Template talk:Infobox video game player

Add alternate pseudonyms parameter

I tried doing this myself but I couldn't figure out the right syntax. Can somebody add a parameter to this template for listing alternate pseudonyms/nicknames for the professional gamer? —Entropy ^(talk) 21:37, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

is there something wrong with |nickname=? Frietjes (talk) 22:31, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

I removed the one that allowed more than one name, deliberately. We don't need to know, in the infobox, what all the various names are for a player, only what he currently goes by. The other nicks/tags will fall out in the competitive history section. --Izno (talk) 23:20, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

Category

What is Category:TempCatForname_trans for, and why is it necessary? --Paul_012 (talk) 01:23, 24 November 2016 (UTC)

@Le Deluge: creator of the category. --Prisencolin (talk) 03:19, 25 November 2016 (UTC)

Answered at User talk:とある白い猫#Category:TempCatForname_trans. --Paul_012 (talk) 02:48, 29 November 2016 (UTC)

Requested move 28 November 2018

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: moved. Consensus to move, and rough consensus that a broadening of scope is appropriate. (closed by non-admin page mover) feminist (talk) 11:54, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

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Template:Infobox eSports player → Template:Infobox video game player – A) Removes the reliance on the "esports" verbiage. (c.f. WP:ESPORTS now.) B) Perhaps a marginally better reason is that "video game player" is preferred by WP:NCVG for naming disambiguation; I think it reasonable to avoid the possible jargon in the context of the template name as well as provide for a somewhat congruous name of the template. Izno (talk) 04:02, 28 November 2018 (UTC) --Relisting. Calidum 04:10, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

• Comment: less concise but more precise would be "Infobox professional video game player", which then has the same function as "eSports" (limiting the scope to only pro players and not people on twitch) without the jargon use. --Gonnym (talk) 09:53, 28 November 2018 (UTC)

  I don't see a problem using this for people on Twitch. They need to be notable first of course, and they should be video game players (Twitch has a Real Life section now), but we shouldn't require people to decide between this and e.g. Template:Infobox Internet personality (or w/e it's called). --Izno (talk) 17:38, 28 November 2018 (UTC)

  Ah ok, so the scope is changing also. If so, then your name choice is good. Support change. --Gonnym (talk) 21:47, 28 November 2018 (UTC)

  Less so a deliberate change and moreso a "let's use the same terminology as we would disambiguate the page with if we needed". --Izno (talk) 13:00, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

  Can't see the need for the extra "professional" in this. There isn't really an organisation that makes the difference between being a professional player, or not. Support Change to infobox video game player; unless someone finds a word more succinct for eports (like esportster, etc.) Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 14:02, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

  Lee Vilenski. that isn't correct. A professional player, is a player who gets paid to play and plays in one of the top leagues of the sport, similar to how any football/basketball player does. There are numerous leagues and teams which qualify as such, compared to someone who plays video games and streams it online, such as Ninja. --Gonnym (talk) 17:37, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

Gonnym - I'd need a source to show that there is some official "professional" tag. Most sports have a distinction that is managed by an organistation. For instance, there are thousands of professional football teams out there; but teams generally have to pass certain criteria and apply to their FA, or FIFA for them to be professional, as opposed to semi-professional or amateur. Simply being "paid to play" isn't enough to be classified as a professional in any sport. Being in a top league is a better indicator; but in other sports, this would not neccesarily be true either. using football again, the Welsh Premier League, is mostly Semi-professional, or amateur, with The New Saints, being a full-time professional club.

Another example of how professionalism is gained, is something like Snooker, where all players are amateurs, until they gain access to the World Snooker Tour, when they become professional. However, this is denoted by world snooker, and not by wikipedia. I'm not sure there is any overarching organisation that has spent any time denoting what makes a esports athlete professional or not professional, and it isn't our job to do this for them. Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 13:19, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

I don't agree with your comparisons. I don't think there needs to be a FIFA type organization that decides these things. Take for example Overwatch League, where the lead call it a "professional esports league". In the league, players are signed to teams and paid; the league schedule is set at the start of the season and there is a championship. I see no difference between this and any other professional sports league. Asking for some other "esport management world-wide organization" would just be ignoring WP:V. --Gonnym (talk) 13:43, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

• Oh, just noticed that we already have Template:Infobox Twitch streamer. Some work should be done to make sure scopes are clear and there isn't overlapping. --Gonnym (talk) 21:48, 28 November 2018 (UTC)

  I would support jiggering it around so that "real life" streamers use something more like Template:Infobox YouTube personality (with a generalized name; Template:Infobox Internet video personality?) while video game players use Template:Infobox video game player exclusively. Just musing. --Izno (talk) 15:20, 3 December 2018 (UTC)

  Yeah sounds correct. Need to see if such an infobox could work as a wrapper of Template:Infobox person or a module to add to it. --Gonnym (talk) 13:43, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

• Full-on support broadening this infobox's scope to be usable for any notable video game player. ~Maplestrip/Mable (chat) 11:09, 30 November 2018 (UTC)

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The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Modules

Should this infobox be made to accept modules such that Template:Infobox Twitch streamer and/or Template:Infobox YouTube personality can be inserted as sub-boxes? Many eSports/video game players have significant followings on those platforms to the point where it is a main part of their career. Cheers, --SVTCobra (talk) 20:47, 24 May 2019 (UTC)

@SVTCobra: I've implemented them. Pbrks (talk) 00:34, 4 November 2019 (UTC)

Separate teams played for by game played

I would like to revert this template to this revision. Some esports players play professionally for different games, and it would make it easier to distinguish which teams he/she played for which games. It would look like the infobox here to the right. Thanks. Pbrks (talk) 22:54, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

Infoboxes are summaries. Going combinatoric will blow this template up. We should be able to say "years for teams" and "years for games". It is exceptionally edge case to need to support this mix-matching. --Izno (talk) 00:36, 7 November 2019 (UTC)

So, something along the lines of the parameters game1, game2, game1years, game2years? Pbrks (talk) 02:17, 7 November 2019 (UTC)

Color Coding?

Foofoo
Wikipedian in 2019
No. 1 – G2 Esports
Role	Support
Game	League of Legends
League	LEC
Status	Active
Personal information
Name	Foo Wikipedian
Born	September 2, 1999 (1999-09-02) (age 25) Gothenburg, Sweden
Nationality	Swedish
Career information
Playing career	2016–present
Team history
2016	Dignitas
2017–2018	Fnatic
2019–present	G2 Esports
Career highlights and awards
MSI champion (2019) 6× LEC champion

Wanted to add a suggestion for this template. If you look at the infoboxes of active professional sports players, many of them are color coded according to what team they play. Would it be possible to do that with this template? I feel like it would make it a bit easier to identify the player's current team or if they're not on a team at the moment. Troutfarm27 ^(Talk) 05:29, 22 November 2020 (UTC)

Troutfarm27 This is very possible. There already exists {{#invoke:Sports color|esports}}, so this would be very easy to implement. I've made a test in the sandbox:

{{Infobox video game player/sandbox
| ID = Foofoo
| name = Foo Wikipedian
| name_trans = 
| image = test 2.jpg
| caption = Wikipedian in 2019
| number = 1
| game = ''[[League of Legends]]''
| team = [[G2 Esports]]
| role = Support
| league = [[League of Legends European Championship|LEC]]
| birth_date = {{Birth-date and age|September 2, 1999}}
| birth_place = [[Gothenburg]], Sweden
| nationality = Swedish
| games = ''[[Dota 2]]'' <br/> ''League of Legends''
| career_start = 2016
| career_end = 
| years1 = 2016
| team1 = [[Dignitas (esports)|Dignitas]]
| years2 = 2017–2018
| team2 = [[Fnatic]]
| years3 = 2019–present
| team3 = [[G2 Esports]]
| status = Active
| highlights =
* [[Mid-Season Invitational|MSI]] champion ([[2019 Mid-Season Invitational|2019]])
* 6× LEC champion
}}

The colors are generated by whatever team is given for team=. There are a few issues that need to be ironed out, like fixing when team=[[Dignitas (esports)|Dignitas]], for example, but this is really just a proof of concept. Pbrks (talk) 05:14, 22 April 2021 (UTC)

Pbrks Wow these look fantastic! I don't work with templates too often so is there a process we need to go through in order to implement this? Troutfarm27 ^(Talk) 00:48, 23 April 2021 (UTC)

Troutfarm27 Thank you, and yes, I'll ask for opinions at WP:VG. Pbrks (talk) 01:49, 23 April 2021 (UTC)

• Really not a fan of colored infoboxes. WP:VG recently removed colors from most video game character infoboxes, so while this is a little more analogous to what is done for other athletics infoboxes... it's going against other precedence in the VG space. I'm wary. Often times this doesn't take into any consideration accessibility of colors, for one. -- ferret (talk) 01:57, 23 April 2021 (UTC)

Came here to say basically this. Sergecross73 msg me 02:02, 23 April 2021 (UTC)

• Accessibility of colors should be handled by considering the "Test table" of Module:Sports color/esports, although I understand the rationale of opposition if this has been recently discussed. Pbrks (talk) 02:05, 23 April 2021 (UTC)
  • Looking at the previous discussion, I don't believe the (from what I see) main reason for opposition from that discussion applies here, as this is not purely decorative. Pbrks (talk) 02:17, 23 April 2021 (UTC)
    • No, it's not purely decorative, but we're fooling ourselves if we believe esports team colors are a thing known well enough by any portion of the general readership to have meaning. There's no governing organization over any of this, so it's not exactly the same as standard NFL colors or similar. -- ferret (talk) 12:07, 23 April 2021 (UTC)
      • That is purely speculative, at best. Audience size in 2017: Esports 167 million, NBA 231 million, MLB 114 million (Goldman Sachs). League of Legends alone dwarfs many major sports in terms of viewership; for example, LoL Worlds 2019 had nearly 100 million viewers; compare that to the previous year's Super Bowl at 98 million viewers (CNBC). In regards to governing organizations, there are; for example, teams in the Activision-run Overwatch League have branding rules (ESPN); even their "minor league" which allows basically any team to compete has team branding rules (2018 OWC Rule Book). Activision also runs the franchised Call of Duty League, so I imagine the rules are similar. Regardless, I don't find this argument very compelling; major esports teams aren't just a group of kids throwing together a logo and random colors, these are multi-million-dollar companies in a billion-dollar industry. Colors are recognizable by many people, even if they aren't to you. Pbrks (talk) 13:44, 23 April 2021 (UTC)

• I'm not seeing a compelling reason to carve out an exception to the house Wikipedia Infobox style. How is it anything other than decorative? Why should (e)sports teams get garish color schemes on their infoboxes when we don't do the same for arguably more impactful things like flag colors for countries? Axem Titanium (talk) 20:50, 23 April 2021 (UTC)

This would only be used on the infoboxes of esports players, not the team articles. Like I said in my initial post, it would make it easier for readers to identify what team a person is on, along with if they're active or not. Retired players articles would obviously sport the usual Wikipedia infobox colors. Troutfarm27 ^(Talk) 22:25, 23 April 2021 (UTC)

Proposed changes

I would propose following changes to the template:

General changes

• Use a grey background for headers
  • Rationale: This makes it easier see separate sections.

Current team header

• If player is currently playing on a team, have a dedicated header for "Current team". Included in this section would be their team's name, the league the team plays in, the game in which the player competes with that team, and the player's role in that team.
  • Rationale: This makes it much easier to distinguish between signed players, unsigned players, and coaches. Gives use to the league parameter instead of just having a list of every league a player has ever played in.
• Remove parameter status.
  • Rationale: The field is generally useless. Common entries are "Active", which is implied by them being on a team, and "Inactive", which is implied by them not being on a team.
• Remove parameter coach.
  • Rationale: The header for this parameter is "Organizer", which itself is confusing and not mentioned in the documentation, and I don't believe I have ever seen it used.

Career information header

If the player is not on a team, the game and role parameters are moved to "Career information", unless the new parameters career_games and career_role are used.

• Add parameters for career_start, career_end, coach_start, coach_end.
• Remove parameter career_earnings.
  • Rationale: I do not believe I have ever seen a reliably sourced entry here, and it often leads to unreferenced/liquipedia-referenced numbers.

Personal information header

• If player does not have a handle/ID, their full name will be shown at the top of the infobox. Otherwise, the handle/ID will be at the top, and their full name will be located in "Personal information".
  • Rationale: When translated names are used, such as in Lim Yo-hwan, there is a large amount of space at the top of the infobox (whether or not this should even be here is questionable as well). This, in general, alleviates that issue.
• Remove hometown parameter.
  • Rationale: The hometown parameter was removed from {{infobox person}} per this discussion, and I believe, for the same reasons, it should be removed here.

I've made several examples in my sandbox to show how they would look. Feedback is appreciated. Pbrks (talk) 22:24, 29 April 2021 (UTC)

• Support. Good sensible changes. While you're at it, it would be great if you could add Syntax instructions to the /doc page (see Template:Infobox video game for examples) so people have guidance for how these parameters are used. My only suggestion is that maybe deprecate the "Status" parameter instead of removing it outright. It might be useful to keep around solely to affirmatively indicate Inactive status, for example, and leave it blank for Active players. Axem Titanium (talk) 16:12, 1 May 2021 (UTC)

Cleanup

@Pbrks: You may want to ask PrimeFac to run his bot for cleaning up invalid parameters: Category:Pages using infobox video game player with unknown parameters. -- ferret (talk) 23:00, 2 May 2021 (UTC)

@Ferret: Thanks for letting me know, I wasn't aware that that bot existed. I have been running through them, and it would be time-saving to use it, but part of me wants to continue going through these manually, since some (many) of the infoboxes are a mess as it stands. If I get burnt out from the monotony of it all, I'll ask them to run the bot. Pbrks (talk) 23:07, 2 May 2021 (UTC)

Fix missing upright parameter

@Pbrks, Izno, Frietjes, and Jonesey95: Template isn't handling missing upright parameter well, causing Bogus file option "upright={{{upright}}}" in 12 mainspace articles. —Anomalocaris (talk) 01:32, 15 April 2022 (UTC)

This should be fixed, may need to purge the articles if you want them gone right away. -- ferret (talk) 01:41, 15 April 2022 (UTC)

ferret: Good job! —Anomalocaris (talk) 01:46, 15 April 2022 (UTC)