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Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Super Meat Boy/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 Karanacs 14:30, 21 July 2011 [1].

Super Meat Boy

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Super Meat Boy (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

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Nominator(s): PresN 18:39, 17 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Hey all, I'm back with what shockingly appears to be another indie video game. Super Meat Boy, indie darling of this past fall/winter, is a recent GA, has been given a good copy-edit scrubbing by Diannaa of the WP:GOCE, has all of its refs working and archived and using the new |deadurl=no, has alt text, and no redirects. It's ready to be mercilessly torn apart for obvious flaws that I should have seen myself! Oh, and I guess I'm still in the Wikicup? I'll be submitting this for points if this passes while I'm still "competing". --PresN 18:39, 17 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Source review - spotchecks not done. Nikkimaria (talk) 19:11, 17 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Issues fixed, and I ran through it checking for italics errors. Cite and statement it was referencing removed, could have sworn I did that earlier. Thanks for the review! --PresN 20:07, 17 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Media checks out; nice work on the thorough rationales. J Milburn (talk) 22:58, 17 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Reading through-

  • "Team Meat" - worth a redlink?
  • I don't believe so; they've only made this one game, and both of the designers have their own articles- an article on the group would just be a three-way copypaste job. --PresN 00:07, 21 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • "follows Meat Boy" A couple of words explaining who the character is?
  • "Hidden warp zones are accessed by finding portals in specific levels. These feature retro-styled bonus levels, which have a limit of three lives or are patterned after another video game." The terms "warp zone" and "retro-styled bonus levels" are not all that accessible. Also, is that meant to be "or"? As in, are all of them either three lives only or "patterned after another video game"?
  • "Clearing certain warp zones or collecting enough bandages, which are hidden within the game's levels, unlocks guest characters from other indie games.[5] A replay function that can be accessed after a level has been completed shows all the player's attempts at completing the level simultaneously.[6]" The sentences do not appear to be linked to one another.
  • Para three of gameplay, you mention "the portal", but only explain it later.
  • "These characters can be unlocked by collecting enough bandages or completing certain warp zones." You've already mentioned this; perhaps mention of the bonus characters should be kept out of the main gameplay section?
  • Commander Video doesn't seem to link to an article on a character as such
  • Are the non-linked games worth redlinks?
  • "It has currently garnered over 840,000 views at Newgrounds, and 8 million overall, since its release." Sourced to a fairly old article- perhaps "as of"?
  • "the game; the game" Repetition
  • "McMillen and Refenes live on opposite sides of America" Probably should be shifted to past tense. Where they live now is not important.
  • "The game includes over 300 levels.[3]" Already mentioned.
  • "The next day they announced that while all versions would be released in the same month, the game would be released for XBLA first due to "contractual obligations".[18] The developers were contacted by Microsoft in August 2010 with the prospect of a promotion for the game at Microsoft's 2010 Fall GameFeast XBLA promotion." So they had contractual obligations before signing the contract with Microsoft?
  • Tried to clarify- it was contracted to come out for XBLA when it was done; the promotional thing was an additional thing proposed later, not part of the original contract. --PresN 00:07, 21 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • "Due to Microsoft's low expectations for the game, Super Meat Boy was only lightly promoted, despite greatly outselling all of the other games in the GameFeast event." This implies the promotion came after the heavy selling.
  • Last para of development is a little choppy.
  • "for Canabalt and Gravity Hook" What are these, and why should we care?
  • "on Bandcamp" What is this?
  • "It won and was nominated for awards at Penny Arcade Expo 2010," Is it worth mentioning which ones?
  • "TheSteam" Typo? Link?
  • "and added," Unwarranted comma?
  • "The reviewer from GameTrailers" Implies we should already know about them. "A reviewer writing for" perhaps?
  • "other reviewers comments" Apostrophe!
  • "game's precise control, excellent level design, and smooth difficulty curve." Without quote marks, this implies that we are endorsing that opinion
  • "Official Xbox Magazine (UK)'s" "(UK)" is not part of the title, surely?
  • You link warp zone in reception, but haven't previously?
  • "Like other characters in the game, Meat Boy has appeared in other games" I had to reread this before I understood

Very nice article generally, I suspect it will soon make a great FA. Furthermore, sounds like a game I'd really enjoy. Good work! J Milburn (talk) 23:29, 17 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I have addressed all of these issues. As a courtesy to the delegates, I've only replied inline when I had a more substantive comment than "Fixed". Thanks for the review! --PresN 00:07, 21 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Cool, I'm close to supporting, but I just want to make sure that the gameplay section is as smooth as can be.

  • "Completing a level within a certain time will earn an "A+" grade, which unlocks a harder alternate level in the "dark world"." What's the dark world? How is the level related to the one that has been completed, if at all?
  • Again, sorry, the phrase "retro-styled bonus levels" is not so accessible
  • "The Xbox Live Arcade version features an unlockable mode called "Teh Internets", which is freely updated with new levels." Official new levels?
  • What's the difference between the level editor and the developer modes?
  • "These characters can be unlocked by collecting enough bandages" The bandages are presumably items found in the levels?

Good work so far. J Milburn (talk) 22:14, 22 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Addressed these last 5 points; sorry for taking so long, I was out of town/busy. --PresN 20:24, 27 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

A couple "quick" comments: —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 08:34, 4 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

  • "Super Meat Boy is a platformer indie game developed by Team Meat, designed by Edmund McMillen and Tommy Refenes." -- This is fairly minor, but, since it's the first sentence, I've got to bring it up. "... Team Meat, designed by ..." is clunky. Try "designed by Edmund McMillen and Tommy Refenes and developed by Team Meat".
  • Day-month-year dates in lead sections are difficult reading. Cutting it down to month-year or even just the year is enough for the general reader. If they want more, the infobox or the rest of the article will provide it.
  • The lead doesn't contain enough on the Music section. In fact, I'd say that it doesn't contain enough material related to the Gameplay or Development sections, either.
  • "Players control a small, skinless, cube-shaped character named Meat Boy as he attempts to rescue his girlfriend, Bandage Girl, from the villainous Dr. Fetus through over 300 hazardous levels." -- "Players control Meat Boy, a skinless, cube-shaped character, as he attempts to rescue his girlfriend, Bandage Girl, from the villainous Dr. Fetus. The game contains over 300 levels and [another important gameplay element, to add more connection to the Gameplay section]."
  • "The game received acclaim from critics. In 2010 it received an award" -- unnecessary double "received". Could be fixed by changing the first sentence to "was acclaimed by critics". A comma would be preferable in between "2010" and "it".
  • "not all consumers would appreciate the difficult levels." -- "not all players would appreciate the level of difficulty" would be better.
  • "multiple chapters" -- "multiple" is redundant, since the "s" on the end of "chapters" already tells us that more than one is present.
  • "The player can jump and run and can jump off or slide down walls." -- I can't think of a clean way to rephrase this without a complete rewrite, but it's difficult reading as-is.
  • "The core gameplay, requiring fine control and split-second timing, has ..." -- "The core gameplay requires fine control and split-second timing, and has ..."
  • "new free" -- "new, free".
  • "which players have created" -- unnecessary double "which"; change this one to a "that".
  • "The level editor features a level portal where users can upload created levels." -- We were already told that PC users could access user-created levels a few sentences back. I recommend merging this sentence into the first one.
  • "Along with Meat Boy, there are several unlockable characters appearing from various video games, generally from other indie games." -- "The player may control characters other than Meat Boy, many of whom first appeared in other indie video games."
  • "enough bandage items placed ..." -- "enough" is redundant.
  • "Some bandages can only be collected by using certain characters. Some levels ..." -- "Some bandages can only be collected by using certain characters, and some levels ..."
  • Part two:
  • The amount of "McMillen"s is a bit jarring. Try changing "McMillen's Flash games" to "his Flash games" and "McMillen was working" to "he was working".
  • "to come up with something that felt fluid and logical" -- Too informal and vague. Try "to find one that felt fluid and logical".
  • "The pair designed the game to be deliberately "retro", imitating the aesthetics of traditional platform games, but with a modern sensibility regarding difficulty: rather than a frustrating type of difficulty, they wanted the game to be rewarding and challenging; to this end they included infinite lives, quick restarts of levels, obvious goals, and short levels." -- This is quite a snake. Try chopping it up into two, maybe three sentences.
  • "This was pushed back" -- "The release date was pushed back"
  • "extra levels in form of the dark worlds" -- There's a missing word in there, but I'm not sure merely adding it would fix this. But, for some reason, I can't think of a solution right now.
  • "February 22, 2010, revealed" -- Second comma should be removed.
  • "The next day they announced that while all versions would be released in the same month, the game would be released for XBLA first due to "contractual obligations"." -- "The next day, they announced that, while all versions would be released in the same month, the game would be released for XBLA first because of "contractual obligations"."
  • "The developers were contacted by Microsoft in August 2010 with the prospect of a promotion for the game at Microsoft's 2010 Fall GameFeast XBLA promotion if the game was finished by then." -- Run-on with an unnecessary double "promotion". Needs restructuring.
  • complete on the game, so for the final two months they worked daily, slept" -- "complete on the game, so, for the final two months, they worked daily, slept"
  • "The PC release went smoother from a promotional standpoint, but highlighted many hardware-related bugs that had been missed in testing that were quickly fixed." -- I don't really understand what this sentence means. How did it go smoother? Also, the "highlighted many hardware-related bugs that had been missed in testing that were quickly fixed" confuses me, on top of being a strange run-on. I don't understand it well enough to offer a suggestion, though.
  • Both "Due to Sony's" and "due to the challenge" need to be "because of" or "as a result of".
  • "pulled from the removed from the from the iTunes store" -- Surprised the copyeditor didn't see this.
  • "into an expanded and cohesive soundtrack" -- Sounds a bit POV when phrased like this. Clarifying the meaning would probably alleviate the issue.
  • I made a few tweaks to shorten the review. Here's part three:
  • "Sales have been strong, with the Xbox 360 version moving nearly 140,000 units by the end of 2010." -- "have been" is a quickly-dated term on Wikipedia. I recommend changing the phrasing to be more timeless. Also, "moving" isn't the best word to use for a digitally distributed game.
  • "Critics praised the game's platform elements, with specific commentary often directed at the game's difficulty." -- "Critics praised Super Meat Boy's platforming elements, and often commented on the game's difficulty."
  • "Gilbert specifically cited the level of difficulty as the reason for not giving the game a perfect score, as while it was the core of the game, it made it inaccessible to some players." -- "Gilbert cited the level of difficulty, which he believed made the game inaccessible to some players, as his reason for not awarding the game a perfect score."
  • "unique retro art style" -- Perhaps "unique, retro art direction". There might be a better way.
  • "noted that the game's visual presentation is unique" -- "noted the uniqueness of the game's visual presentation"
  • "classic 8-bit games. He lauded the game's soundtrack" -- "class 8-bit games, and lauded the game's soundtrack". Also, go ahead and axe the "he stated".
  • Everyone's "stating" things in this paragraph. It starts standing out around Holmes' quote, so try changing that to "wrote".
  • "December 1, 2010, to promote" -- Second comma goes.
  • Addressed all of part 3. I'd like to apologize; this article isn't up to my usual standards and I'm feeling a bit embarrassed about all of the obvious prose flaws you and others keep finding. --PresN 19:25, 18 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - based just up the number of issues I found with the lead, which is all but one of the points below. The additional one is a very serious criticism - response would be interesting.
  • It would be worth adopting the full version of "platformer indie game". More encyclopedic language and more reader-friendly.
  • I assume that Meat Boy is as notable as Super Meat Boy. So link it, even if it's a redlink.
  • Why do you assume that? But sure, linked.
  • Meat Boy is a flash game, but Super Meat Boy is a...? Or is the mention of flash too detailed for the lead?
  • What is a "skinless" character?
  • I'm still none the wiser. Is Pacman a character with or without skin? What difference does the skin/lack of make, ie how is it perceived, why is it important etc? I'm not being pedantic here, I genuinely don't understand. --Dweller (talk) 07:49, 15 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • I think the original description came from McMillen specifically countering PETA that the character was "made of meat", saying that he was instead "skinless"; I don't think it's that important, though, so if it's confusing I'll just change it to "red". I don't think readers are that bothered by McMillen's odd character design quirks. --PresN 19:40, 18 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Red definitely does work, lol. --Dweller (talk) 10:49, 19 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • "300 hazardous levels" sounds like sales speak and certainly breaches peacock at least, if not NPOV. If it's from their sales patter, source and quote.
  • The point of the game is that it is hard. So that should be given some mention in the Gameplay section. The particular phrase was also addressed above already, and is a rather precise description of the game's levels. So perhaps we can keep the adjective, but add some of existing references from Reception where reviewers call the levels/game hard? —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 19:48, 14 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • "an award" should be plural, as it becomes the subject of several bodies who have made awards
  • Done.
  • personal preference for the encyclopedic language of "although" over "though".
  • "unique retro art style" The last word is redundant. The first is peacock unless a quote and in any case is a word to avoid in good writing (anything that's not a direct copy is "unique")
  • Either reference everything in the lead (some peoples' preference) or nothing (mine). Either works. Minor bits of referencing looks like either you've included unreferenced material, or you have material in the lead that's not mentioned in the body. Both alternatives are Bad.
Done. --PresN 18:57, 14 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • 600,000 copies... worldwide?
  • The lead is very short for a Featured Article candidate.
  • I'd expect a proper section detailing sales worldwide to meet our criteria of comprehensiveness - is there a reason this isn't included?
  • All of the information that is available is there, in the Reception. Those two sentences, saying how much it has sold by date x. Pretty much no video game FA has more, as such data is generally not made publicly available. --PresN 18:57, 14 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry. --Dweller (talk) 13:17, 14 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the fixes. I take the point that the rest of the article may be in better shape. I'll review when I can. --Dweller (talk) 08:58, 15 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

  • Oppose for now—I've gone through and made some minor tweaks, so the prose looks good to my eye. However I did a random spot check on some of the sources, current refs 1,2,5,10, and 15, and I found some discrepancies, for example:
    • "The game is divided into multiple chapters, which together contain over 300 levels."→"multiple chapters" division not supported by [2] (2)
    • "Along with Meat Boy, there are several unlockable characters appearing from various video games, generally from other indie games"→"indie characters" not supported by [3] (5)
    • "Players must guide Meat Boy to the end of each level while avoiding buzzsaws, salt, and various other fatal obstacles. The player can jump and run and can jump off or slide down walls. The core gameplay, requiring fine control and split-second timing, has been compared to traditional platform games such as Mega Man and N."→Doesn't mention salt, doesn't mention "N" by name as far as I can see.
    • More checks may be warranted, especially in the gameplay section.
    • What about some of the complaints of the game? Sure, it was mostly positive, but there were still less-positive comments—IGN, for example, noted that the cut scenes showed the lack of production value[4], PC Gamers noted minor bugs[5], and Games Radar pointed out that while he felt the game earned the right to be insanely difficult, it could still turn off some players[6]. Considering the Edge review is the lowest score I could find (8/10) I think you could do with adding those reviewers' comments to the mix (X201 might have a copy, although unfortunately I can't use the database to find exactly when the review was done so you'll have to make an educated guess.
--Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs(talk) 18:05, 15 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Ugh, sorry about that. Your above concerns have all been addressed. All of the points were there in the refs- "chapters" was covered by ref 5, "indie game characters" by ref 2, "N" by the MTV review, etc., but the right refs weren't covering the right sentences. I'll go through the gameplay section line by line this afternoon to make sure that I didn't transpose facts between refs anywhere else. Some negative reception has been added by SCB below; I'll find some more as well. --PresN 19:56, 18 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. The article looks more than enough to be a featured article. I've added some of the reviewers complaints of the game in the reception section with sources. I've also fixed the sources that support "indie games" being written; changed "salt" to "crumbling blocks" and changed "N" to "Ghosts 'n Goblin"-SCB '92 (talk) 20:47, 16 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Spotchecks
  • From this source I've found close paraphrasing that needs rewriting, and am having trouble with source verification:
  • article says:Players must guide Meat Boy to the end of each level while avoiding buzzsaws, crumbling blocks, and various other fatal obstacles.
  • The source says: In Meat Boy you must guide the protagonist through an increasingly difficult series of (often) vertical scrolling levels filled with crumbling blocks, spinning saw blades, and other deadly obstacles.
  • The article says: The game was initially set to include around 100 levels, and to have both co-operative and competitive multiplayer modes. However, the multiplayer option was dropped in favor of increasing the number of levels. The source says 100 levels have been developed and multi-player functionality is expected to be added; it doesn't say one was sacrificed for the other.
  • The article says: The core gameplay requires fine control and split-second timing, and has been compared to traditional platform games such as Mega Man and Ghosts 'n Goblins. I can't find anything in the source about the timing, and I think the bit about being compared is off - the developer said he wanted it to be a recreation of those games (in other words they inspired this game), which is different, in my view.

Will check a few more as soon as I have time. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 04:15, 19 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

  • This source is a video, which should be indicated in the cites.
  • From this source in the article is written, Completing a level within a certain time earns an "A+" grade, which unlocks a harder alternate version of the level in the "dark world", an optional set of difficult levels. Hidden stages called warp zones are accessed by finding portals in specific levels. These warp zones feature bonus levels that have either the art style of older video games and a limit of three lives, or are patterned after another indie video game.[2]. Although in quotation marks, "dark world" isn't mentioned in the source. According to the source the player has to get a "grade A", not A+, to access the alt levels. According to the source all of the alt (warp) levels are retro style. To access the alt levels the source say "with a Grade A they'll unlock the alternate expert version of that level" which is slightly too close to our version of " an "A+" grade, which unlocks a harder alternate version"
  • This source is a blog. What makes it reliable? Also in this source the OP says the development mode (dev mode) is buggy and rough - doesn't mention tools. The article says, Players can also access an unsupported developer mode inside the game to edit their own levels using the "rough" tools that Team Meat used to create the game - I'd suggest rewording this per the source a bit.
  • Ref 9 is also a blog. It seems to be published by the game developers, so again, why is it reliable? Truthkeeper88 (talk) 11:35, 19 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose per 1.c. About 15 or so refs (about 25 percent of the refs) are pages from the blog Team Meat which appears to be written by the game developers, which is an over-reliance on a questionable primary source. Try to find the information from these pages in more reliable secondary sources. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 12:01, 19 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

  • The game developers are a questionable source??? They're the "experts" at the knowledge of the internals of the game, there is no way that should be considered unreliable. There are some of the announcements that they have in this that could be replaced with sourced coverage from other media (for example, I'm pretty sure the availability of the physical soundtrack was noted across other vg sites), but when they are talking about specific design elements and decisions for the game, there is absolutely nothing wrong with their own blog as the source, since if there are news stories, they are going to be likely pointing right back to that blog. --MASEM (t) 17:18, 20 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Not to speak for Truthkeeper, but I'd say the issue is not that this source is likely to contain errors, but that it's a primary source - we tend to prefer secondary sources for FAs. Nikkimaria (talk) 18:13, 20 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Thanks Nikkimaria, basically that's what I'm driving at. I see a couple of problems that need to be resolved before I can strike the oppose.
    • I'd consider this a primary source because the developers themselves produced it. Also, because I can't find a publisher for the site, I'm concerned it might be a publicity site. And finally, it could fall under WP:SPS. I think used sparingly I might say okay, but am on the fence in that regard, but for a page to rely so heavily on a questionable source is problematic, and needs to be resolved to some extent.
    • The few spotchecks I did showed some close paraphrasing that needs to be rewritten. I've only looked at a few sources and noted what I found.
    • In the instances I noted there are discrepancies between the source and the article. These need to be resolved.
    I've stopped spotchecking until the existing issues, which I consider actionable and easily taken care, have been resolved. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 19:04, 20 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    I do agree that over-reliance on the primary sources can be a problem normally; I know several can be replaced as they are just news items (soundtrack release, etc.), but I don't think all of them can be, and may leave, say, 8-10 of them still in place. The point I question is the issue of being reliable, as the confirmed developers of the game are the most reliable source on its creation. While some of what Team Meat has stated has then been duplicated by third-party sources, this doesn't change the reliability of the original info to begin with. And sometimes, these development aspects are just not covered by third-parties (not necessarily the case here, but moreso for any indie games to begin with). --MASEM (t) 18:28, 20 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    I'd like to add that primary sources are critical to almost every video game FA. Only the biggest games receive secondary coverage of their development cycles. JimmyBlackwing (talk) 19:20, 20 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    In that case, my question is whether we're making an exception for video games? Normally I write about books, but many of the modern books I like to write about only receive coverage on blogs and such, and I'd consider an author blog to be unreliable. I don't really see the difference between an author blog and a game developer blog - unless I'm missing something. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 19:32, 20 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Busy at work, I'll get to your issues soon, but just wanted to interject- so, in your opinion, if the developer says "I did blah while making this game(/book)" it would be unreliable, but if a journalist asked them in an interview and they said "I did blah", that would be reliable? Because in both cases- heck, in all cases- the information has to come from the devs; no one else could possible know anything about the game's development other than the people who were there. Primary sources can't be used for notability/importance, and you're probably right that I'm relying on them too much (25% is high), but I don't see how they could not be used to verify facts about things that only they could know about. --PresN 21:17, 20 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: I have yet to read the full article, but something that caught my eye was the list of playable characters. I would call such content game guide info. I suggest summarizing the content. (Guyinblack25 talk 20:58, 19 July 2011 (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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