember that essays are not policy. – Zntrip 21:11, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

ButOnMethItIs: I apologize, I did misunderstand the point you were making about distribution. I think you are right about this discussion dragging on long enough and perhaps it would be best to take a vote. We could contact editors who have made posts in the section (although voting would be open to everyone, of course) to be inclusive. What would the options be? It appears that at least four were presented in the above discussion: (1) doing nothing (i.e. status quo, whatever that may be); (2) listing "OnLive (cloud)", "Cloud (OnLive), or some other variation as a distribution method; (3) listing "OnLive (cloud)", "Cloud (OnLive), or some other variation as a platform; or (4) listing "OnLive" as a platform. – Zntrip 00:58, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

I would very much like to see a !VOTE along the lines you laid out. This discussion has gone in many circles since it was started last year. CaseyPenk (talk) 06:30, 1 June 2012 (UTC)

You guys are all making this needlessly more complicated than it actually is. For starters cloud gaming is a misnomer in and of itself. So stop referring to OnLive as Cloud gaming because they're ad marketers do, it's a Streaming service with cloud save files(like XBL). It's also a platform in the common sense, or at least the MicroConsole TV Adapter is. The part that's being misrepresented is the fact that they are also the distributor/service for that platform, which is irrelevant. It's also worth note that Facebook is not a platform in any sense, it's a distributor and service much like Steam and Origin. Their platforms are PC. --Karek^words?! 03:37, 1 June 2012 (UTC)

Mainstream scholarship / journalism recognizes the existence of social networking platforms. "Zynga launches own social gaming platform" (Financial Times) "Zynga hearts Facebook: Deal seals platform match" (Advertising Age) "Amazon Launches Facebook Applications Platform" (FinancialWire) CaseyPenk (talk) 06:30, 1 June 2012 (UTC)

I'm sorry, you're misunderstanding the use of platform in that instance. A Web Platform and a Video Game Platform or Console is different. In this case Zynga.com is not a platform in the sense referred to it's a platform for distribution of embedded web based content, its standard parlance for trying to make a website sound more impressive than it is in the web industry. In the same manner Google Chrome is a platform but it is not a Video Game Platform. The platform accessing that content is invariably a PC or other web enabled device and not the website it's hosted on, the only reason the word Console isn't being used is specifically to include Handhelds and PCs which historically haven't been considered to fall under that term, though it would be more appropriate to the intent in this context. --Karek^words?! 08:37, 1 June 2012 (UTC)

Why don't we just throw out the "platform" term? There's no reliable, agreed-upon definition of the term. And it seems like this discussion is more or less original research - us discussing the characteristics of different would-be platforms and making POV judgment calls as to which qualify. Given the current state of the discussion, the participants seem unlikely to reach a consensus, which means the status quo, which means continued inconsistencies.

Thus, I suggest we abandon the monolithic term of "platform" and break it down to the specific elements that can be said to constitute a platform: distribution method, physical format, hardware, etc. Each of those properties can be reliably sourced, without making a sweeping judgment as to "yes this is a platform" or "no this is not a platform." The reality is that platforms as traditionally understood no longer exist, and we need to respond to the emergence of cloud and social networking gaming.

So, for example, instead of calling OnLive "a cloud gaming platform," we could call it "a gaming service by which games are synchronized, rendered, and stored on remote servers and delivered via the Internet." That definition builds upon consensus and areas upon which we agree (OnLive is a service, OnLive operates by means of Internet-connected servers, OnLive is not hardware, etc.) We present the irrefutable facts, and readers can make their own judgments as to whether or not those components add up to a platform. CaseyPenk (talk) 06:30, 1 June 2012 (UTC)

That's not actually true, platforms as a term is just being interpreted in an over-broad manner by wikipedians. The meaning isn't misunderstood in the industry, Dragon Age Legends is just one example, they chose Web to refer to the fact that it has no platform restriction. Also as a fact of point, OnLive is a Service and hardware to access that service.

Really it's not confusing, it's pretty straight forward. The platform is a machine(hardware) required to access the content/game, web programs have no platform beyond the PC or Web Enabled Device used to access them at which point the correct parlance is Web. --Karek^words?! 08:37, 1 June 2012 (UTC)

The point of my suggestion is not to provide a definitive definition or to shoot down any prospective definitions; my goal is to avoid the discussion entirely because there are so many people who are so certain of their definitions. You claim to possess definitive knowledge of what a platform is, given your statement "Really it's not confusing, it's pretty straight forward." But as we have seen, there are many other people who are similarly confident in exactly the opposite definition. So I just don't think us debating about hearsay and conducting original research is going to get us anywhere.

Also, the example provided is a selective use of sources; I would like to see "platform" used in that specific sense by Nintendo, Capcom, SCEA, Konami, etc. as well as journalistic organizations before I take it as a universal fact. If, as you say, platform is unambiguously defined by all major media sources, please provide a bevy of references. If, in fact, at least 50% of sources use your definition of platform, we could make progress. But I doubt there is such universal agreement. CaseyPenk (talk) 10:40, 1 June 2012 (UTC)

"Platform" references from the top of my head: eurogamer, CVG and Ubisoft (you might need to sign in for that one) Adycarter (talk) 10:49, 1 June 2012 (UTC)

Where would one find a direct definition of a platform on those sites? CaseyPenk (talk) 11:43, 1 June 2012 (UTC)

No definition as such but those "industry" sites define OnLive as a Platform. Not sure you'll find many/any journalistic organizations and such that actually offer up a definition of what platform means. Are we still talking about OnLive here or have we drifted back to the further question of what exactly Wikipedia should define as a platform? If the later then surely a new section is the way to go as I'd imagine the people who ignore this section would have something to say on it. Adycarter (talk) 12:05, 1 June 2012 (UTC)

Maybe a little of both. Either way OnLive does have a video game platform component that includes a console system and controllers. --Karek^words?! 19:53, 1 June 2012 (UTC)

Starting a !vote

As much as I enjoyed the back and forth between Karek and CaseyPenk in the last 24 hours, no new points have been brought up. Can we please limit the current discussion to the vote proposal? This discussion has gone on for quite some time and there are now many views that have been voiced above for editors to consider. Can we at least achieve consensus on how we want to go about a vote? – Zntrip 08:32, 3 June 2012 (UTC)

Seemingly not :/ Adycarter (talk) 13:49, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

Whoops, I did not see your note, Zntrip. I would like to !vote on your (Zntrip's) 4 numbered proposals above. They're at least a stab in the right direction (I think I mixed up two metaphors right there.. but indeed I think it's the right idea to have a bit of structure like that.) I went ahead and clipped off the previous discussion so we have a new section header here. If everyone could share their thoughts on (1) do you want to have a !vote? and (2) what would you like to see in the !vote? that would be very helpful. I'm unconvinced that this is an impossible task, because we have a lot of smart minds at work here. CaseyPenk (talk) 15:19, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

I'm all for (1) Having a vote and (2) using Zntrips suggested options. We *need* to do something. We also need to make sure in the !Vote that the rational behind each option is clearly explained. Too many people (as evidenced previously) just assume "nope its a store" or similar with little knowledge of the details. Adycarter (talk) 15:22, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

I'm all for a !vote. Here's what I see as our three options:

Option 1: List OnLive itself as a platform in the Platform field. This rationale is due to the fact that we do not know all of the ins and outs of its operating procedures. We merely know that the hardware is specific, and that some games run inside virtual Windows builds, however we also know from the OnLive conferences available on YouTube that there is a |heavy infrastructure framework used to run the games under the OnLive "presentation" (Since there's a disagreement as to whether it's an OS). This technically fits the definition of Computing platform -- "A computing platform includes a hardware architecture and a software framework (including application frameworks), where the combination allows software, particularly application software, to run." -- although it could be argued that it only fits into the Software framework examples and Hardware examples sections of that definition, and not in any traditional sense.
Option 2: List OnLive in the Platform field, but as a subset of Cloud computing. An example would be to list it as Cloud (OnLive). This would fall in line with subset services of consoles such as Xbox 360 (XBLA), or Wii (WiiWare). This option takes a normalization approach (see the above section) to avoid singling OnLive as a sole Cloud system.
Option 3: List OnLive in the Distributor field. Although it can be agreed that OnLive is more than a storefront such as EA Origin or Steam due to OnLive hardware running and processing the games there's still the argument as to whether it's actually a platform. In this case a compromise is made due to a non-consensus which allows us to list it in the infobox until a consensus is made on what to do with the inevitable oncoming of cloud-based platforms.

As for my own opinion, I !vote Option 1 due to the compelling evidence of both hardware and software architectures that are dedicated to OnLive. I feel that even when games run within a virtual OS on their servers it's irrelevant. Many modern games such as The Simpsons Arcade Game run in ROMs wrapped inside an emulator, which is pretty much the same thing. --Teancum (talk) 15:55, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

Now !voting Option 2 - Changed after reevaluating what I had written and other member's rationales. --Teancum (talk) 16:21, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

Option 2, as other similar Cloud services start to populate the market, this gives us a means to use the generic "Cloud" if multiple cloud services offer the same game. If in the case the OnLive version has notable changes/improvements from GenericCloudService, those details can be noted in the body leaving the infobox as "Cloud" only. --MASEM (t) 16:00, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

Option 2 - I like how it's consistent with how we handle digital distribution with XBLA/Xbox360, Wii/Wiiware, etc. Also, per what Masem said above, it seems more "future-proof" too, if there's more and more of these types of things in the future. Sergecross73 msg me 16:14, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

Option 3. I see the actual physical hardware and network infrastructure that supports and runs the games as irrelevant to discussions of platform. In my view, a platform is simply the system the game is developed for - that is, whatever SDK the game is using. So, a game using the iOS SDK runs on the iOS platform, while a game developed with the PS3 SDK is in the PS3 platform. Clearly, games are not developed for OnLive. OnLive is simply a means to an end - it is not an end of itself. Whether you want to call it a "distributor" or a "middleman" or an "enabler" isn't really the point. The point is that games are developed for a certain system primarily, and other uses are irrelevant. To use a parallel example: the platform for Super Mario World is SNES, even though emulators have been developed for iOS and Android. Another example: let's say I use GoToMyPC when I'm travelling to access my home computer. When I use GoToMyPC to play a game, the game is still running on Windows. It is not running on GoToMyPC - the intermediate service is just background technology. OnLive can be used to run literally every game in existence. So unless we want to put "OnLive" or "Cloud (OnLive)" in every single video game infobox, I suggest we start with a reasonably specific definition of platform. CaseyPenk (talk) 16:18, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

As stated before, there is no basis to assume that it has merely background hardware and software. Nowhere in any reliable source (as noted above) has it been said that the machines run on [X] OS. There are cases where they run a virtual machine with the game's original OS (Deus Ex being an example, and they clearly state this is because they couldn't obtain the source code), but no real details have been revealed on what these games run on for the most part. That's why most have gone with option 2. It's a compromise to consider Cloud gaming the platform whilst stating the individual "services/platforms" are to be listed in parenthesis. As far as development for OnLive it does have a dedicated SDK, and runs on it's own dedicated hardware/software setups. So similar to your GoToMyPC statement the remote connection (the micro console, PC, whatever) connects back to the root and that's what it runs on -- OnLive systems. What those are has not been entirely publicly disclosed. As far as emulators, remember that those are homebrew. Should say Super Mario World be released on Virtual Console for the Wii, it's listed as such (which it is in the infobox). It's a publisher-sanctioned release on that given platform, thus we list it. --Teancum (talk) 20:59, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

Option 2 It seems the sanest solution to this and as mentioned has a degree of future proofing. It has an SDK, games ARE developed for it, it has hardware, unique features, etc etcAdycarter (talk) 16:48, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

Option 2 which is the best in my opinion based on what I've said/read before. — HELLKNOWZ ▎TALK 19:06, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

Question: Obviously option 2 is overwhelmingly popular. If chosen, how would we implement it? What games would carry the Cloud / OnLive branding? Because as I said in my !vote, every single game ever created can be run via OnLive. I would like to know what we're getting into. I would support using Cloud / OnLive as the platform for Cloud / OnLive-exclusive games. But if we simply put games that happen to be distributed through OnLive (but actually run on a PC - which is the vast majority, if not all, of the games), then we would have to put every game, as I said. CaseyPenk (talk) 20:38, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

Hmmm, I assumed everything on List_of_OnLive_video_games would have their infoboxes bot edited to include Cloud (OnLive). IE list the games that ARE on OnLive as available on OnLive Adycarter (talk) 20:43, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

Re: CaseyPenk -- That's flawed logic. Just because any game can be run doesn't mean it will. In two years the system has barely 200 games. That's hardly overwhelming. They still have to jump through all the same legal hoops that Microsoft, Sony, or any other platform's parent company has to. They can't just port the game and go. And for that matter we could say the same about any platform. Additionally OnLive has zero system-exclusive games, so that would negate the discussion altogether. --Teancum (talk) 20:49, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

We could probably worry about this after everyone has voted. – Zntrip 20:57, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

I would like to know what we're actually voting on first. That's key to my decision. I would vote for this proposal if it were limited to OnLive-exclusive games. CaseyPenk (talk) 21:02, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

Sure, it's 200 now. But by the looks of it OnLive (and cloud gaming) is going to balloon to the point that thousands of PC games are included. Whether you believe that will happen is beside the point. My point is that OnLive/cloud gaming is just like any distributor -- they don't develop the content; the OnLive "platform" only exists insofar as it serves the needs of the games being streamed, not the other way around. OnLive does just what GoToMyPC does -- it allows you remote access to software running on a machine thousands of miles away. The software is not "running in the cloud" and it's not "running on OnLive's servers." It's running on a Windows PC. Just like my remote desktop on GoToMyPC. I fail to see the distinction. CaseyPenk (talk) 21:02, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

Please provide a reliable source that states that every OnLive game runs on Windows-based servers. --Teancum (talk) 21:20, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

[7] - servers are Windows. My point was that the machines running the games are PCs, which is also true. CaseyPenk (talk) 21:26, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

GoToMyPC - Assassin's Creed loads up on my Windows PC, the video is streamed to my laptop, I play the game. OnLive - Assassin's Creed loads up the company's Windows PC, the video is streamed to my laptop, I play the game. Am I not making myself clear? CaseyPenk (talk) 21:28, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

You are confusing OnLive Desktop (a seperate service they offer) with the OnLive Gaming Platform which uses custom hardware, dedicated blade servers, a specific development API and has games tweaked, altered, changed, ported and such to it. The fundamental basics are the same as using GoToMyPc but it differs massively in many other aspects. Adycarter (talk) 21:37, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

But OnLive Gaming Platform is still a Windows development environment. Per the OnLive website, "With an open standards-based philosophy and a standardized PC development target, you can leverage existing tools and technology you already know on an architecture that’s extremely well-understood. No proprietary architectures, expensive dev kits or new chips to debug ever again." CaseyPenk (talk) 21:45, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

I'm not seeing where that states "Windows" in specific. Perhaps I'm missing something but I'm not even entirely sure what your question is any more. The vote is aimed at games available on the OnLive Platform, they were ported to it, some don't even have PC versions (Assault Heroes 2) some have had features added to the game (LA Noire and gesture controls). The platform itself has features above and beyond "simply running a title via go to my PC", Publishers and media sites refer to it as a platform and it isn't running on a 1:1 remote PC ratio but servers, vitalisation tech and so forth. I get that you can make something "similar" using GoToMyPC or whatever but that doesn't invalidate OnLive as a platform or suggest that GoToMyPC is one. What is it that is currently unclear? Adycarter (talk) 21:50, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

The technical details are all very clear to me. We just have different interpretations of the same facts. This discussion is roughly as circular as all the ones that have preceded it, so I'm just going to let it go. I'm pretty sure this isn't the last we'll hear of the OnLive debate, though. CaseyPenk (talk) 22:08, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

Option 2 — This seems like the most common sense way to incorporate cloud gaming into game articles and it seems to fit all the criteria of a platform. – Zntrip 21:02, 13 June 2012 (UTC)
Option 3 is the best solution imho but I'd also be fine with Option 2. Even if OnLive utilizes hardware as well, it's not sufficient to call it a platform. Steam for example has also games exclusively coded for it or unique features for Steam versions, as well as a server infrastructure for online multiplayer gaming and distribution, yet it's clearly a distribution service. Regards So Why 21:52, 13 June 2012 (UTC)
That said, if Option 2 is implemented, I'd also suggest that "Microsoft Windows" is changed to "PC (Microsoft Windows)". Consistency can only work as a reasoning, if we apply it to everything equally. Regards So Why 21:59, 13 June 2012 (UTC)
Actually it would probably be best as PC(win, mac, WinMac) which iirc used to be the designation used even on the boxes, may still be the case. Assuming we provide links it'd make a good best practice. --Karek^words?! 01:38, 14 June 2012 (UTC)
Option 1 The other two options are also true but are not realistic to what OnLive is. It's a console with Cloud cartridges like Steam. Options 2 and 3 aren't fully informed and this really isn't something that should be up for a vote when it's clearly only a subject of discussion because there's not a popular understanding of the OnLive set up, something that a little bit of research on my part made quite clear to me. Also suggestions related to option 2 in the above comment are very very wise, all PC hardware should be changed to PC(OS supported). Ideally there'd be a fourth option that actually didn't use the justification of option 1 rather had the reasoning I previously mentioned above, that Set top boxes are console equivalent for streamed distribution services. --Karek^words?! 01:19, 14 June 2012 (UTC)
- The point about cloud gaming is that there is little end-user hardware specificity (that is, there may be a hardware box, but end user can play the game over the cloud on other devices too). The difference in PC (Windows vs Mac vs Linux) however is very different. The parenthetic aspect after "Cloud" or any other platforms is to give what service it is specific to, if it is the case. --MASEM (t) 01:29, 14 June 2012 (UTC)
  - I don't view that as a valid reason to restrict it's service terms. We don't classify games by Valve as purely cloud because it has PC support as well. In this case OnLive itself is a console that it would have support on in addition to a Cloud Service to provide support for the PC, which almost all OnLive games already have support for anyway and which should be shown as PC(Steam, OnLive, Origin, insertother) as that would logically make more sense to what is actually occurring. It'd factually be more accurate in addition to being simpler and cleaner in implementation. --Karek^words?! 01:34, 14 June 2012 (UTC)
    - When something is available for OnLive, it means it is available for any OnLive-enabled system, whether that be a PC, a Mac, OnLive's hardware box, and potentially a multitude of other devices. The only common factor to this is that it relies on its cloud platform to play said games. A game made available on OnLive is not technically a PC game. Also, realize that WP is not a storefront or a buyer's guide. When we list platforms and services, we only list a service there if it is the only service for that platform that offers that game; if even two services offer it, we don't list any service to avoid bias to any specific store front. --MASEM (t) 12:46, 14 June 2012 (UTC)
      - That misrepresents my point. OnLive provides a gaming/hardware platform for the product to be experienced through. If the issue is that its not limited to that platform then the whole argument provided for not listing it is invalidated by the reality of multi-system games.
        
        For the second portion; Removing information to not provide bias when multiple services are present is in-fact providing a bias in favor of the market dominant service as opposed to providing actually informative information without spending time worrying about who may make money from providing the service. It's not wikipedian's place to censor information that would be appropriate and useful in that context, nor in this situation does the justification for taking that drastic step make any sense. If the issue is actually one of clarity. which would make more sense, there are better Encyclopedic ways to go about it than simply not providing the information at all. Providing complete and accurate platform information, which is something already deemed worthy of inclusion, does not and can not be equivalent to treating these pages like buyer's guides or store fronts and that's an intentionally false equivalency that could be applied to literally all the information we provide on sale-able "product", no one is suggesting we price and market the games. --Karek^words?! 06:39, 15 June 2012 (UTC)
Option 2: OnLive from what I can gather from our meandering debate above, seems to be a cloud service. As per Masem above, it really makes sense when you consider that other cloud gaming services might come about and will make this policy more "future-proof" as it were. Nomader (talk) 23:16, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

Option 1. I think this option is best because when a game is ported to onlive the game requires specific software modification to function within the onlive environment, and provide onlive specific features. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.235.9.161 (talk) 14:13, 17 June 2012 (UTC)

List OnLive explictly in the distribution field - Option 3 above states "distributor", but I've argued previously that because it is a unique distribution mechanism, that it should go in the distribution field. - hahnch e n 21:21, 17 June 2012 (UTC)

Option 2 - As per the reasons given by others voting for option 2. - X201 (talk) 09:37, 18 June 2012 (UTC)

Option 3 - I believe when we refer to "Platform", we are talking about the systems a particular game has been developed for. We are NOT referring to a streaming service/cloud computing platform etc. because the game has not been developed natively for them. These streaming services merely run the PC versions of the games. No game has been developed on OnLive. Hence OnLive is just a "distributor" in my opinion and should be treated so. Furthermore, I saw some comparisons being made to XBLA and WiiWare. However, listing them as platforms is justified since XBLA is a part of Xbox 360 and WiiWare is a part of Wii, ie. they are bound to specific development platforms. The same cannot be said for OnLive, because it streams the games (running on Windows PCs) to other Windows PCs, Macs, and its own microconsole. --CoolingGibbon (talk) 09:00, 21 June 2012 (UTC)

As mentioned in the rambling mess above though, we have no citable source thats its running on Windows PCs, theres an SDK and there are also titles with totally different feature sets to PC version and in some cases games that don't even have a PC version Adycarter (talk) 09:20, 21 June 2012 (UTC)

Consensus

Given the majority !vote for Option 2 it looks like we've reached a consensus. While other arguments have some validity, Option 2 gives us the best opportunity to handle future Cloud-based platforms in the future, while conceding to some point that OnLive can also be considered a service. --Teancum (talk) 12:45, 21 June 2012 (UTC)

Cracking, while I'm happy to go manually correct all articles it has been suggested having a bot do it is the winning plan. Anyone got one they can set to it? Adycarter (talk) 13:02, 21 June 2012 (UTC)

Just put a full explanation of the request on WP:BOTR. I'd leave it a couple of days first though, just for everyone to see the decision and digest it. Doing the change straight away would seem like taking the valuables from grannies house, five minutes after she's snuffed it. - X201 (talk) 13:16, 21 June 2012 (UTC)

How would we go about automating that, though? There isn't a category for all OnLive games, all we have is List of OnLive games to go by. Maybe the bot can parse through that? --Teancum (talk) 14:45, 21 June 2012 (UTC)

Thought that we had an Onlive cat. That will be the next discussion. :-) - X201 (talk) 15:01, 21 June 2012 (UTC)

Shouldn't the link under "Cloud (XXX)" be Cloud gaming and not Cloud computing? — HELLKNOWZ ▎TALK 06:50, 24 June 2012 (UTC)

Possibly, although imo the Cloud Computing article is more complete and arguably more informative, I guess thats something else on my todo list!

I strongly agree with Hellknowz' point. I think this whole debate's participants have been too entrenched in technicalities to consider how the 'Cloud (OnLive)' thing actually appears to an average Wikipedia user. Not a Wikipedian, a Wikipedia user. After reading this discussion I see the logic behind 'Cloud (XXX)', but frankly it's unsightly and ambiguous.

It seems to be getting consistently reverted from articles now by Phrix89 he seems to be ignoring my requests not to, or to move the discussion here. Adycarter (talk) 12:57, 24 June 2012 (UTC)

You don't see "Microsoft Windows (Steam)" or "Microsoft Windows (Origin)" listed in the platforms section so why is this being allowed for OnLive? It's nothing but shameless advertising and it needs to stop. It should just be "Cloud" or "Cloud gaming", although seeing as it's already in the platform section just "Cloud" makes more sense. Either way OnLive should NOT be listed in the platforms section of articles and to me it seems those who voted for it are more interested in promoting OnLive than improving articles on Wikipedia. If "Cloud (OnLive)" is going to be left in the platforms section of articles then we must list Steam and Origin for their respective games otherwise this is nothing but advertisement for OnLive. Phrix89 (talk) 13:20, 24 June 2012 (UTC)

"Cloud" in itself is less a platform and more of a generic technology though, Listing Cloud(OnLive) is no more a promotion for OnLive than Wii(WiiWare) is a promotion of WiiWare. As covered relentlessly above there are enough aspects of OnLive that make it worthy of inclusion as a platform than there are of Steam. Listing just "cloud" would make as much sense as listing "consoles" Adycarter (talk) 13:23, 24 June 2012 (UTC)

If a game on Windows is only available via steam and/or requires Steamworks, we do list it as "Windows (Steam)". If its available from multiple vendors and doesnt require steamworks, its just "Windows" to otherwise avoid excessive listing/being a storefront. We know that right now the only cloud gaming service is OnLive, but more than enough media has discussed other services are due to come soon, so OnLive won't be the only cloud service forever, though we can anticipate OnLive being the only service to have some of these games. The logic is there if you follow from above. --MASEM (t) 13:35, 24 June 2012 (UTC)

Adycarter, so you're bascially saying we should list OnLive in the platforms section because cloud isn't just what gaming is used for? Because Microsoft Windows is used for more than just gaming yet we still list that in the platforms section of articles. So by your logic we should list "Microsoft Windows (Steam)", "Micosoft Windows (Origin)" and so on for their respective games. And Masem, games like Homefront and Saint's Row The Third for example both use Steamworks on PC and are also and OnLive yet I don't see "Microsoft Windows (Steam)" in the platforms section yet people are incredibly quick to make sure OnLive is put there. There are a lot of games that are Steamworks games on PC and have OnLive versions and not a single one of them has "Microsoft Windows (Steam)" in the platforms section. Maybe it would be best to just list "OnLive" in the platforms section of articles? It makes far more sense than "Cloud (OnLive)" in my opinion. Phrix89 (talk) 14:35, 24 June 2012 (UTC)

Phrix89, I think you need to settle down a bit and read what has already been said here. All the points you are bringing up (some of which I may agree with, mind you) have been discussed ad nauseum and frankly I think everyone is a bit fatigued. The community reached consensus on the issue and you can read how and why that happened. After that, if you have any new points to raise, I'm sure everyone will be happy to discuss them. – Zntrip 22:35, 24 June 2012 (UTC)

I would like to comment that a compromise is not intrinsically the best solution to a conflict. Instead of the clean simple options of 'Platform: OnLive' or 'Distribution: OnLive', you guys have elected the awkward, messy-looking 'Platform: Cloud (OnLive)'. This is obviously my opinion, but do others see the problem in 'Platform: Cloud (OnLive)'? It may be accurate (I don't wish to contest that) but it just looks... bad to me. Sylosin (talk) 23:04, 25 June 2012 (UTC)

Given that we also use "Xbox 360 (Xbox Live Arcade)" and "PlayStation 3 (PlayStation Network)" frequently, no, it doesn't look strange. --MASEM (t) 23:07, 25 June 2012 (UTC)

Wing Commander (franchise)‎

may some one check [8] and particiapte in disscussion at Talk:Wing Commander (franchise)‎ ? (Idot (talk) 16:23, 25 June 2012 (UTC))

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Phantasy Star Generation 1

I just AfD this article, it would be great to get some views. And if it goes smoothly, I will also AfD Phantasy Star Generation 2.Lucia Black (talk) 22:15, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

Video Game Authentification

Hi, I'm not a member but I hope this topic will be of interest: I would like to buy 2nd hand games on ebay, but it's hard to know which will work and which will be blocked because they need a code. I believe some codes can be used more than once and some games have had the authentication dropped, but it's hard to find out the state of protection for each game. Could you point me at a list please, or would you consider compiling a list? Thanks Tobydjones (talk) 13:55, 28 June 2012 (UTC)

You may be looking for something like List of commercial video games released as freeware. Anything beyond that is outside the scope of what Wikipedia is about. I hope this helps. Cheers! Wyatt Riot (talk) 14:26, 28 June 2012 (UTC)

Dispute on List of Splinter Cell characters

There is a discussion about Enrica's death on the List of Splinter Cell characters. The discussion can be found here. Input from project members would be very much appreciated. Thanks, Darth Sjones23 (talk - contributions) 18:50, 28 June 2012 (UTC)

Category:North America-exclusive video games

I am not sure if I brought this up a long time ago, but I've noticed the population on this cat is rather large, and very much incorrect for what it says, A lot of the games in there, if not most have been released in Europe, Japan and the UK. So I don't know how this category can operate on saying all those games are exclusive to North America when they have been released around the world. Govvy (talk) 16:59, 1 July 2012 (UTC)

Category:North America-exclusive video games - A sizeable chunk of the cause could just be from people copying existing pages as a template, and not bothering to fix the Categories. Only way to sort it is to pick a letter and plough through. - X201 (talk) 08:01, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

Mentioning title styles in articles

Hi everybody,

I just edited Dead Space 3 and it specifically mentions the way the title is stylized. The very first sentence goes like this: Dead Space 3 (stylized as DEAD SPACE₃). Are there any guide lines on this kind of stuff? Should we take it out, or just leave it there? I'm usually against it, mentioning the way titles are stylized or unofficial abbreviations. Any input would be appreciated, thanks! --Soetermans. T / C 09:40, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

I usually put/leave it in, mainly as a preventative measure to stop people changing the whole article to the "Official" formatting. It gets the message over that we know its written that way on the box, but Wikipedia just uses plain characters. I even had to tidy up one of the example articles quoted in MOS:TM the other week. - X201 (talk) 10:00, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for your quick reply, X201. I'll make sure to keep those in then. --Soetermans. T / C 10:06, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

Copy to gaming wiki misuse

There may be a effort going on to use Template:Copy to gaming wiki to advertise a gaming Wiki. Several new accounts have been adding the template to some more recent high profile game articles, after a link to Orcz.com had been inserted into the template. I've reverted it a couple times, if someone feels different let me know. The template appears to otherwise be fairly dead, so it's sudden usage and the recent addition of the link caught my eye. -- ferret (talk) 18:20, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

Just looking at the history of the template, and the contributions of the two editors who added the link in (the one who did initially and the one who reverted you) it looks like a coincidence, with both being more or less good faith editors. Since the addition of the Orcz link happened weeks before the template was added to Skyrim, it seems like it wasn't a coordinated effort. The person who reverted you had previously done some link spam removal. I'd say you did the right thing, but it doesn't look too suspicious otherwise. —Torchiest ^talk_edits 18:37, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

Both seem to have made a handful of good edits, before they began working with the template, definitely no complaints there. A little more research on Google, from what I can tell the site they have added to the template was created last month. The only real Google hits are a fundraiser for the newly launched site and the usual whois and "what's my domain worth" type stuff. What caught my eye is that there isn't really a reason that new editors would know of this template or resurrect it, watch list it, etc. The third editor, an IP, also has no activity before this period. Their edits outside of the template are good, no complaints there. -- ferret (talk) 18:47, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

I'm at 3RR for the template now. I've warned the user and informed them of this section. -- ferret (talk) 19:26, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

I am the one who reverted the template to include the Orcz wiki. It was NOT spam. I myself have improved many articles on Wikipedia and removed spam links (both on this account, and anonymously). I use the above gaming Wiki and when I saw it removed I assumed vandalism and put it back, since it seems like a natural place for it in this template. I remember a few years back the template had like 4 or 5 alternate gaming Wikis, but some were removed for inactivity, so seemed like it would be better if it had more options. I will not add it back for now and will let others decide, but I also do not appreciate calling me a spammer (both in edits and in my talk page). Wikipedia guidelines say to assume edits are good faith edits, unless there is evidence to the contrary Sethg556g (talk) 19:55, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

On assuming good faith, you should not call everything "vandalism" including the contrary edit note you left "RV Potential Vandalism (assuming good faith edit)". When I explained on your talk page why I removed it (Without referring to you as a spammer at all), you reverted it again as vandalism. I reverted again with a clear edit note on why (Lack of notability, potential spam), and you reverted again as vandalism. This is not assuming good faith. It wasn't till this point that I gave a warning against spam/advertisement directly to you, which again, you refer to as vandalism. Please understand that referring to everything as vandalism is not AGF. That's why when I originally reverted it I simply stated "Potential spam" and did not revert it as vandalism. -- ferret (talk) 20:05, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

ok sorry well I thought I was being called a spammer since that was the edit said - it said "potential spam again" when I wasn't the one who originally added the other Wiki, I just reverted back to what was thought of as a better template. Then it was also posted on my talk page so anyone coming there might think I am a spammer, even though it says "potential" when all I wanted to do was to help Wikipedia. Anyway like I said even though I think it is the place for it, I am not going to add the Wiki again other editors can decide to do so if they so choose Sethg556g (talk) 20:17, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

Also I apologize for calling the edits of ferret vandalism, thats what I thought at first but still I should have assumed good faith Sethg556g (talk) 20:23, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

GameFAQs

Following Govvy's discussion about the North America-exclusive video games category, is was poking around some of the articles in that category and started noticing that quite a few had GameFAQs as a reference for the release date (GameFAQs is an unreliable source (WP:VG/RS). Curious as to how many there were, I did a rough external link check and stopped counting after 1500. They seem to break down into two groups, References for release dates and normal external links pointing to extra information. The references obviously need replacing with a reliable source, but I was wondering what the best approach would be? Just delete the reference and replace it with Citation Needed? or tag the articles in question with a hidden category so that they can be worked through in a cleanup? Opinions? - X201 (talk) 10:17, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

Making a hidden cat for articles using GameFAQs as a ref could be helpful, but it is probably large enough to deter most editors from actually jumping into it and start fixing it. Salvidrim! 11:47, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

I've noticed how widespread of an issue it is before too. I've personally seen it as too big of an issue to take on, and have instead just always fixed it on articles I've focused on maintaining or cleaning up. Sergecross73 msg me 13:46, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

I'm inclined to agree. Per meta:Eventualism, the GFAQs links will someday all get replaced as older games' articles increase in quality. While release dates sourced to there aren't reliable, it's better than nothing to have a release date be sourced in the meantime until it gets cleaned up. Axem Titanium (talk) 14:09, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

I think I may ask a Bot person to compile a list, I'm curious as the the size of the issue. - X201 (talk) 16:03, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

July 2012 video game TFA

Killer7 will be featured on the Main Page on July 7. Also, shameless plug, Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Cave Story/archive1 needs more love! Cheers, Axem Titanium (talk) 04:36, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

Interactive Achievement Award templates?

I know we've deleted Game of the Year templates before. Should the Interactive Achievement Award templates be treated differently? I'll go digging around for some old deletion discussions shortly. Axem Titanium (talk) 16:35, 30 June 2012 (UTC)

Whatever comes out of the discussion; blindly adding stuff without even using the edit summary is not particularly constructive. Nczempin (talk) 16:59, 30 June 2012 (UTC)

Well, it's amazing how difficult it is to find deleted stuff, especially if you can't remember the exact name. I did find Wikipedia:Templates_for_deletion/Log/2009_August_6#Template:Famitsu_perfect_scores, though, which is thematically similar. Regardless, what do we, as a project, think? Do the Interactive Achievement Awards qualify as the "Oscars of video games", to the extent that we should have a whole template tree, just like the Academy Awards? Axem Titanium (talk) 16:59, 1 July 2012 (UTC)

Nominated for deletion. Axem Titanium (talk) 04:46, 6 July 2012 (UTC)

VG edition tables, cruft?

I've seen several video game articles go into rather a lot of detail about the different editions of a game, including minute details about pre-orders and bonuses. A recent example being the section and table at Assassin's Creed III#Retail editions (table hidden by default). Now to me it seems to be pushing it a bit, does we need this information? It seems once the game is released that game won't be historically notable. I don't recall seeing such tables in any featured articles. I'm not really asking for any action here, just people's thoughts on them, to me they seem like simple cruft; you can describe notable editions briefly in text - but going over it with a fine tooth comb almost seems like they're being advertised rather than informed upon. Яehevkor ✉ 16:26, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

Since the exact same information is presented as prose directly above the table, I've gone ahead and removed it. One or the other I could understand, but both is clearly overkill. —Torchiest ^talk_edits 18:06, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

I absolutely feel they're total cruft. They fill the page with information that's 99% of the time is already mentioned in a bulleted list or prose above it. I'm glad Torchiest took care of the Assassin's Creed III table, I had thought about doing so. --Teancum (talk) 21:32, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

I too agree that table-ifying the various different editions of a game is cruft. In prose, one can explain that special editions exist and describe some of the added features, but shouldn't go into that much detail. Same with pre-order bonuses. --MASEM (t) 21:40, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

The AC series is home to some other pretty bad offenders. Assassin's Creed: Revelations#Retail editions and Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood#Retail editions. Яehevkor ✉ 22:26, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

While I am 100% all for removing crufty tables, I think it's a hard sell to remove it before the game is released. You'll have a lot of resistance from IPs who come here looking for buyer's information. After the game launches, these pre-order special editions will no longer be available and can safely be removed. Axem Titanium (talk) 13:28, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

Agreed. I won't fight it on to-be released or newly released games, but I'm in the process of removing it on the two games listed by Rehevkor. --Teancum (talk) 13:41, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

Well, I see my removal was undone. I didn't remove the table from the other two articles because it didn't look like the prose was fully detailed with all the information as in the newest one, but then that was given as the reason for the undoing. So perhaps after Teancum finishes dealing with those, we can pull the table from the AC3 again. —Torchiest ^talk_edits 14:58, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

Thoughts on Template:Star Wars games

I'm not quite sure what to do with this template and wanted to bring it to discussion. While I understand the desire to keep a navbox brief, the only thing this navbox does is largely duplicate a table of contents (List of Star Wars video games) rather than navigate between articles. To me, it would ideally list all of the SW video games. Thoughts? Also, pinged WP:WP Star Wars. --Izno (talk) 13:25, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

I agree. Right now, the navbox is not useful because it merely navigates sections of the list of SW games. The template would do well to be more comprehensive and not so link-averse. Axem Titanium (talk) 18:03, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

I made some initial changes to it, adding links to all the separate movie-based games while keeping the links to the list as group names for all six movies, and will do the rest later. —Torchiest ^talk_edits 22:46, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

I'd group them by genre to be honest, and be a lot more inclusive with the links. I don't think grouping them by whether they relate to an individual film or not is a good approach. Take a look at Template:Star Trek video games, that's what I'd envision as a good method. -- Sabre (talk) 00:36, 22 June 2012 (UTC)

I agree with Sabre. Broad-strokes genre is more useful for navigation. Axem Titanium (talk) 14:10, 23 June 2012 (UTC)

I like that. I got a bit overwhelmed after the initial changes I made, as it looked like the list was going to explode in size. Might take another look at it today though. —Torchiest ^talk_edits 14:32, 23 June 2012 (UTC)

Whew. It was as overwhelming as I'd feared. I did a major reorganization, which, although not 100% complete, is at least a big step in the right direction. I'd like comments from others on maybe doing a few more genre subdivisions (i.e. splitting FPSes out of the action games group). Also, in the other category is a ridiculous number of additional games, which would probably double the now quite large size of the template again. —Torchiest ^talk_edits 03:41, 26 June 2012 (UTC)

I fixed the target page... ^_^ --Izno (talk) 04:17, 26 June 2012 (UTC)

LMAO. Thanks for that. I was (obviously) using that as a starting point, and by the time I was done, my brain was a bit mushy. —Torchiest ^talk_edits 04:31, 26 June 2012 (UTC)

Are there enough entries to subdivide generic "Action" into subcategories like "racing" or "shooter"? Axem Titanium (talk) 17:26, 26 June 2012 (UTC)

Racing, not really. Shooters, I think so, and I also think some of the games in the action category may need to be moved into the simulation category, since they're action-y space combat games. It's pretty muddled with a lot of the others, though, because the games in that template span three decades, with constantly shifting, splitting, and recombining genres. I'm guessing a game like the old Atari Empire Strikes Back (which I adored as a child) wouldn't count as a simulation game, but just straight up action. But would we count shooters as just modern first person shooters, or would that thirty year old game fall into that category as well? —Torchiest ^talk_edits 17:59, 26 June 2012 (UTC)

Ugh, I hate the fact that "shooter" can refer to both arcade shooters and first/third-person shooters. Battlefront definitely counts as a third-person shooter. I don't know about others. How many racing games are there? I see at least three and I would certainly make a distinction between racing and action. Axem Titanium (talk) 21:07, 26 June 2012 (UTC)

Looking at the games in the "other" list, I see two candidates for that group: Star Wars: Super Bombad Racing and Star Wars: Demolition, although the latter is a "vehicular combat game", which I would just put in the action group. —Torchiest ^talk_edits 03:14, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

I still think of Artillery games as "shooters" too. :P SharkD Talk 21:54, 7 July 2012 (UTC)

Need some help with an Alistair article

I'm working on an article for Alistair (the Dragon Age character) here. I think at this point I've got all the sources that I'm ever going to find and the article's almost done, so this seems like as good a time as any. I know I should probably expand the first section and lead, but it's probably worth putting it here for some help first. If there's a better place to put this, tell me and I can move/repost this elsewhere.

I'm not sure all of the references are reliable, which is obviously important. This and this being two main examples. I know Kotaku is a reliable source, but I'm not sure that just them reposting something else makes it a reliable source. I'm also pretty sure Wired is reliable, but I know nothing about how they work so I could be walking into a user-submitted thing or something.

And I need some help cutting down the Appearances section. I've looked at Aerith and she has a separate FFVII section, so maybe that could work, but even then the Origins stuff looks too long. Hell, I could do with some help with words in general. I don't know how coherent the article sounds to people who aren't me.

Finally, I need a sort of "final-ruling" thing on whether I should make the article or not. It's turned out better than I thought it would, but I've looked into the sources and pulled out any last thing I could find, so I'm not sure how much coverage is actually "significant". I'm probably going to shorten and fold it into Characters of Dragon Age if it isn't made into its own article; but given that the characters page could use a lot of help, that's not so bad. – Harry Blue5 (talk • contribs) 20:38, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

I'll just comment on the two sources you linked above. The Kotaku one should be okay, since even if it's a guest posting, it should still go through their normal editorial vetting process, I think. As for the GeekMom blog, it looks like it goes through a legitimate editorial oversight process; check here for a mention of a book they published. So yeah, both seem okay to me. —Torchiest ^talk_edits 21:03, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the response. Incidentally, I've moved the article into the mainspace and added an image. After all, it can always be merged later on if people disagree with me. The Origins section is still too big in my opinion though. – Harry Blue5 (talk • contribs) 17:23, 6 July 2012 (UTC)

Production

Could someone suggest what should be put into potential Production section of Development? Thanks, Electroguv (talk) 15:42, 7 July 2012 (UTC)

New image for article

Another user wants to add a new article to History of Western role-playing video games. However, I think there are enough already, and I don't think the new one makes a good substitute, either. Could someone please take a quick look, here? Thanks. SharkD Talk 22:05, 7 July 2012 (UTC)

Metroid series chronological order via press release

Is this press release for the Metroid series reliable? Separately, it mentions the timeline of the main series, and then the order of the Prime series; Tezehani (talk · contribs) placed the Prime games below the main games because the official timeline via the PR "has the correct chronological order". The Prime series, remember, takes place between Metroid/Metroid: Zero Mission and Metroid II: Return of Samus [9]. The chronological order Tezehani laid out is incorrect. The press release that splits between the timeline of main series and the timeline of the Prime series doesn't mean at all that the Prime games took place after the main games. Hounder4 (Talk) 11:24, 26 June 2012 (UTC)

What? Why is it organized that way? The games section of a series page should ALWAYS be organized in release order, not fictional chronological order. The chronology should be discussed in a separate section a la The Legend of Zelda if it's notable. It also appears that the press release treats Metroid Prime as a separate continuity. Axem Titanium (talk) 21:14, 26 June 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, the article is organized in order of release. There s a separate fctonal chronology template for plot sections. But other than that, we don't organize it by fictional order.Lucia Black (talk) 21:44, 26 June 2012 (UTC)

I agree that it should be the chronology of release dates and not timeline. Articles such a professor Layton, Metal Gear etc don't use that format.--174.93.167.177 (talk) 22:01, 26 June 2012 (UTC)

I agree however that based on the way that the press release is written that it does not prove that Prime takes place after Fusion and is most likely separating the main series as the Prime series as two separate entities meaning that the positing of Prime in relation to the other games listed says noting about where Prime falls in the series.--174.93.167.177 (talk) 22:06, 26 June 2012 (UTC)

Ok this is confusing, the article is organized by release, not by fictional order. Fusion released before Prime series. The only issue with the "Other M" is after all the other games not before fusion.Lucia Black (talk) 22:49, 26 June 2012 (UTC)

Changed the format. added fictional chronology template and reworked it to be release history.Lucia Black (talk) 23:35, 26 June 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for going ahead and doing that, Lucia. Axem Titanium (talk) 02:28, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

The fictional timeline of any series is only ever relevant to sections or articles detailing plot itself; for any other purpose, all that matters is chronological release order, with perhaps a few odd exceptions. Salvidrim! 03:00, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

Mmm. Seems to me that it does not matter particularly one way or the other. If we have both, everyone is happy. Surely that is the best way. --ProtoDrake (talk) 14:13, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

When is a port not a port?

I'm checking this in anticipation of whether the question comes up during review.

For You Don't Know Jack (2011 video game) at the time of its release , Feb 2011, it has 5 assured console ports: 360, PS3, Wii, PC, and Nintendo DS. They were functionally the same featuring the same question sets, though the PC and DS lacked online play and limited to 2 players (4 for the rest).

In April 2011, they came out with a similar but not as functionally close iOS version. As best as I can tell, it happened to ride on the popularity of the above version, and wasn't treated as a "port". Yes, it's functionally close and chronologically close to possibly be one. Because of how little I can find out about it, I'd rather not have to cover it if I don't have to (though I can certainly note its existance along with the recent Facebook game, since these rode on the above game's success.) I've also got the the fact this is a long-winded series with a lot of non-notable titles to start (some are, but not all), so this iOS version could be considered as a topic within the series.

So the question is, is this iOS version a "port" that should be covered in the game's article, or something else? --MASEM (t) 20:16, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

Most likely just a port so its safe to cover on the same article.Lucia Black (talk) 20:24, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

Masem, what makes you say it "wasn't treated as a "port"."? (I'm not doubting you, just wondering, as I don't know much about it myself either.) Sergecross73 msg me 21:02, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

It wasn't released (or announced) at the time of the other games, it has a different cross set of features (though for this specific game, that's not a whole lot), and I'm not finding a lot that confirms (or denies) this as a "port" of the console game. But its completely possible they used the same resources to make the belated port. --MASEM (t) 22:01, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

Its still a port, even if it wasnt ported the same time. Unless they say its completely different from the original or added new features previous hasnt had. And even then it could still be considered a port.Lucia Black (talk) 22:52, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

I think I answered my own question looking something up here. Trying to tie "iOS" and "port" in google with the game shows that the studio that did the iOS version call it a "port" and even more recently the forums at YDKJ say that revamped "ports" for iOS and Android are coming, so I will consider the mobile versions as ports of the game, and thus include discussion of them. --MASEM (t) 00:23, 6 July 2012 (UTC)

I believe the answer you're all looking for is when is it is a jug. Or was it an urn? Salvidrim! 05:15, 6 July 2012 (UTC)

I guess it boils down to: it's a port, when reliable sources call it a port. Even if in reality it needed almost a full ground-up rewrite. A good example is Minecraft and their Xbox 360 "port". Much of the code and features (like infinite world) were simply incompatible even if translated from Java, so they have some serious differences. It's revisions behind and even has new features. Yet, we still call it a port, since reliable sources call it a port. — HELLKNOWZ ▎TALK 13:51, 6 July 2012 (UTC)

Ok, so it gets more complicated: - PC/360/PS3/Wii version released in Feb 2011 - iOS (stripped down but sourced as a "port" of 2011 game) released in April 2011 - Sometime between then and now, this has been pulled. - Facebook version (definitely not a port as format is very different, and sources don't consider it as such) released in May 2012 - A *new* iOS and Android client is coming RSN, which is specifically a port of the Facebook game (as it will feature cross-platform play with it).

Based on this, the YDKJ 2011 game article should cover "in detail" up to the pulled iOS port. I am of course mentioning the Facebook and newer app as building off the 2011 game success, but they are separate in coverage (and remember: we have a series article for YDKJ since there's been like 20 entries). The Facebook game itself is sufficiently covered for notability purposes, which I might create, since with the iOS/Android apps, there's likely going to be more beyond what's already there.

But again, does it make sense to stop detailed coverage at the cancelled iOS port above? --MASEM (t) 15:46, 6 July 2012 (UTC)

If I were doing it, I would mention all variations briefly, and then wiki-link it off to any variations with independent notability, and put any more detailed information there. Othewise, it seems like a simple sentence or two is plenty. Sergecross73 msg me 18:24, 6 July 2012 (UTC)

Well, I've got it in there: I have a few sentences to say it existed, was pulled, and criticized for lack of MP play (which supposedly the new client will fix, but that's why I made a separate page for the Facebook game). --MASEM (t) 16:50, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, sorry, I didn't mean to sound like I was telling you to do this, you have already done what I was saying pretty much. I agree with what you've done. Sergecross73 msg me 16:52, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

30 best-selling games in Japan of all time

http://en.rocketnews24.com/2012/07/08/japans-best-selling-video-games-of-all-time/ Anyone know if this is reliable? Axem Titanium (talk) 00:06, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

Based on their about page, they throw a lot of impressive stats up, but I'm not seeing anything that looks like proper editorial oversight. The most hopeful piece of information is that Yahoo! Japan and Microsoft MSN use their stories, since I believe those two sites do have proper editorial oversight. —Torchiest ^talk_edits 00:14, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

If that's the case, then this source is probably a valuable addition to the articles of all the games listed. Cheers, Axem Titanium (talk) 13:47, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

Steam template

Hi everybody,

I was wondering what the guide lines are on adding this Steam template, which I saw in the article on Skyrim. To me it seems a bit odd, to link specifically to an online retailer's website in the infobox, even if it is one of the largest ones out there. Searching trough the archives I did stumble upon this discussion, but it does not come to any consensus. As always, any help would be appreciated. Thanks. --Soetermans. T / C 13:56, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

Not appropriate, since that's basically a storefront. We do mention when games use or require Steam, but we shouldn't link to the Steam store page in any scenario. It would be linking to Gamestop or the like for a retail game. --MASEM (t) 14:01, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

I agree with masem, especially with the templates stated use for External Links. However it got me thinking... What about the semi-common practice of using Steam, Amazon, etc, product pages as release date references? Probably an area that needs a good deal of cleanup. -- ferret (talk) 14:39, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

That's actually in our guidelines: Post-release, they are fine. Pre-release, they should be avoided like the plague in that vendors will usually fill in a date to have the item in their sales database as to take pre-orders or the like. --MASEM (t) 16:48, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

Star Wars; The Old Republic storylines

A new topic for discussion. I think it might well be advisable if we put in rough synopses of the stories for the eight different missions found in the MMORPG 'Star Wars; The Old Republic' (and others as the game is updated and expansion packs are created and released). It has been stated that it is more heavily concerned with the storylines than other MMORPGs, so I feel it would be sensible to have some idea of what these stories are, without, of course, putting in any major spoilers for potential players. --ProtoDrake (talk) 14:17, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

WP:SPOILER - if we cover the stories, we discuss the whole story including any potential spoiler information. The question to ask is how critical it is to understand the stories to understand the whole article about the game. --MASEM (t) 14:27, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

For single article issues like this, you should probably visit the article's talk page first. This has been discussed there before and been deemed too detailed to include, as there are 16 individual story lines that carry many similar details. The rationale up to now has been that it's akin to trying to include quest details into the article, bordering on being gamecruft. -- ferret (talk) 14:41, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

Lego Video Games

Something is bugging me about the way the Lego Games are listed (Lego Games being the video games based on licensed themes or themes created by Lego itself). All there is at the moment is a list of the Lego games (an incomplete list by the way) which may state the name of the game, year of release and the platforms it was released on, but nothing about where the Lego games began, when and why they really caught on and became popular, the people that have been involved in the development of more than one of them, the varying reception of the games and any future plans that have been officially confirmed. I don't mean that it has to have the games' production histories as part of it. Such game-specific details can be written into the articles for the individual games, but I do feel that a proper article would be better than just a list. --ProtoDrake (talk) 17:05, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

The problem with the lego games is that they are not consistent in theme or developer. You can segment certain groups off as a "complete" set (eg all the Traveler's Tales-developed games), but the rest are basically - "here's a video game that uses Lego brick." As such, comparing one Lego game to another is not very useful. The master list at List of Lego video games is reasonable to have to show the variation in platforms and release years, but that's about where I'd go with any comparison.

Now that doesn't mean that one can then also create sections grouping those that are developer or thematically tied together. Again, all of the TT-developed games should readily be discussed as a whole since they have similar gameplay aspects and approaches (Well, Lego Rock Band's a bit out there, but still...) and there might be statements from the developer of how they've evolved the series over the years. Were I to do that myself, I'd create the article Lego video games (linking to List of Lego video games within it), describing that there have been many types and developers of these, and then sectioning off the major segments as appropriate. That's where the information you're looking for would best fit in. --MASEM (t) 17:27, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

What is a "list"?

I have had some situations where I question why some articles are called lists. In my opinion, lists really have little content and display basic information of things, usually acting as a directory for multiple articles. However, one type of article has been often marked as a list, and it bothers me. I am talking about game articles like List of Mario LCD games and character articles like List of Mario franchise characters. I would think that these are more of an article talking about the group of subjects, and the individual games/characters are non-notable enough that they do not have separate articles, so they are merged to a larger ground. But with a section for each character/game, I hardly would describe this as a list. Articles like List of Pokémon characters and List of Final Fantasy video games are lists, because they barely describe their subject in detail. Articles like List of Uncharted characters and List of Mario educational games are not lists, because they fully describe the subjects of each section. So tell me: do I have something going here, or am I looking at this issue from the wrong angle? _Blake ^{(Talk·Edits)} 03:03, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

I haven't given it much deep thought yet, but the first thing I think of is that any "disctinction" would be far too arbitrary and debatable... Salvidrim! 03:18, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

I just think that for example, List of Uncharted characters is not a list, because it acts like a real article. It has development and reception for the characters of the series as a whole, not individually. If would make more sense titled "Characters of Uncharted" such as Characters of Halo, Characters of Kingdom Hearts, and Characters of the Final Fantasy VII series. These are not lists, they are full fledged articles. _Blake ^{(Talk·Edits)} 03:26, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

It's a list if you decide to call it a list. The Uncharted characters list could become an article simply by changing its name---it has the chops to justify the change. The only "hard" distinction that's worth anything is whether you choose to take it to WP:FAC or WP:FLC. Axem Titanium (talk) 04:56, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

The 'list of' prefix of such article helps a lot when you're trying to find a 'list' of characters from Uncharted or Tomb Raider or Final Fantasy or The Legend of Zelda. It may have more akin to an article, but having the title of 'list' helps people find it and recognize it as what they need. If it was called 'Characters in (blank)', I think it would be more difficult to find the info needed. --ProtoDrake (talk) 09:00, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

In my person interpretation a list is when an article has multiple topics, albeit related. For example "Mario" is not a list as it talks about "Mario". But "List of Mario characters" is a list because it covers both "Mario" and Luigi". It is important to note that "Mario" is not "Luigi". Per WP:STAND, "Stand-alone lists (also referred to as list articles) are articles the main components of which are one or more embedded lists or series of items discussed in prose form. For me that is a list. But just for me. CyanGardevoir ^{(used EDIT!)} 10:56, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

RE:ProtoDrake about the "list of" prefix. I find it's actually easier/faster to type "Characters of X" into the search bar and find what I'm looking for, compared to "list of" because that contains a lot more than just characters (episodes, countries, albums, everything else). Axem Titanium (talk) 13:43, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

Plus, the Wiki search system is pretty well done. If you search any sort of combination of "characters" and "-insert series here", you should be able to find them. This isn't a problem of how easy it is to find things. It is about whether it is right or not to call what could be an article a list just because it lists multiple subjects of the same type. It acts like a list, while being more fleshed out like an article. If an article just had bullet points for each character, which is uncommon, but found in List of Pokémon characters, I think it could be called a list. But when there is a whole section devoted to each character, plus at least a section or two talking about them as a whole, it should not be called a list. _Blake ^{(Talk·Edits)} 15:29, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

It's important to keep in mind what Axem Titanium and Cyan Gardevoir said above too, though. List articles are articles. This isn't a question of whether a discrete mainspace address is a list or an article. There's no such thing as a stand-alone list that is not an article. That means that such a list should have a proper lede summarizing the topic and it must abide by Wikipedia's normal policies and guidelines like WP:V, WP:RS, and WP:N just like all other articles. The decision over how to title a list article is an editorial decision that in my view is best addressed with an eye toward inter-article consistency. (E.g. if we have a "list of pokemon in pokemon red/green/blue/yellow" and "list of pokemon in pokemon gold/silver" then we should title a similar list for ruby/sapphire as "list of pokemon in pokemon ruby/sapphire" for consistency with the other pokemon articles even if it is more prosey than the others.) -Thibbs (talk) 14:50, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Category intersections are however planned for WikiMedia wikis at some point in the future. These would *really* eliminate the need for lists. SharkD Talk 21:46, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

Only lists that have no more information in each row than a link to an article, and such lists shouldn't really exist anyway. Besides- to be in a category or two, you have to have an article for the list element. --Pres N 02:41, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

The Legend of Zelda series

I am finding many articles within the space reserved for the series 'The Legend of Zelda' confusing or lacking in clear information about points I generally want to know about, such as the plot or whether Zelda partakes in a final battle, or which timeline a particular game relates to. Has anyone got any good suggestions for improvement? --ProtoDrake (talk) 09:08, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

Most of what you are looking for is probably minor details that aren't really necessary to give the summary of the plot, and the timeline is detailed at The Legend of Zelda#Chronology. _Blake ^{(Talk·Edits)} 15:33, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, the things you're looking for would probably be more likely to be found at a Zelda wikia or Gamefaqs or something. Sergecross73 msg me 16:02, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

In reply to Sergecross73, I have had several bad encounters with wikias with specific subjects. Not only with Final Fantasy (which I went to to find out more about the Fabula Nova Crystallis series), but with Lego Hero Factory or Bionicle, the information is hardly ever updated until the information has been available for ages. And also the grammar is not of the best sort and often I can't tell whether the information is formed through common consensus of users or one person's interpretation. But, if this 'Legend of Zelda' section is not really relevant, I am willing for someone to delete it. Though it would be a little hard to say goodbye to something without many answers. --ProtoDrake (talk) 16:46, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, I don't like to use Wikias myself, so I understand, I just know that they tend to include information that Wikipedia deems WP:GAMECRUFT (bad). If we're talking about personal queries, I use Gamefaqs alot, it can be a good place to go. If we're talking about looking for Wikipedia sources or something, then it'd be best to stay away from though. Sergecross73 msg me 20:30, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

Just to say a quick word on behalf of Wikias, I think the idea is a good one especially for popular topics like the Zelda, Mario, Final Fantasy, Pokemon, etc. series where large numbers of fans can come together to discuss and present the microdetails that aren't appropriate for Wikipedia. Many of the Wikias model themselves roughly after Wikipedia so they usually have an appreciation for proper sourcing although it is usually not required. In my experience, Wikias provide the perfect place to put sourced info from print mags covering glitches, exploits, tips, and cheat codes. The biggest difference is that they tend to have a "truth, not verifiability" policy (not a great policy in my view since it can lead to inter-editor drama but there it is). Also the ads are unbearable unless you use adblock. -Thibbs (talk) 15:27, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

Yes, Wikias can be good sometimes, especially when the game series is question is sort of small or not quite largely popular. However, for popular series, I personally try and use actual Wikis, not Wikias, if they exist. Wikias tend to have unorganized management, while Wikis usually have a good leader that has taken the time to actually get a server to put the wiki software on. Plus, Wikia's search and image-clicking systems are junk compared to the real wikis. GameFAQs is good too sometimes. _Blake ^{(Talk·Edits)} 15:49, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

Ouya

So, I know this things is going to be controversial, due to it being very different from traditional video game consoles, and the touchy subject of the "generations" classification at Wikipedia, but I'd like lots of discussion on this if possible. Ouya. Does it belong on the 8th gen article? Please give your thoughts at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:History_of_video_game_consoles_(eighth_generation)#Ouya_-_inclusion_or_exclusion_from_8th_gen

Thanks! Sergecross73 msg me 15:31, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

7th Gen was the the last generation of console-based video gaming, with the Wii-Xbox-PS3 Triumvirate. After that, cloud-based platforms, the expansion of app-based gaming on various supports, gaming without a console (Gaikai, OnLive, Ouya) completely reform the industry. Salvidrim! 15:38, 11 July 2012 (UTC)
- Yeah, I know, much like with the music-related articles I work on, technology is changing everything, and it's harder and harder to classify and organize things. That's why I brought it up here - I wanted as much input as possible. There needs to be some sort of standard, or the page will be flooded with every little guy who make a tech device that a person can interact with on it's screen, which would be tremendous in this day and age... Sergecross73 msg me 16:34, 11 July 2012 (UTC)
  - This is why I was concerns back when in these generation articles and suggested using time frames based on major console releases. With this Ouya, its nowhere near technologically equivalent to the existing 7th gen 360 and PS3. Heck, even initial reports of the Wii U (a supposed 8th gen title) are saying its no more powerful than the current 360, which technically would place it with the 7th gen if we're going by hardware equivalence. For the time being, I think the Ouya can be mentioned in the 8th gen but it shouldn't be put on spec with the Wii U/next Xbox/next PS4 comparisons. --MASEM (t) 16:39, 11 July 2012 (UTC)
    - I am still technically against the concept of these generations, as far as, I believe they clash with Wikipedia standards. But realistically, it doesn't seem anyone can agree on a change, and any changes would probably involve a tremendous amount of work, so for now I've just decided to make the best of things and try to keep the 8th gen article cleaned up the best I can... Sergecross73 msg me 16:51, 11 July 2012 (UTC)
      - I'm in the same camp, Serge. I think an organization by year would be more effective and neutral (e.g. History of video game consoles (199X-200X) than inventing the concept of "generations" which are sometimes staggered. Handhelds, which don't follow the same time cycle and generally straddle "generations", muddy this even more. I also think we should erase the distinction between "console history" and "arcade history" into just "History of video games". I mean, why is the Crash of 1983 the last history article we have on arcades? The years listed in Template:VG History are completely arbitrary as well. That said, I'm not prepared to do the legwork to clean up yet so I'm staying out of this debate. Axem Titanium (talk) 20:53, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

Resident Evil

I want to open a discussion about ways to improve several articles linked to the survival-horror video game series Resident Evil. I have looked at all the individual game articles, together with pages taking in the series as a whole and the characters (major and minor), and I have noticed a sometimes chronic lack of information. I know some of this might well come more into the realm of a specific Wikia, but some of the story outlines are chronically short or missing very important details which make the articles difficult to read or understand. For example: compared to Resident Evil Code: Veronica, the story synopsis for Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation is huge, though it is still a highly condensed view of what happens in the game. There are other examples which can be found among the Tomb Raider, Final Fantasy and Uncharted games which are not challenged and seem to be acceptable to this WikiProject's supervisors and contributors. What are your thoughts? --ProtoDrake (talk) 19:53, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

WP:PLOTSUMMARIZE has a lot of pointers on how to write plot summaries, FYI. You may be able to come to your own conclusions if you read up on some of this... Sergecross73 msg me 20:01, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

Greatest video games list

hello,

is there a "leading" list of the greatest video games of all time, such as 500 Greatest Albums of All Time? Regards.--GoP _T ^C _N 09:42, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

Sounds a brilliant idea. If a proper article is created, you have my fullest cooperation. --ProtoDrake (talk) 09:48, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

Surely its way too subjective and not encyclopaedic? Adycarter (talk) 10:23, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

What I meant was to create a "goal" similar as here. Regards.--GoP _T ^C _N 10:29, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

Oppose that is a rolling stone album and it describes the album. Making a list would be unencyclopedic. CyanGardevoir ^{(used EDIT!)} 10:51, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

Rolling Stone, not The Rolling Stones, is a magazine, and that was just an example. Regards.--GoP _T ^C _N 11:00, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

Seems like every other website/magazine has some sort of "Top X games of Timeframe Y" type list, but I don't believe there's anything nearly as definitive as the Rolling Stones example. Sergecross73 msg me 13:50, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

Expanding the list of reliable sources

There's been a suggestion at WT:VG/S to expand the list of WP:VG compliant RSes to include a section on reliable authors. This addresses a second aspect of WP:RS's definition of a "reliable source" (the current list at WP:VG/S already covers reliable publishers, and this expansion would cover reliable authors). On the other hand it also expands an already lengthy guideline and there is the concern that this could lead to more confusion than clarity. If you have any opinions on the matter, please weigh in on the discussion here. -Thibbs (talk) 14:14, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

Request for 8th gen to be protected due to relentless advertising

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=History_of_video_game_consoles_(eighth_generation)&curid=32168061&action=history I get that the OUYA is exciting and all but its getting stupid now. Multiple IPs and new users have been inserting the exact same adverts pretty much into the article, despite instructions not to and debate ongoing on the talk pages. Adycarter (talk) 17:53, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

WPVG doesn't do this, you'd request it here at WP:RPP. Sergecross73 msg me 18:00, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

Fair enough, unsure what to do, I see you reverted it and he's just added it back. AGAIN. Adycarter (talk) 18:01, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

I can take it to RPP if you want. I support what you're getting at. Sergecross73 msg me 18:05, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

I just requested protection. -- ferret (talk) 18:05, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, I saw that you beat me to it, and it is in effect too. Thank you. Sergecross73 msg me 18:42, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

VG & Crowdfunding

I asked about this before but now with a few new things (the Ouya console, that effort specifically focused on crowdsourced gaming funding, etc.), I am itching to create an article to describe the influence of crowdsourced funding efforts for video games, specifically noting things like Double Fine Adventure, Wasteland 2, etc. along with these, but not focused specifically only on Kickstarter.

The only aspect that I'm having a problem with is a title for this. "Video game crowd sourcing", "Crowd sourcing for video games", etc - I'm not sure. The topic is notable, without a problem, but I'm looking for a good title. --MASEM (t) 20:25, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

The Kickstarter article, and others, seem to use the term crowd funding the most. So maybe something like "Effects of crowd funding on video games? It's similar to many other article's naming, though at the same time, it is rather long, and I'm not sure how many people would even understand the term in the first place. (I was unfamiliar with it prior to you starting this discussion.) Sergecross73 msg me 20:35, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

"Crowd funding in video games" is my two cents. Definitely a valuable topic to cover. Axem Titanium (talk) 03:12, 14 July 2012 (UTC)

The WP article is Crowd funding so you should probably have that in the title, rather than confuse people by adding the parent title (Crowdsourcing) into the title. I like Serge's suggestion best so far. Another variation could be Effects of crowd funding on video game industry. - X201 (talk) 10:15, 14 July 2012 (UTC)

I've gone ahead and started this at Crowd funding and video games. --MASEM (t) 13:56, 14 July 2012 (UTC)

NFCC violation template?

I've noticed Shenmue goes incredibly overboard with non-free content. There are 10 non-free images on the page, which is utterly ridiculous. Is there a WP:NFCC violation template that I can tag the page with? I'd pull the images myself, but given the game's cult status it might just start a flame war. I'd like to have the template up there as a warning for a while. --Teancum (talk) 12:10, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

I went ahead and pulled two images that really didn't seem to be that useful. If that doesn't stick, I found this, which should be what you're looking for. —Torchiest ^talk_edits 12:51, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

Proposed changes re: Sarcastic Gamer and Extra Life

I understand that originally Extra Life was a fundraising effort by Sarcastic Gamer. However, this is no longer the case; at least as of 2012 it's now completely a Children's Miracle Network Hospitals fundraising campaign. However, the only information about Extra Life is as part of the article on Sarcastic Gamer. I propose to move most of the information about Extra Life to its own article (which would require getting rid of the existing redirect). --Shawn K. Quinn (talk) 23:21, 14 July 2012 (UTC)

Reasons for Ratings

I have been feeling for some time that, in some part of the article or as part of a section, some mention should be given to what makes a game a 3+, 7+, 12+ and so on. I have seen footage of Hitman and the Wikipedia article on it said absolutely nothing about what kind of violence players could expect to see. It's not that I want to spoil the experience for those who play such games, but certainly for games like 'Max Payne 3' and 'FarCry 3', 'Beyond Good and Evil' and 'The Darkness 2', there should be some mention of the violence or bad language or frontal female nudity or intense atmosphere of fear or oppression (I have played 'Beyond Good and Evil' and I know what that oppressive fear feels like). A little like the BBFC have those tables on the back of DVDs that tell you what to expect, and PEGI has symbols that do that same job. I know the PEGI page gives examples of some games that have the content mentioned, but that is not good enough in my opinion. What are your views? --ProtoDrake (talk) 19:41, 15 July 2012 (UTC)

I think that if the article is good enough, it should describe these themes somewhere in the article already. A "Rating" section that talks all about what rating the game is and why would be unnecessary. _Blake ^{(Talk·Edits)} 19:49, 15 July 2012 (UTC)

I realize that, but I didn't mean to suggest a whole section on them. That would be overkill. Just something as part of one of the other sections or as part of the section that shows the ratings as to why...ect. ect. Well, as I said, I didn't mean to imply putting in a whole section. --ProtoDrake (talk) 20:03, 15 July 2012 (UTC)

GameFAQs Featured Article Review

Hello, I have nominated GameFAQs for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Delist" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Mark Arsten (talk) 02:22, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

Hello Guys!

I am Jayemd, the newest member of WikiProject Video Games! --Jayemd (talk) 20:17, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

Welcome aboard! It was great to have you on WikiProject NASCAR, now it's also great to have you here! Zappa O Mati 20:22, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

I've noticed you're messing around a lot, like how you're giving yourself lots of barnstars, or altering people's comments to you on your talk page. Please don't bring that sort of silliness here... Sergecross73 msg me 20:26, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

Unreleased Video Games question

I may be being picky, but I don't think the article here about unreleased video games has a place in Wikipedia as it stands. I have looked carefully at it and can see hardly any references to back up many of the games there (For example; The Black Army, Grimoire, Final Fantasy XV). I suggest it be moved into another larger article and given references. --ProtoDrake (talk) 08:26, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

It's actually the landing page for the other pages which cover specific years. I agree it's in a pretty poor state (for example, the platform legend at the top of most of the article pages are missing most platforms), but most Wikipedia articles are a "work in progress", including these pages. I think there is some hope for them. Games for which absolutely no verifiable and reliable references can be found can be removed. The others should have references provided. — Frεcklεfσσt | Talk 13:18, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

Fabula Nova Crystallis Final Fantasy

Don't you think, anyone, that people should mention more about the hinted developments of sequels and other games, as I believe they have done on other pages. I have been scouring the internet and found a reputable site that indicates that a 'Final Fantasy XIII-3' may be in the works, though all there are at the moment are hints and rumors. Also, I find several Final Fantasy plot summaries confusing to read, especially the articles for the Final Fantasy XIII double (maybe trilogy if the hints are true). --ProtoDrake (talk) 15:52, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

If a reliable source says it is in the works and provides enough information for us to write an article or section about it, sure. Otherwise, WP:CRYSTALBALL says no. :) Cheers! Wyatt Riot (talk) 16:18, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

CRYSTAL just says it shouldn't have it's own article. If there's a reliable source saying developers are hinting at it (there are, I've read them) then there's no problem with putting it in one of the FNC articles as long as it's portrayed accurately (ie as a comment from a developer, not a game confirmation or anything.) Sergecross73 msg me 03:23, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

I'm not sure which WP:CRYSTALBALL you're reading. Under section 5—the part on "product announcements and rumors"—it says "[s]peculation and rumor, even from reliable sources, are not appropriate encyclopedic content." Maybe I have a different interpretation of "hint" than you. If we're talking about statements like "such-and-such game is in development", then I don't consider that a hint. If we're talking "this editor at that site is interpreting these vague tweets as an announcement...", then I'd argue we keep it out. Would you (or anyone else) mind mentioning the sources? Wyatt Riot (talk) 03:38, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

Please, read the whole thing when you reference policy, like the openings sentences, and you'll see that the whole thing is in regards to articles as a whole. You'll come across bits like It is appropriate to report discussion and arguments about the prospects for success of future proposals and projects or whether some development will occur, if discussion is properly referenced..

Furthermore, looking up info from reliable sources like IGN shows that the developers have clearly alluded to future content. See here or here. I'm not sure the creators are calling it FFXIII-3 outright or not, but there's certainly information that can be added here. Sergecross73 msg me 03:48, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

Sorry, my previous reply may have come across as a bit dickish, which was not my intent. I was actually amending it when I got an edit conflict, so I'll just say that here. :)

I think we're just talking semantics at this point. The sources make it clear that more is to come, which I feel puts this far beyond rumor territory. It surely wouldn't survive as its own article, but a section in a current article is definitely warranted.

As for policy, I agree that much of CRYSTAL references articles in particular, but WP:NOT does serve to limit content in articles as well. But this, again, goes back to semantics, as the example I gave—interpretations of vague tweets—isn't the type of "hints" we're looking at.

In short: the sources and material looks good enough to write a decent section, so I'll drop it. Cheers! Wyatt Riot (talk) 04:21, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

It's not just IGN that are hinting it. This link here is from the website for the judges at e3 and is quite recent. There is some definite information in that some new Final Fantasy XIII-related stuff is coming along. Though when they will actually get round to releasing Final Fantasy Versus XIII is still as deep a mystery as when Peghani will release their 'final' Zonda. Also, there is a little info on the remake of Final Fantasy X in the link I have given. Cheers. --ProtoDrake (talk) 08:56, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

If major reliable sources are discussing it, it should not have its own article but can have redirects to a larger article, and when discussing it in there, making sure that the info is in context of industry rumors that you can source. Anything more would be CRYSTAL problems. --MASEM (t) 13:03, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

On a different subject (well, roughly): can anyone get any fresh, reliable info on Final Fantasy Type-0. There seems to be not a lot of information on it, and I've been dying to find out more about this slightly enigmatic game. I know it has only been released in Japan so far, but still we should be able to find something with the right kind of poking around (within resources approved of by this WikiProject and Wikipedia of course) Oh, and by the way, I think the part of the FNCFF article needs touching up, since the section on its mythology, a key part of the concept of the game, is structured in a confusing way for me, (though that's only my opinion) and I don't know enough about it yet to make any corrections. --ProtoDrake (talk) 08:27, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

I've worked on the article some. I know IGN did a very detailed review of the Japanese demo. The game has received a lot of coverage in tons of mainstream, reliable sources, because they assumed it would be localized during it's development. So yeah, I think information is definitely out there, it's just that people, like me, may just be hesistant to work on it much until/unless it's gets announced for English release. (Though by all means go at it if you're feeling motivated!) Sergecross73 msg me 12:57, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

Yes, I think you're right. I will have to wait until the game is released in the West. Annoying, but there it is. --ProtoDrake (talk) 14:48, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

Well, you don't have to. I personally just don't tend to find myself to be that motivated to do heavy work on an article for game I'd likely never play an english version of, and if/when it's announced for localization, there would surely be a flood of new coverage with previews of the game. Here's the detailed IGN preview I was talking about, FYI, here. Sergecross73 msg me 14:56, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

Oh, everyone, I almost forgot. I have just added a small section about the possible sequel to Final Fantasy XIII-2. Using both the links I have found and the links you provided, I have put together a small section stating only what has been officially announced by Square Enix and reputable gaming sites like IGN and Game Revolution. You can double-check it if you like, just to make sure it's in order. You see? It's not a full-blown article, but enough to show that 'Final Fantasy XIII-3' is a possibility, though no more than that at the moment and that there will be more news eventually. (PS:Sorry for the bad grammar people had to correct, but I was more focused on getting the details right and putting the right references in the right places) --ProtoDrake (talk) 15:33, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

Everyone who is still in on this talk section, I have heard a disturbing rumor concerning 'Final Fantasy versus XIII'. I don't know whether it is official, but these links here, here and here seem to show that 'versus XIII' has been quietly cancelled. I am not sure whether to put any information on it on the actual page and I urgently need advice as to how to proceed with this, if at all. I must stress that this news is from the last day or so. --ProtoDrake (talk) 08:49, 21 July 2012 (UTC)

VGAR here, reminding you that A-Class is still a thing.

Do you all remember the discussion we had back in Archive 92 about the A-Class? Fun times. I fell off of the planet for a few months since then, and have returned mostly intact... to find that there had been quite a mess left back at WP:VG/A/R, with a total of zero assessments completed in June. Tsk. I've mostly cleaned things up a bit, with intentions to do more whenever the mood hits me. However. While I don't mind doing GA or below, my lack of experience with FAs presents a problem that's compounded by one very large thing we cannot seem to decide on: what the bacon is an A-Class article?

I'm not going to put you all through that again. That would be terribly rude. But I will ask you to briefly decide some makeshift A-Class requisites amongst yourselves so that we can get these three articles out of the queue already.

Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars - ACA requested on 21 February.
Dragon Warrior - ACA requested on 20 May.
Kratos (God of War) - ACA requested on 5 July.

I don't want to look at them anymore. Get them out of my sight. Love, Emmy Altava 09:13, 15 July 2012 (UTC).

A-Class simply requires the approval of two (preferably uninvolved) editors that the article "mostly looks like an OK GA". It doesn't automatically need an in-depth review. Oftentimes all these assessments need: the "Support" of two editors, et voilà! Salvidrim! 16:24, 15 July 2012 (UTC)

I cast my voice on two of them; the third already was done. Salvidrim! 16:43, 15 July 2012 (UTC)
Voted on Dragon Warrior, and moved everything around for it. --Pres N 18:26, 15 July 2012 (UTC)

Yes, getting these out of the way would be nice. I nominated Kratos, and Salvidrim gave his support. Now I'm just waiting for someone else to give their support, or some comments if they happen to not support it. JDC808 (talk) 05:23, 21 July 2012 (UTC)

I have been considering nominating an old quality GA for A-Class, but I won't, If I cannot get around to seriously ~~tearing apart~~ reviewing another A-Class candidate myself. --MuZemike 07:47, 21 July 2012 (UTC)

...and while I'm at it, A-Class assessments should be the most stringent reviews WP:VG articles should go through prior to WP:FAC. This is especially important because GA nomination reviews get most of the general formatting and broadness, while an A-Class review should focus more on strict MoS compliance and comprehensiveness/completeness. WP:VG obviously gets a leg up on A-Class reviews as 1) it's intra-project and so 2) the project can better determine the comprehensiveness/completeness of an article than in other projects or even at FAC. --MuZemike 07:58, 21 July 2012 (UTC)

Final Fantasy Versus XIII Discussion

Please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Final_Fantasy_Versus_XIII#Consensus_for_inclusion_of_cancellation_rumors and include your input. I'd like to get some input from some more experienced or knowledgeable editors here. (It's not an article that I typically work on or anything, but I know it's a big going-on in the video game world at the moment, and there isn't much support from experienced editors at the momemt it seems.) Thanks! Sergecross73 msg me 14:50, 21 July 2012 (UTC)

WP 1.0 data

I am the maintainer of the WP 1.0 bot. I think someone may have a bot that uses the WP 1.0 data for this project by downloading it from the web tool. If so, I'd like to get in touch with that person to make things more efficient. But all I have are webserver logs, I don't have the name of the bot. If there is a bot like that for his project, could the maintainer please contact me? Thanks, — Carl (CBM · talk) 18:45, 23 July 2012 (UTC)

User reviews/backlash policy?

In reading the latest anon IP complaining on Talk:Diablo III about why we don't directly include mention of user reviews from Metacritic and are deliberately suppressing the truth and are elitist fanboys, etc, etc... I started to wonder if this might not warrant a direct policy or mention in an existing policy for the project. In the last year, metacritic reviews and immediate player backlash to release day issues has become more and more of an issue and a constant effort in talk page arguments with anons and SPAs who want to include heavy bias. The recent Modern Warfares, Battlefield, Mass Effect, Diablo 3, and others have all been hot beds for this. I don't have an immediate proposal but wanted to put my thought down for others. -- ferret (talk) 19:08, 23 July 2012 (UTC)

WP:SPS is something that you can link them to, though putting something down for WP:VG in particular could be an idea as well... Sergecross73 msg me 19:55, 23 July 2012 (UTC)
I've added a short section "User reviews" to WP:VG/GL pointing to the SPS issue. --MASEM (t) 22:13, 23 July 2012 (UTC)
- You might want to add a note to WP:VG/RS as well. SharkD Talk 00:28, 24 July 2012 (UTC)

Could someone close this

Nothing too difficult or important, but could someone uninvolved close the short discussion here. Thanks, CyanGardevoir ^{(used EDIT!)} 06:27, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

I'm a little confused by this discussion. It sounds like the move target was changed partway through... Axem Titanium (talk) 15:20, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

ENGVAR

We already have a guideline that articles should use a date format that corresponds with the version of ENGVAR that is being used in an article, but, arising from a date format dispute, I find that we have no guideline on how to decide upon the ENGVAR version that should be used. Up until now, I have based my edits on the observation of other editors, who have used the nationality of the developer as the deciding factor in the version of ENGVAR that should be used. I thought this was already in our guidelines, but after being asked by another editor to show them the guideline, I couldn't find it.

So I'd like other editors opinions on the matter. In one way we don't need a guideline, as common sense should prevail. But on the other hand, we need something that can easily resolve a dispute. I also have worries about particular versions of ENGVAR being forced on articles because previous titles in the franchise were made buy developers in another country, e.g. The Need for Speed franchise is American by origin, and so ENGVAR and date formats in it's articles naturally follow the US system, but now, British developer Criterion have been put in sole charge of the franchise; so should all new Need for Speed articles follow US ENGVAR/Date or should they use UK spelling and date formats? The reverse is true of the new Tomb Raider game. Why should previous titles in a franchise have a bearing on the version of ENGVAR used in another? It seems to contradict the spirit of essays like WP:OTHERSTUFF, and points to us needing some form of ENGVAR advice. - X201 (talk) 08:38, 19 July 2012 (UTC)
Additional: Have just spotted this in MOS:TIES "For articles about modern writers or their works, it is sometimes decided to use the variety of English in which the subject wrote (especially if the writings are quoted)." Could we point to that? Developers are carrying out a similar creative/artistic process. - X201 (talk) 09:33, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

Per the dispute linked above there have been instances where we talked about following developer's nationality in regards to dates, with some exceptions. It never was placed in the guidelines though. The gist as I remember it is that if there is no precedence then we follow the developer's nationality for simplicity and per MOS:TIES (as you linked). The exception that I recall is that if an article was written largely with a different date format that we try not to force the issue. Both formats are acceptable, but the most important thing is to be uniform. So if it's written the "wrong" way and there is a dispute I don't see a lot of point in presenting a battle. That being said if we want to make it a guideline to follow the dev nationality from this point out I'm okay with that, too. WP:MOSNUMscript makes it extremely easy to change all the dates in an article with one edit. --Teancum (talk) 13:53, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

*edit* in the case of development of a series crossing the big blue I'd say that the guideline should be to follow whatever precedent for that given article/series is. If it started with American, leave it be. Same goes for UK dates. --Teancum (talk) 13:55, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

I think we need some kind of guideline, as I think we're heading towards the land grab situation we had with the "nationality" of game covers. - X201 (talk) 08:14, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

List of plants in Runescape

Hello. What do you think about this new article? Is it a suitable topic for this encyclopedic project? Thanks for any hints. --Vejvančický (talk | contribs) 12:53, 24 July 2012 (UTC)

In its urrent state certainly not. I've userfied it for the user at User:YOPbottle/List of plants in Runescape. Salvidrim! 12:56, 24 July 2012 (UTC)

(ec) A list that detailed would probably find a better home somewhere like the RuneScape Wiki. Without a good number of sources discussing the flora, it would probably violate WP:GAMEGUIDE. —Torchiest ^talk_edits 12:57, 24 July 2012 (UTC)

Agreed, but I wasn't sure, since we cover some lists of fictional plants in literature or elsewhere. I've notified the creator about this discussion. Thanks for your help. --Vejvančický (talk | contribs) 13:09, 24 July 2012 (UTC)

Mac OS X/OS X

Now that OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion got released and Apple fully transitioned from "Mac OS X" to "OS X", I've run into the issue updating an article's infobox. Up to this point, the single versions of the supported operating systems are listed in the "platform" section, which is not really compliant with the template (?). My actual problem starts here: If I changed "Mac OS X" to "OS X" and deleted all the listed versions, would it imply that only v10.8 is supported or is there another solution/other rules? If "OS X" would be the correct option, wouldn't all the lists etc. have to be changed? – Moritz37 (talk) 10:46, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

I would absolutely stick with Mac OS X as an umbrella term, just as we use Microsoft Windows to cover XP, Vista and Win7. --Teancum (talk) 12:32, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

Aye. As a disambiguation and historical term, "Mac OS X" is better suited to common usage. If a game was released solely for 10.8 I could see using just "OS X" as more acceptable. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs^(talk) 18:21, 27 July 2012 (UTC)

Alright, thanks! "Mac OS X" indeed seems to be more suited. – Moritz37 (talk) 12:28, 28 July 2012 (UTC)

Left To Rot

I've been watching the article (Left To Rot) for a couple of days. I'm 99% sure its a promotional article with no beefy sources to back it up. I was borderline AFDing it, but I've given it a few days so the editor can respond to the tags. Want a second opinion on whether I should give it another week, or if I should slap the AFD on it now. - X201 (talk) 17:44, 27 July 2012 (UTC)

AFD. The Photoshopped "Rating Pending" chrome on the box art does not encourage me to wait. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs^(talk) 18:25, 27 July 2012 (UTC)

I say AFD. Zappa O Mati 18:28, 27 July 2012 (UTC)

Agree with the above. I tried googling the company and only found a few things on Linkedin looking for programmers. I found nothing to satisfy WP:GNG. —Torchiest ^talk_edits 18:38, 27 July 2012 (UTC)

Someone available for A-Class assessment.

I nominated the page Kratos (God of War) for A-Class assessment on July 5. I've only had one reviewer to post and say he supports it (with the exception of another editor who's involved with the page adding his own comment). Would someone be available as a second reviewer to look over the page and leave a vote of support or unsupport for the page? I know that for A-Class, it requires a review from two uninvolved reviewers, and I just need a second one to know if it passes or fails the A-Class nomination. Thanks to whoever can do this. JDC808 (talk) 02:36, 28 July 2012 (UTC)

I'd already requested a call to arms a bit ago, but that it hasn't been answered really only drives home the fact that the A-Class is sort of dead at WP:VG. Really, VG/A/R in of itself is kind of on life support, but I've been gone for like half a year and so I've become a bit too rusty to do an A-Class assessment in good faith. Considering that I'm practically the only one who's going through A/R at all, and I'm pretty much scarred by the page's tendency to double in size whenever I make progress, that... doesn't help. Emmy Altava 09:58, 28 July 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, I've noticed a bit, especially with Broken Sword as it's been up there for awhile. Luckily, Teancum has offered to assess this page. In the future though, with any GA articles I'm involved with, I think I'll just skip the A-Class assessment and just nominate the articles for FA and go through that process instead. JDC808 (talk) 18:12, 28 July 2012 (UTC)

Talk:Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly#Wii remake section

Can I get some third opinions on this issue? Some IPs are insisting to name the remake section after the Japanese name although an official English title exists. --Mika1h (talk) 20:20, 30 July 2012 (UTC)

Use games as sources for voice actors?

I was thinking if it is necessary to use video games as reliable sources for voice actors, since we have the credits for both Japanese and English versions (for example, see Cloud Strife, which has the voice actors as sources in the lead). On Yuna (Final Fantasy), a user has insisted that we should find better sources than the video games for the voice actors after he tagged them as needing citations and I sourced them with a more readily available source, but I want to have further opinions from a third-party on this. With that said, should we use the video games or use more readily reliable material for the voice actors if necessary? Thanks, Darth Sjones23 (talk - contributions) 00:54, 2 August 2012 (UTC)

If the credits clearly list the name, why shouldn't we use them? ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 01:23, 2 August 2012 (UTC)

The user removed the video game source again. I believe he is Niemti (talk · contribs), an admitted sockpuppet of the now unbanned user HanzoHattori (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) who was unbanned. Darth Sjones23 (talk - contributions) 01:36, 2 August 2012 (UTC)

Further discussion is at Talk:Yuna (Final Fantasy)#Discussion. Please comment there. Darth Sjones23 (talk - contributions) 02:02, 2 August 2012 (UTC)

Well, Cloud's article has two paragraphs dedicated to the voice actors' work so it seems good that the lead incorporates them. The problem with sites like GameSpot and GameFAQs is that their information is usersubmitted, so it makes them unreliable. Reviews, news and interviews seem fine.Tintor2 (talk) 02:27, 2 August 2012 (UTC)

See WP:PRIMARY. There should be no problem citing the video game itself if you are describing the plot itself; inferences that go beyond of what the plot conveys need to be backed by a secondary source. What I like to do is use {{cite video game}} and then include a snippet of the relevant quote(s) used, so that if readers or reviewers have questions and/or concerns, they can access the quote snippet from the citation. --MuZemike 02:41, 2 August 2012 (UTC)

Template:Best-selling PC video games

Anyone else think that this template should rather be in horizontal form at the bottom of the article like other similar templates. Right now it's located below the infobox of every article it has linked taking big amount of space and pushing other templates/images down. --Mika1h (talk) 11:04, 28 July 2012 (UTC)

Absolutely - I get where the creator was going with it, but it feels very obtrusive. --Teancum (talk) 12:50, 28 July 2012 (UTC)

This type of nav box is fine for certain things, but in this case I disagree that it should exist at all. It's pretty arbitrary. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 13:41, 28 July 2012 (UTC)

I agree with all those above. --ProtoDrake (talk) 11:02, 30 July 2012 (UTC)

Just go for it!</viewtifuljoe> Axem Titanium (talk) 15:15, 30 July 2012 (UTC)

Remove it and delete. I like the concept and where they thought to go, but there's several problems, including a lack of references (For example, BF2 is listed at #5 with 11 million copies, which isn't a figure that appears in the BF2 article itself), outdated values (The Starcraft value is from 2009! But at least it's in he Starcraft article), etc. If the template is kept, it requires a lot more structure and sourcing. -- ferret (talk) 15:22, 30 July 2012 (UTC)

Agreed. The numbering of them is also OR - while they are the 10 with highest sales on our list (AFAIK), that doesn't mean that they each occupy those positions in reality, since we don't have all the info on the games listed, let alone all the games ever released. Alphathon /'æɫ.fə.θɒn/ ^(talk) 22:35, 30 July 2012 (UTC)

Especially when you consider games like Bejeweled where there's a reasonable assumption they might be on the list, even if there's no way of knowing. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 01:21, 31 July 2012 (UTC)

Or the fact that Valve doesn't release Steam sales figures. -- ferret (talk) 01:36, 31 July 2012 (UTC)

Agree with above comments to delete. The subject matter isn't really fodder for a template. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs^(talk) 18:11, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

I agree with everyone above. It's just too tough to maintain that type of list. On the other hand, I could maybe see creating a category for games that have sold in excess of a million copies, or something like that. Much easier to just add an article to the category and be done with it. There are similar categories for record sales. —Torchiest ^talk_edits 18:33, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, but who says one-million copies is “best-selling”? It just seems unnecessary to divide games by their sales numbers rather than more germane categories. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs^(talk) 18:49, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

Oh, yeah, I wasn't saying those two things were synonymous, just that there could be a more objective way to group games. And I'm not itching to make the category, just throwing it out there as an idea. —Torchiest ^talk_edits 18:53, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

Would now be a good time for me to lob the "Shipped/Sold" hand grenade into the discussion? - X201 (talk) 08:04, 2 August 2012 (UTC)

Nope :) Luckily, aside from dubious sources like VGChartz, usually when a publisher says sold they actually mean it (different for hardware, though.) Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs^(talk) 13:58, 3 August 2012 (UTC)

I sent it to TfD. —Torchiest ^talk_edits 16:53, 3 August 2012 (UTC)

Yuna (Final Fantasy)

I've started to do some major work on Yuna (Final Fantasy) with the intention of getting it back up to GA status. See Talk:Yuna (Final Fantasy)‎#GA revamp for information. Input from project members would be appreciated. Thanks, Darth Sjones23 (talk - contributions) 17:14, 2 August 2012 (UTC)

Also, I am concerned about mentioning critics in gaming articles. For example, in this article has no reviewer names because despite my efforts to include them, Niemti insists that the reviewers are "nobodies" and named in the "references" and Kratos (God of War) does not have reviewers names either. However, Raiden (Metal Gear), Cloud Strife and Characters of Final Fantasy XII lists the reviewers names in the reception section. I also feel that mentioning reviewers names are notable. With that said, should we mention names of critics when mentioning reviews in gaming articles? Darth Sjones23 (talk - contributions) 17:35, 2 August 2012 (UTC)

I've seen other editors strenuously insist that reviewer names must be included; I've gotten into the habit of always specifying the individual's name. Looking through some featured articles, it doesn't look like there is a clear consensus that it must be one way or the other, so I'd think either is acceptable, as long as it's consistent, perhaps. —Torchiest ^talk_edits 17:43, 2 August 2012 (UTC)

Not all are nobodies, quite a few are notable.[10] But they're notble only when they're notable. And they're all named in the references anyway (and lately they can be also seen by just moving the cursor over a reference, a preview window will pop up with their name). --Niemti (talk) 17:47, 2 August 2012 (UTC)

Just to clarify, the "nobodies" which I was referring to was in the Yuna article. Darth Sjones23 (talk - contributions) 17:54, 2 August 2012 (UTC)

There are times that reception sections use two references from the same site but with different author and have different opinions. It would be confusing for the readers to find "IGN did not like Lara's appearances in the movie" and then "On the other hand, IGN praised her portrayal." This is something I found in multiple articles. The only time that I think reviewers should be avoided is when we are citing a feature article credited to multiple writers (which would count as undue weight).Tintor2 (talk) 17:57, 2 August 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, that goes along with my thoughts, because of my experience writing articles about bands, in which many different reviewers from Allmusic comment on their work, so it's necessary to name them all anyway. —Torchiest ^talk_edits 17:59, 2 August 2012 (UTC)

I also agree with the above, because of my experience with film articles as well as anime articles and video games, in which many different reviewers from various sites comment on their work. With that said, I feel that it is necessary to name all of them. Darth Sjones23 (talk - contributions) 18:08, 2 August 2012 (UTC)

Except they are all named anyway, in there references. And when these guys are nobodies, not notable, they're not readily recognisable anyway - just some of thousands of others of their kind, and by naming them in the article body they're being given a completely unwarranted attention like if they were notable, when they're not (I have nothing against noting and linking the notable critics, any of the of 61 of them), which is also distracting from reading. --Niemti (talk) 18:09, 2 August 2012 (UTC)

Ugh! Niemti, please drop it. As PresN said, we are here to improve the article as best as it can be, not to blindly adhere to the GA guidelines. The proper way of referencing is "XXX of YYY said", not "YYY said", as the websites have no mouth. Darth Sjones23 (talk - contributions) 18:14, 2 August 2012 (UTC)

I guess I'd "blindly adhering" rather to A guidelines or soemthing. But I think my problem is rather with this making the text completely needlessly harder to read and navigate (more of words words words with baseless emphasis on completely irrevelant names of some nobodies, the names that are all already clearly presented in the References section and can be also quickly checked by anyone interested by just moving the cursor over this particular reference). The names of nobodies are distracting, make the text less clear, and may cause quite a lot of tl;dr style reactions from readers (to quit reading or skip the section altogether). Such names should be used only in some special situations (like this dude's so-personal "my dreams"), or for notable critics, where the names have a meaning and can be linked to their Wikipedia articles. --Niemti (talk) 18:51, 2 August 2012 (UTC)

Article on near-exact video game clones

Given a number of recent lawsuits/ongoing issues with near-exact clones (eg Tetris' recent victory, the new EA vs Zynga one, a number of examples of iOS clones out there) , I think we should have an article on that. But as to what to name it...

We have video game clone... but I don't think that given what's there, this would be the right, as the clones are sufficiently different to not imply legal issues. Instead, I know I have sources that can talk about how copyright law (at least in the states) applies to clones such as this one on the Tetris case. The article that I'm envisioning would have at least a "legal/copyright issues" section and then a "notable cases" section, at minimum.

Any suggestions? Should I just adapt the video game clone article appropriately? --MASEM (t) 20:21, 3 August 2012 (UTC)

I could see it fitting into video game clone for now, since there's already a "rip off" section there. If the amount of content swells to beyond the size of the rest of that article, then it would be time to consider forking it. —Torchiest ^talk_edits 20:52, 3 August 2012 (UTC)

Formula 1 track and driver lists

Could you all just confirm to me, that Driver and Track listings like this are not required in WP:VG articles, as per WP:GAMECRUFT. A dispute appears to be brewing regarding my removal of them from the articles on the Codemasters F1 video games (F1 2012, F1 2011, F1 2010, F1 2009). - X201 (talk) 09:45, 3 August 2012 (UTC)

In this context, the driver list is essentially a list of playable characters which is considered to be gamecruft. A recent example is Super Meat Boy (a featured article) which has 20-some-odd playable characters and the character list was removed from that article. --SubSeven (talk) 20:06, 3 August 2012 (UTC)

It's a simulation video game, what it actually simulates should be included. In this case, we can just link to the seasons which actually list the drivers/teams/tracks already, so they do not have to appear in the video game article. The reason we don't need to list it has nothing to do with "cruft" though. - hahnch e n 13:41, 4 August 2012 (UTC)

The Incentives section

I've been looking at our to do list at the top of the page, and I feel that it's time to part with the WP:BOUNTY section. If we're trying to create incentives to drive users to edit video game articles, I feel like the new WP:GAMECUP, a link to our assessments page, or a link to our article requests page would better serve our project overall. Nomader (talk) 06:42, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

Support -- the bounty on Wario is over five years old, and it's poster has become inactive over the past few years, indicating they may not be around enough to notice when it's an FA again and pay the funds. It was also promoted back to a good article in September of last year, which personally speaking is good enough without a truly vested editor. Going forward I'd say the bounty section can be pulled from the to do list. --Teancum (talk) 12:49, 7 August 2012 (UTC)
- On a total side note that has nothing to do with the Bounty Board, it might be appropriate to revert the article back to the form it had when it was first promoted to [[WP:GA] (this is what it looked like when it was promoted). The current version cites Mario Wiki and has a number of completely un-sourced paragraphs. Nomader (talk) 13:27, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

Red vs. Blue FAR

I have nominated Red vs. Blue for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Delist" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. JJ98 (Talk / Contributions) 09:07, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

New article announcements reminder

I know we already have a few members who do a good job in reporting their new article creations to WP:VG/N, but just a reminder to everyone to please add whatever new articles you create onto that list. Though we already have a lot of non-project members who make a lot of mostly drive-by creations, and it is difficult as-is to identify all new video game-related articles by bot, it makes the job easier for us if those members take the minute or so to update the list with their new creation. --MuZemike 05:03, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

Voice acting in Video Games

This may be a minor matter, but something that might interest several people is how voice acting in video games has evolved and improved over the years, and how those developments have been effected and have had an effect in their turn on the styles and quality of the in-game graphics and cinematics. There might also be questions that people want to know answers to, such as when did voice acting in video games become common place, how there are some game franchises which do without dialogue all together, and how film and tv actors are becoming more involved with voicing in video games. What do other people think about this? The reason for this is that I have had to go through about twenty different articles to find what I wanted, or rather not find much of what I wanted. To have it all in one place would be a great relief to me and, very likely, to many other readers and editors. --ProtoDrake (talk) 15:44, 2 August 2012 (UTC)

Voice acting in video games sounds like a great candidate for an article to me. Obviously notable topic, and it could include the history and perhaps the biggest names in the industry. Another possible section could be on the evolution from relatively unknown "specialists" to the use of more famous Hollywood actors more recently. —Torchiest ^talk_edits 15:58, 2 August 2012 (UTC)

A reasonably good topic, a possible idea would be either to expand or create a companion piece about live-character acting, ala the cutscenes of Wing Commander III, 7th Guest, etc. --MASEM (t) 16:06, 2 August 2012 (UTC)

Has anybody else got any good ideas? I haven't the faintest idea of how to put an article together, and I don't really have the time available. I really need help, though I can easily put in some information about well-known actors and such like, but as to building one... Help! --ProtoDrake (talk) 10:01, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

Merge discussion

There is an important discussion on whether we should merge Sniper Wolf back into List of characters in the Metal Gear series. Niemti (talk · contribs) recreated the Sniper Wolf article without consensus back in June 2012. He insists that the article should not be merged, but it basically has a limited creation section, a reception section based solely on Top 10 style lists. As such, I have started a discussion at Talk:List of characters in the Metal Gear series#Merge Sniper Wolf?. Input from project members would be appreciated. Thanks, Darth Sjones23 (talk - contributions) 16:20, 3 August 2012 (UTC)

Of course it's based (largely, not "solely") "on Top 10 style lists" that are the most important thing next to awards (I didn't even check for any awards, because I would have to dig through my 151 GB collection magazine scans for that as the game is from 1996, this magic time from before the Internets). Also some people here appear to think that game reviews are any important for characters, but they are not, because they're reviews of games and not characters (the characters are reviewed in "Top 10 style lists", also other feature articles). --Niemti (talk) 18:44, 3 August 2012 (UTC)

As I am being civil and maintaining good faith to the best of my knowledge, I will try and explain. The conclusion that game reviews are not important for characters is unfounded, as these reviews have been used on several GAs (for example: see Tidus, Cloud Strife, Raiden (Metal Gear)). Darth Sjones23 (talk - contributions) 19:14, 3 August 2012 (UTC)

And I don't think they're GA precisely because they have reviews, and also I absolutely don't think they should have been merged in case if they had no reviews. --Niemti (talk) 19:30, 3 August 2012 (UTC)

Look at this discussion from February which covered the exact same territory. Look how nothing has happened. We already have policies that should kill most of these character articles, in that they're never the subject of a reliable article. They're merely covered as aspects of some toplist, a snippet culled from a preview, or a one liner from a review. The four random character articles that I picked out previously are still around, Elena_(Street_Fighter), Giratina, Von Kaiser, Steelix. I don't think anyone (and I clearly don't) has the will to do anything about them. Just re-read the arguments from February, if you applied the same lax criteria for characters as other game elements, you'd have things like Car damage in Forza 4. - hahnch e n 23:58, 4 August 2012 (UTC)

Nice strawman. --Niemti (talk) 10:16, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

VG character notability guidelines

Arguments like the above keep on occurring, and I think it's because we don't have literal, written out guidelines for VG characters. I'm starting to think we need to come up with something like, for example, Wikiproject Music's WP:NBAND - which gives specific guidelines/requirements for what is needed for a band to have it's own article. We need a WP:NVGCHAR or something. Otherwise there's going to continue to be a disconnect between what is or is not enough to warrant having its own article... Sergecross73 msg me 19:17, 3 August 2012 (UTC)

I agree. Should we establish a consensus on that? Darth Sjones23 (talk - contributions) 19:19, 3 August 2012 (UTC)

I don't think it will involve "game reviews are essential for articles that are not about games". --Niemti (talk) 19:33, 3 August 2012 (UTC)

We're not asking for particular criteria yet, so no need for such a pointy response. I'm just gathering consensus to see if people agree if we should do it at all. Sergecross73 msg me 19:53, 3 August 2012 (UTC)

I think that we should encourage the creation of character articles only iff certain material is known to be available. We can't preclude anyone from making character articles at will, but we can at least say "Hey, we expect sections X and Y in a character article and we don't see that in this one" as deletion arguments. --MASEM (t) 19:57, 3 August 2012 (UTC)

I will propose it at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Video games/Article guidelines. Darth Sjones23 (talk - contributions) 22:05, 3 August 2012 (UTC)

Proposal discussion if you wish to follow. Darth Sjones23 (talk - contributions) 22:13, 3 August 2012 (UTC)