" What are the chances of just letting this community being discriminating about it? Any hard rules, like a game needing to be a IGF finalist, will knock out some frankly fantastic games. Sure, this would mean more work for the mods, but adding browser game support would lead to more games to play and talk about with this awesome community. "

" @MattyFTM said:

• It was made by a developer who has made games for another platform we list on Giant Bomb (this would cover games like Dragon Age Journeys)
• It was nominated for an IGF award (possibly other awards too)

• It has a payment model (such as microtransactions)

 If a game meets any one of those, we allow it. I'm sure the list of criteria can be expanded upon & refined too. "

I really like that list of criteria.   I do think that Facebook should be considered a platform (instead of being lumped in to "Browser-Based"). I consider it a coherent platform, standardizing the microtransaction model with Facebook Credits and having the Facebook-specific social features.  (It's analogous to MS Points and Xbox Live integration in XBLA games.) It's out of whack that we can have Zuma's Revenge (<200 GB users) as a "real" game at GB but don't have Zuma Blitz (>7 million FB users), or that Bejeweled Blitz can enter the GB database due to the XBLA release when its popularity is based on the Facebook release. "

" I was thinking about this recently, and there have been discussions about it in the past. Here are a few possible criteria that could apply: 
 

• It was made by a developer who has made games for another platform we list on Giant Bomb (this would cover games like Dragon Age Journeys)
• It was nominated for an IGF award (possibly other awards too)

• It has a payment model (such as microtransactions)

 If a game meets any one of those, we allow it. I'm sure the list of criteria can be expanded upon & refined too. "

" I do think that Facebook should be considered a platform (instead of being lumped in to "Browser-Based"). "

" I was thinking about this recently, and there have been discussions about it in the past. Here are a few possible criteria that could apply: 
 

• It was made by a developer who has made games for another platform we list on Giant Bomb (this would cover games like Dragon Age Journeys)
• It was nominated for an IGF award (possibly other awards too)

• It has a payment model (such as microtransactions)

 If a game meets any one of those, we allow it. I'm sure the list of criteria can be expanded upon & refined too. "

• It was made by a developer who has made games for another platform we list on Giant Bomb (this would cover games like Dragon Age Journeys)
• It was nominated for an IGF award (possibly other awards too)

• It has a payment model (such as microtransactions)

 If a game meets any one of those, we allow it. I'm sure the list of criteria can be expanded upon & refined too. "

" I was thinking about this recently, and there have been discussions about it in the past. Here are a few possible criteria that could apply: 
 

• It was made by a developer who has made games for another platform we list on Giant Bomb (this would cover games like Dragon Age Journeys)
• It was nominated for an IGF award (possibly other awards too)

• It has a payment model (such as microtransactions)

 If a game meets any one of those, we allow it. I'm sure the list of criteria can be expanded upon & refined too. "

AV Club's Sawbuck Gamer covers a lot of the better browser games out there (and occasionally features some low-graded dross too, for whatever reason). Again, not so much a criteria as a list of possible inclusions based on notability.
 
This is a pretty difficult thing to set in stone, yet it's entirely justified since so many browser games match the quality of those Indie types that end up on XBLA or PSN or Steam. On the other hand, even the good browser games are often endless reiterations of Angry Birds' "throw shit at castles using physics", Tower Defense's "you got towers and they defend things", Geometry Wars' "you gotta use both sticks to shoot shit, dude" and Braid/Limbo's "it's like a 2D platformer, but something weird happens like your dude multiplies or slows down time or everyone is very sad." After a while they stop being notable, despite the high quality.
 
This isn't to say the retail games that are automatically Wiki-approved don't rip each other off constantly. Hmm. Definite grey area. I'm not helping at all, sorry.

@GilberMordinAndSullivan its not so much that a game has to be an IGF finalist, it just has to have a page on the site if it was one. 
If even a small percentage of Newgrounds stuff was submitted it would be a nightmare for the mods. Don't Shit Your Pants makes things very difficult as it fails any test based on length/depth but its great. 

What are the chances of just letting this community being discriminating about it? Any hard rules, like a game needing to be a IGF finalist, will knock out some frankly fantastic games. Sure, this would mean more work for the mods, but adding browser game support would lead to more games to play and talk about with this awesome community.

I think if it's garnered enough attention to merit a wiki page and it does something fairly original than it belongs. Don't need every iteration of Tower Defense.

" I was thinking about this recently, and there have been discussions about it in the past. Here are a few possible criteria that could apply: 
 

• It was made by a developer who has made games for another platform we list on Giant Bomb (this would cover games like Dragon Age Journeys)
• It was nominated for an IGF award (possibly other awards too)

• It has a payment model (such as microtransactions)

 If a game meets any one of those, we allow it. I'm sure the list of criteria can be expanded upon & refined too. "

" If the rules preclude "Don't Shit Your Pants" from appearing, the rules are bad. "

If the rules preclude "Don't Shit Your Pants" from appearing, the rules are bad.

It seems like a good addition, because browser games are immensely popular. I suppose the easiest way to record a game would be to find ones that are well known and such. For example, I'd say the original Super Meat Boy is of importance; and it originated on Newgrounds. I suppose that logic could be extended to Alien Hominid seeing as it sparked off the HD game on the LIVE Arcade, or have I gotten that wrong? TBH I'll wait for someone else to make the pages and then I'll edit them. Because that's how I roll.

The fear I have is that notability will be established by how immediate a game is. If its in any way a slow burn a voting system would find it "not notable". You end up with a list of best arcade browser games, not a list of best quality browser based games.

It would probably be too difficult/disorganized, but perhaps browser-based games would have to receive a certain number of "nominations" before being added. Perhaps every time someones adds a browser game to the database, it just sorts it by name and keeps a tally until it hits a certain number of adds. It still wouldn't be a hard and fast rule, but it would keep out crapware, and keep it exclusive to games that people actually care about.

@LordXavierBritish VVVVV V is not an exclusively browser based game, full version runs in a client.

"   it's hard to say that one browser game is any better than any other when a lot of them are built using the same tools and the only differentiating factor is how much time and effort was put into them. 
 
I don't think anyone here would dispute that VVVVVV deserves it's own page, but at the end of the day it's just a flash game. An impressive and well made flash game mind you, but a flash game none the less. So does that make things like Time Fcuk and Closure worthy of their own page? Maybe? Here are some games that are also very impressive, good production teams behind them, but there is nothing that really separates them from the quick games made in less than aday other than "they're good."  I mean, and this is really drawing a hard line, but it seems like the easiest way to do this is "does the game have it's own site?" Honestly it cuts out a lot of rather amazing games, and i mean a lot, but lines do need to be drawn, I think, to prevent those arguments from happening.  That would make me super sad because I would love to to do a full page write up on a lot of really significant browser based games that people should really probably be playing, but at the end of the day I think that it's a neccesary evil if the wiki is going to maintain any kind of authority or integrity or whatever it is trying to maintain. "

"   it's hard to say that one browser game is any better than any other when a lot of them are built using the same tools and the only differentiating factor is how much time and effort was put into them. 
 
I don't think anyone here would dispute that VVVVVV deserves it's own page, but at the end of the day it's just a flash game. An impressive and well made flash game mind you, but a flash game none the less. So does that make things like Time Fcuk and Closure worthy of their own page? Maybe? Here are some games that are also very impressive, good production teams behind them, but there is nothing that really separates them from the quick games made in less than aday other than "they're good."  I mean, and this is really drawing a hard line, but it seems like the easiest way to do this is "does the game have it's own site?" Honestly it cuts out a lot of rather amazing games, and i mean a lot, but lines do need to be drawn, I think, to prevent those arguments from happening.  That would make me super sad because I would love to to do a full page write up on a lot of really significant browser based games that people should really probably be playing, but at the end of the day I think that it's a neccesary evil if the wiki is going to maintain any kind of authority or integrity or whatever it is trying to maintain. "

Hmm... I was thinking about somehow using Google to measure a game's importance, but why not video game sites and other news outlets? I mean, if something gets mentioned a couple times in Time magazine, Fox News or IGN, it's less likely to be some fly by night, piece of shit flash game. It would still be subjective, but at least we'd have something to go on.
 
Or would that still be too difficult/subjective as a rule of thumb?

  it's hard to say that one browser game is any better than any other when a lot of them are built using the same tools and the only differentiating factor is how much time and effort was put into them. 
 
I don't think anyone here would dispute that VVVVVV deserves it's own page, but at the end of the day it's just a flash game. An impressive and well made flash game mind you, but a flash game none the less. So does that make things like Time Fcuk and Closure worthy of their own page? Maybe? Here are some games that are also very impressive, good production teams behind them, but there is nothing that really separates them from the quick games made in less than aday other than "they're good." 
 
I mean, and this is really drawing a hard line, but it seems like the easiest way to do this is "does the game have it's own site?" Honestly it cuts out a lot of rather amazing games, and i mean a lot, but lines do need to be drawn, I think, to prevent those arguments from happening. 
 
That would make me super sad because I would love to to do a full page write up on a lot of really significant browser based games that people should really probably be playing, but at the end of the day I think that it's a neccesary evil if the wiki is going to maintain any kind of authority or integrity or whatever it is trying to maintain.

" How about, in order for them to get in the system, they would need to require sign-up to play instead of the usual "hit Start and go!"? "

Would something like Facebook end up being considered a platform at that point? For things like Assassin's Creed: Project Legacy, Farmville, etc. Then again, even Facebook as a platform is filled with a lot of crap and they don't really have any approval process for their applications. It's going to be tough to distinguish between which games have a place in the wiki and which don't.

@MattyFTM that might be a better way of thinking about it, instead of trying to catch all that might be notable, produce criteria where a game that meets them MUST be added, i.e IGF winner/finalist. 
Deal with edge cases on a more item by item method.

I was thinking about this recently, and there have been discussions about it in the past. Here are a few possible criteria that could apply: 
 

• It was made by a developer who has made games for another platform we list on Giant Bomb (this would cover games like Dragon Age Journeys)
• It was nominated for an IGF award (possibly other awards too)

• It has a payment model (such as microtransactions)

length/depth might help (thats what she said), however you run the risk of excluding stuff like Canabalt. 
1UP run a list of best free games on PC every year many of which are browser based. Not a rule for notability, more evidence for a paticular game's noteability. http://www.1up.com/do/feature?pager.offset=1&cId=3177782 
Yes/No to unashamed advertainment?  

How about, in order for them to get in the system, they would need to require sign-up to play instead of the usual "hit Start and go!"?

" yo lets play tower defense 3 return of the towerz "

yo lets play tower defense 3 return of the towerz

With it being a new year and all, I figure it's a good time to review some wiki policies. Specifically, I'm talking about in-browser games. 
 
I'd be willing to find a better way to get these into our system (with a proper platform page, rather than just lazily tagging them to PC and Mac), but I feel like we need better guidelines about what we accept. Ideally, we'd just be able to say that we allow "games of note" to be included, but I'd rather not create a ton of arguments about which games are notable. 
 
I also don't want every thing that's ever been made that runs in a browser, either, because we don't need a database that just attempts to mirror every crappy little game from Kongregate or Newgrounds. 
 
So it'd be great if we could get a rule in place that says YES to things like Realm of the Mad God or Kingdom of Loathing but still says NO to This Flash Game I Crapped Out In 20 Minutes But Hey It's About A Current Event So Awesome. If anyone has any input about what the rules that govern this platform should be, I'd love to hear them.