Timeliness and descriptions

Hey all,Trying to figure out why so many instances of "the next...", "the newest...", "the upcoming...", et cetera are used so much for descriptions of recently announced games.

These descriptions are only true for a limited time, and after they or their sequels are released, it no longer is valid. I'm seeing a few series where at least two or three older entries use this nomenclature, and in a couple of cases I've seen games that are 5-6 years old that claim they're the "new" game from X developer.

To use these descriptions just seems counterproductive. Either they force someone else to change them later, or they remain inaccurate forever.

Yeah, though on the other hand, try reading through the wiki entry for Infinite Crisis now without getting a headache.

I try to avoid it, but really, for a lot of titles you don't have much much solid info when creating a page and that is a quick way of identifying what this is.

@reverendhunt: I just had to remove some of this from the Assassin's Creed Unity page. That is a franchise I would certainly avoid using that sort of language on.

I think it's fine for the sake of context. Yes, wiki pages sometimes aren't updated to reflect when they're perhaps not the latest game in their series ect., but that's not the fault of the writing itself and is down to wiki editors not keeping a solid grasp on a game's development and release. In an ideal world we'd have enough editors so all pages are written up to date to reflect their current status, but unfortunately there's so few of us that there's bound to be pages that are forgotten.

It's definitely better to default to something more time universal i.e. "the sequel to MGS4" rather than "the latest MGS" but I mean there's no style guide, no rule book, and very few wiki editors. I get why they end being written in such a contextual way (straight forward, logical). Then, like yummy mentioned, the rest is mostly a factor of people not updating fast enough / enough people editing.

@geraltitude said:

I don't know about that. As I said, a lot of the time there isn't really enough information to discern exactly how a newly announced game relates to its predecessors, and simply assuming that it's a plain sequel can easily turn out to be wrong. As it turns out for example, MGSV is a sequel to MSG4 in name only, and more accurately described as a sequel to Peace Walker and a prequel to the original Metal Gear.

Ahhh you weren't supposed to take that literally to the very last drop. :P No offence but, it was just an example! I wasn't assuming it was a sequel, or telling anyone to assume the narrative relationships of games. If you don't have enough information, that doesn't necessarily justify committing text that by its nature has to be updated. If you want me to be literal the best way to write my previous statement would be to go pure facts as much as possible: MGSV is the XXth game in the Metal Gear franchise, or something like that.

Every situation is different, I feel that goes without saying. Rule number 1 is don't write anything you don't know about. My point is it is safer/better, when you can, to write in universal, non time specific language. In general. That's all.

More popular games have a higher chance of being edited consistently and kept up-to-date, but the problem the OP is talking about happens because wikis don't get edited constantly. Different pages and different games maybe need different approaches too.

I'm pretty much mirroring what GERALTITUDE already said, but:

Ideally, avoid using future tense in any circumstance. The tentative wiki style guide states that everything should be in the present tense anyway. Of course, that can run into issues where the present tense tends to sound a little more authoritative than is possible at the time - even just "a game in the Assassin's Creed series set in Victorian era London" for Assassin's Creed Syndicate might end up being inaccurate or incomplete if half the game turns out to take place in near-future Quebec or something.

Even so, I'd err on the side of underdeveloped present-tense descriptions in the deck and overview. They can be expanded later once the game is out and more information is available, but at least this way it has less chance of being erroneous (or grammatically incorrect, in the case of using future tense for a game that has since been released).

(It's kinda like the reverse of that old idiom about how a society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in. Don't create work for others to do in the future by writing in the future tense, unless you fully intend to fix it later yourself.)