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User:JimmyBlackwing/Sourcing video game articles

< User:JimmyBlackwing

In my experience, finding reliable sources is the single most challenging aspect of writing a video game-related article. Several factors have created this problem. First, the mass interest in video games coincided with the early years of the Internet, and so important video game coverage was put online—only to be scattered by decades of website redesigns and closures. Second, video games' long-standing reputation as a niche pastime has meant that, until recently, little effort has been made to preserve historical materials related to the medium. Third, very few historians have cared to study and document video games. In short, you probably won't be able to read up on Lufia & the Fortress of Doom at your local library.

This puts WikiProject Video games in a position very different from that of, for example, WikiProject Military history. If you plan to write a video game-related article, you won't be able to rely on archivists and historians to dig up and parse reliable sources for you. Nine times out of ten, you'll have to do it yourself. And that involves learning how to use the Internet for more than superficial research. Boatloads of online and print sources are out there—if you know how to find them. This essay will give you, in less than half an hour, what it took me over five years to learn about sourcing video game articles.

What kind of source is it?

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You should start by asking yourself a series of questions. Are you trying to find material for a game or a company—or a concept like emergent gameplay? Is your subject old or recent? Do you need a contemporaneous or a retrospective source? Should it cover cultural impact or the inner workings of a company? Without specifics, you'll have no efficient method for locating your source, and you'll be reduced to aimless Googling.

Let's take an example. Suppose that I want to update the article on Escape from Monkey Island. I start by looking for contemporaneous sources to fill out the Development section. The game was released in 2000, and I know that GameSpot and IGN covered games then. A quick search of those sites nets me several news stories and previews—but I need more. IGN links to a dead fansite dedicated to Escape from Monkey Island (the URL is unfortunately misspelled), and I use the Wayback Machine to retrieve it. This gives me numerous interviews with the team, and a hub for all news related to the game—including links to other long-dead sites, which I couldn't have found otherwise. I expand the Development section by looking up issues of print magazines, such as Computer Gaming World, from 1999 and 2000. As for reviews, I know that Metacritic existed in 2000, so I check its entry for Escape from Monkey Island and Wayback any reviews that have gone dead.

Simply put, if you know what you need, you can locate the proper research tools by a process of elimination. If I'm working on an article about a 1995 video game, I don't look for contemporaneous material on IGN and GameSpot; I pick up an issue of Next Generation or Electronic Gaming Monthly. If I'm trying to develop the article for a German game like Anno 1602, my best bet isn't English sources, but German-language publications like PC Games and Der Spiegel. Similarly, while official sites can help me locate contemporaneous coverage of a game, I'll need more creative solutions for topics that pre-date the World Wide Web. (That said, I might be able to find magazine scans related to a pre-WWW game on a retrospective fansite.) Determine what you're looking for first, and the means for finding it become clearer. Which brings us to the next topic.

Selecting a research tool

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Once you've identified the type of source you need, it's time to find a research tool. What follows is a list of the research tools I've found and/or used in my time on Wikipedia, along with advice on how to locate your own.

WikiProject Video games' reference library

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The largest-scale online research tool for video games, and the best place to begin your hunt, is WikiProject Video games' own reference library. Type your subject into its search box and hope for the best.

If your search doesn't return anything, don't despair. The next step is to manually check the magazine listings for issues around the date you need. For example, if you're looking for the Electronic Gaming Monthly review for Dino Crisis, you can expect it in an issue near that game's North American release date. Drop a polite request for the review, along with information about which issue might contain it, on the magazine owner's talk page. And don't forget to browse the reference library's list of books and strategy guides for material related to the game.

Before you ask anyone for a scan, though, check the online print archive (OPA). Magazines like Electronic Gaming Monthly, Computer Gaming World and PC Gamer often posted their print material online, only to take it down later. That problem is solved by the Wayback Machine. The OPA is a collection of Wayback links to the reviews and site indexes of print magazines. From there, you can find a direct link to the Electronic Gaming Monthly review of Dino Crisis for the Dreamcast. However, let's say you want GamePro's Dino Crisis review, which isn't in the magazine listings or linked directly from the OPA. Go to the GamePro index in the OPA, click on the 1996–2006 review archive, and browse until you find the link you need.

Two side notes. While the OPA is primarily for reviews, many of its indexes (such as Computer Games Magazine's article archive) are also great for digging up previews, news stories and other non-review material. And, if you're looking for a computer game review from between 1980 and 1995, don't forget to check BOZ's amazing Dragon archive, which isn't included in the reference library search engine.

A final and more recent feature of WikiProject Video games' reference library is the ever-growing sales charts subsection. Here you'll find weekly, monthly and annual sales rankings for video games across multiple decades and countries—crucial information when it comes to covering a game's commercial performance. I maintain this page and periodically expand it from my own charts sandbox, where I gather sales rankings in a less organized way and prepare them for public use at WP:VG/SC.

Alternative magazine libraries

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If WikiProject Video games' reference library doesn't have the magazine(s) you need, you aren't out of options. You simply need to expand your search off-site. Here are some of the top webpages dedicated to preserving old magazines:

  • Amiga Magazine Rack (Amiga, Amstrad, Commodore 64, DOS, Game Gear, Mega Drive, NES, SNES, ZX Spectrum, etc.)
One of the best online archives of magazines related to '80s and early '90s computer games, but it contains a few articles about console games from that period as well. Type in a game's title and you'll be given a comprehensive list of the magazines that covered it, often with scans. Even if scans aren't available, the issue numbers and dates can help you track down sources on other sites.
This foreign-language site is a breathtaking resource for finding manuals and scans. It covers thousands of games from the pre-2000 era, and it boasts some of the best press material indexes out there. Search for a game like System Shock and click on its Médias subpage—and behold as magazine coverage, across multiple languages, is cited down to the page number for your research pleasure. These can then be located via other archives. The indexes have gaps, but they're a great starting point.
During the last few years, the Internet Archive has been compiling searchable, cover-to-cover PDFs of old computer magazines. This library overlaps a bit with the Amiga Magazine Rack and Abandonware France—so AF citations, and unscanned pages from the AMR, can often manually be tracked down here. For example, the AMR has an unscanned Zero preview of Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge in its database, which I located in The Computer Magazine Archives without much trouble.
  • SMS Power (Game Gear, Mark III, Master System, OMV, SC-3000, SF-7000, SG-1000)
By far the most intuitive magazine archive related to Sega's early years. Simply browse the game directory and select a title—every relevant review and article in the archive will be displayed. Also a good resource for manuals.
  • Game and Gamer Magazines (Atari, DOS, Dreamcast, GameCube, Genesis, Intellivision, Mega Drive, NES, Nintendo 64, PlayStation, PlayStation 2, Saturn, Windows, Xbox, etc.)
Another Internet Archive project, but this time specifically focused on video game magazines. Although its coverage is spotty, it contains issues from important magazines such as Game Informer, PC Zone and Official Xbox Magazine—and each one is searchable. (Note that many other magazines, such as GamesTM, are available in the Internet Archive but not yet sorted into the proper directories. Get creative and try manual searches if the Internet Archive's directories don't solve your problem automatically.)
A solid collection of (mostly) '80s magazines related to Atari consoles and computers. Overlaps a bit with the Internet Archive's libraries. Unfortunately, its PDFs don't appear to be searchable, so go with the Internet Archive if you have the option.
A library of every Computer Gaming World issue, from 1981 to 2006. It's an incredible tool that I've turned to many times. However, these days, it's been completely superseded by the Internet Archive, where users have uploaded all PDFs from the Museum website in a cleaner and, most importantly, searchable format.
No other video-game-related magazine was as technical or in-depth as Game Developer (1994-2013). Because it doesn't focus on a specific platform, you can read about the production design of Spyro the Dragon in one issue and the development of Half-Life in another. This makes it hard to predict the contents of each issue, but, luckily, they're all searchable.
Nearly complete after years of growth, Pix's scanning project has brought the majority of PC Zone's issues online. While this cache overlaps to a degree with the Internet Archive's magazine collections, its coverage of PC Zone is more comprehensive than anything else on the web.
A regularly-updated archive of Commodore magazines, whose coverage overlaps heavily with that of the Internet Archive. However, DLH's library has an unrivaled assortment of books and manuals related to Commodore games and systems—it's truly incredible. The go-to for anyone working in the Commodore field.
A large but unintuitive collection of various magazines, with many gaps in coverage. It's a pain to use, particularly because most of the files are in the comic book archive format (readable with kthoom). However, it contains magazines that are impossible to access elsewhere. Consider it a last resort.
One of the most niche and idiosyncratic collections of magazine odds and ends on the web, Roushimsx's scan archive contains thousands of pages (including full magazines in .CBZ format) from a wide variety of publications. It's messy and its scope begins and ends with Roushimsx's personal interests, but those interests are wide enough to make this site an occasional lifesaver.

Other online resources

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These are the best research tools I've found online that are not A) dedicated to scanning print magazines or B) listed in the OPA:

Everyone knows IGN. The site's been covering games since the late '90s, and, unlike most other sites of its kind, it rarely loses content. In recent years, though, its redesigns have made older articles cumbersome to access and harder to cite reliably. While IGN still has a huge number of contemporaneous and retrospective features, I recommend checking its older incarnations via the Wayback Machine before you poke around the new site.
Another household name from the mid-'90s onward. What you might not know is that much of its best content is available only through the Wayback Machine. For example: Behind the Games, Columns, Review archive, Designer Diaries, History of, Game Index, Desslock's RPG News, The Greatest Games of All Time and the original news archive (alt). Or just browse the different incarnations of their old features archive. (Note: GameSpot sometimes used a scroll-and-select menu, which is now broken. To access the articles in it, view the page source, search for a key word and manually copy/paste the relevant link into the Wayback Machine.)
A site that's fallen far since its glory days in the early '00s. Technically defunct since 2013, it's still live in some form. However, even more than GameSpot, a lot of GameSpy's best material is only in the Wayback Machine. For example: their Interviews, 20 Questions, Dev Diaries, Hall of Fame, GameSpin, Review archive, GameSpyDaily and Dev Corner. All of those archives end around 2004; later articles remain available on their site.
This site has become pretty obscure since its closure in 2001, but it's hard to match as a source for computer game news from 1996–2001. At one time, it was a chief rival to GameSpot. Check out its various news, previews and features archives. There's a lot here to dig up.
The premier source for adventure game coverage, Adventure Gamers has come a long way since it started over two decades ago. Its owners are pretty meticulous when it comes to preserving and indexing old material back to 2003, but the archives get spotty before that. Don't neglect to check its old Adventure Gamer page (1999–2001) for lost reviews, previews and interviews. See also my collection of the surviving 1999–2004 news archives—all that's left from a tumultuous period of domain changes and server outages.
Here is a site that's fallen on hard times in recent years. While it's still live, the best of its material is only available in the Wayback Machine. But what material it is. When it comes to adventure games, Just Adventure is hard to beat. See its old sections for Interviews, Press Releases, the Eye on Adventure, Articles and more. It was also the English host of The Inventory, one of the most important adventure game fanzines of the 2000s.
One of the most underappreciated research projects I've come across. PC Games Database is a sweeping, comprehensive catalog of reviews by German game publications, online and off. It's hard to overstate how useful this site is for locating reviews of German games, or of games released in Germany, from the '90s through the 2010s.
  • News archives
LexisNexis, Questia, NewsBank and similar services provide searchable archives of general-interest newspapers and magazines. They're irreplaceable research tools, especially for articles on older (pre-2000s) subjects. If you don't have a subscription to one of them, request help from someone who does at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Video games or Wikipedia:The Wikipedia Library. Alternatively, grab one of the free accounts at Wikipedia:TWL/Journals.
Two great tools for filling in your sources. Type in a few variations of your search (e.g. "halo combat evolved", "halo bungie", "halo xbox 2001") to maximize your results. If Google turns up interesting results but doesn't provide a book preview, you can generally access the source elsewhere online or through a real-world library.
Video game manuals and other pack-in materials are invaluable sources, and Replacementdocs once had the biggest digitized collection of them anywhere. Unfortunately, all of its download links have been offline for several years. This is a blow to game history, but I leave the link here in case Replacementdocs ever comes back online.

Finding subject-specific tools

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The resources listed above are general: they cover a broad range of topics at varying levels of depth. But, if you're lucky, you can find even better and deeper tools for specific topics. Never underestimate the power of an official or unofficial site, fan forum or personal blog to collect information on a given subject. For example, fansite The International House of Mojo is the best subject-specific research tool for LucasArts adventure games, and the same could be said about SonicRetro for Sonic the Hedgehog games. Blogger "Pix" runs a site dedicated to Origin Systems games, where he often posts magazine scans related to those titles. Sierra Gamers is rife with old magazine scans that cover Sierra Entertainment games. Hallfiry's Blizzard fan page contains a hoard of print material, while Quaddicted collates key articles about id Software's hit. Check HL Inside's behemoth scan collection for material on everything Valve and Half-Life. And the archived official site of a company like Ion Storm is an unending treasure trove of information.

It's usually not too difficult to find tools like these. Try a few Google searches likely to bring up what you need (e.g. "origin systems magazine scans", "lucasarts fansite") and go from there. With official or fan sites that have gone offline, things are more difficult. Google only brings up results for currently-live material, so you'll have to do detective work with the Wayback Machine to find the original sites. Look for dead URLs on fan forums or on news sites like IGN—places like that typically link to official sites whenever they're created, and to fan sites whenever they do something noteworthy.

When all else fails

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You've tried all of the above, but you still don't have enough material. Worse, tools like fansites and Google Books have turned up mentions of key sources—but you can't access them. I've been there. Here are some of the desperate measures.

Beg for it

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Drop a random request at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Video games. Cold-post on a fan forum asking for help. Ask (or even email) a Wikipedian who once cited the source you need. For example, I managed to obtain the online help file for British Open Championship Golf only after a protracted begging session on a Looking Glass Studios fan site; and I got the Computer Gaming World review of System Shock by contacting a kind stranger on Wikipedia, who'd cited that relevant issue of CGW on an unconnected subject years before.

Buy it

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Many a sourcing crisis can be solved by buying the material you need. For example, I was forced to do this when I discovered that Flight Unlimited's manual and strategy guide, which weren't available online, contain swaths of critical information about the game's development. I've also grabbed issues of PC Gamer US, and Richard Rouse III's book Game Design: Theory and Practice, to access Looking Glass coverage. Check for listings of the source(s) you need on eBay and Amazon.com, or even, as a last resort, Craigslist.

Google it—for hours

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Most people don't venture past page five of a Google search. When things are really dire, I've found myself past page 30, 40 or 50. Mindless Googling is, in general, hugely inefficient; but it can be the only option. I used it to cite the Reception section of Robbing the Cradle, in one of many examples.

Wait it out and try something else

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Sometimes, a key source simply isn't available. An old magazine isn't online and isn't up for purchase. An important webpage hasn't been archived in the Wayback Machine and isn't accessible via mirror. What do you do? Use the other sources you've found to write the best article you can, and hope that the lost source comes to light in the future. Game archivism is rapidly getting better, and things have improved so much in my lifetime that the 2000s feel like the Stone Age for this stuff. There's hope!

Good luck

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Solid sources exist for just about any subject you can imagine, but there's no single way to find them. The above is what I've learned about the process so far. I'll be updating this page whenever I discover or remember more sourcing tools. Hopefully, what you've read here will make sourcing video game articles easier for you in the future. Good luck. JimmyBlackwing (talk) 17:12, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

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