Talk:The Witness (2016 video game)/Archive 1

Archive 1

Gameplay video

The fact that the video is linked through the referenced article doesn't mean we can't make direct mention of it here along with a link. Wikipedia articles don't rely on people visiting external references to find this stuff themselves... Equazcion ^(talk) 22:59, 16 Feb 2011 (UTC)

Yes, but we also don't typically directly link to video (rich media) for reference material that is otherwise already stated in the article. Most of what this game is about is still shrouded in mystery (I'm following the game blog for it still don't know what this yet is all about). As the reveal video only shows elements that Tolito talked about and mentioned in this article already, it is not necessary. A final problem is that technically, that video is a copyvio (as opposed to the one hosted by the Kotaku article), since it contains copyrighted gameplay elements. If Blow had posted a video, that might be worth a link, but this is clearly not. I will, however, agree that mentioning Tolito included some footage in his article. --MASEM (t) 23:50, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

I don't think there's any reason to keep the presence of the video so obfuscated. The level of availability of game visuals is something people are interested in, and should be mentioned in more than just an offhand way buried at the end. I maintain this should be mentioned in the intro along with a link (to the Kotaku article rather than the Youtube video if need be), and mentioned directly, as the availability of real gameplay footage is an important milestone. Equazcion ^(talk) 00:06, 17 Feb 2011 (UTC)

The game being playable is a milestone for sure, so I agree mentioning that it was quietly available at PAX in the lead is fine. But at the same time, that's an early build and from what I've read, not fully indicative of the puzzles in the game. We can describe what was shown (which is done already) as there's little else to build on, but we don't need to link directly to gameplay footage for any of that. --MASEM (t) 01:52, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

We can still say that gameplay was filmed and posted online, with the Kotaku page as a reference. Again the fact that gameplay footage is available for viewing is a milestone in the eyes of those keeping track of development. I don't quite understand the resistance to that. Equazcion ^(talk) 05:09, 17 Feb 2011 (UTC)

I've included that in the lead (the Kotaku ref, the game being playable etc. Bare links to YouTube visions by unofficial sources are discourages because it could appear to be a copyvio or the like. Here, while its the same video, at least its "blessed" by both Blow and Tolito. --MASEM (t) 05:13, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

You included the existence of the playable demo but not that footage exists of it. That's what I'm gunning for: direct mention that footage of it has been posted, within the intro. The existing ref to the Kotaku article is enough of a link for me. Let me know why you don't think that should be done, if you still think so. Equazcion ^(talk) 05:20, 17 Feb 2011 (UTC)

Because from a long-term standpoint, that doesn't aid in the article. The milestone is playable demo. We have sourced info of that - both Blow and Tolito said so. The video is not a milestone as its not an official video in the first place. Should Blow come out with an official gameplay video to promote the work, that might be something more to be said, but it doesn't really matter that there was a shakycam footage of the game as PAX; as long as we have Tolito's description of how it played, that's sufficient for encyclopedic purposes. --MASEM (t) 07:16, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

I disagree, as again it's something people keeping up with development would be very interested in. Actual gameplay footage being available online is important, and I can't imagine how you wouldn't think so. Thinking in terms of the eventual state of the article as it would appear after the game were finished (long-term, as you put it), this might be insignificant. But the fact is, the game is currently in-development, and the people reading this article will likely be interested in this fact given its current in-development state. Articles evolve, and when the video footage becomes insignificant its mention can be removed, but that's just not the case right now. We write these articles for the readers and should include all information available that would be of interest to them, and this assuredly falls into that category. I think you might be stuck in GA/FA mode and are failing to see that. The eventual post-release article will not be hurt by us including a bit of information of interest to those who are following development, anticipating this game, and who are curious about what it currently looks like. Equazcion ^(talk) 07:27, 17 Feb 2011 (UTC)

But it's not an official video - it is shakycam of the demo. Counterexample is that for Limbo, they created a trailer specific to put online to promote what this game would be like to secure funding. I agree that official promotional videos are a milestone, but that's not what we have here. We have shakycam footage not made by Blow or any other developer on the program, far from official as possible. Blow and his team has put up several stills and development blogs, and I'm sure when they're good and ready, will put out an official video like he did for Braid. When Blow or anyone involves with the development puts one up, great, we can talk about that in more detail. --MASEM (t) 07:38, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Why does it matter whether or not the video is official, shakey or not? Wikipedia articles aren't just for posting official promo material. It's the only existing gameplay footage available, which is something people would be interested in knowing about. It not being official or polished is no reason to exclude it. Equazcion ^(talk) 07:43, 17 Feb 2011 (UTC)

This is what I'm not understanding. I've never seen any other article of an upcoming game - indie or professional - where the existence of a gameplay video merits attention, unless that is the only media that is known about the game (see The Last Guardian). I don't see the rest of the community seeing this idea that a video of the game being played as a "milestone". Playable demos, teaser trailers, all that are milestones, and we definitely have that here in the demo. But a video of someone playing the game is just .. random.

The question to ask is if there is anything explicitly in the video that is not adequetely covered by the article, keeping in mind non-free content prevents us from showing much more than a single screen shot? --MASEM (t) 14:42, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Blow himself links to the page from his blog and mentions the video -- he appears to have thought its presence was important enough to mention. Videos are always better than textual descriptions. The same reason we'd post the existence of official promo video is the reason we'd post the existence of bootleg footage. You think articles on subjects like these exist to encompass a company's vision of their product? No, the article exists to describe using all available material. Official promo material or not, it's still a better representation of gameplay than any verbal description. And again it's something that people following development will want to know about, so it belongs in the article.

I'm still not getting the resistance here. I'm not even going to try to argue about how the video is a better description of the current state of the game than any text description could ever be -- it's much too obvious to me, and if you don't get that, I can't really make you understand. In the end this is verifiable footage of the subject of the article, it is of interest (even if you don't consider it a "milestone" per se), therefore there's no reason whatsoever that we can't mention it directly; it's furthermore an elusive subject, being a non-public demo, so we have all the more reason to post the existence of footage. Equazcion ^(talk) 15:49, 17 Feb 2011 (UTC)

While you're right that most people learn better from video than text descriptions of what happens in a video, the VG project does not generally link to game trailers, video walkthroughs from reliable sources, or many other video sources for games, even though they exist and likely are fairly copyrighted. There are likely two reasons. First is that in general, we avoid rich media external links (per WP:EL) because numerous people cannot see those with older browsers or other devices. The other is that while such videos are useful for the gamer, they are not helpful for the average, non-gamer reader particularly if there's no context for them to read from.

The other aspect that you talk about is verifiability. I would agree that if it were the case that Tolito never wrote that article, and Blow on the dev blog pointed to the video explaining what it was, but never talked about it further, then yes, that video has a lot more value to explain the gameplay aspects - we infer gameplay elements from the video and use it as a direct reference since that's the only source for gameplay. But no, we have Tolito's article, which, simply, is a text description of what happens in the video, plus the embedded video itself. Even if Tolito didn't link the video, the gameplay section is still verified to a reliable source (Tolito, and a bit of Blow's blessing on Tolito's writeup). In other words, the video is made redundant by a more-acceptable external source, Tolito's article. If the video didn't exist, nothing would change in this article since Tolito did a good job with his summary. --MASEM (t) 16:17, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Also I do want to point out that we do mention the footage (I don't remember if I added that or someone else did), per the last para Players who tried the game at PAX or saw footage of it from the Kotaku article afterwards.... --MASEM (t) 16:19, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

This isn't a mere walkthrough, and I agree walkthroughs aren't necessary; and I'm also not suggesting linking directly to the rich meduia, as I've already conceded that the existing ref to the Kotaku page is enough. I just want it mentioned that the video exists. This video is of special interest because it shows an in-development game demo that's not publicly available. It's also not merely a better description of gameplay than the text is, in terms of information purposes; people following development quite simply want to see what the in-development game looks like, not just to merely know what its mechanics are. So the only question is, does this video verifiably show what the game demo looks like during its stage of development at the time it was shot? It does. As you say we already do mention it an offhand way, so there should be no reason we can't mention it more directly. Equazcion ^(talk) 16:32, 17 Feb 2011 (UTC)

I don't think it should be in the lead, but I can see - and have added - mention of this is the very first sentence of the body. --MASEM (t) 16:49, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

I altered the wording slightly to make the existence of the video footage more plain and less obfuscated. I don't see the need to keep it so offhand, as you seem so eager to keep it. Equazcion ^(talk) 17:45, 17 Feb 2011 (UTC)

Date format for citations

Just to avoid any issues with WP:DATERET, I would propose we switch the citation dates to use MDY format. I've a script to do it easy, I just need to make sure there's consensus to do that. --MASEM (t) 15:38, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

Would be in the general interest, in my opinion. YMD is just ugly, and since there is no DMY yet, MDY will do perfectly. Lordtobi (✉) 15:40, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

I would not choose DMY since Jonathan Blow is American, and we loosely base the choice between DMY and MDY on the nationality of the developer. But it's more to get off YMD which I do agree is ugly. --MASEM (t) 15:44, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Yes for MDY (game is from US) on all dates except access dates (no need to clutter those).—  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 15:46, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

Well, since some are MDY, some are YMD, it would make sense to also get them in-line, where, in this case, MDY would make most sense. Lordtobi (✉) 15:48, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

You mean have access dates also MDY? MOS:DATEUNIFY specifically allows access/archive dates to be different in interest of brevity. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 15:52, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

It is true that accessdate may differ from date, but the accessdate's should not differ from other accessdate's, which is why MDY would be useful in general. Lordtobi (✉) 15:56, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

Of course they shouldn't differ, I implied that access/archive dates would be YMD. I don't mind if it's MDY, but I wouldn't call it better than YMD. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 16:13, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

Well, not really "better", but somewhat nicer to read/look at. And since YMD *can* be used, we might leave that to a third party to decide, e.g. Masem. Lordtobi (✉) 16:22, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

Except nobody reads access and archive dates :P (And "nicer" is very subjective, most dates I see are 25.01.2015, so an ISO date is super-neat after that.) But yes, whoever is working on the article can decide is fine by me. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 16:33, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

Haha, yeah. Well, as I can see from the article's revision history, Masem and I seem to be the major editors. And as I said, I'll leave it to him to decide, as he also has the script. Lordtobi (✉) 16:36, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

Speaking from the DATERET stance, the reason we allow different date formats for publication date and access date is that there are some publication guidelines that have this type of reference format, where the accessdate is ISO/YMD while the publication date is not, this often in the computer science field. For video games, we really don't have that type of guidance, so most every FA I've seen has common date formats for access and publication dates, and that would be my personally preference too. But gaining consensus is why I started this to validate the change before doing it. --MASEM (t) 16:37, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

You have my acceptance and my opinion, and since Hellknowz leaves the descision to use, go ahead. Lordtobi (✉) 16:39, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

I don't know yet how to execute scripts on Wikipedia, could you tell me? Also, could you execute the script to change the YMD dates now? Lordtobi (✉) 17:28, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

The date switch is done. You can look at WP:User scripts to learn how to use them, generally it is by adding some code to your common.js file (a file stored on WP), which then will have additional javascript code that comes up to enable the scripts to work. --MASEM (t) 18:00, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

On reviews

First, reviews that came out on Jan 25 when the game came out on the 26th are not reviews "prior" to release, in the usual sense. There was clearly a review embargo until the 25th, and they all released reviews that say. That's at release. Normally, in the industry reviews "prior" to release are those months in advance and generally not using a final copy of the game, which is not what happened here.

Second, reviews from non-tradition gaming sources, particularly from print, are very important for use, since most games do not get covered outside of video game sites. So coverage from sources like the Guardian, Time, and Ars Technica are rather important to include. At some point we need to make this more a prose layout and not just have a string of review lines, and once that's done, it will be easier to incorporate these other sources. If anything, the coverage in more mainstream works means we likely should remove the weaker video game sources if there's an issue with # of reviews included. --MASEM (t) 16:26, 27 January 2016 (UTC)

Especially Guardian, Ars Technica, Time, Metro, etc. often take in video games and is not unusual practice for them, as well as the fact that it does not go to print, rather they have their seperate online platform for less important news like gaming. And per guidlines, we should stay with usual suspects (popular video game reviewers) and also not add too many, those being print media's online publications used in excess without really finding a spot to use them outside of what is already given with the sources we have, from 12 reviews, which is definetly enough. If there is something these sources cover that others don't there would be a reason to add them, but as of now, it would be more important to fill the section body instead of feeding it more unused reviews. Lordtobi (✉) 16:33, 27 January 2016 (UTC)

As one of the ones that helped write the review template guidelines, the number applies to the number in the review table. You are absolutely right that we don't want much more in the table, as what happens more than not is that it becomes a dumping ground for links without reflection in the prose. But that does not apply to what is in prose; there is no practical limit but we also don't need every single review that was ever made. And here, in prose, we then put more weight on the external non-traditional sources for the reason that they normally don't cover games, so when they do, that emphasizes the game's notability and importance. --MASEM (t) 16:51, 27 January 2016 (UTC)

Non-gaming sources are definitely highly desired. We want general source perspective, there's already a huge bias of video games being sourced entirely through gaming sources. And the more in-depth reviews, the better, this is excellent for WP:WAF. The game was just released, so it's bound to not have prose written, but that absolutely does not preclude us from including as many in-depth reliable ones as available. Multiple sources agreeing is exactly what we want to verify what we say. (And since the review embargo, it only makes sense there would be a day 1 review flood.) If anything, gaming sources should be the first to go if the number is a concern. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 16:39, 27 January 2016 (UTC)

To add that I fully plan, in the week, to take all the reviews and flesh out the reception once I can identify the common themes, so just having the list of reviews to work from is helpful to get the citation in place and to have that at the ready. But I want to finish the game on my side first even though most reviews are being sufficiently vague to avoid spoiling. --MASEM (t) 17:01, 27 January 2016 (UTC)

Screenshot

Instead of having two screenshots showing the game's environment, maybe replace one with a screenshot showing the puzzle mechanic, which more central to the gameplay. --The1337gamer (talk) 09:50, 6 February 2016 (UTC)

Note that we can likely make a free "puzzle" image (you can't copyright that mechanic, and the graphics are simple enough to be ineligible for copyright alone if you isolate it to just what is on the panel), and thus do not need a screenshot of it directly. --MASEM (t) 15:02, 6 February 2016 (UTC)

Oh, I thought that screenshots of paid property are non-free use. Well, it's not _that_ important, is it? Else, someone could just move the image. Lordtobi (✉) 15:09, 6 February 2016 (UTC)

Sorry, what I meant was: right now you added a screenshot from the game. That's copyrighted, that's non-free. Normally for games that's fine, but it should be possible to create seperate SVG-type image of a representive puzzle, which would look like how this fan-made puzzle is presented: [1] (though I would keep it very simple to the black/white square separation concept). That type of graphic is uncopyrightable because of the simplicity (particularly if we stuck to a 4x4 (5x5 line) grid-like puzzle. That said, now that I think about it, that image shows part of one of the "learning sequences" which are discussed in the game, so seeing the puzzle in context of being in a line of other puzzles makes sense , and that's something we can't replace with a simple free image, so it might be okay, then. --MASEM (t) 15:14, 6 February 2016 (UTC)

Link title style

(diff) My understanding is that we follow WP style for small style things like this. There's no reason to put The Witness in quotes when we italicize creative works (and there is no technical limitation preventing us from doing so).  czar 21:39, 20 February 2016 (UTC)

• Agreed, don't see why it shouldn't be formatted like usual. ~ Dissident93 (talk) 07:25, 21 February 2016 (UTC)

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:The Witness (2016 video game)/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Jaguar (talk · contribs) 21:33, 4 April 2016 (UTC)

I'll have this finished soon. JAGUAR  21:33, 4 April 2016 (UTC)

Initial comments

• "The Witness received widespread acclaim from critics, who praised the difficult, but surmountable puzzles and the game's art and setting" - the last sentence of the lead looks a bit disjointed. Can you merge it in another paragraph? Altinatevly, you could expand this sentence a little and mention what critics liked/disliked about various aspects of the game
• "The final game has more than 650 puzzles, which Jonathan Blow estimates" - link Jonathan Blow here
• "Throughout the island are stations with audio recordings that provide insightful quotes for the player, from persons such as" - why not just people? Feel free to ignore
• "and feared that he would "fall back to square one", his state before the success of Braid, should it fail." - he stated?
• "He considers his approach the "anti-Nintendo"" - not sure if I'm looking at this wrong way, but it would read fine without the "the" here
• "While The Witness would be considered an indie game due to the lack of funding or support from a major publisher" - considered by who? The developers themselves?
• I noticed that US Gamer isn't in the review table?
• No dead links
• No dab links

This is an excellent article. Once all of the minor issues are out of the way, then you can have a GA. It is well written, comprehensive and enjoyable to read. This is pretty close to FA standard! JAGUAR  19:38, 5 April 2016 (UTC)

All of these issues should be resolved now. Lordtobi (✉) 18:41, 6 April 2016 (UTC)

Thanks! This looks good to go now. JAGUAR  17:18, 7 April 2016 (UTC)

Just a quick word of thanks....

...to @Lordtobi:, @Dissident93: and @Iridescent: among others for tidying up after my additions/edits on this over the last few weeks. Appreciate all the fine tuning and improvements. --MASEM (t) 22:42, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

• Your ping didn't work, but I only did a few minor corrections for the lead, if I remember right. ~ Dissident93 (talk) 07:26, 21 February 2016 (UTC)