emtilt

The Moon Silver should be deleted. It is a misspelling of The Moon Sliver, which already exists.

That's not really how the Double Fine prototypes worked, though. Most of them do *not* have a corresponding commercial product and yet have been released and have wiki pages, and even the Costume Quest one was released *after* the main game as a separate product. You're right that its a necessary step toward the finished product, but in the unusual case of Double Fine, they were also intended as their own products (and not as promotions for the game they relate to). I can see I'm convincing no one, though!

@jeff: Thanks for the reply! A few questions for clarification and precedence:

Games should only be joined onto one page when they are the same page ported to multiple places. That means that Nintendo's NES Tetris and Tengen's NES Tetris belong on separate pages. That means that Nintendo's Game Boy Tetris gets a separate page, too, because it isn't a direct port of the NES game (though handheld ports make everything stickier since the ports are often bad and barely resemble some of the game's other versions).

This still seems to me like it implies that something like the Double Fine prototypes should have separate pages. They aren't ports, they were released at different times, they share no levels, they share no (or close to no) code, they share no assets, they were sold to the public as products. What is the criteria that determines they should be lumped with the original commercial release? Admittedly, it's a strange example, because Double Fine runs their prototyping phase as a semi-public promotion and product. Similarly, how about the de Blob example above, which BeachThunder suggested was more like a prototype?

This brings us to a handheld example. Let's take Mortal Kombat II. There are handheld versions of MK2 that suck ass. They're barely the same game. But they're designed to be interpretations of the same arcade product, they're all published by arms of Acclaim, and they're released around the same time. Combining them onto one page is fine here.

Just to clarify the handheld issue with some examples, since it was what originally started this topic: So something like the 8-bit Sonic games (i.e., Game Gear and Master System) should be split for the 16-bit ones, as they are not ports but separate game developments, correct? From your Tetris example, I assume that something like the GBA version of The Simpsons: Road Rage should also be split because it is not a port but a different piece of development with somewhat different gameplay, despite trying to capture a similar game experience. Correct? That one is less clear to me because of your wording - it's "designed to be [an] interpretation of the same ... product" like your MK example, but is separate development and everything like your Game Boy Tetris example. I'd lean toward splitting for the sake of the API, but I get the impression that most other contributors wouldn't. This is the issue with many GBA games, especially driving games, where they could do shitty-3D on the GBA but it usually barely resembled the home console version and was handled by a separate dev team.

The MK handheld example, like Tetris, is another that strikes me as one of the hardest, messiest ones. It's, as you said, a rough attempt to replicate the arcade experience, but I imagine that under the hood it has very little in common with the other versions.

Let me know if you have any other ideas on this topic. It's certainly a weird one.

Adding a line to the search results listing each game's platforms is probably the best way to make this issue less of a hassle from a wiki-searching perspective. Could make the results slightly cluttered, though, if not done elegantly.

So in order to make the site a little more usable, we haven't split up too many pages. There's an engineer focused solely on search right now, so I'm hoping we'll finally get where we need to be on that stuff, at which point we can finally have like 20 different Tetris pages as we originally intended. It's messy, but it seems like that's what's right from a data perspective.

So does that mean that changes of this nature should be delayed for the time being?

Early Access games are released the same product as the finished version, though. Double Fine released the Prototype as a separate product (I have both on Steam, for example). Since they are separate products with no overlap in gameplay, I'd think that some users would want the ability to separately review them and the like. Additionally, a prototype isn't really like a very early version, because that line of code and assets is never intended to go into the game that will ultimately be developed. Finally, it meas that basically the whole wiki article is inapplicable and incorrect with regard to one of the releases - those descriptions don't apply to the prototype. It's in essence a remake or reimagining, more akin to my Resident Evil example than an early access game.

While I definitely disagree with you about Costume Quest, your Tetris example is a good example of how poorly defined this is. It's probably the most difficult game to handle in a consistent way.

I think part of our difference in perspective arises from the dual purpose of the wiki. I'm personally more concerned about how it functions as a database accessed via API for external development. For a large database to be useful via API, it needs to be uniform, consistent, and flexible so that operations can be automated and it works for a variety of purposes. This issue originally came to my attention because certain sites trying to use it were running into limitations because of this kind of inconsistency. I think most wiki editors, on the other hand, are more concerned about the intrinsic worth of the wiki as pages to be read by users, a purpose for which readability is more important that total consistency. A clear set of well thought-out guidelines could alleviate this tension.

@beachthunder: Doesn't seem especially ambiguous to me. It's not really a "prototype" in the strict sense, because the game was made as a student thesis before THQ bought the rights to it and made the commercial one. In any case, why wouldn't a prototype be split (assuming the prototype was released)? It is, by definition, entirely different. Take for example the Double Fine Costume Quest Prototype; it is entirely different than the commercial release, with different level design, graphics, location, enemies, story, and some mechanics.

In this case of de Blob, it's hard to argue that these games are the same one even though they share a similar design aesthetic and main mechanic (if those are the only criteria, all franchises should be one game!). The PC version is a single level based on the city of Utrecht, developed by eight students. The Wii version is ten levels (none in common with the PC version), was developed by Blue Tongue Entertainment for THQ, has different graphical assets and controls, runs on a different engine, and has additional mechanics, among other differences. I actually thought this was a slam-dunk example, having played both versions. (And clearly the mobile version is a third game.)

The differences among the de Blob versions or between the Costume Quest versions are greater than, for example, the different Resident Evil remakes that have different pages, or any of countless other examples.

If the goal is to lump similar games together, I guess that's the site's prerogative, but it seems really inconsistent at the moment. Perhaps with the discussion of a style guide, this should be one of the things addressed? For example, it should be defined what constitutes a unique game.

Well, I attempted to create a new game page for the simplest "splitting" of "lumped" games that I could find. Currently, de Blob lumps together in its description a student game for PC and a Wii game published by THQ, despite them being totally different. However, I figured it was the easiest one to start with because it doesn't have any PC release/platform information, meaning that it was a simple case of creating a new page and then removing the description of the PC version so it could be moved to the new one - mod powers not required.

Unfortunately, I guess that wasn't easy enough, because my new game submission has been pending for 6 days now, despite my other page creations made at the same time being approved within 1 day. This seems to indicate that the desire to accurately split things is not universal, and this ain't gonna happen.

Alias: Warring States Tactics -> Warring States

Alias: Rose & Time -> Rose and Time

Rename MiniFlake to "SilverQuest: Gaiden" (name was changed when the game released on Steam: http://store.steampowered.com/app/333380/), then keep "MiniFlake" as an alias.

Well, if there is a desire to change those things, there needs to be a clear set of guidelines because it's a continuum rather than a sharp divide. Additionally, it's a very large project, and the bulk of the work has to be done by someone with mod privileges because it requires changing releases/platforms, so there would need to be a bit of a plan for getting it done.