Talk:Entertainment Software Publishing

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Entertainment Software Publishing/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: IceWelder (talk · contribs) 08:22, 13 July 2020 (UTC)

• Free from the shackles of my finals, I will be reviewing this article in due time. Regards, IceWelder [✉] 08:22, 13 July 2020 (UTC)

I know that feeling of freedom, it's truly amazing. Anyway, thanks for reviewing this. This is the first company article I've nominated, so I apologize in advance if there's any glaring problems with it. Namcokid47 ^(Contribs) 16:16, 13 July 2020 (UTC)

---

GA review (see here for what the criteria are, and here for what they are not)

1. It is reasonably well written.

   a (prose, spelling, and grammar): b (MoS for lead, layout, word choice, fiction, and lists):

   See the notes below.

2. It is factually accurate and verifiable.

   a (reference section): b (citations to reliable sources): c (OR): d (copyvio and plagiarism):

   See the notes below.

3. It is broad in its coverage.

   a (major aspects): b (focused):

4. It follows the neutral point of view policy.

   Fair representation without bias:

5. It is stable.

   No edit wars, etc.:

6. It is illustrated by images and other media, where possible and appropriate.

   a (images are tagged and non-free content have fair use rationales): b (appropriate use with suitable captions):

7. Overall:

   Pass/Fail:

---

Infobox

• The name atop the infobox should be the full legal name -- the same as the lead is introduced with.
• It is rather uncommon to list a company as a founder, and listing GD-NET is possibly inaccurate (see History notes). This should be removed or replaced by an individual significantly involved in the creation.
• "President" is not a proper noun, so it should be in lower-case.
• The "Products" field should list notable games released by ESP. Otherwise, this should be removed.
• The company had multiple parents in its lifetime, consider listing all and the respective timeframes they owned ESP in.
• The website is dead, either remove the link or provide an archived version (as the EL section does).

Lead

• "... as the publishing arm of the Game Developers Network (GD-NET)." – Possibly inaccurate (see History notes).
• "The company was later sold to D3 Publisher in 2004, who made ESP a wholly owned subsidiary." – Being bought out usually means becoming a subsidiary (unless it is explicitly an asset sale). I think the latter half of the sentence can be removed and instead segway into the subsequent sentence. For example: "In 2004, ESP was sold to D3 Publisher, which had noticed ESP's track record and lineup of well-received titles."
• "ESP was dissolved and merged ..." – Dissolved is superfluous here, given that it is a merger.
• "... the latter of whom had since become a subsidiary of Namco Bandai Games." – I don't think that this is relevant enough for the lead. Consider removing it (and a side-note: corporations are mostly addressed as objects ["that"/"which"] rather than people ["who"]).
• "... have received high praise from critics." – Remove "high"; "praise" already indicates very positive reception.

History

• "The purpose of the GD-NET was to establish working relationships with one another and collaborate on various projects." – While this is certainly what such a group would be for, the attached source (#1) does not explicitly mention this, rather it says that the group members provided "mutual assistance" for each other, maybe use that wording instead.
  • Also, most sources seem to omit the "the" before "GD-NET". Its usage is a bit unaligned in the article, but one of the two variants should be settled on.
• "... chances of surviving the current industry landscape." – Exchange "current" with something like "... of the time".

• "GD-Net established Entertainment Software Publishing (ESP) in November 1997." – This is what I noted above. Both sources that reported on the inception (#1/#4) say that it was established by GD-NET members, but not as part of or through GD-NET itself. If I'm interpreting the schemas from #2 and #3 right, ESP was independent of GD-NET. Please double-check this.
• "The company was headed by Youichi Miyaji ..." – Possibly mention Miyaji's role description for ESP as well (per source #1).
• "Developers such as Treasure and Game Arts ..." – This can be simplified to "GD-NET members".
• "... much more efficient than before, and not having to rely solely on ..." – This should probably say "by not having to rely on".
  • The sentence is also not covered by the adjacent source, please check.

• Most elements surrounding Grandia are unsourced, including the publisher credit (the source says SCEA) release year (the source says 1999), sales, bestseller status, and top-list entries. Please find additional sources to support these claims.

• "... amidst poor sales and a catastrophic marketing campaign" – The source mentions no marketing mishaps.
• "By this time, many developers within GD-NET had either departed or went out of business..." – "went" should be "gone".
  • This sentence is also seemingly unsourced, as is the first part of the subsequent sentence ("ESP also began publishing games for the PlayStation 2").
• "Sega ended production of the Dreamcast in 2001 and CSK sold its shares of the company to Sammy Corporation" – How does this play into the context of the article?
• "Game Arts acquired ESP and became its publishing division." – No source for this. The wording is also a bit misleading, as it suggests that Game Arts became ESP's publishing division.
• "... with ESP becoming a wholly owned subsidiary of D3" – This by-sentence feels out of place but can be omitted anyway (it already says that D3 bought all shares).
• "In 2008 the company partnered with" – A trailing comma should be placed after "In 2008".

• "ESP announced through its official website that ..." – I don't think we need to mention how they announced it, or mention the announcement at all if it is not tied directly to the dissolution. "ESP was merged into D3 on 1 April 2010." would suffice. The financial report from Bandai Namco also has a bit more detail and is in plain English, if this helps.
• "A year earlier, D3 became a subsidiary of Namco Bandai Games, who purchased 95% of its stock and became a member of Bandai Namco Holdings, also known as the Bandai Namco Group." – This can be cut down to as much as "The year prior, D3 had been majority-acquired by Namco Bandai Games"; unless it relates to ESP, the details of the acquisition of D3 are not important here, and neither is the corporate structure of Bandai Namco.
• "All of ESP's properties and assets are now owned by both D3 and Bandai Namco." – This is probably right, but an explicit mention also needs a source. Presuming that this is obvious, it can be omitted.

Games published

• The table header is unnecessary, as the table is the only thing in the section.
• Per MOS:DTAB, the row headers (in this and most other game list cases) should be the first column -- the year of release.

References

• Several online references (IGN, etc.) are linked to their archived versions despite still being live. If the live versions are equivalent to the archived ones, it might be preferable to leave the original link as the primary one (using |url-status=live). (redacted; this is probably FA-level stuff)
• When linking to magazines on Archive.org, make sure to link to the correct page but omit the search query from the URL.
• There are minor WP:CS1 violations (e.g. italics in magazine fields), so I would recommend giving WP:UCB a go for some minor, automated cleanup. WP:IABOT can also help with archives, but this is not required.

Other

• The infobox uses a different date format (mdy) than the references (dmy). If you want dmy on the {{End date}} template, use |df=yes.
• The categories should be alphabetized.
• The rationale for the logo is weak and its license incorrectly tagged to have no rationale at all. I recommend using this format:

== Summary ==
{{Non-free use rationale logo
| Article = ...
| Use = Infobox
| Owner = [[...]]
| Website = ...
}}

== Licensing ==
{{Non-free logo|Game developer logos|image has rationale=yes}}

---

@Namcokid47: The article is decently written, though unfortunately, there are faults in regards to sourcing that I hope can be addressed. Some minor style and wording issues are also present; I laid out my findings above. Once all issues are addressed, this will easily be a GA. Regards, IceWelder [✉] 22:20, 13 July 2020 (UTC)

I'm putting the review  On hold for now. Several issues have not been addressed yet, but the faults are not grave enough for an instant failure. Feel free to strike of tick off issues as they are addressed. Regards, IceWelder [✉] 10:51, 22 July 2020 (UTC)

Actually, I think it's better to just fail the nomination. Since I'm currently working hard to fix up the article for Namco, I've been putting all of my time into that than other articles. There's still a lot of issues present here that haven't been addressed (and likely won't be for the time being). I should have done a better job at this article before I nominated it in the first place. Namcokid47 ^(Contribs) 17:28, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

If you need to work on other stuff first, that's totally fine. Most issues here (except for the sourcing stuff) are minor and can be fixed in a jiffy once you find the time to do so. I don't think it's not worth failing the article over these minor issues just yet. IceWelder [✉] 15:07, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

IceWelder Finally got around to fixing the article (about time I did that....). Anyway, I hope I was able to fix the remaining issues that were left unaddressed, and have also provided explanations for my edits in the article history. Namcokid47 ^(Contribs) 22:04, 8 August 2020 (UTC)

@Namcokid47: Very nice work, indeed. I checked the changes and struck the points addressed, though 2.5 of them are left. One thing not noted above: You added GD-NET as ESP's parent until 2002 in the infobox but removed the same claim from the lead and body. Is this correct? Regards, IceWelder [✉] 09:27, 9 August 2020 (UTC)

@IceWelder: That was just a left over bit that I forgot to remove until now. I've also addressed the last two issues with the article. Namcokid47 ^(Contribs) 14:32, 9 August 2020 (UTC)

@Namcokid47: Brillian work! There was one half-of-a-point unaddressed (a source that ESP started producing PS2 games), but I presume this wasn't properly visible in the list. I will look to get an alternative for strike-throughs for my next review. I quickly fixed the point, as well as some minor stuff. With that out of the way, the article is Y passed. Regards, IceWelder [✉] 15:07, 9 August 2020 (UTC)

Apologies that I took so long to get to this. Thanks a bunch! Namcokid47 ^(Contribs) 15:14, 9 August 2020 (UTC)

No need to apologize! I was in no rush to close since you clearly had other matters to attend to, which is fine. I've seen people who decided to not fix their GANs because they were just lazy, in which case I would instantly fail a nomination. Anyway, next time you do another company article, ping me. IceWelder [✉] 15:26, 9 August 2020 (UTC)