Not looking to agitate the slightly dated agreement that OpenCritic is an accepted source that reliably performs the function of a review aggregator. Conceptually though, a question I am wrestling with is: are what aggregators aggregating useful or reliable measures of mainstream critical reception when we wouldn't use most of the sources they are aggregating? Are we comfortable citing an aggregator when what it captures may mostly be from those websites?
OpenCritic has an interesting double-edged dilemma: it's very open. Its coverage anecdotally seems to outpace Metacritic in finding site reviews. This would be great and indicative of a more representative aggregator with wider coverage, but the problem is that in doing so it imports reviews from a vast amount of unreliable, unassessed or obscure WP:VG/S review websites.
Take a recent game with good coverage, Balatro. Metacritic has 33 reviews comprised of 19 reliable, 2 situational, 7 unknown and 5 unreliable sources. You could say that Metacritic is far from perfect either, but despite the inclusion of a few duds, the aggregator's score is largely capturing the scores of most of the mainstream reliable sources out there on the game.
In contrast, OpenCritic has an impressive 47, consisting of 14 reliable, 3 situational, 18 unknown and 9 unreliable sources. In this case, there's more unknown or dubious sources affecting the score. For the few gems it finds that weren't captured in Metacritic, there's also just a bunch of random "by gamers for gamers" site in the mix. Not particularly a big problem though.
This issue really rears its head once you get to indie titles, where in those cases the majority of games constituting an OpenCritic score will be from unknown or unreliable sources. In that case, using the score is a bit misleading: what is being displayed is not a mainstream consensus but only that of whatever reviews the aggregator could scrape together.
Sorry for the essay, but as posed above: is having a second aggregator that captures the views of any and all reviews largely what we expect it to do for us? Is a more judicious approach needed in some cases? VRXCES ( talk) 07:52, 10 May 2024 (UTC)
Is there anyone who knows the Manual/Style on how to treat soft launches in video game infoboxes? Should they be listed as part of the official release info or be sectioned off to just the prose? For example, Plants vs. Zombies 2 soft-launched first in Australia on July 9, 2013, before having an "official" release of sorts worldwide on August 15, 2013. There was a similar case with Crash Bandicoot: On the Run!'s year-long exclusivity to Malaysia, as this is a common occurrence with mobile titles.
What is the consensus on this? Should soft-launch releases be listed in the infobox when they're defined as "rehearsals for a full release" by many? Venky64 ( talk) 12:30, 12 May 2024 (UTC)
I've crossposted this from WP:HD at the suggestion of a respondant.
There are a lot of video games (particularly from the 90s and 2000s) where two video games exist with the same title, branding, cover art, and everything-- but with different developers, on different platforms. A notable example is Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Double Agent, a less notable one being Need for Speed: Undercover.
However, there doesn't seem to be a consensus on what should be done when these games are extremely different from one another. This happens most frequently with handheld games, where the versions across systems share practically nothing beyond top-level genre and theme. If a game exists on Game Boy Advance or Nintendo DS as well as home consoles, those two games likely have next to nothing in common.
I'd like to ask for guidance as to when a game should be separated into its own article, and when it should be included as a sub-section within a top-level article. While this may seem like it has a blanket answer, I do not believe it does, and I ask that you read my examples for my explanation of why. I'd appreciate rationale so I can apply these to future articles and edits. If I should not be separating these games into their own articles, I would like advice on how to better organize information about them in existing ones, as existing articles do this in many different ways and almost always end up mixing the information in with the main article body, leaving it hard to research specifically these other versions.
Here are four examples:
Road Rash (Game Boy Color) came out in 2000 and uses the branding and theme of Road Rash (1994 video game) but the content is most similar to Road Rash II. The confusing part here is that it came out in 2000, shares a name with the 1994 game as well as Road Rash (1991 video game) but uses the content of neither. At present, the GBC version is described inline on the Road Rash II page, but little information is given and there is no reference to its relationship with the 1994 game. The 1994 game's article is already covering five other versions that share little with the GBC version, and I am concerned that introducing the GBC version into the mix would make for an overly long article that veers a bit off topic, while creating a nightmare in the Reception section. I believe Road Rash (GBC, 2000) should have its own article.
Need for Speed: Porsche Unleashed is a 2000 racing game for PlayStation and Windows. The PS1 and PC versions are wholly different videogames that share a concept and soundtrack but little else. There is also a 2004 Game Boy Advance game by the same name, which is a translation of the PC version to the handheld. It is currently only mentioned in the article's infobox. Because it shares many assets and its design with the main version, I believe these three versions of the game should share an article.
However, in stark contrast to Porsche Unleashed, later Need for Speed games exist across multiple handhelds with completely different developers. Need for Speed: ProStreet was available on home consoles as well as Nintendo DS and PlayStation Portable. The home console versions were developed by EA Black Box, while the DS and PSP games were each handed off to separate B-Teams that made completely different games. I am torn on whether these justify their own articles, but they do not make sense structurally within the existing article. The barrier is that there isn't a whole lot of acceptably sourceable information about each of these ports outside of reviews.
Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Rogue Spear is a multiplatform tactical shooter. There are significant differences between the PlayStation version and the others, but they are minor enough for WIkipedia's purposes that the PS1 version can coexist with the Dreamcast, PC and Mac ones. However, there is also a Game Boy Advance port. It is not mentioned in the body of the article at all and is a top-down game with wholly different content. It is a completely different game from the others, and I feel it warrants its own article. Similar conundrums exist for the Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell games on GBA, which are side-scrolling action games. But again, I fear I would struggle to find enough information about them without dipping into WP:OR
Please let me know how I should proceed. I am going to begin working on a draft of the Game Boy Color version of Road Rash. Kaceydotme ( talk) 04:29, 13 May 2024 (UTC)
Is there a general consensus here about full content updates being called DLC? For instance Shovel Knight, Hollow Knight and Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night all seem to use "Downloadable Content" for what is ultimately part of the game itself rather than a separate thing that one must actively download. The downloadable content seems to never mention this type of content being included in the term. Dead Cells on the other hand as a for instance more properly terms these as 'free content updates'. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ ( talk) 04:44, 13 May 2024 (UTC)
A listing of all articles newly added to the Video Games Wikiproject (regardless of creation date). Generated by v3.20 of the RecentVGArticles script and posted by PresN. Bug reports and feature requests are appreciated. -- Pres N 14:59, 13 May 2024 (UTC)
May 7
May 8
May 9
May 10
May 11
May 12
Bot came back online after a few days, so May 5-7 are scrunched up together into the 7th. And Alexandra IDV wins this weeks award for "article GAd in the same week it was created" for Shin Megami Tensei J. -- Pres N 14:59, 13 May 2024 (UTC)
Hey all, I'm having a discussion at Talk:Lucky Luna that I thought that I should escalate to the project for clarification. Basically, another editor ( Zxcvbnm) added a review box to the article, but there's only one scored review for the game. I removed the box on those grounds, but they think that we should then have that review score in the prose. The relevant section of the MOS is WP:VG/REC, which starts off saying that scores should not be in prose, but then says that that's what the review box is for, and shortly thereafter affirms that the review box itself is optional. Which can be read as a contradiction.
So, my question is: is our intention that scores should only be in the review box, whether or not the article actually has one, or that it should be in the review box if that box exists, and can be placed in the prose if the box does not? -- Pres N 19:48, 13 May 2024 (UTC)
"{{ Video game reviews}} exists for such a purpose."to
"These scores should be limited to the {{ Video game reviews}} template, if present.", to remove ambiguity for what to do if there is no reviews box. -- Pres N 01:11, 15 May 2024 (UTC)
Hi all. Video game writing is not exactly my wheelhouse, so I figured I would come here for help. (Which is not to say I don't play video games – just that I don't usually write about them.)
As a bit of background, I am a regular at WP:CFD, and as such a will sometimes help out at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Working/Manual (where discussion outcomes which cannot be handled by a bot are listed for processing). To tackle the longest-outstanding item on that list, I started "working" on Draft:List of video games with AI-versus-AI modes, which is set to replace Category:Video games with AI-versus-AI modes after Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2023 September 3#Category:Video games with AI-versus-AI modes ended with consensus to listify. (By "working", I really mean "started working but then quickly realized that I have no idea how to do this".)
Any help—from "here is how to go about doing this" or "I turned this into a FL while you weren't looking"—would be very much appreciated! Thanks, House Blaster ( talk · he/him) 02:44, 15 May 2024 (UTC)
I'm working on the Fallout 3 article on my sandbox right now, and I've realized that while writing the gameplay section, I'm copying nearly entire paragraphs from the Fallout: New Vegas gameplay section. This is because Fallout 3 and New Vegas have virtually the exact same gameplay. New Vegas did make minor tweaks, so I can't directly copy entire paragraphs, but it's damn close. If you haven't played the two games, I cannot overstate how similar they are. So my question is, is it okay to basically just copy the gameplay section of New Vegas for Fallout 3? There's only so much I can talk about that hasn't already been stated in the New Vegas article. Famous Hobo ( talk) 21:13, 15 May 2024 (UTC)
Okay. So, this is something that I saw raised by the editor Martin IIIa to explain edits to the page Deep Fear. Leaving aside my feelings on the subject, and wanting editors opinions, but do you think the GA/FA process "encourages editors to attach references to claims which they don't support"? I'm not saying they didn't have valid concerns about Deep Fear, just wanting some additional clarification in case we need to tighten up the review process. ProtoDrake ( talk) 22:08, 16 May 2024 (UTC)
Template_talk:Video_game_reviews#Early_home_computers that might be of interest. CapnZapp ( talk) 10:13, 19 May 2024 (UTC)
I have a review that was published on GamesRadar+ website and on PC Gamer UK. How should I present that information in the article? Blue Pumpkin Pie ( talk) 22:53, 20 May 2024 (UTC)
A listing of all articles newly added to the Video Games Wikiproject (regardless of creation date). Generated by v3.20 of the RecentVGArticles script and posted by PresN. Bug reports and feature requests are appreciated. -- Pres N 00:15, 21 May 2024 (UTC)
May 13
May 14
May 15
May 16
May 17
May 18
May 19
Before you sneer, cast your mind back to the nonsense you thought was funny when you were ten years old. I promise it was just as dumb. -- Pres N 00:15, 21 May 2024 (UTC)
I'm just wondering about two relatively minor issues concerning the introduction and infobox. 1) Should the first sentence in the intro include the initial year of release, as in "Kill death murder" is a 2024 video game..." I know that's how films are introduced but is there a standard for video games? 2) In the infobox, should the platform be listed as "Windows" or "Microsoft Windows"? Thanks. Bertaut ( talk) 13:37, 21 May 2024 (UTC)
IGN Entertainment has acquired Gamer Network from Reed Pop, and while no site yet has been labeled for discontinuation, there are layoffs happening across Gamer Network sites due to redundancies, like Brandon Sinclair at Games Industry.biz
https://www.gamespot.com/articles/ign-buys-gamer-network-sites-layoffs-in-progress/1100-6523610/?ftag=CAD-01-10abi2f —
Masem (
t) 17:55, 21 May 2024 (UTC)
I started a discussion regarding a new format at Talk:List of Xbox 360 games (A–L), would like some feedback Famous Hobo ( talk) 01:06, 22 May 2024 (UTC)
Has anyone played this game and can replace the badly written plot summary in the Wikipedia article? Or should elements of this oldid not have been removed? Ed [talk] [OMT] 04:34, 22 May 2024 (UTC)
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Not looking to agitate the slightly dated agreement that OpenCritic is an accepted source that reliably performs the function of a review aggregator. Conceptually though, a question I am wrestling with is: are what aggregators aggregating useful or reliable measures of mainstream critical reception when we wouldn't use most of the sources they are aggregating? Are we comfortable citing an aggregator when what it captures may mostly be from those websites?
OpenCritic has an interesting double-edged dilemma: it's very open. Its coverage anecdotally seems to outpace Metacritic in finding site reviews. This would be great and indicative of a more representative aggregator with wider coverage, but the problem is that in doing so it imports reviews from a vast amount of unreliable, unassessed or obscure WP:VG/S review websites.
Take a recent game with good coverage, Balatro. Metacritic has 33 reviews comprised of 19 reliable, 2 situational, 7 unknown and 5 unreliable sources. You could say that Metacritic is far from perfect either, but despite the inclusion of a few duds, the aggregator's score is largely capturing the scores of most of the mainstream reliable sources out there on the game.
In contrast, OpenCritic has an impressive 47, consisting of 14 reliable, 3 situational, 18 unknown and 9 unreliable sources. In this case, there's more unknown or dubious sources affecting the score. For the few gems it finds that weren't captured in Metacritic, there's also just a bunch of random "by gamers for gamers" site in the mix. Not particularly a big problem though.
This issue really rears its head once you get to indie titles, where in those cases the majority of games constituting an OpenCritic score will be from unknown or unreliable sources. In that case, using the score is a bit misleading: what is being displayed is not a mainstream consensus but only that of whatever reviews the aggregator could scrape together.
Sorry for the essay, but as posed above: is having a second aggregator that captures the views of any and all reviews largely what we expect it to do for us? Is a more judicious approach needed in some cases? VRXCES ( talk) 07:52, 10 May 2024 (UTC)
Is there anyone who knows the Manual/Style on how to treat soft launches in video game infoboxes? Should they be listed as part of the official release info or be sectioned off to just the prose? For example, Plants vs. Zombies 2 soft-launched first in Australia on July 9, 2013, before having an "official" release of sorts worldwide on August 15, 2013. There was a similar case with Crash Bandicoot: On the Run!'s year-long exclusivity to Malaysia, as this is a common occurrence with mobile titles.
What is the consensus on this? Should soft-launch releases be listed in the infobox when they're defined as "rehearsals for a full release" by many? Venky64 ( talk) 12:30, 12 May 2024 (UTC)
I've crossposted this from WP:HD at the suggestion of a respondant.
There are a lot of video games (particularly from the 90s and 2000s) where two video games exist with the same title, branding, cover art, and everything-- but with different developers, on different platforms. A notable example is Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Double Agent, a less notable one being Need for Speed: Undercover.
However, there doesn't seem to be a consensus on what should be done when these games are extremely different from one another. This happens most frequently with handheld games, where the versions across systems share practically nothing beyond top-level genre and theme. If a game exists on Game Boy Advance or Nintendo DS as well as home consoles, those two games likely have next to nothing in common.
I'd like to ask for guidance as to when a game should be separated into its own article, and when it should be included as a sub-section within a top-level article. While this may seem like it has a blanket answer, I do not believe it does, and I ask that you read my examples for my explanation of why. I'd appreciate rationale so I can apply these to future articles and edits. If I should not be separating these games into their own articles, I would like advice on how to better organize information about them in existing ones, as existing articles do this in many different ways and almost always end up mixing the information in with the main article body, leaving it hard to research specifically these other versions.
Here are four examples:
Road Rash (Game Boy Color) came out in 2000 and uses the branding and theme of Road Rash (1994 video game) but the content is most similar to Road Rash II. The confusing part here is that it came out in 2000, shares a name with the 1994 game as well as Road Rash (1991 video game) but uses the content of neither. At present, the GBC version is described inline on the Road Rash II page, but little information is given and there is no reference to its relationship with the 1994 game. The 1994 game's article is already covering five other versions that share little with the GBC version, and I am concerned that introducing the GBC version into the mix would make for an overly long article that veers a bit off topic, while creating a nightmare in the Reception section. I believe Road Rash (GBC, 2000) should have its own article.
Need for Speed: Porsche Unleashed is a 2000 racing game for PlayStation and Windows. The PS1 and PC versions are wholly different videogames that share a concept and soundtrack but little else. There is also a 2004 Game Boy Advance game by the same name, which is a translation of the PC version to the handheld. It is currently only mentioned in the article's infobox. Because it shares many assets and its design with the main version, I believe these three versions of the game should share an article.
However, in stark contrast to Porsche Unleashed, later Need for Speed games exist across multiple handhelds with completely different developers. Need for Speed: ProStreet was available on home consoles as well as Nintendo DS and PlayStation Portable. The home console versions were developed by EA Black Box, while the DS and PSP games were each handed off to separate B-Teams that made completely different games. I am torn on whether these justify their own articles, but they do not make sense structurally within the existing article. The barrier is that there isn't a whole lot of acceptably sourceable information about each of these ports outside of reviews.
Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Rogue Spear is a multiplatform tactical shooter. There are significant differences between the PlayStation version and the others, but they are minor enough for WIkipedia's purposes that the PS1 version can coexist with the Dreamcast, PC and Mac ones. However, there is also a Game Boy Advance port. It is not mentioned in the body of the article at all and is a top-down game with wholly different content. It is a completely different game from the others, and I feel it warrants its own article. Similar conundrums exist for the Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell games on GBA, which are side-scrolling action games. But again, I fear I would struggle to find enough information about them without dipping into WP:OR
Please let me know how I should proceed. I am going to begin working on a draft of the Game Boy Color version of Road Rash. Kaceydotme ( talk) 04:29, 13 May 2024 (UTC)
Is there a general consensus here about full content updates being called DLC? For instance Shovel Knight, Hollow Knight and Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night all seem to use "Downloadable Content" for what is ultimately part of the game itself rather than a separate thing that one must actively download. The downloadable content seems to never mention this type of content being included in the term. Dead Cells on the other hand as a for instance more properly terms these as 'free content updates'. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ ( talk) 04:44, 13 May 2024 (UTC)
A listing of all articles newly added to the Video Games Wikiproject (regardless of creation date). Generated by v3.20 of the RecentVGArticles script and posted by PresN. Bug reports and feature requests are appreciated. -- Pres N 14:59, 13 May 2024 (UTC)
May 7
May 8
May 9
May 10
May 11
May 12
Bot came back online after a few days, so May 5-7 are scrunched up together into the 7th. And Alexandra IDV wins this weeks award for "article GAd in the same week it was created" for Shin Megami Tensei J. -- Pres N 14:59, 13 May 2024 (UTC)
Hey all, I'm having a discussion at Talk:Lucky Luna that I thought that I should escalate to the project for clarification. Basically, another editor ( Zxcvbnm) added a review box to the article, but there's only one scored review for the game. I removed the box on those grounds, but they think that we should then have that review score in the prose. The relevant section of the MOS is WP:VG/REC, which starts off saying that scores should not be in prose, but then says that that's what the review box is for, and shortly thereafter affirms that the review box itself is optional. Which can be read as a contradiction.
So, my question is: is our intention that scores should only be in the review box, whether or not the article actually has one, or that it should be in the review box if that box exists, and can be placed in the prose if the box does not? -- Pres N 19:48, 13 May 2024 (UTC)
"{{ Video game reviews}} exists for such a purpose."to
"These scores should be limited to the {{ Video game reviews}} template, if present.", to remove ambiguity for what to do if there is no reviews box. -- Pres N 01:11, 15 May 2024 (UTC)
Hi all. Video game writing is not exactly my wheelhouse, so I figured I would come here for help. (Which is not to say I don't play video games – just that I don't usually write about them.)
As a bit of background, I am a regular at WP:CFD, and as such a will sometimes help out at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Working/Manual (where discussion outcomes which cannot be handled by a bot are listed for processing). To tackle the longest-outstanding item on that list, I started "working" on Draft:List of video games with AI-versus-AI modes, which is set to replace Category:Video games with AI-versus-AI modes after Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2023 September 3#Category:Video games with AI-versus-AI modes ended with consensus to listify. (By "working", I really mean "started working but then quickly realized that I have no idea how to do this".)
Any help—from "here is how to go about doing this" or "I turned this into a FL while you weren't looking"—would be very much appreciated! Thanks, House Blaster ( talk · he/him) 02:44, 15 May 2024 (UTC)
I'm working on the Fallout 3 article on my sandbox right now, and I've realized that while writing the gameplay section, I'm copying nearly entire paragraphs from the Fallout: New Vegas gameplay section. This is because Fallout 3 and New Vegas have virtually the exact same gameplay. New Vegas did make minor tweaks, so I can't directly copy entire paragraphs, but it's damn close. If you haven't played the two games, I cannot overstate how similar they are. So my question is, is it okay to basically just copy the gameplay section of New Vegas for Fallout 3? There's only so much I can talk about that hasn't already been stated in the New Vegas article. Famous Hobo ( talk) 21:13, 15 May 2024 (UTC)
Okay. So, this is something that I saw raised by the editor Martin IIIa to explain edits to the page Deep Fear. Leaving aside my feelings on the subject, and wanting editors opinions, but do you think the GA/FA process "encourages editors to attach references to claims which they don't support"? I'm not saying they didn't have valid concerns about Deep Fear, just wanting some additional clarification in case we need to tighten up the review process. ProtoDrake ( talk) 22:08, 16 May 2024 (UTC)
Template_talk:Video_game_reviews#Early_home_computers that might be of interest. CapnZapp ( talk) 10:13, 19 May 2024 (UTC)
I have a review that was published on GamesRadar+ website and on PC Gamer UK. How should I present that information in the article? Blue Pumpkin Pie ( talk) 22:53, 20 May 2024 (UTC)
A listing of all articles newly added to the Video Games Wikiproject (regardless of creation date). Generated by v3.20 of the RecentVGArticles script and posted by PresN. Bug reports and feature requests are appreciated. -- Pres N 00:15, 21 May 2024 (UTC)
May 13
May 14
May 15
May 16
May 17
May 18
May 19
Before you sneer, cast your mind back to the nonsense you thought was funny when you were ten years old. I promise it was just as dumb. -- Pres N 00:15, 21 May 2024 (UTC)
I'm just wondering about two relatively minor issues concerning the introduction and infobox. 1) Should the first sentence in the intro include the initial year of release, as in "Kill death murder" is a 2024 video game..." I know that's how films are introduced but is there a standard for video games? 2) In the infobox, should the platform be listed as "Windows" or "Microsoft Windows"? Thanks. Bertaut ( talk) 13:37, 21 May 2024 (UTC)
IGN Entertainment has acquired Gamer Network from Reed Pop, and while no site yet has been labeled for discontinuation, there are layoffs happening across Gamer Network sites due to redundancies, like Brandon Sinclair at Games Industry.biz
https://www.gamespot.com/articles/ign-buys-gamer-network-sites-layoffs-in-progress/1100-6523610/?ftag=CAD-01-10abi2f —
Masem (
t) 17:55, 21 May 2024 (UTC)
I started a discussion regarding a new format at Talk:List of Xbox 360 games (A–L), would like some feedback Famous Hobo ( talk) 01:06, 22 May 2024 (UTC)
Has anyone played this game and can replace the badly written plot summary in the Wikipedia article? Or should elements of this oldid not have been removed? Ed [talk] [OMT] 04:34, 22 May 2024 (UTC)