Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (computer and video games)

From WikiProject: CVG

One issue I have is that this naming convention doesn't discuss what length a series should be where it would be appropriate for a disambiguated series article. For instance, it is beneficial to have a page called "The Legend of Zelda series", but perhaps not so much for "No One Lives Forever series" or "Max Payne series", the latter two having only two games (not counting expansions or spinoffs) under their belt. This is an interesting issue because in my opinion, it's ok for Max Payne to be home to information on the series thus far rather than creating another article that does the same thing. Hopefully, I'm making sense here.

I'm personally of the opinion that it depends on the series. In one case, Splinter Cell, is not the name of the first game, it's technically Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell (same for Ghost Recon and Rainbow Six). Considering Splinter Cell could refer to the first game, the first novel, or the future movie, it works just as well as a disambig page. K1Bond007 03:33, September 8, 2005 (UTC)

What about cross-platform?

I have discovered that Mario Tennis (N64 and GBc) and Mario Power Tennis (GCN and GBA) games have both a handheld and a console title with the same exact title. Currently, the original Tennis article also lists the GBC infoxbox on there, while the Power Tennis one has no such infobox.

This naming convention only talks about games in a series. If I were to spin the GBC article off onto its own page, would it be an abbrevation (such as Mario Tennis (GBC)) or a full name (such as Mario Tennis (Game Boy Color)? Or would it be better to create a series page. In that case, would Mario Tennis become Mario Tennis (N64)? - Hbdragon88 22:18, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

Fixed. After finding out about Donkey Kong (Game Boy), I went ahead and made the N64 version into Mario Tennis (video game) and the GBC version has been made into Mario Tennis (Game Boy Color). I found out that ther is a GBA version and created the series template to link the whole series together. - Hbdragon88 23:24, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

Proposal

I propose using both existing conventions, with the ambiguous name redirected to the game article, i.e., make The Legend of Zelda a redirect to The Legend of Zelda (video game), with a dab( disambiguation) notice at the top of the game article linking to The Legend of Zelda series. Ditto Final Fantasy. (There is precedence for an ambiguous name pointing to a disambiguated one. See 2, or Boston or soccer, for example.) Alternatively, the ambiguous name could be redirected to a dab page( like this) listing the series article, all games, and adaptations such as tv series or movies, but that would mean the creation of a lot of dab pages.

For a series where the game name is also a character name, make the ambiguous name a character article, with a dab at the top pointing to the games, e.g., Donkey Kong as it currently exists. If there is a series article, the dab should point there.

As for different games on multiple platforms with the same name... each should be in an article with the full console name, the abbreviations should be redirects, and the ambiguous name should point to the series article, or if there isn't one, a dab page. For example: Mario Tennis for the N64 should be at Mario Tennis (Nintendo 64) with a redirect at Mario Tennis (N64). Mario Tennis (GBC) should be a redirect to Mario Tennis (Game Boy Color). Mario Tennis and Mario Tennis (video game) should redirect to Mario Tennis series. Actually, I think I'll go set that up right now, so you can see what I mean. -- WikidSmaht (talk) 20:23, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

Done. -- 20:30, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

I strongly disagree (heh, second battle). Redirects at that level (acronyms like N64 or GBC) are highly unlikely to be searched; people looking for that game are going to search the base game (Mario Tennis(. Second, when people are looking for Mario Tennis, they're most likely to be looking for the console version, the N64 version. The (Game Boy Color) already dabs it far enough for the more obscure handheld title.

I'm not in favor for creating a myriad of unnecessary redirects. It should be kept as simple as possible. Perhaps for dab purposes we could add "This article is about the series" or "This article is about the so-and-so-version" at the top, but I wouldn't go so far as to create a ton of redirects. For instance, on KOS-MOS, it simply says that she is a character from Xenosaga. We don't see KOS-MOS (Xenosaga). - Hbdragon88 09:48, 11 February 2006 (UTC)