Template talk:Infobox video game

Writer is connected to author (P50)?

Why is this parameter linked to author (P50) when the wiki article listed in the infobox explicitly describes the writing of the script? I think screenwriter (P58) would be a more reasonable choice, while "author" would be more appropriate for the "Idea/Story by" line, which by the way is separated from writer in the Template:Infobox film. Speaking of usage - P58 is used with 428 video games and P50 with 218 video games. What do you think about swapping properties? Solidest (talk) 19:48, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

Because P50 made sense at the time. No one ever refers to video games as having a "screenwriter". I'd suggest all such cases switch to P50, but honestly no one from WP:VG really maintains Wikidata and I've debated suggesting we pull it back out. -- ferret (talk) 20:12, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

If we switch everything to P50, wouldn't it make sense to rename the parameter to "author" as well? Because an author is more than just a writer. An author can be the original creator of the idea, while writer is hardly referred to as such in this pair. For example, I would say that the author of Gears of War (video game) is Cliff Bleszinski or Sven Winke is the author of Baldur's Gate 3, but both of them are not writers of these games. An author is something between director/writer/gamedesigner which may variate in different cases. While a writer may be someone who adapted the original work or idea of the author. For the very same reason Pac-Man doesn't have a writer, but it does have an author/creator. Solidest (talk) 22:14, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

IMO "author" shouldn't be used for video games at all unless it is a one-person indie game, since it refers to the creator of the entire work (as with books), not just the initial game idea. Removing all Wikidata garbage, though, would be the best solution. IceWelder [✉] 22:24, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

It’s better to not be too hung-up on the (English) label of a property. P58’s French label is “scénariste”, which is most definitely used for video games. Among the English aliases is “screenplay by”, and video games have most certainly been referred as having a screenplay (just one random example, 1992’s Alone in the Dark has « Screen Play: Hubert Chardot, Franck Manzetti » in its opening credits). I would agree with the suggested move to P58 (disconnecting the field from Wikidata is also a possible solution of course, which I’m sure can be done without having to refer to anything as 'garbage'). Jean-Fred (talk) 07:50, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

Alone in the Dark is definitely an outlier. "Screenwriter" is an exceedingly rare title in video games from an English view. -- ferret (talk) 14:51, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

If anything, both properties have "writer" and "written by" AKAs. And I sincerely don't understand how someone who holds the position of "Lead Writer" (the most common credit in modern narrative games used by this parameter) can be called the author of a game.

I didn't mention it the first time, but the situation here is exactly about how the properties are designed on wikidata. The author (P50) is primarily a property for literary works and for indicating the out-of-category authorship of a work. Can we say that the hired writer of a script for a game becomes the author of a video game? Of course not. Whereas the property screenwriter (P58) is rather used for any audiovisual works, starting from the cinema. Writing for a game is much closer to writing for films than writing poems or novels, if anything. And it doesn't matter how you call those positions. In both film and games, it's a script because in a game, as in a film, there is a narrative that is played out/performed visually (essentially written in dramatic mode). Writing in the form of regular literary prose is quite rarely used in games - exceptionally in unconventional indie projects where text is an important part of the gameplay.

Another nuance is that author (P50) used 217 times with video games (or its subtypes), while screenwriter (P58) is used 436 times.

And the last is that author (P50) is connected to author (Q482980)=Author and writer (Q36180)=Writer, while screenwriter (P58) is screenwriter (Q28389)=Screenwriter. Check these items on wikidata - the former is all about literature and books, the latter as I said is about audiovisual works, including video games. Then check the content of the articles on wikipedia and find where they mention "video games" - the conclusion is also unambiguous.

To be honest, there is not even any room for manoeuvre here and it is obvious that at the moment the property is given incorrectly. Solidest (talk) 21:59, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

I mean, you kinda showed it. P50 is attached to Writer, which is why years ago, we chose that property. Like, literally 8 years ago now. And at the time all efforts to determine appropriate properties pointed to P50. Now, 8 years later, Wikidata has been off doing it's own thing and populating P58 instead, and no one brought it up till now. Wikidata drifted from what Enwiki was doing in the years, which is part of the issue with Wikidata integration in the first place. Video games do not have a credit called Screenwriter and no one in WP:VG would have ever thought to use that. -- ferret (talk) 22:08, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

Okay, since we seem to have come the agreement on this, I open an edit request. Solidest (talk) 22:46, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

Per the reasons above, Wikidata property for "author" should be replaced to P58. Solidest (talk) 22:46, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

Have we come to agreement? I'm steadfast in "screenwriter" is not a video game credit. -- ferret (talk) 23:09, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

So you ignored all my arguments, and yet your argument is "that's how things were on wikidata 8 years ago and they seem to have changed and you demonstrated it" turns out to be your disagreement with the state of things? i.e. you basically don't care about it? Also, based on the fact that you focus on label, and ignore descriptions, aliases, and other statements of wikidata items and properties, it looks like you don't really understand how wd really works and should be used in importing. Or either you are just showing stubbornness/ ignorance, which hardly plays any role here or elsewhere on wikipedia. If you really have counterarguments that you are ready to give to the points above in the described context, I will be glad to hear them. So far I haven't seen that from you, except for repeating the phrase to which you have been answered by 3 people (and I personally gave you three reasoned answers to that). Video game writer is not "author" on wikidata of 2024, p58 is correct property for that. Solidest (talk) 02:05, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

Hmm, yes, let's try to avoid riding the line of personal attacks. I literally implemented all Wikidata integrations for WP:VG, and was a proponent for years. I did give my reason, but you misunderstood it as agreement, somehow, even though I explicitly said once more that "screenwriter" is not the English project usage, and the descriptions/aliases made no mention of video games on the property. Then you rushed to an edit request. You highlighted that author is an connected to writer, which is what I referred to with "you kinda showed it", as why we used it. When Wikidata moves out of alignment with English Wikipedia expectations, such as using a different term than we do, we don't necessarily change to match Wikidata, we sometimes just stop using it, as Jean-Fred alluded to above. This is also Icewelder's position, though he'd remove all the credits from using Wikidata. The project tends to sit on edge of deciding to remove these fields entirely, regardless of Wikidata, as well, due to numerous issues in how they are sourced and populated. The actual smoking gun from the Wikidata side, not brought up so far, is that video game writer is a suggested constraint on Occupation for P58. This is a very clear argument, and does make the Wikidata intent clear. But, I'm also more in line with Icewelder and would currently lean towards removing the properties entirely. -- ferret (talk) 02:47, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

I don't mind removing the properties, as it would stop gadgets suggest exporting values into two different properties. This infobox also has a problem with "artist" param, when for 95% modern games people most of the time list "art director" there which has its own property art director (P3174), but the infobox is connected to game artist game artist (P3080) - and this also creates incorrect or doubling exports. Unlinking will also help to resolve this issue as well. Basically, Wikidata favours precise data, while Wikipedia prefers to fit 10 different positions into 5 parameters and therefore degrades the quality of data in this regard. And the situation is unlikely to change until English wikipedia revises its approach towards infobox data accuracy rather than compactness. Solidest (talk) 03:39, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

Yes, artist is another sticky one, where there are two properties representing related roles. It looks, at a glance, that P3174 was added just after we had implemented as P3080 (which I think I actually requested because there was nothing suitable at the time). Infoboxes on English Wikipedia aren't meant to be detailed accuracy, but compact "at a glance" information. Our rules for Release date are so arcane that we never even tried to implement Wikidata for that. Are any of the credit positions actually correct, once we review all related properties? Programmer is using P943, but of course we also want only "leads" or "directors". And of course, we use the generic P57 for directors, and P123 for producer. P86 is probably fine for composer? -- ferret (talk) 03:45, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

Director is also a tricky one. When credits have "creative director" and "game director" at the same time, then it would mean that game director is rather a production head position (unit production manager equivalent), than creative position as what "game director" is usually is. Using two roles at the same time is not as common, but it still happens: 1, 2, 3, 4. The infobox documentation currently assumes that this is the same position. A couple of weeks ago I created a proposal for "creative director", mostly as it's often used on television and is quite different from director in this context. And it's not really clear how to use this with video games - people will probably still fill this in when a role is specified. Solidest (talk) 15:36, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

 Not done for now: please establish a consensus for this alteration before using the {{Edit template-protected}} template. Relax, Solidest and Ferret. As an alternative solution, Wikidata may need a new property for video game writing credits. Neither "author" nor "screenwriter" (in English) adequately describe the work of video game writers in my opinion. SWinxy (talk) 03:08, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

(Wow, this conversation sure got busy overnight :) ).

@Ferret: re: Alone in the Dark being an outlier and screenwriter being rare lingo for video games: sure, I’ll take your word for it. (we may want to tweak the articles for screenwriter (which currently says A screenwriter [writing for] video games) and screenplay (which states "A screenplay, or script, is a written work by screenwriters for a […] video game"))

I’m not sure I get what the problem is here. Ferret, it seems to me you are getting defensive about the use of P50? There is no reason to: I don’t doubt that using P50 felt like the right thing to do 8 years back − even our own WD:VG documentation has been pointing to P50 for 11 years. But Wikidata is a wiki, it’s in perpetual evolution. Sometimes the change happens in a controlled way (we have a discussion, decide on changes, and implement them) ; sometimes it happens on its own, someone eventually notices (in this case Solidest) and we have the discussion a bit after the fact. As changes on WD side do potentially impact other projects (like this infobox), then the former is obviously a more ideal process. I don’t think the latter has happened that often with video games (perhaps I’m wrong), but I understand this can be annoying for you. Personally, I think we have more to gain by working somewhat together rather than actively against each other, and since I understand that not many (if any) en.wp VG editors want to get involved with WD (which, fair enough − only so many hours in the day), I don’t mind picking up a bit more of the extra work to make things work smoothly between our projects.

Anyhow, coming back to the topic at hand: I opened a more formal proposal on our side to clarify the P50 vs P58. I do acknowledge that the English label might not be a great fit ; but really, I can’t stress enough that "it does not really matter": properties encode an agreed-upon relationship between item and value. if we all agree that in the context of video game items, P58 means "video game writer" then it does. And we do have Descriptions, Aliases and Constraints to clarify. (There is certainly no requirement for this infobox field header to be changed to screenwriter). Of course, preferably, the labels are a good fit (which is the case in French and any other language I can read, for that matter), so we can start a discussion to relabel P58 − would “scenarist” make everyone happy? Jean-Fred (talk) 11:10, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

@Jean-Frédéric We use video game writer here, which has an entire article on the process. It does make some comparisons in a few places to screenwriters, but generally avoids the use of the term "screen" and refers to "script writing" more generically. There's no defensiveness here, I'm simply direct in my text, and very calm. As noted, the missing piece to me in the arguments was the constraint on occupation that directly mentioned video game writer. Otherwise, P58 makes no mention of video game writing. Adoption of WD is hampered by changes in the structure like this: Sure, this one case has been identified, but what other templates on Enwiki have either improperly chosen a property, or that property's use has changed since it was adopted? Either way, Enwiki's infobox video game has an arcane rule set for credit fields in that we only want to display lead roles, which means almost any Wikidata pull is a violation of the template documentation outside of very small game projects. We've discussed removing these fields entirely, though I don't think that's happening. It may be best, as Icewelder first stated, to remove WD for these staff fields. -- ferret (talk) 14:09, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

Just to point out that you talk about the word "screen", but omit the fact that "author" is also not used anywhere in Video game writer and avoided in exactly the same way. In the context of video games it can not only have a different meaning in other languages. Jean-Fred already said about French, and I can say that in Russian this word has the basic meaning "creator", which is why this parameter is already called "scenarist" in the video game infobox on ruwiki. But in English it's also a case - just look what author describes. It has a very different scope compared to the role of screenwriting in film, which is the equivalent for writing scripts in video games. The situation with the exact title of the profession does not play an essential role when we talk about the concept of the position itself. The exact same job can have different titles in different fields, and on wikidata there is no possibility to add 5 titles in the same language at once. That's why items have aliases. But anyway, I think renaming the properties to "scenarist" suggested by Jean-Fred should really handle this situation, as well as adding explicit AKA "video game writer" and additional intentional linking video game writer (Q3476620) in P58. And by the way, you're addressing disconnecting wikidata from the infobox again, but that's not what we're originally talking about. Here we are discussing replacing one property with another. If you want to start the discussion on removing wikidata from the code, you should probably start a new discussion below, pausing this one. Since switching from one topic to another is a bit confusing. Solidest (talk) 15:49, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

For P58 specifically, I think "scriptwriter" is the primary English label you want to cover the most media of this type. I think this in general should pause until WD:VG concludes their discussion (as they said to use P50 as well, as noted). Once that concludes and the exact guidance from WD is in order, we can update the property usage for this field. If we change the infobox right now, we potentially fix the pull for some ~450 items... but break it for ~250. Then we should resume discussing the fact that multiple properties can apply to these fields (i.e. as noted above for artist, etc) and the suitability of continuing using them given our rules to filter to "Leads" only. -- ferret (talk) 16:03, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

@Ferret Thanks, this sounds like a plan. I’ll come back here once the discussion on WD:VG concludes. I will also float “scriptwriter” (as you suggest) as potential new English label for P58.

I look forward continuing the discussion regarding multiple properties and the "leads" only rule.

Jean-Fred (talk) 19:04, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

Modes field

This might be me being old-fashioned, but... does it make sense to set the Modes field for single-player games? I'm a fan of keeping infoboxes lean and svelte, and single-player seems like the "default" for a game to me, and thus skippable. Which isn't actually true as far as playership (Fortnite, CoD, Minecraft, etc.), but is surely true as far as raw number of games treated equally (most games are single-player only). I'd suggest updating the doc to say that "Modes" parameter should only be filled in for multiplayer or mixed single & multiplayer games. Every little bit of trimming helps get the infobox over sooner and get back to the text, especially notable on mobile displays where the user needs to swipe through the full infobox on their way to the second paragraph of the lede. Thoughts? SnowFire (talk) 18:08, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

If you are going to show it for all other modes, includes games with both single and multiplayer modes, you really need to keep it for singke player only games, otherwise a reader could conclude something dufferent. Masem (t) 20:55, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

I think single-player being the default is a faulty assumption, and the casual reader might come to a completely different conclusion under a lack of information. Also, removing the field for one value but keeping it for all others feels completely arbitrary. That is somewhat like defaulting to a Windows release assumption unless the infobox states otherwise. IceWelder [✉] 21:42, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

My argument is merely that the best Infobox is the shortest one. Infoboxes are not for every single true fact. I don't think a game being (mostly / all) single-player really needs to be highlighted; it is generally obvious from context. SnowFire (talk) 22:24, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

There isn't really that much context to go around if one only reads the infobox. If you would like to make an argument for deprecating the field entirely, I would get that, but only disallowing one value that you think everyone would be able to infer seems unreasonable -- and difficult to enforce. IceWelder [✉] 22:38, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

My two cents... I'd cut credits before cutting modes down. Also, since we only support single player and multiplayer, I mull what if we had "singleplayer=yes", and "multiplayer=yes" and built the displayed field from that. This would also eliminate every case where someone puts a non-accepted item in the field. -- ferret (talk) 22:52, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

This, or making the existing field a three-entry enum, sounds like a great idea. IceWelder [✉] 23:04, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

I'd still rather just not display pure single-player at all, but seems others disagree on that.

I agree that simple y/n flags might be handy for external Wikidata-style analysis, though. Only worry is that I can see people throwing in footnotes to explain certain edge cases? And I'm not sure what would be a good way to represent that, short of creating a new `mode notes` and `mode group` field or the like. (And yes, I say this after just going ahead and saying that short infoboxes are better, but if people are arguing about whether a game qualifies or not, having the ability to throw in {{efn|The 1991 Sid Meier's Civilization release is single-player only; the 1995 CivNet remake has multiplayer capability.}} or whatever seems handy to avoid eternal edit wars. SnowFire (talk) 15:46, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

If we had yes / no fields, there wouldn't be a way to insert a footnote, at least not in the field itself. As someone who patrols this field regularly, I've never seen anyone do that, tbh. -- ferret (talk) 15:54, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

Interesting that you've found it rare. I'm guessing it does mostly occurs in-text rather than my example of a footnote - I see that at Star Ocean 3 for example. I just imagine completionists who just can't help but point out that one totally optional multiplayer minigame buried in a 70 hour game or whatever, or want to point out that the tutorial of a MOBA is technically single-player. (But I definitely haven't done an extensive analysis, so I'll defer to you on this.) SnowFire (talk) 22:01, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

I've honestly never seen that. Usually what I see is older games who's infoboxes haven't been updated in age that list things like "co-op" and "splitscreen". -- ferret (talk) 22:04, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

It is always possible that if we converted the modes field to simple three-mode (sp/mp/smp with aliases, defaulting to sp) that we can add an extra field to be treated as a type of explanatory note. I don't know what that would be named.

Also we need to consider how to grandfather existing infoboxes if we change this field. Masem (t) 22:06, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

Oh I'm confident Primefac could bot update it. That's not really an issue. We would only have two new fields, sp=yes/no and mp=yes/no. If both are yes it'll programmatically show both. -- ferret (talk) 22:10, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

I've put a demonstration of sp/mp yes/no flags in the sand box and test cases at Template:Infobox_video_game/testcases#Mode_switch_test. Is this a direction we want to go? These are the only two values we allow anyways. -- ferret (talk) 03:07, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

I'm fine with it, but per above, despite the potential for annoying pedantry, I'd rather keep either the ability to either override the values, or to always use the sp / mp values but to also have some sort of explanatory addition or footnote. In particular, the example of multiple relevant releases of the same basic game, but where the value changes, seems like something important enough to go in the Infobox (the Civ1 vs. CivNet example, say) if we're going to have the field at all. SnowFire (talk) 21:29, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

It's a good thought. I also believe in keeping an article lean, but I don't think single player is a fair assumption to make. Just at quick glance, it looks like around 30% of games on Steam are multiplayer. It's probably worth clarifying which is which, so readers don't assume. I like the idea of two simple "Y/N" flags for single player and multi player, because it prevents editors from piling on more information than necessary. Shooterwalker (talk) 16:39, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

released field

Currently it reads "Add release dates ... for English-language regions and the developer's region." I think it should also say "first country of release" or something similar. The original release isn't necessarily in the developer's region. Saw this at Gray Matter (video game) where original release date was deleted because it wasn't in a "major region". Mika1h (talk) 00:17, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

I have altered the wording to state that it should be the region of first release (if different from Western release) and that typically is the developer's region. — Masem (t) 01:35, 20 February 2024 (UTC)