Template talk:Infobox video game

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This template is within the scope of WikiProject Video games, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of video games on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Video gamesWikipedia:WikiProject Video gamesTemplate:WikiProject Video gamesvideo game articles

Summary of Video games WikiProject open tasks:

Summary of Video games WikiProject open tasks

AfDs

Jeffrey Johnson (actor) (1 participant)
Rayman: The Animated Series (3 participants)
Sam Beres (2 participants)
Project Sora (3 participants)
Sora Ltd. (5 participants)
Endor AG (3 participants)
Cue Club 2 (2 participants; relisted)
Anti-Cheat Expert (6 participants; relisted)
Planet Half-Life (3 participants; relisted)
Flash Element TD (4 participants; relisted)

Merge discussions

Other discussions

No major discussions

Featured content candidates

Ada Wong (nom)
The Sims 4 (nom)
Smash Hit (nom)
Five Nights at Freddy's: Help Wanted (nom)

Good article nominations

Donkey Kong (nom)
Puff-puff (onomatopoeia) (start)
Tina Armstrong (start)
Birdo (nom)
Shin Megami Tensei V (nom)
Justin Yu (nom)
Kim Kitsuragi (start)
Miner 2049er (start)
Pixel Piracy (start)
Ether One (start)
Dr Disrespect (start)
Pokémon Sword and Shield Expansion Pass (start)
Hotline Miami (start)
Pokémon fan games (start)
The Outer Worlds (start)
River Raid (start)
The Great Giana Sisters (start)
Pikachu (nom)
Visions of Mana (start)
Mario Party: Island Tour (start)
Meltan (start)
Bejeweled (video game) (start)
Kleavor (start)
Haunter (Pokémon) (start)
Lavender Town (start)
Bit City (start)
Dendy (console) (start)

DYK nominations

No did you know nominations

Reviews and reassessments

Articles that need...

Infoboxes

This template is within the scope of WikiProject Infoboxes, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Infoboxes on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.InfoboxesWikipedia:WikiProject InfoboxesTemplate:WikiProject InfoboxesInfoboxes articles

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Frequently asked questions

A number of changes have been discussed and rejected multiple times, and sometimes discussed and ignored. Please review the below discussions before adding a new section for the parameter you would like to add. Each discussion is listed by most- to least-recent.

I would like |predecessor= and |successor= added: See: Add a space to input succeeding and preceding games if it is in a series, Three parameters suggestions, Add sequel and succeeded, Add "follows" and "follwed by" in videogame infobox template., Iterative games, Prequel and Sequel, GameSeries
I would like |website= added: See: Add a link to the website of the game, "Official Website" Field, No way to add a website., Template-protected edit request on 5 November 2020, Three parameters suggestions, add website parameter, website
I would like |based on= added: See: Template-protected edit request on 13 July 2020, How about a "Based on" parameter?
I would like |support status= added: See: Template-protected edit request on 31 May 2021, Early access date, Add field for end of life?, "Discontinued" date or similar for multiplayer/online games, Add new field for current status, Optional support stopped parameter wanted needed
I would like |infobox software parameter= added: See: Programming language, Optional Source Code Repo field, Add field for latest release version and date (as in Infobox software), Parameter suggestion: "size", Size parameter, Add license field?, Add a game version information, Programming language, missing fields
I would like |specific technical parameter= added: See: Addition of parameters, Parameters to the video game infobox, Addition of new optional parameters
I would like |other kind of parameter= added: See: Add Reception?, e.g. PEGI age ratings are missing from this info box, Budget field, Sound director parameter
I would like Wikidata to...: See: Release date (P577), Image property
I would like to refine how we treat a certain field, or even remove it: See: Staff precedence, "other_name" paramter, Propose adding Age Guide, Updating Computer Releases, Proposal on arcade fields (successful), On ending the practice of laundry listing dates..., Derivative copyrighted cover arts, Platform and Release Date fields, Guidelines for including Producer(s), Co-op, On staff in infobox, macOS in the infobox, Removal of the display parameter, Distributor (successful)

Archives

Archive 1	Archive 2	Archive 3
Archive 4	Archive 5	Archive 6
Archive 7	Archive 8	Archive 9
Archive 10	Archive 11	Archive 12
Archive 13	Archive 14	Archive 15
Archive 16

Previous and next game in a series fields discussion

This page has archives. Sections older than 60 days may be automatically archived by when more than 2 sections are present.

Proposal on arcade fields

I mentioned this on WT:VG and it got some support so I wanted to make a formal proposition.

Proposal: Remove the arcade game-specific fields Cabinet, CPU, Sound, and Display from the infobox.

Reasoning: These fields are each a combination of (a) too technical, (b) difficult to source, (c) not normally written in prose, and (d) not defining characteristics of the game. We already prohibit system requirements on non-arcade games per WP:VGSCOPE#13 for similar reasons. I've omitted Arcade System from this proposal, as there was some hesitation from others about removing it.

Votes

Support as nominator TarkusAB^talk/contrib 19:07, 11 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support These fields can all be derived from the arcade system specified and don't belong in the infobox. For that matter, I support removing Arcade System and an AWB run to move it into Platform instead. -- ferret (talk) 19:11, 11 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- The "Arcade System" parameter is closer to what we'd have as an "Engine" field for video games, and I'd be careful with that. I mean, the "platform" for all arcade games is "arcade", but the "arcade system" if it is notable is like the game engine it runs on. Now, that does beg the question, how many of those are notable? I know there's an AFD on one of the Namco ones for example, If only a fraction of these "arcade system" boards are notably that a smattering of arcade game infoboxes use it, then yes, lets deprecate that parameter too. But if it can be used more than say 10% of the time, we probably should keep it. --Masem (t) 19:16, 11 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support the four give as per nom. Mostly tech specs. --Masem (t) 19:16, 11 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support - they are a relic from the past when game articles had more technical details. ~ Dissident93 ^(talk) 19:55, 11 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support per nom and above. IceWelder [✉] 20:46, 11 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - Arcade system should not be removed from the template. Roberth Martinez (talk) 02:32, 13 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- @KGRAMR: Re-read the proposal. It's not advocating to remove Arcade System, only Cabinet, CPU, Sound, and Display. TarkusAB^talk/contrib 03:09, 13 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- Sorry! I did not make myself clear... Roberth Martinez (talk) 03:30, 13 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Partial support for Sound, CPU and Display. However, looking at arcade cabinet, it seems Cabinet would definitely get a mention being one of the primary characteristics of an arcade? Please correct me if I am misunderstanding this field and arcades in general. — HELLKNOWZ ▎TALK 09:46, 13 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- @Hellknowz: Yes Cabinet is a little different. While you may think of most arcade games being bought and sold as dedicated cabinets in the West, it was different in Japan and the East in general. They had "candy cabinets" which were sit-down cabinets (as opposed to the western upright standard), and they were generic as opposed to being decorated for a dedicated game. Games were not sold with the cabinets but rather in "kits" which included the game PCB board, instruction pamphlets, and promotional flyers. If you were an arcade owner, you owned several generic cabs and then just buy/sell the kits and swap out the boards. The JAMMA standard makes this very easy. Arcade game trading among hobbyists in the West is basically like this now. TarkusAB^talk/contrib 11:45, 13 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I'd say there's a rough consensus to remove fields here, with the possible exception of cabinet. -- ferret (talk) 21:11, 18 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Support per above. OceanHok (talk) 00:51, 12 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support While I did think its info that would appeal to a certain audience, it goes against What Wikipedia is Not. Le Panini ^Talk 01:18, 12 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support - I agree with the concerns by TarkusAB and Le Panini, since Wikipedia is not a game guide. Lord Sjones23 (talk - contributions) 02:27, 12 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support - I would actually vote to toss out the arcade system parameter too, since in my experience it's really hard to source and only a select few are actually significant. Anyways, I'm definitely voting to get rid of the others. They're useless to anybody that isn't an arcade cabinet/board collector — general readers are not gonna care what processor is used in Pac-Man, for instance. It's WP:GAMEGUIDE material that does nothing but bloat the infobox. Namcokid 47 ^(Contribs) 17:59, 12 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

So there is near universal support for this. Only one person voiced opposition, and one voiced concern for the Cabinet field to which I replied explaining and I don't see anyone else having concerns with it. Where do I need to go to make this happen? TarkusAB^talk/contrib 03:30, 27 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

TarkusAB, I removed them. ~ Dissident93 ^(talk) 04:54, 27 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@TarkusAB and Dissident93: When removing parameters, make sure to arrange for cleanup, as it floods the maintenance category. @Primefac: Could you run PrimeBot against Category:Pages_using_infobox_video_game_with_unknown_parameters to clean up the recently removed parameters? -- ferret (talk) 16:21, 27 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Sure, I can try to run this later today. Primefac (talk) 17:22, 27 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Add field for end of life?

Online games and MMOs have an "end of life" date associated with them since they are no longer playable when the servers are shutdown. It would be useful to add that field to the infobox after the release date.S-1-5-7 (talk) 07:59, 6 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

S-1-5-7, this has been discussed in the past (as a status parameter) and the consensus was that people would misuse this more than its intended purpose. Think of a game that stopped receiving updates, somebody could consider that game to be "end of life" even though you see cases like Left 4 Dead 2 that just received its first major update in over five years. I proposed that online-only games, including MMOs, could either have their own infobox or some sort of a yes/no flag that enables the use of status and other potential online/MMO specific parameters. The latter of course could still be misused, but the additional step(s) could be tracked and watched like we do for invalid parameters. ~ Dissident93 ^(talk) 19:50, 6 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Dissident93 That is an interesting observation. Maybe the field could be something like "Online service status" and could be used for both pure online games that have ended (e.g., The Sims Online) as well as traditional games that are still playable but no longer allow multiplayer (e.g., Homefront). Games that don't have an online service component (e.g., Doom) wouldn't put anything in there even though they haven't been supported in decades.S-1-5-7 (talk) 13:46, 7 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

S-1-5-7, I personally don't disagree with this, but I still see this creating more problems than it really solves. ~ Dissident93 ^(talk) 20:27, 7 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

It looks like this Template_talk:Infobox_video_game/Archive_11#Closure_date was the previous discussion of this. S-1-5-7 (talk) 13:50, 7 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

S-1-5-7, there were more recent discussions too that had the same consensus. ~ Dissident93 ^(talk) 01:43, 19 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Template-protected edit request on 5 November 2020

This edit request has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request.

Can the website parameter be added to this infobox? I see it useful to link to the official website of the video game, like minecraft.net for Minecraft, genshin.mihoyo.com for Genshin Impact, and leagueoflegends.com for League of Legends. Aasim (talk) 22:12, 5 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I'm going to disable the tper for now pending a discussion on this (or time for one, at least). ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 22:21, 5 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I refer you to my previous response at Template talk:Infobox video game/Archive 15#Three parameter suggestions. --Izno (talk) 22:26, 5 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Predecessor and successor

Hello! Is it possible to add fields for preceded by and followed by which denotes which game which preceded and succeeded the first game. Mvh Sondre --88.91.100.244 (talk) 16:33, 12 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, this again. --Izno (talk) 16:43, 12 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Added FAQ

After yet another "GIEF SUCCESSOR" thread, I've started an FAQ. Right now it's just an index of the past year or two of discussions here. See Template talk:Infobox video game/FAQ. Feel free to go forth and actually summarize the group opinion. --Izno (talk) 17:59, 12 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Should an edit notice be created, pointing out the FAQ? - Favre1fan93 (talk) 18:47, 12 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I am not a fan of edit notices as being just more banner blindness. The utility of the FAQ above is that I can link to it like #FAQ. --Izno (talk) 18:49, 12 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]