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Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Braid (video game)/archive1

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The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was not promoted by Raul654 10:55, 9 March 2009 [1].

Braid (video game)

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Nominator(s): MASEM (t)

Braid, an independently developed game, has gained a lot of attention due to not only it's innovations in gameplay (involved time-manipulation), but the overall experience of game, art, and music. There's a heck of a lot of information for a game pretty much made by one person, which I've hoped I've captured well for this. Thanks goes to Drilnoth who helped to also copy edit this while undergoing its GA nomination. MASEM (t) 03:37, 2 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

  • Oppose It's me again, and you can probably guess what I'm going to say. :) Needs serious attention to prose. Examples at random:
    • "Braid tells the story of Tim, the protagonist, attempting to rescue his princess, and has many allusions and interpretations." Two disconnected clauses awkwardly mashed together. Latter clause is puzzling.
    • "requiring the player to use these abilities to collect keys to complete each level and puzzle pieces to fully complete the story." Tiring sentence structure.
    • "Developed over a course of three years on his own money, Blow " Misplaced modifier.
    • "designed the game to reflect on much of the current trends he favored and disliked in current game design efforts." Eh?
    • "Artwork for the game was drawn by David Hellman, with the graphics iterated several times to achieved Blow's desired vision for the game." Redundancies and proofread!
    • "Its release on Xbox Live was very positive " No doubt reaction to its release, no?
    • "While working on the art direction, Blow improved on the puzzles in the game to make sure they could play better." Can't get more unspecific than this. Explain please.
    • "One mechanic that Blow could not develop further was a world with no "arrow of time", requiring the player to get from one end of a level to another in a way which would allow them to retrace their steps back, making things such as a drop from a height higher than what the player could jump would be impossible"
    • "Blow then began adding puzzles that made philosophical points on game design in general, and resulted in dropping some worlds that were not as interesting as the remaining levels in the game"
    • "Blow also specifically avoided using a first- or third-person view for the game like these other title had done as, despite the fact that the time effects are better experienced from those perspectives, some of the puzzles in Braid would have been impossible or more difficult in any other perspective" Try reading this one out loud.
    • etc. BuddingJournalist 17:35, 2 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    • Rather have the input than none :). I've gone through with a fine comb to try to cut apart the longer rambling sentences and remove redundancies. Please give it a second look. --MASEM (t) 22:50, 2 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
      • I think you'll need to spend a couple hours at least on the prose. Problematic sentences are abundant, and the problems are not just limited to simple spelling/grammatical errors (although they're there as well). You'll have to spend some time thinking about the best way to reword them. Think carefully about your audience; assume that readers will not know anything about the game (e.g. "it has been interpreted as an oblique ironic comment about traditional platform game design"...I don't see the irony...explain). More examples at random:
        • "The story is left ambiguous leading to many allusions and interpretations." Still have no idea what the heck this is trying to say.
        • "While the game features traditional aspects of platform games, it incorporates a number of time manipulation features, requiring the player to use these abilities in collecting keys and completing each level and puzzle pieces to fully reveal the game's story." Latter half causes readers to run out of breath.
        • "designed the game to reflect on his opinion of recent trends in current game design efforts." Eh?
        • "As each world was build up using these piece, Blow suggested more changes that reflectd the tone of each world and avoided art that distracted from the gameplay."
        • Audit for "then"; it's a lazy way of trying to achieve narrative flow. Makes articles read like school book reports. BuddingJournalist 23:14, 2 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: I did a copy-edit on the lead, but I would consider withdrawing the nomination so more extensive work can be done. -- Noj r (talk) 07:02, 3 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comments -

Otherwise, sources look okay, links checked out with the link checker tool. Ealdgyth - Talk 14:15, 3 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Points addressed above. --MASEM (t) 14:39, 3 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose, 1 (b). The PC version is less than a month from release, and if it has even half the impact of the XBox version, there should be coverage enough to bulk this article out significantly. As it stands, the article is incomplete. If the release was due next year, I'd feel differently. But because it's so close, I don't think the article will meet the comprehensiveness requirement until the dust has settled on the PC release. For context, I'd feel the same way about a film article nominated before its theatrical release was complete, or an article about a sporting competition nominated halfway through the playoffs. On a side note, this article has improved tenfold since I read it last year; back then, I considered working on it myself. But under your supervision, I can't see that FA star's being too far away. All the best, Steve T • C 23:00, 5 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    • I understand and agree to a point on that, though the transition from Xbox to PC is less significant of a jump than if this were a PC title being ported to the Xbox; I can't see how much this would add beyond "controls suck on the PC". However, I don't discount there could be more, I just haven't seen anything. (eg if Blow was reading a level editor I would have expected to see news about that) --MASEM (t) 23:41, 5 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
      • Hi, I'm thinking more along the lines of critical reception, release info., unforeseen problems and further awards, development coverage, and—not meaning to diss the console press, though it appears I am—hopefully some decent coverage that interprets the story and themes in more detail than we've already seen (New Games Journalism—no matter what one might think of the term itself—is something that appears not to be as popular in the console community, but which has provided much insight at the PC end—Braid is ripe for such analyses). Much of this is likely (if at all—I'm not unwilling to discount the possibility it won't) to appear either closer to the release or after it; give it a couple of weeks and I'd be willing to bet on an explosion of coverage. Steve T • C 00:11, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose, 1b. I agree with Steve here, surprisingly enough. Seeing little subsections makes me naturally hesitant about it being comprehensive, and the news results suggest that this is going to be more impacting than, say, Halo 2's PC release (which aside from male nudity was released way past relevance, although I still need to add in reception for the PC version and so that's prolly not the best example.) On an unrelated note, is there a better image to replace the shot of Blow, say File:Jonathan blow speaking.jpg or similar? The disembodied hand and long shot is rather disconcerting. --Der Wohltempierte Fuchs (talk) 20:09, 8 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

On the advice of waiting for the PC version to settle out, I'll withdraw this nomination for now. --MASEM (t) 21:57, 8 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
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