Wikipedia:WikiProject Video games/Navboxes

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In the past, computer and video games had a motley assortment of navigation templates (typically called "navboxes") scattered at the bottom of many different pages. Such templates are often useful for linking series of articles, such as a series of games, but they can easily become too large, garish, or even malfunction, impairing usability. This guideline discourages many of the excesses, while suggesting how to make useful navigation templates that guide users within an article series.

When do I need to make a navbox?

Consider whether a navbox is necessary at all. You need to have an article series which is large enough such that a navigation template is useful, but small enough that all of the articles are strongly-related.

If the series is too small, you may not need a template at all to link them. Such articles will already be interlinked with wikilinks, making a navbox superfluous. Additionally, there is a tendency among video game fans to create idiosyncratic "series" of tenuously-linked games or exceedingly short successions (only two or three games long); be aware of this tendency in yourself, and strive to avoid it. If you think a series is too short to need a navbox, it probably is.

On the other hand, a series can be so loosely-defined or so broad as to include far too many articles. A common example of this sort of "series" is "every game a company mascot has appeared in"; a template with every single game Mario has appeared in would include dozens, if not hundreds, of games, and would be so huge as to be useless. Try narrowing the scope; {{Mario series}} includes only platformers in which Mario stars. If you want to make an exhaustive list, consider instead using a list (as part of a series article or as a standalone article) or a category. {{Mario series}} links to exhaustive lists of all the games in which Mario appears, in lieu of including every single obscure game in the template itself.

How do I make my navbox?

Standard naming for a navbox which links together a series of games is, using the hypothetical example of the Kwazy Quux series, "Template:Kwazy Quux series". If this leads to naming conflicts, "Template:Kwazy Quux games" is a good alternative. Avoid CamelCase, all-lowercase, or other less-readable names, but also avoid overly-long names.

Now that you have a name, you need the code. The standard appearance, for a hypothetical Kwazy Quux series, is:

This example, using {{CVG Navigation}}, illustrates many of the guidelines below.

The appearance, including the color, is standard for the computer and video games Wikiproject. They are standardized so that we have a standard, pleasing appearance, and so that multiple navboxes line up nicely at the bottom of a page. Editors are strongly cautioned against changing colors because they think one series of games should have its own color.

The title section should link the name of the series to an umbrella series article if one exists; if one does not, leave the series title unlinked. The second half, which can be "video games", "computer games", or "computer and video games", as suits the editors of the template, should link to Computer and video games, the umbrella article for the entire Wikiproject. Feel free to adapt the template to whatever suits the content; {{Mario series}} has one such variation. Be sure to link Computer and video games no matter what, however.

Make sure you use non-breaking spaces ( ) in the middle of game names so they don't end up separated over a line. Similarly, separate games in a serial list with a non-breaking space followed by a bullet followed by a regular space ( • ).

All proper names of longform works (which includes nearly all computer and video games, as well as series of games) should be italicized. Make sure to only italicize the portion of the article name that is actually part of the work's proper name; when differentiating between different games of the same name using a parenthetical, make sure you don't italicize the parenthetical. Likewise, if an article name isn't a game name (such as with a list of games or characters or such), don't use italics at all.

Articles should be linked by their shortest possible common name; if a game is best known as "Seriesname 2", link it as "Seriesname 2", but if it's better known by a subtitle, link it by the subtitle. Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins is linked in {{Mario series}} as Super Mario Land 2 because that's how it's best known. If space is at a premium, games can even be reduced even further; for example, "Kwazy Quux • 2 • 3" Do not use abbreviations even if they are in common usage (unless the game's name is itself an abbreviation), as they are unprofessional.

When differentiating between games with the same name, the preferred parenthetical is by platform (as in the Kwazy Quux example above). If a game is not strongly associated with a particular platform, the preferred alternative is by year.

Make sure to add the navbox to Category:Video game navigational boxes or one of its subcategories, so other editors can find it.

What to avoid

Many older templates used "hide/show" functions, to compensate for excessive size. Such functions often had problems in certain browsers and could easily cause display glitches if improperly implemented. These guidelines should resolve the issues of overlarge templates that led to the popularity of such functions, so hide/show functions are no longer needed (and are indeed explicitly discouraged because of the glitches).

Try not to link overspecific articles, particularly in the case of spinoff games or articles about fictional characters, places, objects, or concepts. Instead, link umbrella articles, so that readers can have a larger context in which to place such articles. {{Metal Gear series}}, a template for the long-running Metal Gear video game series, links only a comprehensive list of characters, rather than cramming all of the main characters into the template. This helps discourage disputes about which ancillary articles are or are not important enough to go into the template as well as template bloat; if there is any doubt, they probably should be excluded.

Don't link to articles that don't exist yet or to article sections. While red links encourage people to write articles, navboxes are primarily for navigation, and if we don't have an article for Kwazy Quux Gaiden: Densetsu no Quux yet, it doesn't aid navigation to link an article that doesn't exist.

Avoid linking to articles for unreleased games, unless they are particularly noteworthy despite the fact that they were or are unreleased. Articles for upcoming games are often of low quality and subject to sudden change; such games are often cancelled, renamed, or turn out to be hoaxes or misunderstandings, and this is assuming they don't flop or otherwise turn out to be not terribly noteworthy after their release. As a rule of thumb, an unreleased game that does not have a definite release date should usually be excluded, and a game that has never been shown in playable form or does not have a definite release title should never be included.

Cancelled games (or games that saw only limited, regional release) almost never merit inclusion; their articles tend to be of extremely limited interest, limited only to readers already intimately familiar with the series as a whole and its history. There are exceptions to these rules, particularly in the case of otherwise small templates or extremely notable unreleased games (e.g. Duke Nukem Forever), but in general it is best to err on the side of exclusion.

Bloated templates

If you feel a navbox contains too many links use {{CVGnavbox-bloated}} (as stated on it's page) and start a discussion on what can be removed from the navbox. Tagged templates will be placed into Category:CVG navbox cleanup.