Talk:List of games

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Games - classification method

[Moved from Talk:List of Applications#Games - classification method -- Kynikos (talk) 09:43, 4 November 2013 (UTC)]Reply

Currently, games are first divided in Free/Reimplemented/Commercial/Emulators/MMO and only then they are grouped by genre. I'd like to see the opposite, i.e. first group by genre (also in Template:Games navigation) and only inside each genre make the distinction between native/emulators, free/commercial and whatever distinction better suits that particular genre.

Note that this topic has already been briefly touched on in Talk:Common_Applications/Games/MMO#MMOG by me and AlexanderR, but more opinions are needed.

-- Kynikos 08:45, 5 February 2012 (EST)

+1 -- when browsing games, one would logically search by genre first. The genre classification scheme is more consistent with the other Common Applications pages, too, where applications are organized by type first, then by UI/platform (graphical or console). -- pointone 12:25, 4 March 2012 (EST)
In my opinion the classification is really confusing (not very KISS! ;)) It's hard to guess whether a game should belong to Native - Reimplemented or Native - Commercial, or MMO (some of them are also commercial). There is a Humble Indie Bundle section, but a game cannot be categorized this way, since all HIB games are also sold by other means (like Steam - which also has its own section). Besides Native - Free is sorted by genre, but it's the only one. Some entries use the Application template, other do not, some entries are not even games (see the Quake part). All this can be treacherous because if you look only in the wrong sections, you might miss some games. So you end up using the browser search function... In the end sections become rather useless. My suggestion:
  1. Merge the Netbook Games page.
  2. Create a game template which features the genres (should always be a list, since it's hard to stick to one precise genre), the license (proprietary), optionnaly the distribution system (Steam, HIB).
  3. The article should only contain a list of games sorted alphabetically. That's the only KISS-way to sort, after all.
  4. Move Emulators to a separate article.
  5. Digital Distribution should be removed / merged into the rest of the list.
-- Ambrevar (talk) 07:51, 5 July 2013 (UTC)Reply
  1. Agreed, see also Talk:Netbook Games#Merging
  2. I haven't understood what you mean, sorry, maybe you can give an example... What about adapting Template:Games navigation to the new classification?
  3. I think a classification by genre is feasible and welcome, and in any case I'm not sure if your idea would conflict with 2.
  4. Well, yes, after all emulators are not "games"; another possibility would be moving them to List of Applications/Other; also consider a link from Gaming, or even moving the list there?
  5. Consider moving it to Gaming?
-- Kynikos (talk) 12:25, 5 July 2013 (UTC)Reply
1. OK
2. I meant a new Game template based on the App template. So basically it would look like
{{game|Name|Genre|Description|License|Official website|Pkg|Distribution (optional)}}
3. The problem with classification by genre is that it is not always obvious, nor it is absolute. Just like for music or movies. A lot of games haved mixed genre.
  • You can use precise subgenres to overcome this issue, but as games add up and various genres get added, you'll quickly end up having as much genres as games.
  • Or you could use fuzzy genre names, so that you make sure there is no ambiguity. But then categorization will not be so useful. And still, some games will never fit in one single category.
I believe genre-sorting it is bad for the wiki for many reasons:
  • The reader may not find a game if looking in the wrong category (and he/she assumes it will not be anywhere else).
  • The writer may add a game in a category that may seem strange to the majority, but OK to a minority
  • The writer may add a game in a category but was unaware that it is already in another category.
All the aforementioned reasons are actually the same that were invoked for merging Netbook Games in the first place.
If we treat genre as a tag (as in the template), then you can add as many genres as you like so that anyone can find it satisfactory. The reader can still search by genre using the browser.
4. The emulator section is not huge, so I agree it is worth considering to move it to Gaming.
5. Idem.
Off-topic: the "li" tag is the only decent way I've found to nest indented lists, but there is this annoying "1." remaining. Any clue? :/
-- Ambrevar (talk) 13:19, 5 July 2013 (UTC)Reply
(Using # only supports simple lists, if you want to nest something you have to use <ol> and <li> for the whole list; anyway in this case it's easier to keep it simple and hard-code the numbers ;) (fixed, btw))
2/3. Ok, now I get what you mean with the Game template, and of course I agree with the observations you make in 3. Just to mention it, a further alternative could be using a sortable table with short labels representing the genres, if they are only a few (broad genres):
Name A B C D Description Website Packages
FooBar x x lorem ipsum lorem ipsum lorem ipsum lorem ipsum lorem ipsum lorem ipsum lorem ipsum lorem ipsum lorem ipsum lorem ipsum lorem ipsum lorem ipsum https://www.archlinux.org/ foobar
However using genre tags or a table would require modifying each entry in the list (big, almost irreversible job), so I'd say let's first try to restructure the current list by using simple sections for the various genres and see what it looks like after the job is finished; the games whose main genre is so hard to define can be temporarily put in a Miscellaneous, Other or Mixed section, and we'll see how many of them end up there: if they are not so many I think we can find a simpler solution than using tags (e.g. just arbitrarily choose one of the genres they would belong to). For the genre titles we can take inspiration from wikipedia:Video game genres.
-- Kynikos (talk) 15:08, 5 July 2013 (UTC)Reply
Actually I was first thinking of a table, but I wasn't aware that MediaWiki had native support for sortable ones. Unfortunately this does not really solve the issue, because we cannot limit the number of genre. The Wikipedia article is endorsing my point: it lists 46 genres! I do not think it is possible to have a finite number of genre columns. Is there any chance a filter table would be available too? I mean the one with an edit field in the header row. This way there would be only one genre column with arbitrary, yet normalized content, which the reader can filter. That would be a much better solution in my opinion. And yes, it would require modifying the complete article, but I think it is easily feasible using external tools like Emacs and/or AWK (I'm currently editing this page from Emacs). -- Ambrevar (talk) 16:26, 5 July 2013 (UTC)Reply
Of course the table method should make use of only a restricted number of categories, say the top ones in wikipedia:Video game genres; yes, it wouldn't allow people to add more categories (easily), this could be seen either as a disadvantage or an advantage... AFAIK there's no way we can have a filterable table :(
Anyway you've probably overlooked a bit the last part of my post: since with the tag idea we should first put all the games in a single list and reorder them alphabetically, I think it's really worth it to try to sort them in some genre sections first, and see how it goes: we don't have to use all the 46 sections in wikipedia:Video game genres, I guess the best way would be to start with the top-level categories, and then see how many games go into each of them; if a top category hosts "too many" games (20? 50? ...) it can be split in subcategories and so on. All the games whose main category is not obvious can be temporarily put in a separate section.
-- Kynikos (talk) 02:47, 6 July 2013 (UTC)Reply
Sorry for the misunderstanding, I got your point, I was just meaning the Wikipedia's way to list genres is not trivial. Anyway, let's reach a consensus and move on: I'll merge the Netbook Games article, create a Game template based upon the App template, and put all game entries in their respective Genre section. Any thought about this?
-- Ambrevar (talk) 08:48, 6 July 2013 (UTC)Reply
For the moment please leave the App template, let's do one step at a time:
  1. First thing go on with merging Netbook Games, some adaptations will be required to other articles, like the warnings at the top of List of Applications/Games and others.
  2. The following step will be merging all the subpages of List of Applications/Games into List of Applications/Games itself.
  3. Then replace the current sections in List of Applications/Games with the top ones in wikipedia:Video game genres: Action, Action-adventure (if we really need it), Adventure, Role-playing, Simulation, Strategy and Others; maybe keep the subsections of List of Applications/Games/Free and move them like their counterparts in wikipedia:Video game genres.
After that we'll see what to do, whether to create a Game template, use a table, move the sections to separate subpages... I know you may think I'm being too conservative, however the truth is that I do like changes, but only as long as they are well planned in advance, I don't like the do-then-fix approach too much :P This is just to tell you that I really appreciate your will to help with this big restructuring! Thank you ^^
-- Kynikos (talk) 14:38, 6 July 2013 (UTC)Reply
Alright, we may proceed at a more reasonable pace. Before proceeding I made some research on Linux game lists, and found this one: icculus.org. It is very up to date and complete; only a few games from Arch Wiki are not included there, but it has much more games overall. The list has filters! Besides they seem open to contribution. Since Icculus is a well established reference, I'm wondering if it is not more productive to contribute by adding the few missing games to Icculus rather than duplicating their amazing work in this Wiki. After all, this belongs to Arch philosophy: contribute upstream!
Following this direction, we would only need to replace all links to List of Applications/Games and Netbook Games with a redirection to Icculus. The emulators/steam/desura part can still be merged in Gaming. What do you think about it?
-- Ambrevar (talk) 12:49, 7 July 2013 (UTC)Reply
I'm always in favour of avoiding duplication of external resources, especially when they are very good ones like icculus.org's table. However in this case, like explained in Help:Style#Hypertext metaphor, our list is indeed giving Arch adaptations, i.e. it's linking to any existing articles for the games, and, even more importantly, to their package names/pages. That's why I'm against deleting it.
Nonetheless, we could finally come to a conclusion in Talk:List of Applications#See also visibility and greatly improve the visibility of external links, to which icculus.org should be already added.
-- Kynikos (talk) 12:47, 8 July 2013 (UTC)Reply

Sub-entry formatting

(Split out from Talk:List of games#Games - the big merge -- Lonaowna (talk) 13:16, 27 March 2016 (UTC))Reply

You may have noticed that the formatting is strange for sub-entries (this is new in fact) like for Doom. The link is not properly aligned. I've tried with '**' but this is worse. The 'App' template may need to be fixed to support indentation. Thanks for the deletions by the way. -- Ambrevar (talk) 12:22, 17 July 2013 (UTC)Reply

Unfortunately the App template won't support indentation, this was discussed in [1]. I guess the only viable alternatives are making subsections for Doom etc. or just wlisting the various spinoffs as normal applications (no indentation), I'll leave you the choice, unless you have other ideas. -- Kynikos (talk) 11:40, 18 July 2013 (UTC)Reply
Yes! I'm always in favor for a single page, less dispersive. But this page will become a very big long list. Are you sure it's fair to mention the games are not in the official repositories or AUR. I think that in this page there must be only games available on Arch Linux. At most you can do a section called "steam" where to put only the weblink to the list of steam games. At the end this is the Arch Wiki. Veleno (talk) 21:35, 18 July 2013 (UTC)Reply

Making article more readable

I am thinking about making this article more readable. Here is an example of what I have came up with so far:

Name Package Released Updated License Description
Aquaria aquaria-gitAUR 2007 2010 Proprieatry 2D sidescrolling action-adventure game, heavily focused on exploration and puzzle-solving, with non-linear gameplay.
Barrage barrage 2005 2009 GPL Violent point-and-click shooting game with nice effects.
Blob Wars: Metal Blob Solid blobwars 2003 2003 Proprietary 3D Action-adventure game with various weapons and missions.
Blob Wars: Blob and Conquer blobandconquerAUR 2003 2003 GPL 3D Action-adventure game, sequel to 2D platform game, Blob Wars: Metal Blob Solid.
Bloodridge bloodridgeAUR GPL Java based, 3D adventure fantasy game.
BZFlag bzflag 2001 2013 Proprietary Multiperson, first-person tank shooter.
Freedink freedinkAUR 1998 2009 GPL Free and enhanced version of the action-adventure Dink Smallwood.
Gish freegish-gitAUR 2004 2005 Proprietary 2D physics platformer about adventures of ball of tar.
Hammerfight hammerfightAUR 2004 2004 GPL 2-dimensional physics-based combat game.
Neverball neverball 2003 2004 GPL 3D game to guide a ball through a maze.
Rune runeAUR 2000 2014 Proprietary 3rd person Adventure / Hack'n Slay using Unreal Engine. Runs great from box installation.

Feedback/thoughts? Does this formatting violate arch wiki rules? axper (talk) 18:27, 29 April 2014 (UTC)Reply

This formatting would not violate any style rules, but it would break style consistency with List of applications. On the other hand, I have to agree that using tables would look neater, but this is still a personal feeling. However how would you adapt indented entries like those under List_of_games#Shooters_.28FPS.2C_Third_Person.29? Finally, I wouldn't include the "Updated" column, as it would be hard to maintain.
My current position: neutral. More opinions are needed.
-- Kynikos (talk) 01:29, 30 April 2014 (UTC)Reply
I agree in regards to Updated column. axper (talk) 05:13, 30 April 2014 (UTC)Reply
The problem with indented entries should still be solved. Then we'd probably need a field for a link to an ArchWiki article, if available (default to Wikipedia?).
Then, if approved, initially this change should be implemented with templates in a backward-compatible way that only needs to rename the existing templates from "App" to e.g. "Game", so that it would be easy to revert in case of too many negative feedbacks. A [[Template:Games start]] and [[Template:Games end]] should be used to start and end a table under a section, and [[Template:Game]] should create a wiki table row based on Template:App's parameters (this would delay the addition of the "Released" and "License" fields), so that it would be possible to simply replace * {{App with {{Game in order to update the page, and vice versa to restore the current formatting.
-- Kynikos (talk) 05:49, 30 April 2014 (UTC)Reply
Here's my proposal for indenting and other stuff:
  1. Indentation is a problem only with Doom, Quake1, Quake2 and Quake3. This can solved by creating archwiki articles for those games, where source ports should be listed.
  2. Game engines do not belong in this article.
  3. "Name" column should link to:
    • If exists, Archwiki article. Which in turn will link to Official site and Wikipedia
    • If there's no Archwiki article it should link to Official site
    • If there's no Official site, and there is Wikipedia article, then should link to Wikipedia article
  4. I am against linking to Wikipedia by default because:
    • Only 30% (source ports included) of games listed here have Wikipedia articles
    • I don't think archers who are looking for games to play are likely to be interested in Wikipedia article
axper (talk) 11:00, 30 April 2014 (UTC)Reply
About 1. I wouldn't like to create new articles only for that; an alternative could be using nested tables instead, sorry for the quick example, we're still brainstorming after all:
Name Package Released Updated License Description
AAA BBB CCC DDD EEE FFF

BBB

Name Package Released Updated License Description
AAA BBB CCC DDD EEE FFF
AAA BBB CCC DDD EEE FFF
CCC DDD EEE FFF GGG HHH
About 2. you may even be right, but they don't bother me if they stay, honestly.
About 3. and 4. I'd still tend to agree, but they would be a later problem, since even if we approve the change to a table layout, I'd like to keep the templates backward compatible with Template:App at least initially, so we would use the existing links for the first stage.
Anyway, let's wait to see if there's somebody with a clearer position than mine.
-- Kynikos (talk) 14:03, 1 May 2014 (UTC)Reply
User:Kynikos/Games_table is my proposal, it would preserve backward compatibility with standard App entries (indented usage is discouraged in Template:App anyway) and would already allow adding the relase date and license as optional fields (which wouldn't break Template:App if restored later), plus it would be ready for adaptation of nested entries. -- Kynikos (talk) 02:59, 3 May 2014 (UTC)Reply
Have a look at User:Axper/sandbox/Doom, User:Axper/sandbox/Quake 1, User:Axper/sandbox/Quake 2. Is it ok to move these pages to normal wiki?
I'll try to merge your backwards compatible template. axper (talk) 08:10, 9 May 2014 (UTC)Reply
Ok, you convinced me :) After all there are already several articles on games, see Category:Gaming. However what would you think about merging all Quake releases (1, 2, III, 4, Live) into a single article (each release in a separate main section), and maybe keep the 5 entries in the table here with links to the specific sections of the new article? -- Kynikos (talk) 10:48, 10 May 2014 (UTC)Reply
Good idea, I agree. Have a look at User:Axper/sandbox/Quake_Series. axper (talk) 14:05, 10 May 2014 (UTC)Reply
Yep, I like it, just mind the capitalization of the title when you move it, it should be Quake series. -- Kynikos (talk) 02:10, 11 May 2014 (UTC)Reply
Update: User:Axper/sandbox/listofgamesnew I reached up to letter 'E'. I'll be able to continue working on this in a few months only. axper (talk) 07:29, 29 June 2014 (UTC)Reply
I still think tables look good, but what you're doing in User:Axper/sandbox/listofgamesnew seems different from what we planned here, can you explain better? Are you trying to list all the game packages you can find there? And all by yourself? Isn't it too much of a big project to approach that way? I think it would have been much simpler to follow the step by step procedure we outlined here thus also letting other users contribute ant give feedback ^^' -- Kynikos (talk) 09:51, 30 June 2014 (UTC)Reply
I have created my own table for this article in my User:Fusion809/sandbox, before I even read this discussion, so needless to say I agree. Although I think adding some colour to the table, to make it easier to visually grep through what is inevitably going to be a huge table. Fusion809 (talk) 14:21, 2 August 2016 (UTC)Reply
Thank you for resuming this discussion. After two years I still think that tables are better for long application lists than Template:App, but I also still support the draft that I created in User:Kynikos/Games table, compared to your version. In particular, I'd keep the genres separated by normal article sections, so that they also appear in the Table of Contents, and once we've agreed on the field types to be shown, dedicated templates should be used to format the rows, instead of hard-coding code, especially the colors. — Kynikos (talk) 22:17, 3 August 2016 (UTC)Reply

Automatic generation

These scripts will generate template entries for every game in AUR and Official Repos: https://github.com/axper/archwiki-list-of-games axper (talk) 16:22, 13 May 2014 (UTC)Reply

I appreciate the effort, but auto-generating the page would in practice prevent users from editing it as a wiki article, because every update would overwrite their edits. Personally I'm against. -- Kynikos (talk) 10:50, 10 May 2014 (UTC)Reply
Didn't intend these scripts to generate the article automatically. Rather they should be used only once, as there are many many games not listed here now. Probably use later for diff or something. axper (talk) 13:51, 10 May 2014 (UTC)Reply
I see, but it will have to be accurately merged also the first time, because the list has to preserve the current section structure (genre categories). -- Kynikos (talk) 02:13, 11 May 2014 (UTC)Reply

List of created templates

Please keep up to date (no need for signatures).

Delete all the unneeded templates once the main discussion is closed.

See also Special:PrefixIndex/User:Axper/Template:Game and Special:PrefixIndex/User:Kynikos/Template:Game.

Separate entry for demos?

Should demos be listed as separate entries in the article? axper (talk) 10:04, 30 April 2014 (UTC)Reply

They're only a handful, if I'm not mistaken, I don't think it'd be worth it. Still open for more opinions of course. -- Kynikos (talk) 14:08, 1 May 2014 (UTC)Reply
Alright, so I'll list demos alongside, with "freeware" license. axper (talk) 15:38, 9 May 2014 (UTC)Reply
Or, we can extend a little the usage of the License column and write "demo" or "demo (freeware)" or "freeware (demo)" for those entries, also to facilitate searching by keyword and table sorting. -- Kynikos (talk) 10:53, 10 May 2014 (UTC)Reply

Requiring material/asset from another source

Some of the packages require material from original game (like ecwolf) get acquired/downloaded from elsewhere. Shouldn't this be mentioned in place? Siavoshkc (talk) 19:50, 5 November 2023 (UTC)Reply