Talk:The Sumerian Game/GA1

GA Review
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Reviewer: Indrian (talk · contribs) 14:52, 3 July 2020 (UTC)

Another early game nomination by PresN; another early game GA review by Indrian. Indrian (talk) 14:52, 3 July 2020 (UTC)

Review

 * ✅"The game, set in 3500 BC" - This is super nitpicky, but is the game truly set in the year 3500 BC, does it just begin in that year, or is it just meant to evoke mid-4th Century BC Sumeria? Since it follows the reigns of three kings over what is implied by the game play to be a period of many years, I doubt the whole game is meant to happen in that single year.
 * ✅" In the second version of the game, the second segment was refocused, with the rounds limited to 10 and the player no longer required to make choices around grain allocation, but instead only make decisions about applying workers to farming or crafts." - This sentence feels like it has a lot of clauses stitched together, and would probably be well-served by being split up a bit.
 * ✅"as an early mainframe game for an IBM 7090 time-shared mainframe computer" - I get that you are trying to incorporate a link to the "early mainframe game" article as a pointer to the larger topic this article falls under, but this reads incredibly awkwardly.
 * ✅"One session with 30 sixth-grade students was run." - Passive voice.
 * ✅"This expansion was made in the summer of 1966 by Addis" - More passive voice.
 * ✅"This expansion was made in the summer of 1966 by Addis, who rewrote and expanded the game, adding a stronger narrative flow to how the advisor tells the player about the events of the city, refocusing the second segment of the game on the new concepts introduced, and interspersing the game with taped audio lectures corresponding with images on a slide projector, which have been described as the first cutscenes." - Lots of clauses joined by commas again. This may not need to be broken up so much as rewritten slightly.  For example, "rewrote the game by adding a stronger narrative flow" rather than using a comma there.
 * ✅"The new version of the game was again conducted with 30 sixth-grade students" - More passive voice.
 * ✅"He named the result King of Sumeria, programming it for a DEC PDP-8 minicomputer" - These two clauses really don't have anything to do with each other and should be separated.
 * ✅"Around 1971, DEC employee David H. Ahl had written a version of The Sumer Game in the BASIC programming language" - The verb tense here is wrong. I did not change it myself because I am not sure whether it is supposed to read "Around 1971 Ahl wrote" or "By 1971 Ahl had written". Either change would fix the issue depending on what you are attempting to convey with the sentence.
 * ✅"In addition to being a prototype of the strategy and city-building genres as part of the early history of video games" - As above, this attempt to reference the early history article is a little clumsy.

I think that's about it. Its really just some minor grammar issues, so I will go ahead and place this while the changes are made. Indrian (talk) 15:27, 3 July 2020 (UTC)


 * Took me a while to figure out why I wrote so much passive voice yesterday- pretty sure it's because that 1967 report was (mostly) written in a detached, passive voice ("it was decided to make extensive revisions during the summer of 1966") and that infected my writing. The trains of comma-separated clauses and clumsy attempts to shoehorn in links to other articles are all me, though. Anyways, all of this should be fixed now in this edit. Thanks for reviewing, and so fast! -- Pres N  19:37, 3 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I let a couple of GAs get away for me a little bit when COVID hit, so I felt the need to show I can actually do one of these things reasonably fast ;) Anyway, flow is much better and the "early history of video games" article is introduced much more smoothly.  You missed one of my flags for passive voice, which you can see above.  When that is fixed, I think we are good. Indrian (talk) 20:16, 3 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Gah, done. -- Pres N  01:31, 4 July 2020 (UTC)
 * And promoted. Indrian (talk) 20:33, 7 July 2020 (UTC)