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Family trees

Editors have been adding family trees to Metal Gear articles which sure seem wp:fancrut like in this section. I left a message in the user's talk page and it seems the user already made one for another project. Just leaving this here in case I'm reverted.Tintor2 (talk) 23:42, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

These are both poorly sourced and ultimately unencyclopedic. Template:Dragon Ball family tree is already at TfD and I've started a TfD for Template:Metal Gear family tree as well. Woodroar (talk) 00:52, 3 November 2020 (UTC)
@Tintor2 and Woodroar: There was a discussion about this at the Comics project (here) and I've since nominated the other family tree template this user has created at TfD, here. - Favre1fan93 (talk) 01:27, 3 November 2020 (UTC)
It's really just one particular editor. Sadly I feel that the editor in question does not understand that the content created is unencyclopedic in tone as it is completely in-universe, and that citing secondary reliable sources is necessary in order to verify the contents of the stuff written up. Unbelievably, the editor even made up names on the family tree templates you won't find anywhere on the Fandom articles, where fan speculation is the norm. Haleth (talk) 14:03, 3 November 2020 (UTC)

Parentage

Is WP:ALIEN a child project of WP:VG? I ask because WP:ALIEN is not listed among the "Related WikiProjects and task forces" on the front page, however WP:VG is listed as a parent project on WP:ALIEN's front page. So what do you think? I'll leave a similar note at WT:ALIEN here. -Thibbs (talk) 19:45, 1 November 2020 (UTC)

It doesn't matter. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 04:58, 2 November 2020 (UTC)
ALIEN hasn't had a talk page comment by a participant in 1.5 years, and is based on a film franchise. It's not a child project of the video games project, and also is a dead project, and also, as per NinjaRobotPirate, it doesn't really matter. --PresN 05:27, 2 November 2020 (UTC)
I think I see what you're saying. In some sense project structure doesn't really matter as it's not set in stone, but as a practical matter I do see value to keeping track of which articles belong to WP:VG, its child projects, and its taskforces. I think it has significance for merge/deletion discussions, archival/statistic reasons, and in my case reportorial reasons related to the WP:VG Newsletter. Anyway thanks for the responses. The response I got at WT:ALIEN seems to concur with the comments here. Or at least the parentage aspect anyway. -Thibbs (talk) 14:24, 3 November 2020 (UTC)

Redirects

I came across 3 articles with redirect issues in NPP queue which I've listed in subsections below. I'm asking for project member input which will help in a final decision to avoid these issues in the future. I'm inclined to let it pass as reviewed, but your input will provide more credibility.

Carth Onasi

Yes or No?

Mission Vao

Yes or No?

Bastila Shan

Yes or No?

Deletion procedure for draft hoaxes

What is the deletion procedure for hoaxes in draft space? I nominated two for speedy deletion, Draft:Paper Mario All Stars and Draft:Super Mario 3D All Stars 2, which were made by an IP user who recently got blocked for repeatedly trying to insert fake games and films in various articles, but the deletion request was denied because it's apparently not clear that they're made up.--AlexandraIDV 23:03, 3 November 2020 (UTC)

Tell me, and I’ll delete them. Sergecross73 msg me 23:04, 3 November 2020 (UTC)
Hah, thank you.--AlexandraIDV 23:18, 3 November 2020 (UTC)
Same. G3 vandalism/hoax is G3 vandalism/hoax. -- ferret (talk) 00:32, 4 November 2020 (UTC)
In all seriousness, you didn’t do anything wrong, you just unfortunately drew an admin who didn’t know much about video games. Which I get it, I’d probably make the same call if it was a subject I wasn’t well-versed in - I wouldn’t be able to tell that that a “Toyota 12” is a real car and a “Toyota 13” is a complete nonsense proposition of a car, even though it’d be simple for a car person to identify. Sergecross73 msg me 00:40, 4 November 2020 (UTC)
Yeah, if someone told me that Millard Fillmore ate a rutabaga and badger muffaletta, I'd think it was a fun fact. Le Panini (Talk tome?) 14:00, 4 November 2020 (UTC)

New Articles (October 26 to November 1)

Main page: Wikipedia:WikiProject Video games/New article announcements
 A listing of all articles newly added to the Video Games Wikiproject (regardless of creation date). Generated by v3.4 of the RecentVGArticles script and posted by PresN. Bug reports and feature requests are appreciated. --PresN 15:06, 3 November 2020 (UTC)

October 26

October 27

October 28

October 29

October 30

October 31

November 1

Large number of redirects, though most are actually older but never got their talk page templates cleaned up until this week. --PresN 15:06, 3 November 2020 (UTC)
Thanks, was just gonna ask about that. Sergecross73 msg me 17:00, 3 November 2020 (UTC)
Bug report: For some reason Super Mario 3D All-Stars is in this list even though it was made 2 months ago. CaptainGalaxy 10:53, 4 November 2020 (UTC)
Reason found: The talk page had been left up at Draft:Super Mario 3D All-Stars, and that was fixed this week; new article report script got lost with the redirecting. --PresN 15:00, 4 November 2020 (UTC)

Did SCE Japan Studio became SIE Japan Studio?

I was recently editing Patapon (video game) and I noticed that SCE Japan Studio was renamed as SIE Japan Studio. The Official website redirects to SIE Japanese website but nothing confirming it as "Japan Studio" that I can see. Does anyone have any more information on this? I thought SIE was the amalgamation of all of the development teams that are owned by Sony.Blue Pumpkin Pie Chat Contribs 16:28, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

  • Most Sony studios are just called "[Location] Studio", including Japan Studio and Santa Monica Studio. I don't know who started the trend here but when there is an article for one such studio, it is prepended with "SCE" as an artificial disambiguator. When Sony Computer Entertainment was renamed Sony Interactive Entertainment, all studio articles were moved from "SCE" to "SIE". The studios themselves were not renamed. Notably, though (~pre 2005), some studios were named e.g. "SCE Studio Cambridge".
Suffice to say, I find the naming scheme of our articles misleading. IceWelder [✉] 17:21, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
Unless prevented by another article, all of these studios need to have the SIE removed from their titles because its nether their official name or even really a nickname (outside of Wikipedia that is). ~ Dissident93 (talk) 19:09, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
Even if there's a conflict they need to be moved to e.g. "Japan Studio (Sony)", we don't disambiguate by throwing an acronym as a prefix. --PresN 19:16, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
Agreed.Blue Pumpkin Pie Chat Contribs 19:25, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
True, WP:NATDIS still requires for it to be a valid alternate name used by sources, which doesn't seem to be the case. ~ Dissident93 (talk) 19:36, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
If everyone is on the same page, I'll be proposing a group name change to all the SCE/SIE studios if they have natural disambiguation.Blue Pumpkin Pie Chat Contribs 20:57, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

Requested Move

These articles have natural disambiguation and are not required to have "SIE" or "SCE" in front of the Studio names. If disambiguation is required, we would use based on sources and naming conventions of Wikipedia with "(Sony)" at the end.

Support as nominator.Blue Pumpkin Pie Chat Contribs 21:12, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

Whilst on the topic of SIE WWS...

I discussed this briefly a while ago with some others when there was some back on forth between articles about it but this discussion reminded me of it. That is what company to list as the parent company in the infobox of those studios that are a part of Sony WWS. Do we list Sony Interactive Entertainment or SIE Worldwide Studios? As there is currently some inconsistency across articles, though some of that does make sense for former studios before Sony WWS was established. Below there is a table with what parent company is listed as of writing this, hopefully we can come to a consensus across the articles. Regards  Spy-cicle💥  Talk? 01:02, 4 November 2020 (UTC)

Current Studios
Sony Interactive Entertainment SIE Worldwide Studios
1 Bend Studio Guerrilla Games
2 Japan Studio Insomniac Games
3 London Studio Media Molecule
4 Naughty Dog Pixelopus
5 San Diego Studio Polyphony Digital
6 Santa Monica Studio
7 Sucker Punch Productions
Former Studios
Sony Computer Entertainment SCE Worldwide Studios Both
1 Psygnosis (Sony Studio Liverpool) Bigbig Studios Guerrilla Cambridge
2 Evolution Studios Sony Online Entertainment
3 Incognito Entertainment
4 Zipper Interactive

Paper Mario: The Origami King Questions

Length of Gameplay

After doing basically a complete re-write of Super Mario Bros. 35 and getting it to GA status, I'm now moving on to Paper Mario: The Origami King and doing what I can to assist and write there.

I'm in the process of re-writing gameplay, and there's some info that I think needs to be gone over, which is boss fights and how their specific combat works. Is there a limit to the length of a gameplay section, or just until it goes over everything? It's two paragraphs long right now. I would ask on the talk page, but it seems inactive over there right now. Le Panini (Talk tome?) 13:53, 4 November 2020 (UTC)

I don't know that there's a specific limit on gameplay section lengths, although I usually see 1-4 paragraphs depending on game complexity and RS coverage. My basic advice would just be to cover the aspects that RSs cover, to the extent that they cover them, and try to avoid the types of content described at WP:VGSCOPE unless RSs treat them as major aspects. Note that points 3 and 4 on that MOS page mean that we should avoid describing each individual boss fight - describing how boss fights work more generally, and possibly using one as an example, would be how I would expect that article to look.--AlexandraIDV 14:09, 4 November 2020 (UTC)
To me , I have to judge how much RSes go into gameplay over other facets. Games with unusual gameplay elements (say, The World Ends With You on the DS) got attention to describe how they worked out, whereas games that were just basic variations on typical genres, something I'd expect Super Mario Bros. 35 to be outside of its battle royale format, would not need a lot. This often makes games that are seemingly deep, like your GTAs or your Far Crys or the like, very limited in gameplay because there's little direct focus on those elements but how the entire thing is put together. --Masem (t) 14:19, 4 November 2020 (UTC)
I was thinking about adding one more paragraph on how boss battles (in general) work, as all the sources can't stop talking about combat. Thank you! Le Panini (Talk tome?) 14:22, 4 November 2020 (UTC)
For PM: Origami, that would seem fair, as I recall that was the part of gameplay that stood out in articles about the game. As much of the rest of the game was the same general gameplay as past PM games, that's where the focus was. So a para to summarize the basics of gameplay (w/ a See Also link to the series summary of gameplay) and noting major changes, and then a para on the battle system seems right in line. --Masem (t) 18:07, 4 November 2020 (UTC)

Relying on Primary Sources

Another issue I see with this article is the development section. It seems this section relies heavily on one source, which I'm assuming is an interview with Kensuke Tanabe (for some reason I cant find the website when I search it up). Would this be an issue, because I've seen tags that say something like "this section relies too much on one source". It is a primary source too, I believe. Should more sources be put in place? Le Panini (Talk tome?) 22:02, 4 November 2020 (UTC)

There is disagreement on interviews being primary sources; I personally do not think this is the case with an interview conducted by Game Informer with a developer. (This can be problematic in other niche businesses where you can basically pay to be "covered" but this is not really a case in the VG industry). That is, GI made a decision to cover the game, came up with the questions and got answers from Tanabe, then fleshed the rest of the article around that - this to me is secondary coverage. It is completely okay if one source dominates a development section as long as it is from an RS like GI, and there are clearly other sources in there too, so I don't think you have any issues with that. --Masem (t) 22:13, 4 November 2020 (UTC)

Merge proposal for Sonic the Hedgehog 4

Nomination withdrawn. Lord Sjones23 (talk - contributions) 01:05, 5 November 2020 (UTC)
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

I would like to propose a merger for Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode I and Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode II into Sonic the Hedgehog 4 per the concerns raised by Dissident93 in my Sonic GT/FT proposal. Please vote whether you would keep or merge the articles. Thanks. Lord Sjones23 (talk - contributions) 23:41, 4 November 2020 (UTC)

Discussion

  • Merge as nominator. Lord Sjones23 (talk - contributions) 23:41, 4 November 2020 (UTC)
  • Leaning oppose. As I've done a bit of research into the two games, I believe that there may be enough material to justify a separate article for Episode II. It introduces some key changes gameplay-wise, had a unique development (there are a few dedicated interviews), and the critical responses for both episodes were vastly different. Plus the Episode I article is already beefy enough, to the point any more info on Episode II would just be bloat. JOEBRO64 23:43, 4 November 2020 (UTC)
If that is the case, should we expand on the articles if it is necessary? Lord Sjones23 (talk - contributions) 23:48, 4 November 2020 (UTC)
  • Strong Oppose - They are two separate, notable games with no shortage of sourcing or prose. I’m strongly against the practice of merging articles just to make good/featured topics easier. That’s missing the whole point of that process, which is improving the encyclopedia. Sergecross73 msg me 00:56, 5 November 2020 (UTC)

Retro Gamer issue request

If anyone has issue 187 of Retro Gamer, I am looking for a making-of for Intensity (video game) that I recently created. I think it would immensely help the article. GamerPro64 04:56, 5 November 2020 (UTC)

I think it looks like 189? --Masem (t) 05:32, 5 November 2020 (UTC)
I know it's the December 2018 issue. GamerPro64 15:16, 5 November 2020 (UTC)
Based on this TOC preview [7] you definitely are looking for Issue 189, pages 30-34 for that Intensity story. Haven't found any source for it, though but that narrows down what you need. --Masem (t) 20:46, 5 November 2020 (UTC)
I don't have it, but for what it's worth I bought a digital copy of a Retro Gamer issue on pocketmags for a couple bucks for some of the Rogue Squadron articles. That might be an option at the very least? --TorsodogTalk 07:16, 5 November 2020 (UTC)
Archive.org has it: https://archive.org/details/retrogamerukcollection --Mika1h (talk) 23:02, 5 November 2020 (UTC)
Got it now. Thanks. GamerPro64 15:31, 6 November 2020 (UTC)

Another Retro gamer issue request

While we're at it, I've been looking for a complete copy of retro gamer issue 15 (Volume 2, Issue 3). All the archived online copies are missing a bunch of pages, and I particularly want to dive into a piece on page 58 about the Star Control series. Shooterwalker (talk) 16:33, 6 November 2020 (UTC)

Revisiting the Sonic the Hedgehog and Sakura Wars GT/FT proposals

Hello once again. While I've been busy lately due to real-life situations, I plan to revisit the FT/GT topics for Sakura Wars and Sonic the Hedgehog at some point before the end of this year.

While we've got most of the Sakura Wars articles up to GA status (with the exception of the 2019 game, which is currently B-Class; I plan to nominate it for GA sometime soon), I think we may need to work on the 2019 game article and get it up to GA before we get it to GT. With the Sonic the Hedgehog article now an FAC and the fact that there are 23 GAs and 2 FAs for the main Sonic the Hedgehog series out of 29 articles total, I think we should work on getting the rest of the articles up to GA status before we can nominate it for GT as per Wikipedia:Good topic criteria? Thoughts? Lord Sjones23 (talk - contributions) 18:00, 4 November 2020 (UTC)

The only game I believe is getting in the way of Sonic the Hedgehog FT is Sonic Chaos and Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (8-bit video game).Blue Pumpkin Pie Chat Contribs 18:55, 4 November 2020 (UTC)
All right. I think we should start working on those articles as part of the GT/FT Drive. Lord Sjones23 (talk - contributions) 19:01, 4 November 2020 (UTC)
There is also Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode I and Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode II. I discussed this earlier with a potential nomination for the 3D games. (Oinkers42) (talk) 19:03, 4 November 2020 (UTC)
I've contacted the Sega task force for their thoughts on the matter. Lord Sjones23 (talk - contributions) 19:10, 4 November 2020 (UTC)
(Oinkers42), I still think we could merge the two Sonic 4 articles together, as the only real difference between the game's are the reception sections on their respective articles. They were separated back when an third episode was still expected, and the majority of their articles can be merged without much conflicting information. ~ Dissident93 (talk) 23:33, 4 November 2020 (UTC)
So, as per TheJoebro64 (talk · contribs) in my withdrawn merge proposal, there may be enough material to justify an article on Episode II. Lord Sjones23 (talk - contributions) 17:02, 5 November 2020 (UTC)

Citations in Sonic articles

There might be some dead citations in the Sonic articles, so we can use the IA Bot to archive them. Lord Sjones23 (talk - contributions) 01:58, 7 November 2020 (UTC)

Infobox Image Captions

Should Infoboxes that have a cover-art image come with a caption? If so, what kind? Le Panini Talk 16:42, 8 November 2020 (UTC)

Generally no, you don't include a caption. If its in the infobox, it should be obvious its a cover art. But sometimes there are details you can add that may be helpful, and the two cases that I know of would be where you can identify key characters in a game (eg see The World Ends with You), or when you know "concept or creation" details of the art that would be helpful to identify right there, eg see Ico. --Masem (t) 17:12, 8 November 2020 (UTC)
Also helpful to mention the region/version the cover is from if there are different variants.--AlexandraIDV 17:28, 8 November 2020 (UTC)
I would only do this if its a major variance. If the image is the same but the title of the game is different (like some of the Ratchet & Clank games), that's not really a reason to "clutter" the caption field to add the distinction. The logic on the caption field is that if there's that image in the infobox for a video game (or similarly for an album, book, movie, etc.) it's obviously cover art, and we don't need to spell that out. Only if there's something unusual about it or necessarily clarity should the caption= field be added. --Masem (t) 17:33, 8 November 2020 (UTC)

Wii Featured article review

I have nominated Wii 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. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:11, 8 November 2020 (UTC)

As a note, there's a lot on the Wii missing from this, just pulling some stuff from Iwata's article. While S.G's put some points, I think this needs a bunch more reworking now that we have been hindsight of how important the Wii is to console history. --Masem (t) 20:26, 8 November 2020 (UTC)
Masem, I agree. It seems to lack article age, and it seems seems to be written as if it was just launched a year ago. A lot of new info could be added onto the base of info already there. Le Panini Talk 23:11, 8 November 2020 (UTC)
My two cents. All of the dead (and live) citation links on the Wii should be archived so in case a link is dead, we can archive it. Lord Sjones23 (talk - contributions) 01:25, 9 November 2020 (UTC)
Technically, there is an archive bot that has already archived the links in a database, and it is merely a matter of running a citation bot to pull those from that database onto that. (I know that now, that every reference that is archived within 24hr automagically). But I would wait to do that until after the improvements have been made. --Masem (t) 01:32, 9 November 2020 (UTC)

Before the article gets reviewed for GA criteria, do you all think its a good idea to add an image gallery to Paper Mario: The Origami King? I think it'd better explain the gameplay mechanics. I would add 3 fair use (or possibly free work if someone takes pictures) images of the following mechanics: Mario using his 1000-fold arms, a folded toad, and Mario filling up a confetti hole. Is this a good idea? Are there examples of other game articles that do this? I'm asking my questions here to get multiple opinions. Le Panini Talk 15:15, 9 November 2020 (UTC)

NO If that doesn't stress it enough. Please review WP:NFC as Wikipedia aims to use only free content and tries to minimize the use of non-free media. One non-free screenshot would be reasonable but that's pretty much it. --Masem (t) 15:18, 9 November 2020 (UTC)
Well, you made it loud and clear. Thanks for answering! Le Panini Talk 15:45, 9 November 2020 (UTC)

New Articles (November 2 to November 8)

Main page: Wikipedia:WikiProject Video games/New article announcements
 A listing of all articles newly added to the Video Games Wikiproject (regardless of creation date). Generated by v3.4 of the RecentVGArticles script and posted by PresN. Bug reports and feature requests are appreciated. --PresN 16:15, 9 November 2020 (UTC)

November 2

November 3

November 4

November 5

November 6

November 7

November 8

Draft Regarding Paper Mario Characters

(I know I've asked a lot of questions here. I like to get consensus and opinions before taking major steps.)

Hello everyone, or should I say Masem, you seem to be most active right now. While I'm waiting for someone to pick up TOK for GA review, I started another article about the main characters of the game, being Olivia, King Olly, and Bob-Omb. About 2 hours in, I asked a couple of other users about their opinions on where I should take the draft (The users are Captain Galaxy, (Oinkers42), and Abryn). I got some mixed opinions on what the article should be about. Here were the suggestions:

  • (Le Panini) The article should be about TOK characters, as they are the best examples of notability in the franchise.
  • ((Oinkers42)) The article should be about characters in the Paper Mario franchise as a whole, as it would be better received.
  • (Captain Galaxy) The article should be about only the characters in the franchise that represent good notability.

Any thoughts for where this should be taken? Le Panini Talk 00:28, 10 November 2020 (UTC)

Does the concept have dedicated sourcing on a whole? If you’re just cherry-picking notes about characters from game reviews, then it’s not clear a character article meets the WP:GNG at all... Sergecross73 msg me 01:50, 10 November 2020 (UTC)
The Paper Mario series games do not really have a continuity between them. Characters in one game rarely show up in another game in the series and when they do, it's incredibly minor/ancillary to the plot. For that reason, I don't see a compelling reason to collect them on one series page. Characters within a particular game should be kept inside the Characters section of that game's article. Axem Titanium (talk) 01:53, 10 November 2020 (UTC)
Axem Titanium, It's a struggle to find sources on literally any other character outside of TOK and Vivian. I'll move the reception of Olivia and Bobby to the original article. I'd rather pull the plug on it now before I waste my time finishing only for it to be deleted by consensus 3 months later. It's my biggest fear on Wikipedia: Being outvoted. Le Panini Talk 02:39, 10 November 2020 (UTC)
The best way to avoid being outvoted is to make sure you’ve always got 4-5 detailed sources from WP:VG/RS that specifically cover the subject of your proposed split/article creation. And that you can write a few paragraphs worth of prose. It’s not a rule, but it’s a personal standard that generally works for me (and generally dictates whether I support or oppose a deletion in discussions too.) Sergecross73 msg me 03:46, 10 November 2020 (UTC)
Watch out for combining characters that are only tangentially related. That would be WP:SYNTH. Unless they have an intrinsic relation, like Articuno, Zapdos, and Moltres, they would have to have their own pages, unless the article was a list of the game's characters at large.ZXCVBNM (TALK) 04:59, 10 November 2020 (UTC)

Removing infobox arcade fields

Template talk:Infobox video game#Proposal on arcade fields. I opened this proposal a while back but it stalled, so I am requesting some more input. TarkusABtalk/contrib 00:17, 12 November 2020 (UTC)

Reliable source check

I've been working on a few Star Control related articles. Sourcing is proving tricky because it's not just pre-internet, but even pre-magazine to some extent. But one of things that has led to a small burst of internet coverage about this ancient DOS game is its influence on Mass Effect, as cited by BioWare co-founder Ray Muzyka. There's a few sources that go into more detail about the games' similarities. And I cited this fact in the Ur-Quan article:

  • ... leading journalists to note the similarities between the games' villains, "as Sovereign's words -- and voice -- echo those of the Ur-Quan almost line for line".[1]

References

  1. ^ Ullery, Chris (2012-03-13). "Arcade Arcana: Star Control II–Mass Effect's Estranged, Spiritual Father". PikiGeek. Archived from the original on 2012-03-16. Retrieved October 14, 2020.

This is based on a defunct Pennsylvania based game site called PikiGeek. According to a previous discussion about PikiGeek, one editor advised that it's only reliable for specific journalists. I might be more generous, since the staff page shows that they do have several editors for oversight and fact-checking. But as for specific journalists, the article was written by Chris Ullery, who now works with the The Intelligencer in Pennsylvania (a newspaper with hundreds of years of history). I also put some value that he's not making a statement of opinion, and more of an observation that is easily verified in the primary material itself.

I'd ask for some outside opinion as how to best handle it:

  • Keep the above fact as reliable in this specific instance
  • Rewrite the above fact as reliable, but qualify it with more delicate phrasing
  • Remove the above fact as unreliable

Happy to answer any questions and otherwise go with the consensus here. Shooterwalker (talk) 17:56, 6 November 2020 (UTC)

  • I would suggest rewrite and rephrase. Sources like IGN had described Mass Effect to be a big pastiche of multiple disparate influences not just from science fiction works but also from all over popular culture, so I have no reason to doubt the journalist's opinion that Sovereign's characterization and voiced dialogue borrowed from the Ur-Quan since Star Control was big back in the 1990's. However, how exactly do we verify that the character's "words -- and voice -- echo those of the Ur-Quan almost line for line"? Uploading an audio file to compare the copyrighted voiced dialogue? Direct quotations from both Sovereign and the Ur-Quan? I think a more elegant solution is to simply address that journalist's claims exist and was published without necessarily going into minute detail, since I assume the purpose of including the source is part of your attempt to assert the Ur-Quan's place and influence within its genre. Haleth (talk) 02:22, 7 November 2020 (UTC)
    • That makes sense to me. I think the spirit of the source is more important than the exact quote, and the important thing is that one character design is influenced by the other. Let's let others check in with their assessment. Shooterwalker (talk) 18:51, 7 November 2020 (UTC)
My point in the GAN is purely about it being a reliable source, not the question of phrasing. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs talk 19:27, 7 November 2020 (UTC)
  • PikiGeek is now archive material but it seems basically reliable. For verification it's probably fine, but I wouldn't use it at AFD to prove something is notable. It does prove an observable connection between Mass Effect and Star Control for this character design. It looks like PikiGeek had four editors. A quick search of the author shows he's a reliable journalist, or has at least become one. Is there a reason it shouldn't be considered reliable for this discussion? Jontesta (talk) 20:45, 8 November 2020 (UTC)
  • Thanks for everyone who checked in so far. I'm good to abide by the consensus, and could use more feedback about whether this source is reliable enough to justify the statement in question. Tagging a few active editors (User:Masem, User:Namcokid47, and User:Dissident93) who have helped out on reliable source discussions, if you have a few minutes to review. (No pressure.) Shooterwalker (talk) 17:10, 12 November 2020 (UTC)

Date formats

I have a concern on which dating format we should use for certain game articles. On games developed by Japanese, American and Canadian developers, we usually use the American MDY format. However, for games developed in the U.K. (like Banjo-Kazooie) Australia and New Zealand, as well as some of the games developed in Canada, Japan and the U.S. (including Crash Bandicoot 4) we sometimes use the British/Australian DMY format.

Which date format should be appropriate for use in games that are developed in North America and Japan? Same question, about those developed in Britain, Europe and Australasia? Lord Sjones23 (talk - contributions) 02:47, 13 November 2020 (UTC)

Past discussions here have indicated that the developer should not be viewed as a "strong national tie". As such, the first date format used should stand unless there is some other national tie. For example, Lara Croft is no longer developed in the UK, but the topic of Lara Croft, a British character, still has a strong tie. Metro and Witcher both use DMY on the basis of being adaptions of books by famous Russian and Polish authors respectfully. On the flip side, Watch Dogs was developed by a Canadian studio, but is based wholey in Chicago and all themes within are US-centric. -- ferret (talk) 03:00, 13 November 2020 (UTC)

Input requested

A question has come up at the Comics Project about what information needs to be cited to a third party source when a comic character appears in a video game. Any comments from this project would be appreciated. Argento Surfer (talk) 15:10, 13 November 2020 (UTC)

Review page update

Hi all, I've boldly updated your project's peer review page (Wikipedia:WikiProject Video games/Peer review) by updating the instructions and archiving old reviews.

The new instructions use Wikipedia's general peer review process (WP:PR) to list peer reviews. Your project's reviews are still able to be listed on your local page too.

The benefits of this change is that review requests will get seen by a wider audience and are likely to be attended to in a more timely way (many WikiProject peer reviews remain unanswered after years). The Wikipedia peer review process is also more maintained than most WikiProjects, and this may help save time for your active members.

I've done this boldly as it seems your peer review page is pretty inactive and I am working through around 90 such similar peer review pages. Please feel free to discuss below - please ping me ({{u|Tom (LT)}}) in your response.

Cheers and hope you are well, Tom (LT) (talk) 23:51, 9 November 2020 (UTC)

@Tom (LT): Why? The page already indicated it was inactive and in fact had The process was closed in July 2011 in favor of the general Wikipedia-wide peer review process. --Izno (talk) 04:13, 10 November 2020 (UTC)
Thanks for the ping, I was weighing up these two things in my mind. Ultimately, in my opinion, although the process is marked as historical, it's still worth updating the page, because the chance of a future editor wasting time starting the process again is in my mind fairly high. I hope by making this change that future editor will be able to contribute somewhere else more productively. --Tom (LT) (talk) 08:15, 10 November 2020 (UTC)
Further update - thanks for your comment - I've made the template much clearer why it's been added. --Tom (LT) (talk) 07:01, 15 November 2020 (UTC)

Assessment drive

I’ve done some massive reassessment work to the 38 unassessed articles last night and so far we have no unassessed articles in terms of quality and importance. To accomplish one of our goals (Start-Class or more), I think we should start doing an assessment drive to get the stub articles out of the way. Any ideas on how we can proceed? Lord Sjones23 (talk - contributions) 19:33, 7 November 2020 (UTC)

If you want somewhere to begin, I guess the highest-importance stubs/start-class articles or the list of popular pages in the last month are pretty good starting points. These articles often have a lot of available sourcing, so easy to get to start-class at least, and sometimes (especially for popular pages) have seen recent editing activity that isn't yet reflected by the quality assessment.--AlexandraIDV 22:31, 7 November 2020 (UTC)
Gotcha. And about the games that have very few sources for notability and/or reception, what is the best way to deal with this in terms of assessment? Lord Sjones23 (talk - contributions) 01:32, 8 November 2020 (UTC)
I like to assess only based on the info that is actually sourced, while ignoring the rest and assuming that it could be removed at any time. So if an article has a massive amount of unsourced plot information but only a couple sourced sentences, it's certainly not going to be a C-class article.ZXCVBNM (TALK) 02:55, 8 November 2020 (UTC)
In this particular case, do you think it should be Start-class? Lord Sjones23 (talk - contributions) 03:08, 8 November 2020 (UTC)
What case? Did you mean to post a link there?ZXCVBNM (TALK) 06:26, 8 November 2020 (UTC)
Example: This minor expansion took me only about 10 minutes, but made the article way more useful to readers. Start-class is, really, a very low threshold, and is easy to reach with almost any subject that has decent coverage in online sources. If one wanted to take this further to C-class, it would be pretty easy as well based on the game's available RS coverage.--AlexandraIDV 13:35, 8 November 2020 (UTC)

@Sjones23: Well, one of the goals has been accomplished. It's not the Start-class one, though. That one obviously needs the most work, with several thousand articles to go through.ZXCVBNM (TALK) 19:07, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

Given that, should we create a new milestone if necessary? Lord Sjones23 (talk - contributions) 20:52, 16 November 2020 (UTC)
Should probably make a new section on ideas. GamerPro64 22:43, 16 November 2020 (UTC)
Sounds good to me. Lord Sjones23 (talk - contributions) 23:55, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

New Articles (November 9 to November 15)

Main page: Wikipedia:WikiProject Video games/New article announcements
 A listing of all articles newly added to the Video Games Wikiproject (regardless of creation date). Generated by v3.4 of the RecentVGArticles script and posted by PresN. Bug reports and feature requests are appreciated. --PresN 03:40, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

November 9

November 12

November 13

November 14

November 15

Peer Review of Paper Mario: The Origami King

"Your review may be more successful if you politely request feedback on the discussion pages of related articles; send messages to Wikipedians who have contributed to the same or a related field; and also request peer review at appropriate Wikiprojects."

Would anyone like to give their suggestions for the peer review of Paper Mario: The Origami King? I'm doing everything I can to make the Featured Article review as simple as possible. Le Panini Talk 15:16, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

Mario Clash has two screenshots

There are two files showing gameplay for Mario Clash, one for Mario Clash (File:VB Mario Clash.png), and another for Mario Bros. (File:Mario clash.PNG). Which should be deleted and replaced so that we do not have two similar non-free files? (Oinkers42) (talk) 00:22, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

I would use File:VB Mario Clash.png for both since that use shows Mario initiating an attack on an enemy though the fair use rational will need to updated if we an image on more than on article. The replaces image will also be deleted in a few days time if not in use so we don’t need to do anything regarding deletion once of of the two images isn’t being used.--65.92.160.124 (talk) 00:33, 20 November 2020 (UTC)
Thats a pretty rare game. Personally, I’d see if we could possibly justify both, just because they’re hard to come by. (Even beyond its rarity, I imagine it’s even harder to find someone who could take a screenshot of it. I own a VB and the game, but I can’t even begin to know how you’d get a screenshot off that wacky system.) Sergecross73 msg me 01:16, 20 November 2020 (UTC)
Sergecross73, You own a Virtual Boy? I'm so jealous right now. Le Panini Talk 13:48, 20 November 2020 (UTC)
Yeah, an Aunt/Uncle bought it for me as a Christmas gift when I was young when they went on clearance. I enjoyed playing it when little, but it wasn’t until much later that I realized what a rare gift it was. Anyways, I own a bunch of the games, and last I checked it still runs, so I can look into stuff if anyone needs it, though as I said, I have neither the means nor the tech know-how to get screenshots from the thing. Sergecross73 msg me 14:23, 20 November 2020 (UTC)
Wait a second, looking at this closer, I’m confused about the problem here. Mario Bros. and Mario Clash are two separate games, and each article only has one screenshot each in its respective article. There’s no image issue here, in the same way there’s no issue in having a screen shot of gameplay in every Mario Kart or Smash Bros game article. They’re similar games, but not the same game... Sergecross73 msg me 14:42, 20 November 2020 (UTC)
Mario Bros. actually has two screenshots, one for the actual game (File:Mario Bros. Gameplay.gif), which I have no problem with, and one from Mario Clash (File:Mario clash.PNG). I feel that the additional screenshot from Mario Clash (File:Mario clash.PNG), not to be confused with the Mario Clash screenshot (File:VB Mario Clash.png) on its own article, can be deleted and replaced. I am trying to figure out which screenshot is necessary, and which can be replaced.
  • Why does this have to be a discussion? It really isn't important, just pick one. File:VB Mario Clash.png is probably better because it actually shows gameplay action with Mario throwing something. Just make sure to add another NFUR to the image being used. Also the screenshots were almost certainly taken in emulators. TarkusABtalk/contrib 19:47, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

Hello there! I'm actually the author of the VB Mario Clash screenshot. If anybody is wondering how I took a good gameplay screenshot is because I did it from the Mednafen emulator, using its snapshot feature. Roberth Martinez (talk) 20:16, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

Review thread 49

It's been a few months since the last time, and there have been several nominations recently, so here's another thread for review exchanges and for drawing attention to articles that have been waiting for a review for a while:

Featured Article candidates

Featured List candidates

Good Article nominations

Peer Reviews, reassessments, and requests

I will review any article - PR, FAC, GAN, FLC, etc. - in exchange for a proper review of either my GAN Chicago by Night (nom) or my FLC List of Vampire: The Masquerade books (nom). (these two aren't VG related, but I'm asking here since the RPG project is so much less active than WPVG.) --AlexandraIDV 13:00, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

Re: the bold merge of Tutorial (video games)

The article was merged to Level (video games) by User:Occono without discussion. But I am skeptical that the content of the article is entirely contained within the concept of a level. Tutorials can encompass numerous levels as well as be outside the game itself, like help videos. I also think the article is of course individually notable. So I want to see if anyone else thinks the merge should be reversed.ZXCVBNM (TALK) 18:35, 3 November 2020 (UTC)

Should be merged to Tutorial#Computer-based tutoring. --Izno (talk) 18:44, 3 November 2020 (UTC)
I was being bold and doing it because both articles were entirely insufficient and I thought it better in the long run to just merge them were more eyes can improve the whole picture, then spin tutorial back off later once it's ready, rather then going through a discussion which could take years to resolve, it feels like these days on here. I don't object to demerging at all, but I hope it actually leads to improving the tutorial article and not just doing it for the sake of it. Merging them until they're ready to be separated can help improve focused editing by drive by editors, there's too many loose articles on Wikipedia about super-niche aspects of things that would better off merged into a more complete and comprehensive single article.--occono (talk) 20:00, 3 November 2020 (UTC)
There is possibly something to be said in the presentation of a video game about the first "part" being the learning of the video game, which is often done by a tutorial, but there are numerous documented examples where this is not done, such as the platform learning approach of Portal, or the drop-you-in-and-learn of The Witness. And just doing a super quick search on Google, this is basically the evolution of the instruction booklet and can be documented further. This is more than just the concept of a tutorial level, so I think the merge is right to start, until we can firm up what this potential topic could be. --Masem (t) 20:10, 3 November 2020 (UTC)
Fully support the merge. I support either target proposed above. Sergecross73 msg me 23:03, 3 November 2020 (UTC)
  • I'm not opposed to a merge, but combining "Tutorial" with "Level" seems like the wrong choice. Many (if not most) Tutorials are not levels. Tutorial#Computer-based tutoring is a better choice, but I think the article has enough potential sources to be expanded and stand on its own. This source gives an important counter-example: "In Stellaris, tutorialization takes the form of thorough and elaborate tooltips. Every time you open a new menu, a window opens up telling you what that menu is for and what can be done in it. You’re also given nudges at various points about what you should do to get the wheels of your spacefaring civilization going. From all this, I mostly understand how the game works. It’s just not very fun."[8] Jontesta (talk) 20:36, 8 November 2020 (UTC)
  • @Jontesta: Exactly. I'm thinking something along the lines of tutorial videos integrated into a game, which are not levels. Or tutorial text or the like. There are numerous kinds of video game tutorials that simply aren't levels in a game.ZXCVBNM (TALK) 17:33, 16 November 2020 (UTC)
  • I expanded it with both level-design and non-level tutorial designs. I think it makes it less appropriate for merging and more appropriate for a stand-alone article, but I feel more strongly that it is partially off topic in the level article. Jontesta (talk) 19:26, 16 November 2020 (UTC)
I don't oppose it, the section in the level article is better now. I will just say that no improvements on the original tutorial article happened until I merged it, so it seems like I made the right move. :P --occono (talk) 15:33, 21 November 2020 (UTC)
No harm no foul. If there's an important game term, it's worth bringing it up for discussion here. I like these kinds of articles. I boldly recreated it as game tutorial. Jontesta (talk) 18:52, 22 November 2020 (UTC)

Potential FA plans for the Kirby series

So, in addition to my plans to go nominate Sonic and Sakura Wars for GT/FT, I've also been thinking about a future project that we can all work on. The Kirby series debuted on April 27, 1992, so is it possible if we can rewrite the main series article or Kirby's Dream Land (a GA) and get either of them to FA status and feature it as a TFA on its anniversary date (April 27, 2022)? Lord Sjones23 (talk - contributions) 20:33, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

Sjones23, I support it! I think Dream Land would be the easier project, but the series in whole would be the better option. Le Panini Talk 21:46, 11 November 2020 (UTC)
In addition, if we can get all of the main series articles up to GA/FA status, we can do it for GT/FT as well. Lord Sjones23 (talk - contributions) 21:48, 11 November 2020 (UTC)
Sjones23, Now that would just be a challenge. A lot of Kirby related articles aren't in good condition. (eg. Kirby: Squeak Squad, Kirby Tilt 'n' Tumble, Kirby & the Amazing Mirror) Le Panini Talk 21:55, 11 November 2020 (UTC)
Le Panini, indeed it would. At the moment, I think we should start working on getting Kirby Star Allies up to GA status and get Kirby's Dream Land up to FA. No rush. Lord Sjones23 (talk - contributions) 21:59, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

Four articles in the series are currently Good Article status:

Just for reference. Le Panini Talk 22:04, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

FWIW, the Dream Land article was promoted a long time ago, and looking at it now, I'd say it's B-class at best. JOEBRO64 00:04, 12 November 2020 (UTC)
In this case, we should do a revamp of the article to match the current GA standards. Lord Sjones23 (talk - contributions) 02:40, 12 November 2020 (UTC)
I wanted to tackle Kirby Super Star but I don't think i'm able to do one of my favorite games any justice with its article. I also wanted to tackle Kirby's Dream Course, since it was initially an original title without ties to Kirby titled Special Tee Shot, but i'all leave that one to someone else... Roberth Martinez (talk) 04:06, 12 November 2020 (UTC)
I'll see what I can do. CaptainGalaxy 08:20, 12 November 2020 (UTC)
I'll work on Star Allies while you guys focus on other articles, then. Star Allies is not that difficult to do, and is really a one person job. Once I finish, I'll move on to another. Le Panini Talk 18:45, 12 November 2020 (UTC)
Got it. I've started work on the Star Allies lead section and expanded it to three paragraphs. I'll also help in finding development and gameplay sources. Lord Sjones23 (talk - contributions) 19:16, 12 November 2020 (UTC)
If anyone needs help, please feel free to look at the Kirby series here and see which articles are of need first. CaptainGalaxy 20:32, 12 November 2020 (UTC)

Dream Land I think would need a lot of work. The number of modern sources that are likely not featured is quite large, even besides quality issues. - Bryn (talk) (contributions) 00:51, 13 November 2020 (UTC)

Abryn, that's true. There's a lot that needs to be done with this, but I'm gonna help anyways. Le Panini Talk 02:19, 13 November 2020 (UTC)

Would you guys suggest making a Kirby Fighters 2 article? It has brief mentions in other Kirby related articles, but now seems to be notable on its own after the game's release. (Draft:Kirby Fighters 2) Le Panini Talk 13:14, 13 November 2020 (UTC)

There’s plenty of sourcing out there - I found a bunch with the simplest of Google searches. If someone wants to make it, it’d be very easy to argue it’s notability. Go for it, if you want to do it. Sergecross73 msg me 03:01, 16 November 2020 (UTC)
Sergecross73, Already did. I'm gonna publish it soon, as the base of the content is already there, but will still greatly improve on it.
It’s looking good so far. It already looks good enough to avoid deletion discussions, in my opinion. Sergecross73 msg me 03:07, 16 November 2020 (UTC)
Sergecross73, I submitted it for review, and it got accepted. However, its listed as Kirby Fighters 2 (video game), and I want it to just be Kirby Fighters 2, which is currently a redirect. Do you know how to fix this? Le Panini Talk 17:36, 16 November 2020 (UTC)
The generic request process is WP:RM/TR for such a change. --Izno (talk) 17:49, 16 November 2020 (UTC)
Yup, that’s where you’d want to go. In the future, if you want, you can also leave me a note on my talk page, and I’ll generally do it for you too. Sergecross73 msg me 18:35, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

Kirby Star Allies

I've submitted Kirby Star Allies for GA review. When accepted, 5 out of the 13 articles (including the series article) in the series will be good topic; 38 percent on the way of getting the series to good topic status. Le Panini Talk 02:46, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

GT Status for the Kirby series

Kirby series to Good Topic: 31% complete

There is already four articles from the Kirby Series that are good article status, with Kirby Star Allies approaching review. All we need is the main series article (Kirby (series)) to be promoted to GA status, and then it will merit being a Good Topic. Shouldn't this article be our priority? Le Panini Talk 11:42, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

Unless I'm missing something, I'm counting 12 main series articles. Only 4 are GA so the other 8 would need to be improved and promoted before a GT can be considered. That's a lot of work. People can work on whatever they want I guess, but I'm not understanding this drive to promote Kirby articles for a GT when there are other topics much closer to GT. TarkusABtalk/contrib 12:52, 16 November 2020 (UTC)
TarkusAB, Oh, that's how it works? Well then, nevermind. I'd also like to say, though; when I said "our", I really just meant the people interested in helping, not the Wikiproject as a whole. Le Panini Talk 13:04, 16 November 2020 (UTC)
For reference, here what the table would look like with its current status so far should it go to GT.
edit | discuss
Kirby series
12 articles
Kirby's Dream Land
Kirby's Adventure
Kirby's Dream Land 2
Kirby Super Star
Kirby's Dream Land 3
Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards
Kirby & the Amazing Mirror
Kirby: Squeak Squad
Kirby's Return to Dream Land
Kirby: Triple Deluxe
Kirby: Planet Robobot
Kirby Star Allies
Lord Sjones23 (talk - contributions) 04:16, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

Does anyone have access to these magazines?

Rich Diamond was deleted but I had it moved to draft space: [9]. This archived version of the developer's page shows a few reviews were done of the game in the 1990s, including one in Newsday (apparently under the title ""PLUG & PLAY Cruising the Entertainment Highway / REVIEWS / A Sparkling Debut / New firm's `Diamond' is polished and pleasing") and one in Games Magazine as well. I don't know that any of the other sources listed on that page are WP:RS for terms of meeting the WP:GNG? There was also a review in the Orlando Sentinel which I have already been able to add to the draft page. If anyone could access either of those two magazines or any other source, and either share them with me or add them to the draft that would be much appreciated. BOZ (talk) 22:29, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

Thanks to Czar we have the Newsday article, so does anyone have access to Games Magazine? I believe that we are probably talking about the same magazine as here: Wikipedia:WikiProject Video games/Reference library/Games, so maybe Thibbs has access? BOZ (talk) 04:37, 22 November 2020 (UTC)
I missed it, but Czar pointed out that the index page shows the review was in Games #155 (Vol 23, #7). :) Aha! BOZ (talk) 13:26, 22 November 2020 (UTC)
Games review is sent. Good luck with the article. :) -Thibbs (talk) 14:36, 22 November 2020 (UTC)
Thanks everyone who helped. :) BOZ (talk) 15:14, 22 November 2020 (UTC)

Category:Sandbox video games

Category:Sandbox video games currently redirects to Category:Open world video games, but I feel like they should be two different categories, since not all sandbox games are also open-world. Thoughts? Off-topic, but I also think it should be "Open-world video games" (with a hyphen). IceWelder [✉] 20:06, 8 November 2020 (UTC)

Given that we have figured out how to have separate articles on the concepts, they should be separated, though several games will be in both. Also, because "open world" is a gameplay concept and not a genre, the category probably should be at Category:Video games featuring open worlds or something like that. --Masem (t) 20:25, 8 November 2020 (UTC)
Or maybe Category:Open worlds? IceWelder [✉] 20:44, 8 November 2020 (UTC)
Too vague a category name. Think of it from a non-video game reader's standpoint, that term would make no sense. --Masem (t) 20:58, 8 November 2020 (UTC)
This is such a complicated area of subject matter because people use these words in really ambiguous ways. In popular culture, there was a time where open worlds and sandboxes were basically the same thing, because you're talking about a style of level design. But there is some narrow area where sandbox refers to a mode where you basically make the player invincible or turn off victory conditions and let them do whatever they want. I personally don't think we should create a separate category for that, but if we do, it should be Category:Video games with a sandbox mode. I personally think the Sandbox article could be merged to a better article about similar concepts like emergent gameplay or nonlinear gameplay. Jontesta (talk) 20:51, 8 November 2020 (UTC)
There is a clear distinction on "open worlds" and "sandbox" however - that's level/map design versus gameplay, though I will agree that early on when GTA3 first hit, these terms were intermingled. Gaming media has come better to distinguish the terms, recongizing not all open world games are sandboxes nor vice versa. I do agree that "sandbox" and "emergent" may be closer, and that if we are going to categorize games, we have to talk about explicit sandbox modes (an objective determination) and not games that have sandbox-like gameplay (a very subjective determination). --Masem (t) 20:57, 8 November 2020 (UTC)
My understanding is that GTA3 popularized both the term "open world" and "sandbox", in reference to its free-roaming structure and emergent systems that interact dynamically in the world. For several years afterward, most sources used these terms interchangeably. Over time, though "open world" has increasingly referred to non-linearity in any game regardless of its emphasis on emergent systems, while the term "sandbox" has come to refer to just the emergent systems aspect regardless of whether the game has a defined goal. Phediuk (talk) 22:22, 8 November 2020 (UTC)
See Sandbox game, as we've been to expand on it, but you're basically in the ballpark. Pre-GTA3, sandbox games were those that were more about non-linearity, so the Elites and the SimCitys. Then you had GTA3 which created the idea of sandbox games being based on multiple systems that allowed for emergent gameplay, and the Sims where there was more guidance and goals in sandbox gameplay (compared to Elite/SimCity), but still being freeform to get there. --Masem (t) 22:34, 8 November 2020 (UTC)
Connected to an earlier discussion about the Sandbox game article, this is why it's misleading to name every game design article "X game", like "Physics game", "Loot game", "Emergent game", or "Replayable game". Despite being short and common names, they end up inviting indiscriminate lists and categories, where people argue about how much X you need before it's an X game. (How much loot before it's a loot game? How much physics before it's a physics game?) And I don't think this can be resolved by finding every time a game journalist calls something a "loot game" or "physics game", as that tends to be just as arbitrary. Most of these articles should be "X gameplay" or "X in games". The Sandbox game article really is referring to multiple different things, and that's going to make a category inherently problematic, suggesting a need to rename both. Jontesta (talk) 19:36, 16 November 2020 (UTC)
Does the use of a Game Trainer (Trainer_(games)) count as sandboxing? There is a lot of technical voodoo involved with creating these kinds of gameplay modifications, and even the legality of it is questionable at best. But, as a category, it has a history and is expandable. 2601:18C:C900:FC80:8024:FA61:23FC:D07F (talk) 14:36, 23 November 2020 (UTC)
If the trainer is only there via user mods, this does not make the game, for WP's purpose, one with a sandbox mode. We only consider what the game officially supports as released by the developers/publishers in considering the base features and thus how it is categorized. --Masem (t) 14:40, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

Questions regarding Paper Mario: The Origami King

A peer review of Paper Mario: The Origami King is well underway. There are a lot of bold changes suggested that I would like to gain opinions for before making them, however.

1. Should I have both images for gameplay, or remove one? Two things to keep in mind: 1. "The reason I have two images is because ring style combat of regular battles against boss battles are actually distinct, with Tanabe calling them the exact opposite. 2. These images are however, fair use.

2. How in detail should the plot go? Should it rather explain the whole storyline, or just a rough "Mario goes and clears the streamers" kind of thing?

3. How should the reception be phrased? I currently have it so each reviewer has their own explanations in different categories of general likes and dislikes. CZAR made it aware that nobody *ahem* really cares, and would rather just know what each review had to say about what. check out the review for a deeper explanation.

4. How far in depth can the gameplay go? The Origami King introduces an entirely new style of combat; should it rather use a video? Maybe a list?

Thoughts? Le Panini Talk 03:45, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

  1. The boss battle image is not necessary because it's just a variation of the standard boss battle. Rather, use an image of Mario walking around the environment normally. That's oddly missing.
  2. You don't need to mention every story beat. Mention the key plot points and explain what the game is about high level. Skip mentioning inconsequential places and characters.
  3. Yes you should find ways to combine critic comments within the same phrase. It reads almost like you were afraid to put two or more critic comments into the same sentence. In fact, now looking back at the article, it seems you are afraid to attribute information from more than one source for any sentence. You can and should combine information from two or more sources into a sentence if it enables better writing. Citations can be made mid-sentence or combined at the end.
  4. No no no. Explain gameplay to give a general audience a high level feel of how the game plays. If some boss or sequence does some wacky one-off weird shit, don't mention it.
TarkusABtalk/contrib 05:23, 23 November 2020 (UTC)
TarkusAB, Yeah, it seems I'm getting "summarizing" and "synthing" very confused. So you're saying to cut the boss battle section entirely? It seems to be a bit notable in some reviews. Le Panini Talk 05:45, 23 November 2020 (UTC)
Yea don't be that afraid of synth, take a look of WP:SYNTHNOT. Regarding boss battles, sorry I read your question wrong. If reviewers describe boss battles separately from regular battles, then what you did is fine. However it doesn't seem to need additional visual aid like you are suggesting. Boss battles look very similar to standard battles, and since you already have a picture of a standard battle, prose alone should be able to paint the picture in their head. TarkusABtalk/contrib 11:11, 23 November 2020 (UTC)
TarkusAB, Got it. Thanks for the input! Le Panini Talk 16:20, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

Labelling early access games as "upcoming".

As long as I've been in WPVG, early access games have been called "upcoming" in the first sentence because, in the traditional sense, these games are not out yet and you instead have the option to pre-order the game and play the alpha version of it. This wording was recently challenged on my article Teardown (video game), which is when I noticed that we do not have this explicitly put down anywhere. The only thing we currently have is not listing early access dates in infoboxes, per Template:Infobox video game. Is there broad consensus to call early access games "upcoming"? If so, this should be added to our MoS. IceWelder [✉] 20:09, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

We should be more clear on this. The early access period is equivalent to an open beta/etc. and not the true "release" of a game. Only when the game is released out of beta/early access is when we actually "date" it since that's the same metric used by awards and the like. This advise is stated in Template:Infobox video game/doc but I don't know if we need to say it anywhere else. --Masem (t) 20:26, 21 November 2020 (UTC)
I do think that for a lot of people, early access does mean released. We should not call it released, of course, but instead of saying upcoming, note that it is in early access status, or whatever. - Bryn (talk) (contributions) 20:58, 21 November 2020 (UTC)
This seems like an area where we shouldn't outsmart ourselves, and simply call an early access game an early access game. Jontesta (talk) 18:53, 22 November 2020 (UTC)
This. ~ Dissident93 (talk) 19:27, 23 November 2020 (UTC)
Are there good constructs to point out early that the game is in early access without having to double-use "early access" when later addressing on which date the game came out in early access? IceWelder [✉] 19:46, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

New Articles (November 16 to November 22)

Main page: Wikipedia:WikiProject Video games/New article announcements
 A listing of all articles newly added to the Video Games Wikiproject (regardless of creation date). Generated by v3.4 of the RecentVGArticles script and posted by PresN. Bug reports and feature requests are appreciated. --PresN 22:32, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

November 16

November 17

November 18

November 19

November 20

November 21

November 22

That massive pile of new categories is real; Thibbs found a ton of untagged categories this week. Also, Stardock Systems Inc. v. Paul Reiche III and Robert Frederick Ford is a fun read. --PresN 22:32, 23 November 2020 (UTC)
That's a pretty good start on that one given how significant that issue is. I still need to write something comparable on the Tetris vs Mino case which is *the* case law on the concept of copyright of look & feel that persists today. --Masem (t) 22:40, 23 November 2020 (UTC)
The talk page tag was added in the revision dated October 8th. Ben · Salvidrim! ✉ 00:21, 24 November 2020 (UTC)
It's a game that's completely flown under the radar :P --Masem (t) 01:07, 24 November 2020 (UTC)
Whoops, yeah, the vandalism mucked it (Fortnite) up and I missed it. As for Kirby Fighters 2 - it absolutely should be here; I think this is a bug, as I see in the bot log the "move" from redirect to "real" article, but the script dropped it for some reason. It's obviously new: added. --PresN 04:22, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

Category:Video games featured on Angry Video Game Nerd. Having a list of AVGN games, OK, I could understand an argument for it, but a category? Being featured on AVGN is not a defining characteristic of a game. - X201 (talk) 08:27, 25 November 2020 (UTC)

Agreed, it's a bit much. Notable things and people are featured in other notable things all the time.--AlexandraIDV 08:29, 25 November 2020 (UTC)
If others are in agreement that this is a bad category, I think it’s a fairly straightforward nomination for deletion. ImaginesTigers (talk) 17:13, 25 November 2020 (UTC)

Link to the CfD: Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2020_November_25#Category:Video_games_featured_on_Angry_Video_Game_Nerd -- ferret (talk) 17:47, 25 November 2020 (UTC)

Help needed: 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim

This is a general appeal for help. 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim currently has a massive, bloated plot synopsis. I've begun something on the article's talk page (link here) looking for suggestions on how to trim it down while taking its complex plot into account. Suggestions and article examples dealing with complicated non-linear plots would be helpful. --ProtoDrake (talk) 16:20, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

Hey there. I'll see what I can do to help. Lord Sjones23 (talk - contributions) 17:53, 25 November 2020 (UTC)

A category move to be aware of

Per [10], the "old school" Mac OS categories have been moved to "Macintosh" (eg "Mac OS software" to "Macintosh software" as to resolve the "Mac OS" vs "macOS" conflict. I recommend that given there's a desire to have consistency on category names and mainspace, that we also go through and use "Macintosh" as the platform for these older games to match. It may need a few hands working at AWB to process through Category:Macintosh games to make those substitutions. --Masem (t) 02:58, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

No, there was obviously a mistake in the move set. The rationale given in the CfD is that the parent categories of various "macOS" and "Classic Mac OS" categories should be called "Macintosh". However, we did not have a separate parent category for games on both systems, so the category for Classic Mac OS games was moved instead. We should create a new "Classic Mac OS games" category and put both that and "MacOS games" as subcats of "Macintosh games". Compare this to Category:Macintosh software, which has both Category:Classic Mac OS software and Category:MacOS software as subcats.
We should not use "Macintosh" in-line in articles. Macintosh is a hardware series that runs to this day, including all systems running the modern macOS. There would also be a divide in using a hardware name for old Mac games but an operating system name for new Mac games, which makes no sense at all. IceWelder [✉] 07:06, 20 November 2020 (UTC)
Indeed. It's also worth pointing out even in the Classic Mac OS era, Macs weren't actually called Macintoshes for a large part of it (Power Mac G3s and G4s were a permanent naming shift away from it.) Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs talk 17:27, 20 November 2020 (UTC)
@Masem: I've gone ahead and created the new categories and filled them partly. I will AWB/JWB over it later today, maybe you could aid me in that. IceWelder [✉] 11:01, 20 November 2020 (UTC)
That should be fine, using "Classic MacOS" instead. What I know is that we want the consistency on category name and in the article, based on past category issues. --Masem (t) 14:12, 20 November 2020 (UTC)
I don't think that this is always possible. For example, Microsoft Windows is the name of the article, but the category is located at Category:Windows games. We also still uphold the Mac OS X/OS X/macOS distinction, while all three are categorised into Category:MacOS games. I don't think the category name should strictly affect the name used in the article, nor do I think that we should just do such a change on all articles. Let's start with the category and leave the naming within the article for later discussion (also discussing "Windows" vs. "Microsoft Windows" then). IceWelder [✉] 17:54, 20 November 2020 (UTC)
Recateogrization done. New cateogries:
Please let me know if I missed something. Regards, IceWelder [✉] 11:08, 26 November 2020 (UTC)

Are these articles potentially viable?

I tried to build Heads Up (aka Heads Up Action Soccer), Sargon III, and Railroad Tycoon Deluxe from existing redirects, after finding multiple reviews for each of them, but they were reverted to redirects. Are there other sources that will help to establish notability for them to ensure that they demonstrate that they meet the WP:GNG? 2601:243:1C80:6740:DD50:EB04:4574:A2C0 (talk) 03:29, 26 November 2020 (UTC)

You could sell me on Sargon 3 and Tycoon. If Tycoon really is a remake and following discussion deems it still a redirect, it should probably live at the original game article, not the series page. Based on the chatter in the edit summaries for Heads Up, probably not a valid article, though I'm sure its target would take the content if it didn't have it. --Izno (talk) 04:19, 26 November 2020 (UTC)
Well, two out of three ain't bad! :) What more would need to be done with these to make them convincing as articles? I found one more review for Sargon III: [11] 2601:243:1C80:6740:DD50:EB04:4574:A2C0 (talk) 15:27, 26 November 2020 (UTC)
Well, the articles need to follow WP:MOS/VG. They need to be have sections for gameplay, development, and reception. If they have enough of a historic mark, there can be a legacy section. If there's a plot to the game, then a plot section.
Additionally, there needs to be an infobox, and the lead section's length is determined by how long the article is. Happy Thanksgiving! Le Panini Talk 16:40, 26 November 2020 (UTC)
OK, fair enough! I will find some time over the long weekend to give it another try. :) 2601:243:1C80:6740:DD50:EB04:4574:A2C0 (talk) 19:12, 26 November 2020 (UTC)

Copycheck help at Wii

Wii had been named at FAR a month-ish ago, but I've been pinging away at it to fix most of the problems - part of the issue was that it was written from a Nintendo enthusiast' POV and lacked the same type of coverage we give consoles now. As such there is a lot of newish writing and I would like some help with readthrough and copy editing. I still myself have to work on source reviews and some other MOS fixing so its not a rush here but it would help clear up the FAR problem. --Masem (t) 23:03, 28 November 2020 (UTC)

New Articles (November 23 to November 29)

Main page: Wikipedia:WikiProject Video games/New article announcements
 A listing of all articles newly added to the Video Games Wikiproject (regardless of creation date). Generated by v3.4 of the RecentVGArticles script and posted by PresN. Bug reports and feature requests are appreciated. --PresN 16:08, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

November 23

November 24

November 25

November 26

November 27

November 28

November 29

Assessment goal reached!

(10783/8355)

Back on January 29, 2014, fresh off of getting 50% of our articles to Start-class or better, we started a goal of reaching 20% C-class articles- articles with a solid structure and references, but too rough around the edges or lacking in details to be B-class or higher. At the time, we were at 3101 C+ articles out of a target of 6007. Today, 6 years and 10 months later, we made it, with 7458 Cs or higher out of a target of 7455!

It's time, then, to pick a new goal. Currently, we have goals to reach 10% B+ and 75% Start+, both of which were also started in 2014 and have a ways to go (slow but steady progress). We've previously had goals to reach percentage or static targets of classifications such as GAs or FAs, as well as Start-Bs. As always, we can do something more esoteric like all High-importance articles being C+ or number of good/featured topics or whatever we want- the aim is to pick a goal that inspires people to work at it. Any ideas? --PresN 23:01, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

  • I think more High-Importance articles should become higher classed here. Meanwhile, I'm wondering if it is possible to properly automatically track the number of good and featured topics we have. GamerPro64 23:37, 16 November 2020 (UTC)
(40 / 50)

Or:

50 Good and Featured Topics: 80% complete
Good Topics
Featured Topics

Or something like that. --PresN 00:41, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

I think the first bar works better because then it feels like we're closer to completion. CaptainGalaxy 00:44, 17 November 2020 (UTC)
  • A static amount of GT/FT is not bad but I feel like we're already so close, meeting the goal would not amount to that much improvement. I definitely favor improving the quality of high-importance articles. How about getting all top, high and mid importance be C-Class or above? We're at 2092/3210, about 65.1%. It's fewer articles than in the original goal (a bit more than a thousand) and 65% feels like a decent percentage to start at -- high enough that it feels achievable, but middling enough that there is a lot of work to accomplish. Plus I feel this will focus efforts on the most important content, the most read and critical articles, thus resulting in the highest impact to effort ratio. Ben · Salvidrim! ✉ 01:23, 17 November 2020 (UTC)
  • 50 was just a suggestion. We could extend it to 75 if that would be better. I do feel that good topics is the way to go, however. C Class article to me feels like a neutral point- its either start /stub class or B class, and anything else is just bunched into C.
  • But keep in mind, however, good topics are hard to do. Just doing the Kirby series, for example; The series has 12 mainline games, and only 4 (with 1 on the way) are Good Articles. This could take months to complete on its own, let alone ten more. Le Panini Talk 02:24, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

Mid/Highs to C+ would be:

(2092 / 3210)

Would have to be manually updated, but that's not the end of the world. As far as topics go: so, the current set of 3 goals are particularly bad, taking as I said 6.8 years to get the first one done, and probably at least a couple years to go to get another; prior ones have also been a little slow, though- 5% GA+ took 5.5 years, 250 FA/FLs took 3.5 years, 750 GAs took 3.5 years, 10% C+ took 2 years, and 50% Start+ was a noticeable outlier in taking only 8 months. Having a goal that takes a bit isn't too bad, though I think we should shy away from any more goals that would take a decade- those aren't goals to strive for at that point, just a tracking metric. --PresN 03:30, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

PresN, While Good topics could take months, it wouldn't take years if groups divide up and work on individual things. I'm not saying we organize this whole project like "hey, you three do this, you four do that", its just nature that we all work towards the things were interested in. That's why Final Fantasy has so, so many featured articles. Le Panini Talk 10:48, 17 November 2020 (UTC)
  • I've been watching that C-class bar with anticipation for some time now, so this is great news. I'm all for a Featured/Good Topic goal. We could also try bringing back an FA goal like we used to have—it seems like the number of VG FAs has slowed down a bit in recent years, although it might just be my perception. JimmyBlackwing (talk) 16:54, 17 November 2020 (UTC)
  • I also support a GT/FT goal as well as an FA/GA goal. By the way, here are the progression bars for some potential assessment drive ideas I have in mind.

Thoughts? Lord Sjones23 (talk - contributions) 00:56, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

I don't like these, because they're not actually achievable. A small project can aim for them (like the SE project does, but for something the size of WPVG they're all unattainable; they're just tracking the current status without motivating anyone, which is what the rainbow template right below the WPVG goals already does. The ones we've had that took 6 years only occasionally motivated a few people (especially in the past few weeks); that GA+ one there will take centuries. --PresN 02:00, 18 November 2020 (UTC)
You could be right. Maybe we could make all High/Top/Mid-importance articles higher than C or Start class and/or have at least 40-50 good or featured topics? Lord Sjones23 (talk - contributions) 02:10, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

The suggestions seem to be either change it to A) Something involving Good Topics/Featured Topics, or B) Something involving High-Top tier articles, so it should be either of these. Le Panini Talk

Yeah, I'll wait to see if anyone has any other ideas or seconds JimmyBlackwing's FA count idea, but it's looking like I'll just add both goals (we've had 4 before). --PresN 03:17, 18 November 2020 (UTC)
I oppose anything involving "all articles of X" because I doubt it will ever be achieved. Especially with regards to lifting articles out of stub class, see WP:PERMASTUB. However, the Good Topic/Featured Topic goals sound much more achievable and better.ZXCVBNM (TALK) 06:45, 18 November 2020 (UTC)
Zxcvbnm, Well, WP:PERMASTUB are frowned upon by the people down at Articles for Deletion, but that is true. Le Panini Talk 10:42, 18 November 2020 (UTC)
@Le Panini: I think that, especially with video games and fictional characters, permastubs are rather rare and usually just evidence of non-notability. But there could be some, which is why I think trying to target all pages is futile.ZXCVBNM (TALK) 10:49, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

Alright, this conversation has petered out; I've gone ahead and added the "50 GT/FTs" and "All Mid/High/Tops C+ class" goals. As a note: while the majority of the offenders on the second goal are Mid/Starts, there's 118 High/Starts and 72 Mid/Stubs that are much lower-hanging fruit. A couple citations and a few sentences would bump most of those up a level without much stress, or deciding that maybe Starglider 2 isn't one of our ~700 most-important articles would also start clearing it out. --PresN 05:39, 25 November 2020 (UTC)

deciding that maybe Starglider 2 isn't one of our ~700 most-important articles I will bear this burden. --Izno (talk) 05:42, 25 November 2020 (UTC)
PresN, Thanks, been waiting for a reply. Le Panini Talk 03:52, 1 December 2020 (UTC)

Reliability of Adventure Gamers as a source?

I'm working on some older game articles and detailed sources are scarce. But I found this really thorough interview at Adventure Gamers, and wanted to be sure it was still considered a reliable source. It's mentioned as reliable here. It's certainly used in a few featured articles. Shooterwalker (talk) 17:26, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

@Shooterwalker: I do not have much experience with AG, but: interviews, assuming there is no doubt that they are genuine, can be seen as self-published sources and be used - just not for overly self-serving statements, and they do not on their own demonstrate notability.--AlexandraIDV 19:22, 30 November 2020 (UTC)
I know there were a couple editors who leaned on AG pretty heavily in the creation of their “edutainment” type articles, but quite frankly, I think it was more because it helped their efforts more than it was due to them ever advancing a valid argument on how they were a reliable source. Sergecross73 msg me 19:27, 30 November 2020 (UTC)
Going back over it, the appears to be a few reasons that it's been used in FA's and GA's. First reason seems to be that published books consider it a reliable source, particularly for interviews. Which is really the main thing I want to use this for. What's just as important is that they have an editor-in-chief which sends a strong signal of editorial review. I could see how someone might want a little more certainty before they use this to verify notability or extraordinary claims, but to establish their interviews as reliable I'd be pretty satisfied. Would Sergecross73 or anyone else have any other concerns or factors to weigh? Shooterwalker (talk) 00:59, 2 December 2020 (UTC)

Is there an easy way to search Famitsu or Dengeki archives?

right now I'm attempting to fix Patapon, Patapon 2, and Patapon 3. I remember a couple of years back some information that was once easy to find on Famitsu, now I can't find it at all. I suspect I'm just not searching the right way anymore. I think this topic came up in the past but I was just wondering if anyone found a way to search for older information.Blue Pumpkin Pie Chat Contribs 01:52, 2 December 2020 (UTC)

I don't know about news articles, but regarding Famitsu cross-review scores, I just added instructions for finding them at Wikipedia:WikiProject Video games/Reference library/Famitsu TarkusABtalk/contrib 05:31, 2 December 2020 (UTC)
@Blue Pumpkin Pie: As to the articles, I've found the best way of finding them is to put the Japanese title and website url into Google and search through using translate, with an emphasis on the article dates. The articles still exist, it's just that those websites' new search engines aren't that efficient. That method's how I found an interview regarding the WonderSwan port for Romancing SaGa. --ProtoDrake (talk) 09:44, 2 December 2020 (UTC)
@ProtoDrake: The only downside for me is I don't remember any the article dates.Blue Pumpkin Pie Chat Contribs 15:05, 2 December 2020 (UTC)
@Blue Pumpkin Pie: What I mean is, when you're in Google (at least when I'm in google), the search engine shows the date of an article. If those don't show, then look at the URL type. For games of that period, this URL type (https://www.famitsu.com/game/coming/2007/08/25/104,1188035689,77026,0,0.html) is found in Famitsu and this type (https://dengekionline.com/data/news/2007/12/19/827c3f31641f6244ee970c41acf47d22.html) for Dengeki. An example search for, say, the first game which got me the latter would be "パタポン 2007 dengekionline.com". --ProtoDrake (talk) 19:15, 2 December 2020 (UTC)
@ProtoDrake: i attempted the same search and it's no longer available for Patapon 2 and 3. I'll attempt again.Blue Pumpkin Pie Chat Contribs 13:49, 3 December 2020 (UTC)
@Blue Pumpkin Pie: Try putting quote marks around the game's title, that should force the search to narrow down if it's throwing up the wrong results or no relevant results. --ProtoDrake (talk) 13:50, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Wrath of the Darkhul King peer review

Hello everyone. If possible, I would greatly appreciate any feedback on my current peer review on Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Wrath of the Darkhul King. I would like to nominate this for a FAC sometime next year, but since I have very little experience with video game articles, I would greatly appreciate any feedback on how to improve this article prior to a FAC. Thank you in advance! Aoba47 (talk) 01:46, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

Aoba47, I already gave feedback, but this link:, WP:MOS/VG is the policy and guidelines for video game articles. Also, the Wikipedia:WikiProject Video games/Search engine, which is basically google but it only shows reliable video game sources. Le Panini Talk 01:49, 3 December 2020 (UTC)
Thank you for both sources! The search engine is particularly helpful, as it would help to weed out any unreliable sources to focus completely on those considered reliable. Aoba47 (talk) 01:51, 3 December 2020 (UTC)
@Aoba47: Quick eyeball source check (see WP:VG/S in case you didn't get there from the search engine page), your citations to Giant Bomb at #6 and #28 and GameRankings at #14 are UGC. (Cheats are not really stuff for our wikis too unless it's one of the well known ones e.g. the Konami code; see also WP:VGSCOPE#3.) KinuyoYamashita.com at #19 is self-published and should probably be verified through either the manual or game credits instead - if not present in those places, he's probably not important-enough. The rest of the sources look fine though the citations should use the correct parameters, and the cite journals should be cite magazines. --Izno (talk) 05:14, 3 December 2020 (UTC)
@Izno: Thank you for the advice and links. I have removed the cheat codes per your suggestion. I have also removed most instances of Giant Bomb except for one. Currently, it is the only reference I have for the game's UK release so I will do further research to see if I can find a more appropriate source as a replacement (and if not, I will just remove that date entirely). I will remove GameRankings, make the adjustments to the magazine citations, and revise the Kinuyo Yamashita part later this week. Apologies in advance as this is probably super obvious, but what does UGC mean? Aoba47 (talk) 05:28, 3 December 2020 (UTC)
@Aoba47: Looks like you got the use of Gamerankings where it was inappropriate. Consider whether its use as an aggregator is merited based on the age of the game and a comparison to Metacritic; 1-2% difference probably not; otherwise maybe yeah. WP:UGC, user-generated content. I took care of the magazine citations. --Izno (talk) 05:32, 3 December 2020 (UTC)
@Izno: Thank you for the edits and explanation. I have used Wikipedia for a while, anod it is nice to continually learn new things. The magazines were added by another user before I started working on this article, and I completely forgot to look at them. According to an early draft, the GameRankings was 49.70, which is a five point difference from Metacritic and probably not different enough to be notable. Could you point out where GameRankings is still used in the article as I am likely reading over it? Aoba47 (talk) 05:42, 3 December 2020 (UTC)
I completely forgot to look at them Sounds like you have some more work to do. ;) I was saying that GR is not included in the article any more; you pulled it when you yanked the Cheats. --Izno (talk) 06:17, 3 December 2020 (UTC)
I definitely do lol. Thank you for the explanation. Aoba47 (talk) 16:46, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

Paper Mario: The Origami King featured article candidate

I'm one step further than peer review, and was wondering if anybody would care to give their opinions on the featured article candidate for Paper Mario: The Origami King. I'd be willing to review a good article nomination in exchange, if you give me a name. Le Panini Talk 13:15, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

Scaling a fair use image

I don't have the tools to be able to scale down the image properly. I'm on Chromebook, and I don't have access to the image scaling programs. Is there another way I could do this, or does someone else have the ability to do it? Le Panini Talk 00:51, 4 December 2020 (UTC)

The bot will get it for you. -- ferret (talk) 01:13, 4 December 2020 (UTC)
Ferret, That's what I'm resorting to, but it took a month over at Super Mario Bros. 35. I'm fearing the image reviewers are gonna keep responding with "hey, fix that". Le Panini Talk 02:40, 4 December 2020 (UTC)
Le Panini, try resizeimage.net. Do you want to use the full picture or the cropped one? Enjoyer of World(bother me...) 03:58, 4 December 2020 (UTC)
Except you can scale on a chromebook. Double click the image to open it in Gallery and click the rescale icon at the top. TarkusABtalk/contrib 04:26, 4 December 2020 (UTC)
TarkusAB, Didn't know this. I have a feeling that it scaled the image a bit in resolution too, however. Does it look fine? Le Panini Talk 10:55, 4 December 2020 (UTC)
You want to change the resolution, that's what scaling is. The size is acceptable now (as long as the width times the height is less than 100,000), but I think cropping screenshots and not saying so is misleading. I think you should share the full screenshot without any cropping, but if you need to crop it to show detail, say that it's a crop in the image description and caption. The largest a 1920 x 1080 screenshot should be scaled down to is 421 x 237. TarkusABtalk/contrib 13:11, 4 December 2020 (UTC)

New VG Ebook bundle

90 books on retro video games for a $30-min, portion going to charities over at Story Bundle Story Bundle --Masem (t) 18:15, 5 December 2020 (UTC)

Awesome deal, good source, if only I had money. Judging by the lack of comments, nobody else does either. Le Panini Talk 10:48, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

On on VG cat renaming

I have seen a number of large-scale category renames (not in VG) which are generated related to fictional works that replace cats named something like "X in media type" to "Media type about X", for example, Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2020 November 23#Category:Astronomical locations in fiction. This is something that seems to be standardizing across the category structure *and* helps to emphasis these should not be used trivially (that is, just because one character in the work happens to be LGBT but the game doesn't make any deal about it, that does not make the game appropriate in the cat "Video games about LGBT themes".)

I've used AWB to assemble and ween out the various "X in video games" cats we have over at User:Masem/vgcats-rename. I'd like a check of these if there's any to be removed or changed before I recommend a similar mass nom over at CFD. --Masem (t) 18:22, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

Tangentially related, this revert I did for "LGBT related video games" -- ferret (talk) 18:52, 8 December 2020 (UTC)
Some of these are categories of "X video game characters" rather than "video games about X", like Category:King characters in video games and Category:LGBT characters in video games, and probably should be excluded from such a CFD nom.--AlexandraIDV 19:15, 8 December 2020 (UTC)
That's why I want to have the list checked before I create a nom to exclude those types of categories. Though, arguably, there are probably some bad categorizations in these ones where games are included rather than characters. --Masem (t) 23:21, 8 December 2020 (UTC)
I went through my list and spot-checked most that were called "x characters in video games" and affirmed all were lists of characters in games (not lists of games) so have removed those, leaving a far shorter list to handle for category moves. --Masem (t) 15:03, 9 December 2020 (UTC)
Category:Player progress tracking in video games appears to actually contain only articles about player progress tracking (experience points, etc.), so it's different from the rest. --PresN 17:41, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

The Game Awards 2020

The Game Awards 2020 are soon! Be sure to update your award templates.

EST - 7:00 PM Today

PST - 4:00 PM Today

CET - 1 AM December 11

UTC - Midnight December 11

Also, the new Smash Bros. fighter is gonna be announced. Lets see who updates the article first. Le Panini Talk 20:33, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

Congratulations to Masem for being the one to do so. Le Panini Talk 00:53, 11 December 2020 (UTC)

Game companies Legend Entertainment and Accolade

I just put in a bunch of work on both of these, with hopes of eventually taking them to GA status. Legend is probably close, but Accolade needs at least one or two more passes, and probably deeper dive in my research.

I wanted to ask if anyone who remembers the 90s game industry had any constructive criticism, mainly on whether there's any glaring omissions. I think Accolade published over 100 titles and it's hard to know which titles to go into, if I'm trying to be "comprehensive". This is also an issue for Legend, albeit to a lesser extent since they only put out 20 titles as a niche company. Shooterwalker (talk) 04:54, 4 December 2020 (UTC)

@Shooterwalker: The awards section for Legend feels off; to start with because it's in reverse-time order, but also because it's a lot of different magazines. Might be worth combining as "notes" in an expanded gameography section, as that section currently doesn't have details like the Accolade table does. Speaking of, that table is pushing the edge of how long it should be in an article; it may be worth breaking out into something like List of 3D Realms games, up to you. --PresN 23:05, 8 December 2020 (UTC)
The feedback helps. Thanks a lot. Shooterwalker (talk) 03:26, 11 December 2020 (UTC)

DMC5

Should Devil May Cry 5's special edition be commented alongside the original? It's a game for different newer consoles but it's more or less the same stuff. Some users already put the metacrtic scores alongside vanilla so I'm confused about that. I did created the Devil May Cry 4: Special Edition but there was more material to give it its own article. Cheers.Tintor2 (talk) 11:45, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

The Special Edition should very much not have its own article. It definitely falls into the "minor changes" category of remasters. The main game only released last year after all.ZXCVBNM (TALK) 15:28, 10 December 2020 (UTC)
I agree with Zxcvbnm, a new mode, character, visual updates, and an option for faster combat isn’t even close to enough for it to be an article, I’d imagine it would be classified as a stub at best if there was minimal retreading of the original article’s contents. UGM9 (talk) 00:18, 12 December 2020 (UTC)

New Articles (November 28 to December 5)

Main page: Wikipedia:WikiProject Video games/New article announcements
 A listing of all articles newly added to the Video Games Wikiproject (regardless of creation date). Generated by v3.4 of the RecentVGArticles script and posted by PresN. Bug reports and feature requests are appreciated. --PresN 23:16, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

November 30

December 1

December 2

December 3

December 4

  • None

December 5

Bot is paused, so a few days missing at the end- will reappear when the bot is turned back on. --PresN 23:16, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

@PresN: I think an issue happened with the article I created as it isn't on the list. It was the Pac-Man 40th Anniversary and it was created on November 30. Thank you in advance. CaptainGalaxy 10:43, 9 December 2020 (UTC)
@Captain Galaxy: Added, looking into why it was skipped. --PresN 14:12, 9 December 2020 (UTC)
I have started a merge discussion for Age of Empires III: Definitive Edition (and one for Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition) here and here. All opinions are welcomed. OceanHok (talk) 12:23, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

Boz article creations

Do we need to discuss some of these articles created by BOZ. Some of these are just awful. I can’t even tell what The Seven Spirits of Ra is supposed to be. They don’t establish notability or tell the reader anything of substance in the prose. I feel like there’s a few of these every week... Sergecross73 msg me 17:26, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

Cross referencing their contributions, they are adding to the VG Reference library by documenting the games that are covered in depth in each issue [12] which is a good thing, but then extending that to make articles on those games based on only that one source, which is not per WP:N and our general guidelines. --Masem (t) 17:33, 10 December 2020 (UTC)
In that case, are some of those eligible for WP:AFD? Lord Sjones23 (talk - contributions) 17:37, 10 December 2020 (UTC)
I would consider if they can be merged to developer's articles first; if we're dealing with companies long-since dead with no linkable places, then PROD'ing first. But we should make sure BOZ is clear that they shouldn't be creating these with just this one source. They can make sensible redirects and keep up cataloging the magazines, that's extremely helpful. --Masem (t) 17:40, 10 December 2020 (UTC)
(edit conflict) Yeah, it’s great that someone’s out there creating rare articles, but not when you’re making them like this. Unless he’s got something else cooking, (probably not, he hasn’t edited it in a full week now) I feel like stuff like this should be going to AFD, since a bold redirect isn’t possible as far as I can. But I could be wrong, because I can’t hardly tell anything about the subject... Sergecross73 msg me 17:42, 10 December 2020 (UTC)
Sometimes a stub or redirect can be worse than a red link... see WP:REDLINK, because it doesn't encourage people to make their own, more "complete" articles. So I personally don't really approve of creating stubs just to be "there". The problem is that it's pretty unlikely anyone will ever expand most of these retro game perma-stubs. It would be better if he made 10 featured articles on retro games than 1000 stubs on bottom of the barrel older games.ZXCVBNM (TALK) 18:20, 10 December 2020 (UTC)
Hey all, I would recommend discussing this with BOZ directly before AFDing things. I've been working through the backlog of games that lack cover art and have raised concerns regarding at least one of his article as potentially lacking notability. He addressed the issue pretty quickly and was very responsive to my concerns. My understanding is that he is working through some old editions of Computer Gaming World and creating articles for games from the 1980s that lack pages. You'd be surprised at the sort of coverage he's found (or at least I was). I think he occasionally creates articles about games that are arguably too obscure to justify a page, but a lot of the pages he creates are about games that *did* receive significant coverage back at the time of their release in reliable periodicals (and have some minimal coverage online) and I think probably deserve a page. So I would try to work the issues out with him before AFDing things as I suspect he'll be willing to work with you all. Perhaps if you post on his talkpage, he'll respond, he's been pretty active in the past few months. DocFreeman24 (talk) 18:33, 10 December 2020 (UTC)
That could work. Lord Sjones23 (talk - contributions) 18:40, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

I will retire from video game articles, although I enjoyed participating and working on them. I did not mean to be controversial. My apologies for any bad situations or feelings I may have caused. BOZ (talk) 18:59, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

You don’t necessarily need to stop altogether, you just need to stop doing it like this. You need to follow the basics like anyone else - like illustrate that they, for example, meet the WP:GNG. Sergecross73 msg me 19:08, 10 December 2020 (UTC)
I'd go a bit further than that and say that they should really not be stubs if possible, per WP:PUTEFFORT. Even if it takes longer, stubs should generally be avoided for topics this obscure. Having them be start class at least would be significantly more useful.ZXCVBNM (TALK) 19:11, 10 December 2020 (UTC)
I agree. He barely defines the subject in my example above. The rest is mostly a pull quote for reception...which means little because it’s thoughts on something that’s barely even defined. Sergecross73 msg me 19:18, 10 December 2020 (UTC)
I agree on principle, but I don't really agree in practice. WP:NODEADLINE and all. If notability is established with multiple sources, then placing those sources there is a lot of effort already, especially for obscure topics. I agree there should be sources for GNG, but past that there's no policy that forbids an article. We're a bit spoiled with instant access Internet sources for all the contemporary topics. —  HELLKNOWZ   ▎TALK 20:07, 10 December 2020 (UTC)
To be clear, BOZ is commonly creating stub articles with just one source and hardly any prose. That’s the main sort of thing I’m objecting to. Sergecross73 msg me 20:20, 10 December 2020 (UTC)
I've been thinking about this issue every time I saw the abundance of articles. The sources are notable, and Computer Gaming World references some inside their review too. Some of these can be greatly expanded; Hoops (1986 video game) was a stub, and I nominated it for deletion, only to discover how much material there is for it. This can be considered for most of these articles, but not all. No hard feelings for him, though. Le Panini Talk 20:25, 10 December 2020 (UTC)
I've assessed most of BOZ's articles over the past few days and I support his efforts in trying to help out. Lord Sjones23 (talk - contributions) 20:27, 10 December 2020 (UTC)
Certainly, if as Boz is adding to the Reference works list and finds that a game is now listed in 3 of the works, then that's a good reason to say that we can likely expand to a decent article even from those three sources, and they should be encouraged to create it on that basis (meeting the GNG). It doesn't have to be a fleshed out article to start - the stubs that are being created are fine as long as the three sources are in there. Its the single source and stub that is of question. But we also still want to encourage this indexing since as best I know we don't have any other resource like that and that's extremely helpful. Its not that any of these can't be expanded in the future, just that the work to find more sources should be done first. --Masem (t) 21:13, 10 December 2020 (UTC)
In regards to BOZ's articles, that reminded me that i need to find sources for the 3DO articles he created. I'll get to them once i'm done with a personal project on my sandbox... Roberth Martinez (talk) 21:40, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

It is better that I stop altogether, at least for the foreseeable future. I don't want to be the center of controversy, which clearly, this is. BOZ (talk) 22:50, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

Fwiw, I think BOZ does some good work. For one, they have over 4,200 created articles, which is hearty amount. The issues arise because these articles aren't particular deep. The arguments between a redlink and a one sentence stub aside, I feel that if they are simply working through magazines, and writing articles based on that, it isn't altogether bad work, but probably not suitable for mainspace. Might I suggest that these get continued to be created, as a base for any user to expand with another source or two? If BOZ is working through backdated copies of magazines, then inevitably they will also get reviews from other magazines, which would then give them a bit more content. I'd hate to drive someone away when the work could be helpful. I know this isn't the first time this has been talked about. Perhaps leaving them in some sort of container for drafts that we have an index for as a wikiproject would be a good idea, one that we promote when we hit three or more sources? (Not that I'm saying they therefor meet GNG of course.) Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 23:03, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

I want to say that I think this whole discussion is a disgrace. Over the years, BOZ has done more for WPVG than most of the editors here. He broke ground with his work in the late 2000s and early 2010s by adding every single Dragon magazine review to every relevant page, creating little articles wherever necessary. He did the same with every single review ever published in Next Generation magazine, a feat that still boggles my mind. How many other editors in WPVG can claim an achievement like that? I certainly can't, and I've been here since 2005. The dedication alone is unbelievable. Some of you have a problem with BOZ's way of creating rapid-fire stubs to ensure that his source-adding projects take a few years rather than a few decades. Instead of harassing one of WPVG's most dedicated editors into quitting, as you appear to have done, consider following his example and expanding those articles with sources. It's not that hard. Many of the pages that BOZ has created have since grown into Start-, C-, B-, GA- and even FA-class articles with the help of other editors, many of whom would never have started the pages themselves. Let effective editors edit the way they're able to be most effective, and be effective yourselves by picking up whatever slack remains. The idea that WPVG would somehow be "better" if we stopped BOZ's incredibly generous, decade-long contribution of time and effort is not only laughable—it's kind of sad, and shows the worst side of Wikipedia behavior. JimmyBlackwing (talk) 00:02, 11 December 2020 (UTC)

Do you think we opened a pandora's box on this one? Lord Sjones23 (talk - contributions) 00:44, 11 December 2020 (UTC)
I don't see any evidence of harassment here whatsoever. No one said anything about forcing him to stop editing, that was something he brought up himself a la WP:IQUIT. People were simply commenting, objectively, on articles with no proof of notability.ZXCVBNM (TALK) 01:33, 11 December 2020 (UTC)
You're comparing this to IQUIT? What a passive-aggressive accusation to make against someone who's been editing constructively in good faith, along these exact lines, for over a decade. This is literally the reason why Wikipedia's been bleeding its best editors for years now—hard workers get thrown under the bus, thanklessly, time and time again. As he said, all he's trying to do is avoid a scene. Who can blame him after a thread like this? It's an embarrassment for the project. None of us are perfect editors; we all have our specialties. BOZ has been faithfully executing his specialty for a very, very long time, without bothering anyone. And yes, Lord Sjones23, I do think this opened a Pandora's Box, in that it's scared off one of WPVG's most productive editors and resulted in a very obvious net loss for the project. What exactly has been achieved here? Are we pleased with ourselves? JimmyBlackwing (talk) 02:56, 11 December 2020 (UTC)
  • I think it's all friendly, and hopefully a misunderstanding. I've dug through some of those ancient magazines and what BOZ is doing is extremely valuable. If the games are in those magazines, they are almost definitely notable. It's just painstaking work to actually develop them into articles. I would be harder on the articles if they were cobbling together web sources for some mobile game, but these are games that lived through an awkward phase before the internet and were almost definitely notable. I could see how someone might recommend a merge, assuming there's a suitable target with the developer or publisher. Shooterwalker (talk) 02:02, 11 December 2020 (UTC)
I appreciate their work, but the articles need more general attention instead of creating them and moving on. That was the only issue I had, not the fact that "these article are stupid get rid of them", rather "it could happen it just need more work" (like my Hoops (1986 video game) example above). I have tried to expand these articles before, but Computer Gaming World is one of the only sources that's blocked on my Chromebook entirely. I understand that (most of) these articles are notable and that he's done good work. We never said "stop bro" like you suggested. Le Panini Talk 02:28, 11 December 2020 (UTC)
I never said you said that either. I really meant it when I said this is all friendly, and any defensiveness is probably coming from a misunderstanding. Let's try to bring the temperature down and say a few nice things about each other. We're all here to improve the encyclopedia. Working on the more obscure retro game articles is thankless work, and we'll figure out a solution. Shooterwalker (talk) 18:55, 11 December 2020 (UTC)
  • To be clear, no one except Boz, wants Boz to stop altogether. We want him to create articles that have more than one source to them. Sergecross73 msg me 02:52, 11 December 2020 (UTC)
  • As I believe I've said before at least once, like Jimmy, I find Boz's work good, categorically. I do understand the concerns of notability, etc. A suggestion I might recommend would be to channel each of these travels into public-facing lists, not of the magazines themselves (we have the ref library for that, which I hope Box fills in with each issue of each mag he goes through), but of the devloper or publishing companies. It can be an stand alone list (as might be warranted for Sega) or an embedded list on an article about the company (whether in tabular or prose form). I know the olden days might not clearly lay out the company or the company might have been a one hit wonder scenario, but I know it has helped bridge a gap with an article he created before that took a turn at AFD; now we have list of play-by-mail games, expanded by another user who has done a similar thing as Boz does. --Izno (talk) 04:48, 11 December 2020 (UTC)
  • From my experience working on older articles from before the current state of game journalism, I can say what helps, and that BOZ is definitely helping the state of our game coverage, albeit in a quick way. What would help more are the actual links. I was able to bring Star Control 3 up to GA with a lot of info coming from this list Talk:Star_Control_3#Source. (Incidentally, created by User:JimmyBlackwing, so thanks for that.) I'm now working on Legend Entertainment and I had some help similarly with these. In my experience, accessing those links is really helpful for someone who comes along to work on a stub (let alone attempt to AFD it). It happens naturally for modern game articles with web journalism, but it's less straight forward for 1980s games sourced to magazines. That's what's creating the challenge here. It's still praiseworthy to create an article that is sourced to a magazine with a raw text citation, and we should see it as the first step in the collaborative editing process to creating a good article. An archive link would make it easier for editors to take the second step to expanding a stub, but I'm trying to keep my criticism constructive, so that I'm supporting that first step too. Shooterwalker (talk) 19:10, 11 December 2020 (UTC)
Thanks for the appreciation. :) Anyone who wants to use it for the benefit of sourcing mostly 20th century retro games, I started or greatly built everything under Wikipedia:WikiProject Video games/Reference library#Non-video game oriented / general computing magazines (except for "Commodore User", which was my next goal), as well as a few others including under the main games-only section including Wikipedia:WikiProject Video games/Reference library/Electronic Fun with Computers & Games and Wikipedia:WikiProject Video games/Reference library/Electronic Games and Wikipedia:WikiProject Video games/Reference library/Videogaming Illustrated, and some big cleanup on Wikipedia:WikiProject Video games/Reference library/Softline. Hopefully you all get some use on that, and someone picks up where I left off. :) BOZ (talk) 19:27, 11 December 2020 (UTC)
Thanks again for all your hard work. This has been a very disillusioning thread. JimmyBlackwing (talk) 20:22, 11 December 2020 (UTC)
In a period where we struggle with editor retention, BOZ has helped the project in more ways than one. Lord Sjones23 (talk - contributions) 23:18, 11 December 2020 (UTC)
Why don't I see you around more often? Le Panini [🥪] 01:10, 12 December 2020 (UTC)
  • I interviewed BOZ for the WP:VG Newsletter back in 2014 and from our discussion I got the sense that he was at core an incrementalist. It's true that many of the new articles BOZ creates are stubs or even sub-stubs so in some way it might create work for reviewers and AfD watchers, but I find value in the liminal tension between WP:GNG which sets up the minimal expectation and WP:BEFORE which exhorts reviewers to search for RSes and expand before deleting. Perhaps some of BOZ' low-level stubs are provocative but the way I figure it this provocation may well spur some editors to edit to save the stubs and from there to expand them to proper articles. Deletion is always an option and I don't get the sense that BOZ takes deletions personally. Providing paper-based and historical coverage for historical VG topics is a very important and often arduous task and as this is BOZ' primary form of addition I must applaud it. I can see how the efforts can appear minimal in relation to the desired final form of a single article/topic, but considered from a broader perspective I see more positive than negative in the efforts BOZ has made. -Thibbs (talk) 02:38, 12 December 2020 (UTC)

I need a name for an article

So I'm currently trying to create an article about the current controversy in the Nintendo community, with mostly a focus on #freemelee but also the stuff with Etika joycons and GilvaSunner. However, I don't have an approprate name for the article itself. Does anyone have a good suggestion for the article? CaptainGalaxy 15:36, 13 December 2020 (UTC)

Captain Galaxy, Maybe Nintendo controversies and redirect Controversy in Nintendo. Le Panini [🥪] 15:45, 13 December 2020 (UTC)
Criticism of Nintendo would follow the other articles in Category:Criticisms of companies. Criticism for their lack of support for fan events and such could fall into that, although it should preferably be prevented from being given the WP:UNDUE treatment by putting it alongside other criticisms. One prominent issue that comes to mind is their use of conflict minerals. I believe an article solely about #freemelee would run afoul of WP:NOTOPINION.ZXCVBNM (TALK) 16:20, 13 December 2020 (UTC)
Yeah, be careful. This is scary territory. The melee fans are upset. Le Panini [🥪] 16:24, 13 December 2020 (UTC)
Gamers are mad all the time. “The game isn’t good enough”. “The game was delayed”. “The company won’t let me do whatever I want.” “The developers removed the digital boobies from my anime game.” It’s always something. This is nothing new or noteworthy. Last year Nintendo fans were raging because there weren’t enough Pokemon or whatever in their upcoming game. It’ll be something else next month too. Sergecross73 msg me 19:29, 13 December 2020 (UTC)
(That's actually a fair point.) Le Panini [🥪] 19:38, 13 December 2020 (UTC)
FYI, We generally don’t want to even be naming sections with the word controversy, let alone entire articles. I’m not entirely sure there’s a collective article here anyways, it sounds like a number of unrelated events of fans whining about a company being protective of their intellectual property. Sergecross73 msg me 18:50, 13 December 2020 (UTC)
Please see Talk:Nintendo where a similar argument about a separate article for controversies related to Nintendo have been been brought up and refuted. Basically, Nintendo may have issues they get criticized by fans for, and are well known to be overly protective of IP, but unlike Electronic Arts where their business practices have been discussed and criticized in mainstream sources, most of the criticism at Nintendo is fan-derived and not well documents, so we should not be making separate articles for it. --Masem (t) 19:00, 13 December 2020 (UTC)
I think that there is an article to be found here, you're just going to have to trust me here. I'm currently creating the article in my Sandbox so you're going to have to give me time on it. Once I'm done with then you can review it and likely shut it down. I think this specific outrage is worthy of an article because of how quickly it spread into other none related gaming avenues, such as The Game Awards. I'm currently also not struggling for notability either if that helps, with over 10 different notable website, some of which giving there own opinion on the situation such as Nintendo Life. However, I'll give the draft a bit of time just to see how long the outrage continues for. CaptainGalaxy 20:09, 13 December 2020 (UTC)
If the sandbox being referred to is User:Captain Galaxy/sandbox it will need quite a bit of work since I don’t see any evidence form reliable sources that there is a 2020 Nintendo boycott.--65.92.160.124 (talk) 21:19, 13 December 2020 (UTC)
That was just a placeholder name because I for some reason forgot the word controversy or criticism at the time and couldn't think of a good name, which is why this request even exist. CaptainGalaxy 21:28, 13 December 2020 (UTC)
So far it seems like the stuff in that draft would be better off integrated into The Big House (tournament)#The Big House 10 where it would be much better off.ZXCVBNM (TALK) 00:00, 14 December 2020 (UTC)
A potential article about Slippi might be a good host to it as well. (Oinkers42) (talk) 00:05, 14 December 2020 (UTC)
@(Oinkers42):@Zxcvbnm: I'd be down for either. I think I should fix up the Sandbox article first, but it seems the general consensus is for the information to be split into other articles. CaptainGalaxy 00:19, 14 December 2020 (UTC)
Upon learning The Big House article exists, I agree. Sergecross73 msg me 01:39, 14 December 2020 (UTC)
I think creating a synthesis article on multiple Q4 2020 Nintendo controversies is a bad idea. The copyright controversy and the #FreeMelee controversy are largely unrelated. I am fairly neutral on "Criticism of [company]" articles, though. I could see #FreeMelee working as a standalone article, but I might give it a bit more time. For now, a new section in Super Smash Bros. in esports might be a better idea. Ninendo's applications of copyright have always been covered there. ~Maplestrip/Mable (chat) 10:03, 14 December 2020 (UTC)

Some new editors need a gentle introduction to wiki-notability

I think they are probably under 20, so someone who is under 30 or so or someone who spends a lot of time with people under 20 is a lot more qualified than me to welcome them in a way that will "reach" them.

The article, which is almost certainly going to die at AFD, is Smileghost (Innyume) (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs). All of the contributors probably need a nice Wiki-welcome, along the lines of "most games can't have an article, but here's how you CAN help..." or something like that. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 🎄 04:34, 14 December 2020 (UTC)

Be careful to not bite new users. Maybe recommending them to articles for creation might work. (Oinkers42) (talk) 12:52, 14 December 2020 (UTC)

Among Us Crewmate and Impostor and Their Notability

Recently pages were created on the Crewmate and Impostor from the game Among Us. The pages were nominated for speedy deletion shortly after the pages were created, but it was prevented. Now, they have been nominated for a full deletion discussion (See here for Impostor discussion and here for Crewmate discussion). I believe that the Crewmate and Impostor are notable, not just because of the surge in Among Us's popularity, but the fact that they've become highly popular characters. Their are hundreds of newspaper articles on them, and many which focus solely on the characters themselves. The deletion, however, claims that they are not inherently notable. Any thoughts? Squid45 (talk) 18:50, 14 December 2020 (UTC)

You should be making your arguments at the respective deletion discussions, not here. That said, as you join those, you should read up on WP:NOTINHERITED, as some of your stance, and much of the article content, seems to rely on a premise that is not considered valid in deletion discussions. Just because the game is notable doesn’t mean it’s characters are. Sergecross73 msg me 19:01, 14 December 2020 (UTC)
To explain further the issue, while there probably are lots of sources about both characters, its all tied too strongly with talking about Among Us directly; there's no separate coverage of the characters distinguished from the gameplay in these sources. Thus they are inappropriate splits from the Among Us article. --Masem (t) 19:07, 14 December 2020 (UTC)
As per Mr. Game and Watch, they're just empty shells of characters, aren't they? They aren't Mario, with personality, significant coverage, and history, they're just jelly beans. Le Panini [🥪] 19:08, 14 December 2020 (UTC)
Yup, exactly, just like Steve from Minecraft too - the games are wildly popular, but since the characters are more or less empty shell avatars, they don’t really end up getting the attention they need to meet our notability standards. Sergecross73 msg me 19:12, 14 December 2020 (UTC)
The "shell character" is an excellent way of distinguishing these types of characters from the more "crafted" ones. --Masem (t) 19:15, 14 December 2020 (UTC)

Possible StarCraft FAR approaching

Please see Hog Farm's message at Talk:StarCraft (video game) regarding unreliable source usage. -- ferret (talk) 14:20, 15 December 2020 (UTC)

If all that it is is unreliable sourcing this could be fixable. GamerPro64 19:14, 15 December 2020 (UTC)

Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door

I'm working on Super Paper Mario right now (and its not that good condition-wise, so any help would be appreciated), but took a look at Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door. However, I don't think this meets the good article criteria anymore, mainly of which numbers 1 and 2. There is a lot of prose and hard to read content, and goes into excessive detail sometimes. There are also a lot of original research with some parts not having citation. It's also has little info about development, but that's probably only how much is available. Should this be demoted, yes or no? Even if it does, does it really matter if I'm going to fix it later and re-nominate it anyways? Le Panini [🥪] 13:13, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

I don't see the need to voluntarily drag it through all that litigation. If you're already set on improving it, just improve it and move on. The GA process is there to encourage and reward article improvement, it's not like a law of quality or anything. TarkusABtalk/contrib 15:09, 16 December 2020 (UTC)
TarkusAB, That's what I thought. I was thinking "why demote it if I'm gonna promote it?" Le Panini [🥪] 15:11, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

The 'Plot' section of this article was copied verbatim from the Ratchet & Clank Fandom page. Thankfully, the page is licensed under CC-BY-SA, so it's probably possible to leave this up until some editor who feels like killing an hour creates a new one in its place (being copied verbatim in its entirety, I think it's best to just scrap this and start from scratch without even using the original as a reference).

In case you're wondering: the edit that added this 'Plot' section to Wikipedia was submitted on September 27, 2013. Meanwhile, the original source of the material that User:RahulRamdhany (let's call a spade a spade) plagiarized was submitted to Fandom on December 1, 2012.

I just stumbled across this while editing (I decided to check, because the lack of explanation for side characters like the Plumber made me suspicious), so if anyone here who's more knowledgeable about this sort of thing (namely properly crediting the original source) would be willing to help out, I'd be grateful. In the meantime, I've completely removed the offending material and transplanted it into the article's 'Talk' page. TheTechnician27 (Talk page) 16:35, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

Issue of Edit Warring over at Cyberpunk 2077

I would like to alert the project to this discussion over at Talk:Cyberpunk 2077. Please comment if you are able to thanks. --Deathawk (talk) 15:18, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

Video game reviews under-the-hood changes

Your feedback is requested at Template talk:Video game reviews § Current sandbox changes. Izno (talk) 17:35, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

Music video game and rhythm game

is there a difference between Music video game and Rhythm game? If not, we should merge the two.Blue Pumpkin Pie Chat Contribs 20:24, 18 December 2020 (UTC)

Yes, I think there's enough of a difference - or in that understanding the specific differences of the rhythm game genre (eg this IGN article I still have an open tab to populate articles with [13]) to see how vastly different that is from other games that are based around music-as-a-gameplay option. The music game article is right to classify rhythm games as a subgenre of it. --Masem (t) 20:34, 18 December 2020 (UTC)
I think I have concrete examples for the differences. Persona 4: Dancing All Night, Thumper and the Hatsune Miku games are rhythm games because the whole point is creating rhythm or adding to the soundscape in a predetermined pattern. But things like many works by Tetsuya Mizuguchi don't follow rhythm game patterns and are more based around the experience of the music like Rez (you add to the music, but it's organic and partly optional), or have non-rhythm gameplay like the Space Channel 5 games. --ProtoDrake (talk) 20:44, 18 December 2020 (UTC)
Yeah, that brings up the class of games like Tetris Connected and Lumines as well. --Masem (t) 21:11, 18 December 2020 (UTC)
It would be a good idea to make the Music video game article more distinct. The article isn't well-sourced and at first glance, it looks like someone attempted to make a Rhythm game article instead of a music video game article. It definitely doesn't help that the image to represent music video games is a rhythm game as well. Although I agree with the explanations given here, I think it's important to make it clearer in the article.Blue Pumpkin Pie Chat Contribs 21:52, 18 December 2020 (UTC)
I found a good book that I can the intro chapters via Google Books that makes the clear distinction of music games overall from rhythm games, of which I've tried to incorporate into that article. There's probably more out there but this is a start. --Masem (t) 00:43, 19 December 2020 (UTC)
I've left sources that might be useful on the Music Game talk page. --ProtoDrake (talk) 00:45, 19 December 2020 (UTC)

Requested move: Racing video game -> Racing game

Discussion here. Popcornfud (talk) 03:53, 19 December 2020 (UTC)

Renaming and moving of Borderlands (series)

Hello, recently it was proposed that Borderlands (series) be renamed and moved to Borderlands (video game series). Any support/oppose statements are welcome. Link to discussion page is here.SenatorLEVI (talk) 08:21, 19 December 2020 (UTC)

New Articles (December 7 to December 13)

Main page: Wikipedia:WikiProject Video games/New article announcements
 A listing of all articles newly added to the Video Games Wikiproject (regardless of creation date). Generated by v3.5 of the RecentVGArticles script and posted by PresN. Bug reports and feature requests are appreciated. --PresN 00:39, 15 December 2020 (UTC)

December 7

December 8

December 9

  • None

December 10

December 11

December 12

December 13

For the first time in a year, the script has been updated with bugfixes and feature additions! Changelog:

  • Bugfix: A draft -> mainspace move was previously ignored if the article was then reassessed later in the week
  • Bugfix: Pages where the talk page tag was removed were showing up as redirects (now ignored)
  • Bugfix: Category moves showed up as a deletion + creation due to the 1.0 bot misreading them (previously manually corrected)
  • New Feature: If a "new" article was previously a redirect, the line is appended with "(was previously a redirect)"
  • New Feature: If a "new" article was actually created weeks to years ago and was just tagged, the line is appended with "(newly tagged - originally created {diff} ago)"

--PresN 00:39, 15 December 2020 (UTC)

Nifty! Le Panini [🥪] 02:07, 15 December 2020 (UTC)
Thanks again, PresN. Whether I say it each week or not, I do look through these, and I like looking through this each week to find interesting (or problematic) article creations. It is appreciated. Sergecross73 msg me 02:22, 15 December 2020 (UTC)
Thank you for the update, PresN! I love looking at this each week to see what was created, and that 1st bugfix should definitely help me with future articles. Hope your doing well! CaptainGalaxy 14:27, 15 December 2020 (UTC)
Thanks for your work. I think it is really useful to see trends in article creation, like articles about 80s PC games, and Assassins' Creed and WoW characters. I really love the feature where it will tell you if the article was newly tagged. (Oinkers42) (talk) 14:31, 15 December 2020 (UTC)
Thanks once again, the new features are very helpful when reading through particularly the newly tagged - originally created X Ys ago. Regards  Spy-cicle💥  Talk? 16:29, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

I do wonder if it might be a better idea to redirect loot system to Loot (video games) as opposed to Loot box. Anyone have any opinions? --Lightlowemon (talk) 09:25, 19 December 2020 (UTC)

Poptropica level list

An RfD about List of Poptropica islands has re-opened a discussion about whether it's appropriate to include a list of levels at the main Poptropica article. Anyone who has applied Wikipedia policies to lists of levels might check-in on the RfD with how to proceed. Jontesta (talk) 17:18, 19 December 2020 (UTC)

Hi, what does "50 Good or Featured Topics" milestone means? Where can I find a list of video game topics? (what is "the topic" on Wikipedia, and how is it different from the regular article?) EchoBlu (talk) 07:54, 20 December 2020 (UTC)

Hi there! So a featured topic (click there for a full list of all the featured topics on Wikipedia; scroll down to video games) is just a collection of existing articles linked by something. So, for video games, a featured topic would be something like List of Final Fantasy video games (itself containing multiple articles that are at featured or Good article status. They are really flexible. You might not think Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion is a topic, but there are featured articles on its development, the time when the ESRB re-rated it, and both of its DLC. As for what 50 means, it’s simple — this project is trying to get fifty articles to Good or Featured status. I think there are currently 10, unless I'm bad at arithmetic (which, to be fair, I am). ImaginesTigers (talk) 08:15, 20 December 2020 (UTC)
@EchoBlu: Yes, pretty much that. A "Featured Topic" is a collection of connected articles, such as a series article and the articles on all the games in the series, which has gone through a nomination process at WP:FTC; one of the criteria is that more than half of the articles in the set need to be "Featured Articles" (WP:FA) or "Featured Lists" (WP:FL), while the rest need to be "Good Articles" (WP:GA). A Good Topic is the same, except that less than half of the topic is featured articles. If you check the bottom of Wikipedia:WikiProject Video games/Good content and Wikipedia:WikiProject Video games/Featured content you can see the video games topic that are currently good/featured- we have 30 Good and 10 Featured right now. The goal is basically "make an entire section good content", instead of just "make good articles". --PresN 15:12, 20 December 2020 (UTC)

Syntax inconsistency re: PlayStation

Hi there. I noticed that the PlayStation articles were the only video game consoles, commonly referred to with the definite article the, not to include the in the first sentence of the article. So, the rest of the article was referring to the consoles as "the PlayStation 4 was [...]", for example, but the lead was beginning "PlayStation 4 is a video game console [...]".

This goes against almost every other I could quickly find. See: Nintendo Wii, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, Xbox 360, Xbox Series X and S, Gamecube. All of those articles begin with "The". The only exception is when PlayStation is used as an adjective ("PlayStation 4 games").

It felt it was easier to bring the PlayStation series into line with everything else, rather than the other way around. If anyone has any objections, let me know, but it’s strange to be inconsistent in the article's lead sentence with the rest of the article. Anyone know why this might be the case? ImaginesTigers (talk) 14:41, 20 December 2020 (UTC)

I know we've had a past discussion on this but I've no idea how to locate it as all of the search terms are ridiculously common words. -- ferret (talk) 15:12, 20 December 2020 (UTC)

"its on gog now"

User:Slinkyw has added "its on gog now" to Planet's Edge, Wetlands (video game), and Zephyr (video game). Pretty sure we don't do that? But, is there a way to include this information or should it be removed altogether? 2601:243:1C80:6740:2180:D204:E3B:485D (talk) 14:07, 20 December 2020 (UTC)

I know GOG did announce these games, but we really should look for 3rd party sources to discuss the re-release via GOG; that these were older games and are being made available for newer systems is potentially notable but we should want the 3rd party sourcing. --Masem (t) 14:19, 20 December 2020 (UTC)
(edit conflict) Removed altogether, unless there's some evidence that big reliable secondary sources care for some reason. I'm doubtful. -- ferret (talk) 14:20, 20 December 2020 (UTC)
What about cases like the Xbox One version of Haven which doesn't have any reviews listed for it at Metacritic. Should the fact that the game is released on Xbox One be removed from the article? --Mika1h (talk) 17:59, 20 December 2020 (UTC)
That is where the platform appears to be one of the original target platforms for release. Just because it wasn't reviewed for it doesn't mean it wasn't released officially for it. What we're trying to avoid are re-releases under emulation as GOG games typically tend to be - remasters/remakes yes, but simple retooling to make the game workable from MSDOS to Windows isn't all that much. --Masem (t) 18:17, 20 December 2020 (UTC)
Gog isn't a platform. Gog is a storefront. The platform would be, generally, "Windows", not Gog. In reality, it's almost always DOSBox emulation, which makes Windows the required platform to run it. -- ferret (talk) 19:30, 20 December 2020 (UTC)
Something being on GOG makes zero difference, unless a RS comments that this is a particularly big deal for whatever reason. GOG isn't a platform, so we should just list windows. Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 19:32, 20 December 2020 (UTC)
If it's DOSBox, the platform should be listed as MS-DOS, not Windows. IceWelder [✉] 19:35, 20 December 2020 (UTC)
The particular edition, sold and downloaded from Gog, is a DOSBox wrapped game. That edition, therefore, requires Windows. They don't sell you a bare DOS version and then you run it in DOSBox yourself. It's an embedded release. Semantics aside, the platform is either DOS or Windows. Never Gog. -- ferret (talk) 19:43, 20 December 2020 (UTC)
First, GOG/Steam versions are official versions, they are not releasing them without license holder permission. Second, if we are starting to remove PC emulation releases then these standards should be also applied to console emulation services (Virtual Console, PSN, Xbox). --Mika1h (talk) 19:55, 20 December 2020 (UTC)
No one said they were unofficial. But GOG/Steam are not platforms. MOS:VG already covers this. We don't list stores fronts as Platforms, nor do we include backwards compatibility emulation on consoles. Already in the MOS and/or Infobox doc. -- ferret (talk) 20:20, 20 December 2020 (UTC)
This wasn't about adding it to infobox but elsewhere in the article, like the Release section. --Mika1h (talk) 20:29, 20 December 2020 (UTC)
Old games being re-released on modern storefront can definitely be mentioned in prose in Developpment/Release section (and maybe lede if makes a big splash), as long as you have the coverage in reliable sources to cite it. Ben · Salvidrim! ✉ 22:14, 20 December 2020 (UTC)

Discussion at Talk:Clannad (visual novel)

 You are invited to join the discussion at Talk:Clannad (visual novel) § Requested move 19 December 2020. Question at hand: is (visual novel) a valid form of parenthetical disambiguation for our articles? — Goszei (talk) 19:52, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

A possible cleanup task

User:IceWelder is going around converting redirects of "Steam (software)" to the proper "Steam (service)" but as these fill my watchlist, I'm realizing how many of them are for game articles. While there are some legitimate uses, we hardly should be mentioning Steam in game articles themselves (we do not care about storefronts unless this is raised by third-party sources), so there's a possible cleanup task here of stripping mention of Steam from game articles where it is unnecessary (eg where its being used as a place where the game was released with no other function). --Masem (t) 14:42, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

I agree in principle, but this would be a monumental task, since Steam is used (or at least linked to) in 3,000+ articles. It is not something as simple as an AWB run. IceWelder [✉] 18:29, 23 December 2020 (UTC)
I'd be down, the problem is there at the time of writing, 2989 main articles that mention Steam by name, not including the service's article itself. You're going to need a lot of help. CaptainGalaxy 20:06, 23 December 2020 (UTC)
Using AWB it should be possible to narrow down by using "Steam (service)" as a text search for pages in Category:Windows games. (using the work that IceWelder has done). That might miss a few but that should avoid where Steam appears in general discussions on storefronts/distribution (appropriate use). --Masem (t) 20:08, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

Template question

I recently noticed that we have a template for the StarTropics series which only has entires for the two games in the series. I question whether or not we need a two entry template.--65.92.160.124 (talk) 21:41, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

Usually we delete navboxes that small. --Izno (talk) 22:53, 23 December 2020 (UTC)
{{StarTropics series}} --PresN 01:55, 24 December 2020 (UTC)
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