Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of fictional towns in video games


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was delete.  Sandstein  15:07, 23 February 2016 (UTC)

List of fictional towns in video games

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There are a couple of issues with the list article. First, a lot of entries are redirected to articles listed at List of fictional universes in games, like Clock Town, Columbia (BioShock), Liberty City (Grand Theft Auto), Traverse Town, etc. Because most of them are redirects, they are not notable enough to have their own articles.

Second, curious enough, the only reference listed is Real life locations in video games. Without proper sourcing, it fails WP:GNG.

Third, there's the question what constitutes as a town, as opposed to a village or a city.

Fourth, it's near inexhaustive. There are dozens of locations in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim alone, let alone the series in general. Soetermans. T / C 08:43, 15 February 2016 (UTC)


 * Delete per, well, those four arguments. Can't add much to it but say that I agree with the issues brought up. ~ Mable ( chat ) 09:11, 15 February 2016 (UTC)


 * Comment. Just want to note that this article is one of a set of articles that were split off from List of fictional towns and villages, so a "delete" outcome here will probably just result in a merge back to the parent article. Also, I think the nom's arguments are flawed: the first and third points aren't reasons to delete; I don't think GNG is a problem, as a cursory Google search brings up plenty of lists of fictional locations; and the fourth point is addressed by the article's lead, which makes clear that this isn't an all-inclusive list of every town in every video game. DoctorKubla (talk) 11:56, 15 February 2016 (UTC)
 * I'm not contesting the existence of lists of video game locations, I'm saying that by themselves, they're not notable. Most of these are redirected to the article on the video game they appear in. At WP:VG we're trying to focus more on the development, creation and possible reception of video games and their content. A good example of this is Rapture (BioShock) (which is also the only place with an article); design, in-game function, reception. Dishonored mentions the inspiration of the city Dunwall; the list just mentions it from an in-universe aspect. Merely listing video game locations is the same as a list of levels: inappropriate gameguide material. --Soetermans. T / C 12:26, 15 February 2016 (UTC)
 * Delete any hope of being a usefully exhaustive list?  If not then it fails WP:List and is misleading and will frustrate readers.  Aoziwe (talk) 13:32, 15 February 2016 (UTC)


 * Delete as a non-notable list if WP:GAMECRUFT failing WP:GNG with no reliable independent in-depth sources, such as WP:VG/RS. Does not meet WP:LISTN and does not warrant a WP:SPLIT from any parent article. At best, individual entries would be notable (each have article), and there's only 2, which is hardly sufficient to justify a list. This also appears to be "location" and not towns, though that is a rename issue (if kept). — HELL KNOWZ  ▎TALK 13:48, 15 February 2016 (UTC)
 * Delete - per WP:GNG and WP:GAMECRUFT. The list has no significant reliable coverage. And, as stated, it's completely inexhaustive and unnecessary. There are millions of cities in video games...  ~Oshwah~  (talk) (contribs)   14:01, 15 February 2016 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Video games-related deletion discussions.  /wiae   /tlk  14:17, 15 February 2016 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions.  /wiae   /tlk  14:18, 15 February 2016 (UTC)


 * Delete -- per WP:LISTN's note regarding intersections of categories of items, I'd say this is pretty clearly a delete. See also Hellknowz's !vote. --Izno (talk) 14:30, 15 February 2016 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Fictional elements-related deletion discussions. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 16:01, 15 February 2016 (UTC)


 * Keep, Rename to List of fictional locations in games (and merge List of fictional universes in games into it) - There are tons of sources justifying this per the criteria at WP:LISTN: "if it has been discussed as a group or set by independent reliable sources". Here are a few that took less than a minute to find:
 * The Guardian - Six of the best video game cities
 * Popular Mechanics - The 4 Best (Fictional) Video-Game Cities
 * The Guardian - Which are the best video game cities?
 * Complex - The 25 Worst Video Game Cities To Live In
 * Video Gamer - Top 10 Video Game Cities of all Time
 * Den of Geek - Videogaming's most unique fictional cities
 * Dorkly - 8 of the Greatest Cities in Videogame History
 * The separate question is about specific list items. We do have a few articles about places in video games to link to (see Category:Video game locations), but to say it should be limited it to that ignores the fact that cities are at the center of many games -- notable video game locations that we wouldn't cover in a stand-alone article because they're practically synonymous with the game itself. Think of e.g. SimCity, the Bioshock games (although we do have a separate article for one of them), Fallout: New Vegas, Resident Evil: Raccoon City, and, of course, the Grand Theft Auto (series). GTA's cities in particular have even been the subject of academic and mainsteam articles (e.g. The Guardian - From Watch Dogs to GTA V, why 'video games are going to reshape our cities').
 * TL;DR - There are more than enough sources for the group to satisfy WP:LISTN. There are plenty of sources to justify entries' notability for the purpose of inclusion despite not having a stand-alone article. This is a very well covered subject, even if the list as it stands today needs work. &mdash;  Rhododendrites talk  \\ 17:31, 15 February 2016 (UTC)
 * Comment - By the way, I'm going to !vote keep at the List of fictional universes in games AfD, too, but I don't think we need both. We should merge them into a single List of fictional locations in games. &mdash;  Rhododendrites talk  \\ 17:36, 15 February 2016 (UTC)
 * Delete- hopelessly undersourced, no possibility of completeness, inherently OR in that it's inevitably an editor's unbacked judgement call for what counts as a "town" as opposed to a city, or encampment, etc. Reyk  YO!  14:03, 16 February 2016 (UTC)
 * How is this incompatible with what I said above? There are lots of sources, so no OR is required at all. Lists don't have to be complete. Town, city, encampment, etc. are all locations hence a simple rename would solve that. &mdash;  Rhododendrites talk  \\ 14:51, 16 February 2016 (UTC)
 * I disagree. I do not believe cruft can be dealt with by moving it around, any more than you can clean your bedroom by shoving all the clutter under your bed or putting it into another room. Lists don't need to be complete right this instant, but it should be possible to have a usefully complete one in principle and I just don't see that being possible here. Broadening the scope of the article to dodge OR issues won't help here either because then it would become too indiscriminate. You'd still have the problem of a uselessly incomplete list but, perversely, it would also be too vast and sprawling to be navigable. Reyk  YO!  15:24, 16 February 2016 (UTC)
 * I don't find analogies that rely on a premise of an unqualified "it's cruft" helpful. The question isn't what to do with cruft, it's whether the list in question is an appropriate and notable list subject. Whether someone fills it with a pile of trivia -- or whether someone could do that -- is irrelevant to AfD except in the most extreme circumstances (which this obviously is not). Also "it should be possible to have a usefully complete one in principle and I just don't see that being possible here", if I understand you correctly, is also problematic. Most lists are not only incomplete but intended to never be complete. Lists of groups of people, lists of people by profession, lists of bands, lists of companies, lists of songs, lists of works of art, etc. -- these lists exist despite having no chance of being exhaustive or complete because it's possible to set an inclusion criteria to make them encyclopedic. We don't delete list of hip hop artists on the basis of it never being complete and people spamming it all the time, for example. So I don't understand this idea that a list which is so conceptually broad needs to be "complete" rather than needs to be well sourced and notable, with a clear inclusion criteria (all of which, as I've explained, are very clearly possible). &mdash;  Rhododendrites talk  \\ 16:16, 16 February 2016 (UTC)
 * Many lists are complete, and the better the prospects for completeness the more useful the list. For example, List of sovereign states or the periodic table are complete and extremely useful. Your example of list of hip hop artists is also complete-ish, in the sense that one can be confident of containing all these artists down to some minimum level of fame or wealth. It only starts getting patchy and spammy around the more obscure artists. Such a list is still useful, but not as much as a complete and well-defined one. Lists like A sampling of fictional locations selected arbitrarily and randomly, however, are very useless. There is no prospect of discriminate coverage, even in principle. You'll inherently get some fictional universes covered in excruciating detail, while others are ignored entirely. There is no natural ordering or tendency to ensure the most relevant and important entries get listed. It really is just a random sampling, and this is useless. Producing an entirely new list does not solve that problem, it just dodges the OR issue while also adding the problem of the list becoming too huge to be navigable. "Lists of fictional X" are among the worst and most embarrassing content Wikipedia has, and should be culled severely. Reyk  YO!  08:52, 17 February 2016 (UTC)
 * The first couple times I read this I struggled finding any connection between it and our policies/guidelines. Yeah, the periodic table is a list about a fixed set. Ditto sovereign states. And the alphabet, an band's discography, Academy Award winners, Presidents, etc. Lists like this one and like list of hip hop artists are not fixed sets. There's no such thing as "completeish" in this case. There's no way to tell if list of hip hop artists actually includes people above a certain level of fame (whatever that even means), and there's no policy/guideline which says that sense of completeishness has anything to do with whether they're an appropriate list. However, I think what you may mean is that there's no way to set reasonable inclusion criteria that will give us an encyclopedic list of reasonable length. That is, of course, a reasonable concern for a list. So I'll take a stab at one so we can talk about it in terms of "completeness": The list of fictional video game locations should include every notable fictional video game location as determined by multiple reliable sources which cover the location in depth (and outside of e.g. level guides/game walkthroughs -- we're talking about the location).</tt>. That seems like a pretty stringent criteria in terms of keeping out "cruft". &mdash; <span style="font-family:monospace, monospace;"> Rhododendrites <sup style="font-size:80%;">talk  \\ 13:59, 17 February 2016 (UTC)
 * It would be inexhaustive. "Location" can mean anything. To give you an example: The Elder Scrolls are set on the planet Nirn (IGN, GamesRadar, PC Gamer). The games take place on the continent Tamriel (Engadget, Time), which consists of 9 provinces. Morrowind was set in Morrowind, (Rock, Paper, Shotgun, Eurogamer) Oblivion is set in Cyrodiil (Game Informer, Game Zone). It didn't took me long to look up these fictional locations, and I'm not even at the town, cities or encampments. And this is just one video game series. --Soetermans. T / C 15:29, 16 February 2016 (UTC)
 * Inexhaustive means not exhaustive. Do you mean inexhaustible as in impossible to exhaust? I guess my response is similar to what I wrote just above -- most of our lists are a set of examples from a large group. If you add a few more refs for each one of those such that we can call each of them notable, why would you make an exception to our standards for both list notability and list item notability by deleting this? &mdash; <span style="font-family:monospace, monospace;"> Rhododendrites <sup style="font-size:80%;">talk  \\ 16:16, 16 February 2016 (UTC)
 * I guess I got the words confused, sorry about that. "Flammable means iflammable? What a country!"
 * Keep, or merge with the other list, per Rhododendrites, who has demonstrated that the topic clearly satisfies LISTN. Plus which, this is a daughter list of the main list of fictional places, and, under LISTN, we can spin those off without regard to notability anyway. James500 (talk) 23:31, 16 February 2016 (UTC)
 * WP:LISTN doesn't say we can disregard notability. "Notability guidelines apply to the inclusion of stand-alone lists and tables. Notability of lists (whether titled as "List of Xs" or "Xs") is based on the group. One accepted reason why a list topic is considered notable is if it has been discussed as a group or set by independent reliable sources, per the above guidelines; notable list topics are appropriate for a stand-alone list."
 * Let's assume there's going to be List of fictional video game locations. Anything can be seen as a "location", right? A universe, star system, planet, continent, country, province, valley, town, village, city, airport, sea, river, etc. Does that all fall under the same group, like WP:LISTN says? Sure, reliable sources say plenty about certain fictional locations, but are we going to consider them to be in the same set now? Is the ever-changing land of Hyrule similar to Rapture (BioShock), just because they are "locations"? --Soetermans. T / C 07:43, 17 February 2016 (UTC)
 * I stand corrected. It is the guideline WP:AVOIDSPLIT that says that daughter lists may be spun out "without regard to notability". James500 (talk) 21:25, 17 February 2016 (UTC)
 * So we've got two contradictory guidelines on our hands. That won't make things any easier. --Soetermans. T / C 23:19, 17 February 2016 (UTC)
 * There is no contradiction if you read LISTN carefully: "Lists ... often are kept regardless of any demonstrated notability" and "the entirety of the list does not need to be documented in sources" and "individual items ... do not need to be ... notable" and so on. James500 (talk) 00:01, 18 February 2016 (UTC)
 * You realize you made me read this like Christopher Walken? WP:LISTN says "Notability of lists (...) is based on the group" and a little further: "The entirety of the list does not need to be documented in sources for notability, only that the grouping or set in general has been". Like I pointed out, "fictional locations in video games" is not a cohesive grouping or set, so that would be WP:INDISCRIMINATE. --Soetermans. T / C 00:10, 18 February 2016 (UTC)
 * The list does not meet any of the four criteria of INDISCRIMINATE either. Nor can I see how the group is not cohesive. James500 (talk) 00:31, 18 February 2016 (UTC)
 * Because anything can be a location. Rapture (BioShock) is a dystopian city with more or less the same characteristics in three games released between 2006 and 2013, Hyrule is land of fantasy that has seen tremendous changes from games released from 1986 to the upcoming 2016 release. --Soetermans. T / C 01:12, 18 February 2016 (UTC)
 * How in the world can anything be a location? Rapture and Hyrule are both obviously notable locations. What difference does it make to its inclusion in this list if its name and basic definition (a world in the Zelda games) hasn't changed? If by "anything can be a location" you're saying that a particular pixel, shop, street, cloud, or coordinate can be a location, that's obviously what the inclusion criteria and list definition would set forth. After all, we have plenty of other lists of fictional places. See Category:Lists of fictional cities (video games is one of 7 in that category). Likewise, all of those sources that talk about cities/towns/universes/worlds in video games manage to do so in a coherent way, because after all, if we're requiring sources talking about the locations, those sources aren't going to accidentally write about some random shop or street such that "anything" could be on the list. &mdash; <span style="font-family:monospace, monospace;"> Rhododendrites <sup style="font-size:80%;">talk  \\ 01:29, 18 February 2016 (UTC)
 * Maybe it would assuage some of your concerns to call it list of fictional populated places in video games? &mdash; <span style="font-family:monospace, monospace;"> Rhododendrites <sup style="font-size:80%;">talk  \\ 01:30, 18 February 2016 (UTC)
 * To awkwardly cite myself from yesterday: "Anything can be seen as a "location", right? A universe, star system, planet, continent, country, province, valley, town, village, city, airport, sea, river, etc. (...) reliable sources say plenty about certain fictional locations, but are we going to consider them to be in the same set now?" My point is that in our shared understanding of the word location, we can say "Rapture is a city, and as such a location" and we can say "Tamriel is a continent, also a location". But reliable sources speak of types of locations, they have articles on the best game worlds like Nirn, the joy of running through Kokiri Forrest in Ocarina of Time or criticizing the desing of the City from Thief. We're the ones putting them together. We're the ones looking at what constitutes as a location. --Soetermans. T / C 01:44, 18 February 2016 (UTC)
 * The point I also brought up in the other deletion discussion: what about real world locations with fictional elements? Tokyo exists, Neo Tokyo does not. Or what about real world locations portrayed in a fictional universe? One level of Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves is set in the real-world village of Kinderdijk. Or what about mythological concepts, they're fictional too, right? In Age of Mythology the player visits Egypt, Greece and the Nordic countries, but also Atlantis. My point is, it's arbitrary original research and synthesizing to decide what's what. --Soetermans. T / C 09:25, 17 February 2016 (UTC)
 * Real locations are not fictional locations, regardless of how they are portrayed. James500 (talk) 21:25, 17 February 2016 (UTC)
 * While New York City exists, Manhattan's "Fabletown" does not. In S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl a second meltdown devastates the Ukrainian countryside. In Mass Effect our Galaxy has seen countless of wars and disturbances and has alien technology. Still "real locations"? --Soetermans. T / C 23:19, 17 February 2016 (UTC)
 * Chernobyl and the Milky Way Galaxy are real locations no matter how inaccurately they are depicted. As far as I can see, "Fabletown" is fictional as there is no such place as Bullfinch Street, New York. James500 (talk) 00:22, 18 February 2016 (UTC)
 * So no matter how inaccurately they are depicted, when a real location is featured in a video game, that's not fictional. Fictional locations have to be completely made up? What if a name is changed slightly, like Neo-Paris, is that fictional or not? Or what about the Capital Wasteland, which is based upon the old Washington D.C. area? In the game, set in 2277, it was nuked 200 years before and it has a different name, but you can walk around the National Mall. It's not Washington D.C. anymore though. Is that a real world location? --Soetermans. T / C 01:07, 18 February 2016 (UTC)
 * We don't have to disregard notability. WP:LISTN is notability, and this passes LISTN. 's point is that if, as says above, this was a WP:SPINOUT, there's an argument that it doesn't have to meet notability -- it would just have to make sense to include (with due weight) in the parent article (i.e. if an embedded list gets too long sometimes it makes sense to give it its own article for organizational/aesthetic reasons, not because its notable in its own right). I'm going to suggest we not get sidetracked by that, though, because I think it easily passes WP:LISTN. There is definitely an argument to be made that deleting something that was spun out doesn't make sense, though, because if it was deemed appropriate for another list before it should just be merged back there... As for New Tokyo, etc. that seems like the sort of thing that can be worked out on the talk page. For the sake of argument we could just say "no, it wouldn't include those" to simplify discussion about WP:OR, but that would be worked out there. &mdash; <span style="font-family:monospace, monospace;"> Rhododendrites  <sup style="font-size:80%;">talk  \\ 13:59, 17 February 2016 (UTC)
 * Consensus can change. Deleting something that was spun out of another article would be okay. List of Mafia characters was redirected again to its original article, while List of Mercenaries characters was deleted. --Soetermans. T / C 14:32, 17 February 2016 (UTC)
 * Well, yes, of course, but this thread has no bearing on the consensus to spin it out (assuming it existed). If the question there was "should this stay or be spun out" and it was spun out, then deleting it doesn't affect the previous discussion -- it just means whoever spun it out would have to move it back in because it didn't survive on its own (and then people would determine what, if anything, to do with it on that page). So this isn't actually a consequential line of argumentation because being a spin-out makes it so merge/delete would be treated the same way (except one doesn't leave a redirect), presuming someone is inclined to restore it to List of fictional towns and villages. I didn't mean to create a distraction from talking about this list -- just clarifying what I think James meant. &mdash; <span style="font-family:monospace, monospace;"> Rhododendrites <sup style="font-size:80%;">talk  \\ 15:29, 17 February 2016 (UTC)
 * and, I have to say I enjoyed discussing with you both a lot, but I think at this point us discussing the same points isn't beneficial to the discussion. I said what I wanted to say, so I'm going to wait and see what happens. Thanks for your quick and sharpwitted replies. --Soetermans. T / C 01:57, 18 February 2016 (UTC)
 * I too think hearing more opinions from different people would give a better idea on the consensus. This discussion feels like it's going in circles... ~ Mable ( chat ) 07:43, 18 February 2016 (UTC)
 * Delete as it is unnecessary, unsourced, and hard to determine for what belongs on the list. --Kiyoshiendo (talk) 01:04, 21 February 2016 (UTC)
 * Delete. We would not use a series of listicles to argue for a "list of sexiest video game characters" and by the same logic should not use a series of listicles to prove the concept of "fictional locations in video games" notable. The rationale for this discussion has already been said much shorter in the concurrent "fictional universe" deletion discussion. I'm not convinced by the arguments above. Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of video game components. czar  02:33, 21 February 2016 (UTC)
 * Keep. User:Rhododendrites has provided sufficient sourcing to demonstrate this subject meets WP:LISTN. I like the rename suggested as well, but that's for another process. Citation isn't present currently, sources shown above demonstrate that such sourcing exists, if individual entries might not have coverage in RS. While this sort of article isn't interesting to me, there's more than adequate precedent to establish that AFD is not cleanup. BusterD (talk) 17:32, 22 February 2016 (UTC)
 * As I mentioned on the related AFD at "list of universes", not only is there a problem with sourcing (indicating a notability problem) but also a problem where this list is basically a directory (and in particular, a non-encyclopedic cross-categorization), something which Wikipedia is not. --Izno (talk) 17:40, 22 February 2016 (UTC)
 * Delete as per WP:INDISCRIMINATE. While I understand Rhododendrites' point, I can't see how this can be encyclopedic.  Onel 5969  <i style="color:blue">TT me</i> 12:56, 23 February 2016 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.