Template talk:Infobox video game series

Syntax guide

This Wiki article desperately needs a "Syntax guide" section to explain the various fields in the template. See "Template:Infobox_video_game#Syntax_guide" for a good example. ProResearcher (talk) 07:49, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

Agreed. I'll try and make a start on one later. - X201 (talk) 08:24, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

Corrected italicization/quotation

Since this infobox pertains to franchises, I’ve replaced the title’s italics with quotation marks per MOS:QUOTEMARK. I’ll correct any articles I find that now display incorrectly as a result (e.g., "Myst", not Myst or "Myst franchise"), and encourage others to do the same. —Frungi (talk) 22:34, 2 June 2013 (UTC)

Since most articles don’t seem to follow this practice, I’ve reverted my changes, pending a decision at WT:MOSTITLE#Media franchise titles. —Frungi (talk) 00:32, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

spinoff of

That field should be removed from the template documentation since it doesn't seem to work anymore. --Mika1h (talk) 17:04, 7 July 2014 (UTC)

 Done - X201 (talk) 18:29, 7 July 2014 (UTC)

Licensing

Can you please add license informations? I'd like to know what license are some games published under. Thanks for any help.

     Sincerely, Mis012  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.70.128.78 (talk) 17:36, 24 September 2014 (UTC) 

Wikidata

Following the Wikidata-enablement of Template:Infobox video game, this will be looked at shortly as well. I've implemented the easy properties in the sandbox. Fields I have not looked up suitable properties for are platform of origin, year of inception, released, first release x, latest release x and spinoffs. Most of these will likely need sub-modules to check property qualifiers. I'm uncertain "spinoffs" has a suitable property, as Wikidata does not necessarily care about main versus spinoff parts. -- ferret (talk) 12:27, 25 August 2016 (UTC)

Confusing field label link - Creator vs writer?

Creator is wikilinking to Author, while writer is not linked at all (Should be writer?). I do not have a suggestion on more suitable links, other than Creative work which doesn't really work, but I think this is an odd arrangement. This is important for Wikidata as there is a Creator and Author property. We would use the Author property (On Wikidata, "writer" is an alias for "author") for Writer, and Creator property for Creator. The enwiki articles here seem confusing but maybe there's nothing to be done for it. -- ferret (talk) 12:39, 25 August 2016 (UTC)

Example? czar 14:34, 26 August 2016 (UTC)

The Sims. Will Wright is the creator, not the writer/author. I don't necessarily know an infobox using both fields off hand, but I find the labels confusing. -- ferret (talk) 15:05, 26 August 2016 (UTC)

I wouldn't link "Creator" in The Sims—it should be self-explanatory (and not every field needs a link, no?) czar 15:37, 26 August 2016 (UTC)

Then I would say unlink Creator from Author, and link Writer to Writer. -- ferret (talk) 15:42, 26 August 2016 (UTC)

Artists, Writers, Composers

Should the Artists, Writers and Composers parameters be present in this infobox? I'd expect these roles change often during the course of most long-running video game series. Also seems weird to include these three but not stuff like producer, director, designer, which are probably more noteworthy roles when it comes to coverage from video game series in reliable sources. --The1337gamer (talk) 21:20, 9 February 2017 (UTC)

I would only include these when there have only been a few staff members in those roles throughout the series, or when some are particularly noteworthy. And yes, I'm surprised there aren't parameters for producers, directors and designers.--IDV^talk 15:37, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

I think its a large case-by-case basis with them, and would honestly not even bother with adding staff unless they are almost always known by that role, such as Koji Kondo as the composer of the Mario and Zelda series, or Nobuo Uematsu for the Final Fantasy series. ~ Dissident93 ^(talk) 04:23, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

Yeah, this is the type of field that draws the wrong type of info. I agree it should be key people that oversaw nearly every game of the series in that role. --MASEM (t) 06:23, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

Year of inception

There is a discussion regarding the year of inception field ongoing at WT:VG#"Year of inception". Page watchers may wish to participate. --Izno (talk) 12:38, 13 June 2017 (UTC)

• Could this be brought up again? I really don't see the point in such a parameter when the "first release date" states the same thing in more detail. ~ Dissident93 ^(talk) 19:27, 1 January 2019 (UTC)

  Agreed, we don't need that. I would even go as far and say that we don't need "platform of origin" either. Lordtobi (✉) 11:45, 2 January 2019 (UTC)

Yeah, just realized that the first platform listed should be considered the "platform of origin" anyway. ~ Dissident93 ^(talk) 02:35, 3 January 2019 (UTC)

@Lordtobi: Do you want to go ahead and just remove both? I don't see who would really oppose this when the info already exists under other parameters. ~ Dissident93 ^(talk) 01:39, 17 January 2019 (UTC)

Dissident93, yep.  Done. Lordtobi (✉) 09:47, 17 January 2019 (UTC)

Lordtobi Need to run AWB and remove use of the old fields. See Category:Pages using infobox video game series with unknown parameters -- ferret (talk) 13:09, 17 January 2019 (UTC)

Should we summon PrimeBOT? Lordtobi (✉) 13:10, 17 January 2019 (UTC)

 Done. Lordtobi (✉) 17:17, 17 January 2019 (UTC)

Country of Origin

How do the people know which country a game came from? This information should be included in this infobox.

It isn't always reported in reliable, secondary sources, and it rarely has more than trivial significance. (And if the developer's country is important, that relation is best explained in prose.) The infobox is for quick lookup of a game's most definitive traits. czar 19:18, 19 July 2017 (UTC)

Plural indicator

Can somebody add (s) to the genre and platform parameters (and whatever else that needs them)? Some series are strictly a single genre, and it's already inconsistent with some other parameters that already do this. ~ Dissident93 ^(talk) 17:00, 7 September 2018 (UTC)

 Did this back in November but forgot to reply. Lordtobi (✉) 09:48, 17 January 2019 (UTC)

Producer parameter

@IceWelder: All right, lets discuss. Is the |producer= parameter not included in the infobox simply because no series has the same producer for all its games? If that's the case then one can also argue the same for the other parameters for notable people (i.e. creator, artist, writer and composer), and to some extent the developer and publisher if they change midway through the series. I echo the sentiment from the comments in the above section (Template talk:Infobox video game series#Artists, Writers, Composers) that the reason to exclude other equally valid parameters is unclear, but perhaps you might know the reason as to why this might be the case. -- AquaDTRS (talk) 01:10, 5 April 2020 (UTC)

Opposed to the addition of producer field unless more examples can be produced for it's use. Adding a field to use on a single article (Splatoon) isn't any good. Especially since it's a little bit questionable Splatoon should even have a series article as a 2 game franchise. While some historical parameters might not be much better, I'd be more for depreciating them than adding another 1-3 article-used field. -- ferret (talk) 01:25, 5 April 2020 (UTC)

• Concurring with Ferret here. The parameter would see limited proper use, many series with a handful of games in them will have seen around a dozen different produces. However, you're right that this would also apply to artist/writer/composer; some series are known for having the same writer/composer, but that's not the majority. Cases with the same artist are rather rare. I'm not really seeing a strong consensus in the discussion above, and they come with the same set of problems. Maybe that addition should be reversed instead. |creator= should be fine as it refers to the entirety of a series rather than individual games within it. IceWelder [✉] 09:00, 5 April 2020 (UTC)

I agree with both of you and these are valid points. I added the producer parameter because it doesn't seem unreasonable to have it with the inclusion of the other parameters, but I see that the other parameters have the same issue as well. Moving forward, what if all the parameters to do with people expanded in scope to include notable people who worked on majority of the entries in a series as opposed to one or two who did for the entire series? That seems more likely if a series was longer than the duration for which people are typically employed, and the parameters are more likely to get populated. I'm also referencing other genres like film (e.g. Harry Potter (film series)) as an example, but that might be irrelevant if there was already some consensus established by the video games wikiproject that I might not be aware of. -- AquaDTRS (talk) 22:27, 5 April 2020 (UTC)

As vague as it would be, I wonder if a "key people" field, similar to Infobox company, would be more useful and viable. Limit to 4 key individuals, like IBCompany. Mostly replacing Creator, but allowing for outliers that the other fields might cover. -- ferret (talk) 23:59, 5 April 2020 (UTC)

Ferret, would they still be marked under their field? ~ Dissident93 ^(talk) 07:19, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

As "key people"? No, not automatically. The field would literally be "Key People". But like usage of key people in IBCompany, (Producer) and similar parenthetical titles could be done. -- ferret (talk) 11:57, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

Yeah that's what I meant. Ideally those same people would be mentioned in the lead alongside their roles anyway, so it probably isn't necessary. ~ Dissident93 ^(talk) 19:06, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

Embedding accessibility

While this infobox is successfully embedded into other infoboxes at Nekopara, I found other infoboxes inaccessible to embed into this infobox. Possibly, this infobox lacks the necessary parameters. Unnamelessness (talk) 12:22, 6 June 2020 (UTC)

@Unnamelessness: The Animanga infobox is a special setup that doesn't follow normal infobox rules. You can't just embed unrelated infoboxes into that system. It's breaking the display of those infoboxes and causing those pages to be put in maintenance categories for invalid template syntax. Your best bet is to approach WP:ANIMANGA and see about having a sub-infobox for video game series added to the animanga infobox. -- ferret (talk) 01:24, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

How so? Where is that display issue come from? I see no problem at all from my laptop when embedding is done. Unnamelessness (talk) 08:27, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

BTW, two examples, Tower of God and Hypnosis Mic: Division Rap Battle, show that there is no problem with the embedding accessibility of the animanga infobox, so I am confused why the infobox VG and VGS can't. Unnamelessness (talk) 08:37, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

@Unnamelessness: Those are working in the opposite direction. Either way, I've fixed this. Child was a supported parameter already but was not in the list of allowed parameters. -- ferret (talk) 11:43, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

Two proposed parameters (sales/parent)

Just worth a discussion, but how does everybody feel about adding a sales and/or parent franchise parameter? Sales is self-obvious while "parent" would be used for sub-series that exist within a larger franchise, basically existing as an inverse of the spin-off parameter. Examples that could use that include Yoshi (Mario), Persona (Megami Tensei), and Trails (Legend of Heroes). ~ Dissident93 ^(talk) 07:18, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

• Ferret thoughts on this? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dissident93 (talk • contribs) 20:19, 6 October 2020 (UTC)

• parent, perhaps. I'd say no on sales. It's so difficult to source, especially for a series which will often rely on tallying games together. We don't have sales for individual games in the infobox either. It would become like the various list wars over "units sold", "units shipped", "total registered players" and so on, all over again. -- ferret (talk) 20:27, 6 October 2020 (UTC)

  Ferret, going to WP:BEBOLD and add the parent parameter. There are more examples that I didn't list that could use it, so I don't see any good reasons that it could be opposed. The only thing I'm iffy on is the actual name. "Parent" just sounds odd without any further context, so maybe it could be "sub-series of" or something akin to that? ~ Dissident93 ^(talk) 01:23, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

  I'd say "parent series" if you want it to be more contextual. -- ferret (talk) 12:22, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

  That works. ~ Dissident93 ^(talk) 18:53, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

I'm reading parent as a synonym for Spin-off. That has caused problems in the past, with disputes over what is or isn't canon or a spin-off. - X201 (talk) 09:48, 17 March 2022 (UTC)

Wouldn't that be on a case-by-case basis? Can you point to where this has been a problem? ~ Dissident93 ^(talk) 21:26, 18 March 2022 (UTC)

Sales is something that is very rarely available for video games and the infobox is for standard/common values. Similarly, "parent" (which is a term I don't think reliable sources even use) also only applies to some large series. Fields should represent commonalities between games rather than highlight uniqueness, which is what prose is for. —  HELLKNOWZ ∣ TALK 12:37, 19 March 2022 (UTC)

Most recent edit had probably unintended effects

@Dissident93: I was looking at Devil Summoner just now, and noticed that the title and release date of the original game now is written centered in the inobox with no label giving context for what the data means. I assume you didn't intend to do this with your edit today, but I don't know templates well enough to fix it myself without undoing your edit wholesale.--Alexandra^IDV 13:17, 25 June 2022 (UTC)

This should be fixed now. -- ferret (talk) 13:49, 25 June 2022 (UTC)

Thank you!--Alexandra^IDV 17:11, 25 June 2022 (UTC)

Yeah sorry I had to leave the PC soon after and couldn't figure out why I was having JSON issues (I see now though). Everything should be working as intended now. ~ Dissident93 ^(talk) 20:46, 25 June 2022 (UTC)

Removal of "platforms"

This template currently has a |platforms= parameter intended to list all platforms across all titles. I feel like this is a redundant parameter, as it tells the reader nothing about the series as whole, nor about the individual games, in 99% of cases. The 1% are those that stick to one line of consoles like Pokémon for Nintendo handhelds. In most other cases, however, the list becomes bloated with more than a dozen entries that you can only match to the games by actually reading most of the body, making it redundant as infobox information. Examples from the top of my head include Max Payne, Spyro, Serious Sam, Grand Theft Auto, Age of Empires, FlatOut, and many more. I would therefore advocate for the removal of this parameter. Additional input would be welcome. Regards, IceWelder [✉] 11:40, 24 September 2022 (UTC)

I have mixed feelings. I feel this infobox is hard pressed to have meaningful fields, so I feel a little off about removing one. In the example series, not only is the platform a near meaningless list, but really the developer list is too. I'm not sure there's a good solution to either field for these examples. Is removal appropriate for platform or even developer? Or perhaps a rule for limitations in either field is needed. Call of Duty has 25 developers in the infobox, although only 4 are uncollapsed. -- ferret (talk) 20:00, 24 September 2022 (UTC)

I think the main difference is that, in most cases, you can feasibly find minimal "primary" developers while relegating the "others" to a note or even the body (see e.g. Serious Sam; Call of Duty is an outlier). In contrast, there usually is no "main platform" for the vast majority of series, so the field is destined to either be massive bloat or collapsed by default. A hard number limit could rarely be useful; say we set it to four, what would the four platforms for Call of Duty be? I would also argue that the main developers (which usually equals creators) of a series are among the most important data to tell the reader up front, whereas "any random platform at least of the games was one" is not as relevant. Where there is indeed a main platform or line of platforms, it can still be pointed out in the lead. IceWelder [✉] 21:19, 24 September 2022 (UTC)

At least for console-focused series, can we just list original platforms of main titles, and collapse others? For example, for Final Fantasy, we list original platforms from FFI to FFXVI:

• Nintendo Entertainment System
• Super NES
• PlayStation
• PlayStation 2
• PlayStation 3
• PlayStation 4
• PlayStation 5

and make a bunch of ports/remakes/spin-offs collapsed? --Lopullinen 07:27, 29 September 2023 (UTC)

For western series of cross-platform games like Max Payne, {{collapsible list|title=Multiple platforms|[[Windows]]|[[OS X]]|[[Nintendo DS]]|...}} looks like a solution? A long platform list is useless and may against WP:UNDUE. --Lopullinen 07:38, 29 September 2023 (UTC)