User:Butcherpath/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
(Provide a link to the article here.)

Silent Hill (video game)

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
(Briefly explain why you chose it, why it matters, and what your preliminary impression of it was.)

I have chosen to evaluate an article on the 1999 video game, Silent Hill. I chose this for two reasons. First, Silent Hill is something which I have a confused understanding of. I love the horror genre and have been presented elements of the video game such as stills, short clips, and sound bites, however I have never actually played it and have no context points other than that it was made in the 90s. The place I find myself in respect this topic is similar to most Wikipedia users. They too often approach the site with some previous exposure to a topic, but seek a clearer, more concise understanding of it. I would like to test whether Wikipedia is able to deliver this. Second, from the little information I do have about Silent Hill, I know that it involves a visual medium and is quite conceptual. I also know that video games tend to sway indeterminately between narrative and non-narrative, which seemed relevant to Islamic Book Art. Finally, I know that like the Persianate Book Art we learned about in the Roxburgh article, the horror genre historically draws from metaphysics, folklore, and historical events. Thus I assume there will be some element of cultural contextualization in addition to the baseline visual analysis.

I believe this article matters because it was enjoyable for me to read, and helped to appease my desire to know more about the subject. It is irrelevant whether something has 'academic' or other conventional merit in my opinion (though I would argue Silent Hill does). I believe that if even just one person desires to know more about a particular thing, then that thing is deserving of a page.

My preliminary impression of the article was "yes great. very interesting!". I found myself to be engaged the entire and that was suffice for me. Perhaps if I were using it for some sort of serious research investigation, I would have higher standards, but I can't say.

Evaluate the article
(Compose a detailed evaluation of the article here, considering each of the key aspects listed above. Consider the guiding questions, and check out the examples of what a useful Wikipedia article evaluation looks like.)

Lead section- I found the lead section to be very well done. The first sentence defined it as a "survival horror game", established the date of production, and credited the creators. The rest of the section provided a satisfactory balance of visual analysis--commenting upon the perspectival choices and graphic distortion--narrative summary--stating the name of the character, the place, and the situation--and critical reception.

Content- The content was pretty good as well. I would say there was maybe an overemphasis upon potential narratives. I would have liked to read more about the experiential qualities of the game upon the player, rather than the experience of the character. However, given the writers are not supposed to infuse their own experiences into their articles, I'm not sure if this could have even been done at all. Despite it not feeling exactly balanced, there was certainly a good amount of information on the more artistic properties of the game. Like I predicted, there were several cultural references acknowledged (one interesting one being Twin Peaks on the composer of the soundtrack)!

Tone and balance- This article remained absolutely unbiased. There were zero claims or arguments made--nor was there overpraising or condemnation of any single element or narrative. I almost wish there was a little more personality, just because video games are such a personalized experiential thing. I would have liked to know what it felt like to be playing it.

Sources and references- This was an interesting element to evaluate, given Silent Hill is such a contemporary creation and video games don't tend to have academic research done upon them. Despite this, every fact had a citation, and when I clicked on the links they mostly seemed legitimate. I will say that the sources used were mostly current day news sites, as well as archives and tech catalogue records. I did not come across any published academic writing being referenced. Just out of curiosity, I looked up Silent Hill on JSTOR and found that there were actually several pieces of writing, though around 85% were authored by the same man, Bernard Perron, who seems to have written a book on the game.

Organization and writing quality- I did not find any grammatical errors. The writing was simple, but I had no issue with it. The organization was decent. There were several paragraphs that I would have probably split up, and some of the headings weren't perfectly clear (ex: section labeled development containing subsections music and design).

Images and media- I would have liked more images. There was only 1 image of the actual game being played. Given the game is visual, I think it would have been very helpful to have more stills as a reference for the graphic descriptions which were a bit abstract at times. Also, I find it important to note that I had been exposed to Silent Hill imagery prior to reading this article, so the lack of substantial images probably affected me even less than it might have upon a person without this basis.

Talk page- The talk page seemed very cordial, though not very active. There was limited conversation, the most recent one being in 2020.

Overall impressions- I very much enjoyed this article. It seems to have a decent amount of information, and has prompted me to do more research upon the subject. It also felt very accessible--easily navigatable and understandable.