User talk:Bcadren

I created an account for this because r/wikipedia doesn't allow self-posts anymore and I felt it was important to say this. o_O; I will say I have edited before; but only to fix grammar errors; I've always been paranoid that I'd put a lot of work into an addition and it'd just casually be deleted because of relevance, etc. but that's just me. Anyways:

WikiGames Proposal

Wikipedia is and always will be a great resource; but it really seems to fall short when talking about video games. You can look up some of the most important and influential games of all time and the article is a great source of information, about who made the game, when it came out and what critics thought; but as to what the game actually -is- and details that would be useful to someone trying to do scholarly work in the field of game design; either there is no useful content or there is sharply less information than would be attained from reading a newspaper review. And oftentimes the sources cited on such pages are developer's website; developer's personal blog; reviews and other promotional materials that are highly biased in favor of the game.

When attempting to do scholarly research on the use of starvation as a mechanic in major games; I found 4chan, YouTube, GameFAQs, TVTropes and individual MediaWiki-Based sites for the different games to all be far more helpful than wikipedia and then, due to their lack of accountability I always found myself making sure that at least two sites confirmed it; I had played the game itself directly long enough to confirm it or could confirm that the YouTube videos were actual gameplay directly recorded from the game. The whole ordeal caused what should have been a simple undergraduate assignment (and didn't take classmates of different fields long to complete) into a 3-week long researchathon including directly playing about 15 games and researching a total of 87.

For a quick comparison between Wikipedia's information and that of a fan wiki try this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pokémon_Yellow http://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Pok%C3%A9mon_Yellow_Version

Wikipedia has relatively little information about the actual content of the title, with a ton of secondary sources, mostly from gaming news outlets; to back it up. Conversely; the fan-site has a more real information available, but doesn't clearly define what is fan theory from what is fact in all cases and doesn't cite sources; so we are left to assume that all the information is from primary research performed on the games; though for the most part, this assumption is factual it does need to be directly stated to be credible.

So this comes down to my proposal. I'd like all of the following rules to apply to games (but I'm not sure if this is palatable to wikipedia in general so in turn I'm not sure if this should be a proposal to change wikipedia or for a new wiki that's better for the specific field of game design). I'm not familiar enough with wikipedia bylaws to be certain exactly how it would need to be worded for a proposal to the board, but:

1. Due to the nature of the subject (any specific game title); the game itself is to be considered the primary source of information on itself. As such, a citation to the game will always be included in the article and primary research performed on the title is allowed. This research is to be considered more credible than FAQs/Walkthroughs and more complete than reviews.

2. Information on gameplay should focus on mechanical and art differences that make a title unique and notable to gaming history. This section should be primary research as heavily as possible; but should not be opinions. 'The character movement speed was significantly slower than similar titles.' is a fact. 'The slow movement speed was frustrating.' is an opinion. Opinions do not belong in content sections. People that do this direct research may need to technically cite to themselves as an expert to be able to do so; but through the wikia nature, mutliple people all playing the same game for the goal of unbiased research would end up with a more concrete definition of what the game -is- than citing many different reviews, which may not cover all features of the game as one would be forced to do now.

3. A new 'content' section; should be appended, which focuses on what the game is; levels, characters, etc. The amount of information included would depend on the relevance level of the game. In cases of larger games; this leads to separate pages for characters, locations, etc. Similar to what wikipedia already does for long-standing television series like the for example this page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson_family

4. In critical and audience reception sections; information about features that commonly panned or were loved by critics is more important than the percentile opinions of specific websites. Overall sales by region, if available should also be used.

5. Fan theories aren't relevant unless they had a significant effect on the metagame; such as long standing hoaxes that most players would have heard of. Using theory to explain design choices isn't allowed unless creators confirmed the speculation in interviews or other materials. For example with pokemon, again, because it's never been publicly stated by Nintendo, what the pokemon Jynx is based upon. Either you do not state that the pokemon is based on Yama-Uba or you clearly state that this is a common, but unconfirmed theory about the design choice. However, the rumored "Mew hiding under a truck" in Red is notable because of how enduring the myth was; but it is notable only as a myth.

6. Affiliation: If a game's individual wikia agrees to clearly mark or remove fan opinion and directly cite all sources that are not directly from the game it can be cited to directly for content and affiliated with (means we formally approve that it has accurate content about the game in question and is maintained to wiki standards); meaning it is listed on a special page for sites that reach these requirements and directly linked to in lieu of a content section.

Preempting a few questions I expect:

Why not use fan wikis of specific games? They don't correctly cite sources or clearly mark the differences between fact and opinion in many cases. Also, many games don't have this resource available.

Why not use StrategyWiki or GameFAQs? In both cases, the resource is primarily a walkthrough designed to help a person complete the game in question; not an informative article about what the game is that could be understood by a non-player. Also, similarly neither of these tends to cite sources. In most cases, they are quite credible and correct; but it would always look bad from a scholarly perspective for one of your sources to be the hacker handle of an individual from GameFAQs.

Why is this an issue? Honestly; I think this hole in Wikipedia is due to not currently accepting citations directly from games (or at least not making it public if it does so); which leads to not being able to directly add content based on the game itself and no clear guidelines about how much information on a game is relevant. Some games; like the one I was just playing, Pathologic, could fill 50-200 pages of information directly, but are left with nothing or close to nothing here and though I could add a ton of information about it from this gameplay. I would need to (1) cite the game directly, because there is little info available online and (2) need to have clearer guidelines on how much to print because of relevance. So cite a friend, who I only know as 'awsumpwner27' "Wikipedia's system is great, but it's designed for hard sciences. In media, people are forced to not add much at all."

Comment back here or on Reddit; I guess. If this becomes a program for wikipedia itself; this account will become very active in adding information on games that I have played. If it becomes popular on reddit, but its clear that it cannot be a program for wikipedia; I'll probably be soliciting donations to start this as a separate project. Thanks for reading.