Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Sorority Life (online game)


 * 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 merge to Playdom. User:Czar noted, rename the redirect per the naming conventions, but didn't give specifics; I'll leave it to him to follow up with any required rename. -- RoySmith (talk) 16:41, 22 August 2018 (UTC)

Sorority Life (online game)

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Quite a hard thing to do a before search for (I searched for sorority life, and came up with a load of campuses, and searched for Sorority life video game, which was much the same), but the included references don't scream notable.  Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 07:50, 31 July 2018 (UTC)

There are several reasons why Sorority Life is notable in gaming history:


 * It was designed by an historically important game creator, Steve Meretzky.
 * It represents a career milestone in Meretzky's shift from text adventures to designing "casual" online games.
 * It had millions of regular users at its peak, at a time (2008-2010) when that was somewhat unusual for games hosted on social media platforms.
 * It was also notable in the history of "casual" gaming itself, as the players were mostly women over the age of 35; this was still seen as unusual and remarkable at the time.

There are probably other reasons, but that's what I came up with just now off the top of my head. – skoosh (háblame) 17:07, 31 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Video games-related deletion discussions. Tyw7 (🗣️ Talk) — If (reply) then (ping me) 18:19, 31 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Fraternities and sororities-related deletion discussions. Tyw7 (🗣️ Talk) — If (reply) then (ping me) 18:19, 31 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Technology-related deletion discussions. Tyw7 (🗣️ Talk) — If (reply) then (ping me) 18:19, 31 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Websites-related deletion discussions. Tyw7 (🗣️ Talk) — If (reply) then (ping me) 18:19, 31 July 2018 (UTC)

Addendum: I found five distinct mentions of the Sorority Life game on the New York Times website in 2009 and 2010:

"There is even a take on the same concept called Sorority Life. You build up your player by hosting social events. Instead of arming weapons, you add accessories and outfits. “The results of an attack will be calculated based on how many sisters you have in your sorority, and what they are wearing,” the game says. For me, though, the kicker was seeing that a number of my friends who are 30-something professional women in real life — consultants, real estate brokers — had at least tried Sorority Life and no other game on Facebook. https://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/11/arts/television/11facebook.html

"Players of the games have competitive reasons to buy, too. Wendy Pickering of Columbus, Ohio, plays Sorority Life, a game in which players create and dress groups of co-eds, and then, rather violently, pit them against one another until the most glamorous house wins. She discovered very quickly, she said, that she would be trounced in every showdown if she didn’t have enough fashionable items." https://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/07/technology/internet/07virtual.html

"Playdom is one of a cluster of tech start-ups that make simple online games and sell virtual goods — like a $2.50 outfit for a character in Playdom’s Sorority Life, in which players shop, party and go to the spa. Such companies have popped by piggybacking on fast-growing social networks like Facebook." https://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/27/disney-purchases-playdom-a-social-game-start-up/ and https://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/28/technology/28disney.html

"So when I heard a few weeks ago that the Walt Disney Company had agreed to acquire Playdom, maker of the popular Facebook game Sorority Life, in a deal worth up to $763.2 million, I had to check it out. As the online teaser says: 'Sorority Life has the hottest fashions and coolest cliques. Play the game all the girls are talking about!'" https://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/16/arts/television/16playdom.html

"Virtual goods include items that people buy on popular Facebook games like FarmVille, Mafia Wars or Sorority Life, as well as others bought on mobile games and virtual worlds. Last year, the market for virtual goods on Facebook was $835 million, and it was the fastest growing portion of the virtual goods market." https://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/28/virtual-goods-expected-to-grow-by-40-percent-next-year-study-says/

This was not just a fly-by-night operation, but an app that the United States paper of record cited as an example of a popular Facebook game, alongside FarmVille and Mafia Wars, and mentioned repeatedly in articles about its publisher, as well as about social-media games and virtual goods in general. I believe this speaks satisfactorily to the question of its notability. – skoosh (háblame) 18:26, 31 July 2018 (UTC)

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus. Relisting comment: It's a little unclear whether a couple of the comments indicate pure research or also !votes. There is also a delete/merge dispute, hence a relist
 * The CSE gives a handful, all to Gamasutra, none of them significant. This TNYT article is a significant treatment. The others above aren't really significant. I tend toward delete. --Izno (talk) 20:50, 31 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Searching for "Sorority Life" Playdom yields about fifty hits, rather than two. In any case, we've got a sort of mini-review in the NYT, a couple of paragraphs in two other NYT articles, a more extensive treatment in Jezebel, and an article by the game designer in the trade publication Casual Connect (also cited in the Hodj 'n' Podj article). This appears to satisfy WP:GNG, and there may be more sources out there, waiting to be discovered. – skoosh (háblame) 17:45, 31 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Merge to Playdom. Much of the coverage, such as the New York Times article sites, is about the company, its corporate ownership/structure, and its games in general, with only a small part of the article devoted to Sorority Life. There are enough references for a brief account of the game, but based on the length of the sources and the length of the article, a merge seems sufficient. --Colapeninsula (talk) 12:37, 2 August 2018 (UTC)

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Nosebagbear (talk) 21:52, 6 August 2018 (UTC)
 * Merge to Playdom. The coverage is scarce and the list of passing mentions above do not provide enough info to write an article that does justice to this topic. Cover the game in a summary style section in the parent article. Also rename the redirect per the naming conventions. (not watching, please  as needed)   czar  17:20, 11 August 2018 (UTC)

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
 * I mean, there's also this presentation from GDC 2012 by one of the game designers later assigned to the project, laying out and explaining the reasoning behind various aspects of the game in depth. Two different articles in Casual Connect (Summer 2010, pp. 15, 75) use "Sorority Life" as an example in discussions of social game design. If someone (maybe me) incorporates this information into the article, would it then work on its own? What further additions or changes would need to be made? I started this article and marked it as a stub to encourage later users to come and flesh it out. I doubt that would happen if it were merged into the Playdom article; it certainly won't happen if it were deleted. skoosh (háblame) 17:31, 13 August 2018 (UTC)
 * Keep - Notable game for its time, with millions of users-- and part of the reason that Disney purchased the company Playdom for $768Million in 2010. The game was the subject of a substantive NYT review. -- LeflymanTalk 17:00, 14 August 2018 (UTC)

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks,  Sandstein   18:07, 14 August 2018 (UTC)


 * Merge to Playdom – this game has received some coverage, and per a source review could be interpreted as borderline notable relative to Wikipedia's notability standards. Merging, as per WP:ATD-M, is in order, as it will preserve encyclopedic content about the topic and serve to expand the suggested merge target article, which presently only has simple listings of the game. North America1000 07:28, 21 August 2018 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it.</b> 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.