Rename: Black Mesa Commute

Let's play Guess The Trope! Black Mesa Commute is about...

...well, it has nothing to do with mesas or with commuting, nor with the color black. The trope is about tutorial levels. With a name like that, it's hardly surprising that it's not thriving (27 wicks, 51 inbounds). Tutorials are ubiquitous, so I would expect lots of wicks, inbounds and examples here. Furthermore, this trope strikes me as a duplicate: it is about a "limited area" where you can "get familiar with the controls" and see the scenery - so that's basically any tutorial level. If this is meant to be different from the main trope about tutorials, then it doesn't show how. I think some merging would be in order here.

Where are you getting that from? Read the description again.

Any form of scene setting in a game that allows you to explore a very limited area of the setting while getting a tour of the level. Often gives you a small chance to get familiar with the controls and shows off the scenery

How do you interpret that as "tutorial level"? Giving you a chance to get familiar with the controls is only a minor part of this trope, and isn't even required.

edited 22nd Sep '12 4:29:57 PM by abk0100

A Tour Level or Tour Scene. The name sounds like it could be a bit confusing, though.

Is it misused?

edited 22nd Sep '12 10:21:45 PM by AnotherDuck

I think the allegation is that its underused. It has a surprising number of inbounds for a trope with only 27 wicks, though. The wick count could probably be bumped a bit by cross-wicking.

While I enjoy video games, I'm not enough of a fanatic to say if this is really being underused, but the name is certainly non-indicative. If never would have found this if I had been looking for it. I'm not familiar with the trope namer. I suspect there's some fan myopia going on here, which may help account for the inbounds.

I'm not seeing a super-strong case for renaming yet, but there is a case to be made. At the very least, we should do some redirect farming.

This one seems to need crosswicking, but it's fine otherwise. Unless we have a case that there should be more wicks.

Good trope, bad name. I like the Tour Level suggestion.

Cross-wicking would only give us a handful of extra wicks; at a rough estimate, it would put us in the mid-thirties or maybe low forties.

Whether that's underuse or not I'm really not qualified to say.

I found the description unclear.

The name seems bad—totally non-indicative, and utterly opaque to anyone not familiar with the work from which it's derived, which is not necessarily a reason for renaming, but does mean that the bar for showing it needs a rename is set very low. I'm inclined to believe the accusations of underuse unless a strong counterargument is provided.

I don't see how 51 inbounds is a "surprising amount".

51 inbounds seem enough for me. That said, redirect farming seems to be a viable option here.

The wicks are awfully low and the name is stupendously bad. I'm far from convinced that 51 inbounds is sufficient to make up for that, particularly given the odds that many of them may be referring specifically to the Trope Namer.

Proof for the "trope namer" claim?

It's a reasonable supposition given the opaqueness of the name. Anyhow, the whole point of keeping the old name as a redirect when we rename is to preserve inbound links, so inbounds alone are a relatively weak argument against renaming.

Anyway, looking at the Inbound Referrals page, the ones that can be usefully backtracked do seem to be dominated by Half-Life references. I can't make heads nor tails of the Manchester Free Press link—whatever was there is gone from the front page—and I can't find the link on the Russian page, and a couple of the other pages seem to be gone. Overall, though, I think the evidence supports nrjxll's hypothesis.

eta: bottom line, though, any inbound links intended to refer to the trope will still work even if we rename.

edited 23rd Sep '12 4:02:35 PM by Xtifr

So?

OP was based on a misunderstanding and called for rename without much evidence. Does this thread need to exist? I feel like it's not exactly a pressing issue.

It's a non-indicative, misleading name that seems like it's probably contributing to underuse. The inbounds analysis shows that people are misinterpreting this to be about the trope namer, not the trope! That's a problem.

I don't see any trackable inbounds at all. Even if there were, the sample size would be too small to be meaningful.

Yes, several of the blogs seem to have disappeared since I checked. Nevertheless, I assure you most of them were talking about half-life (which appears to be some moderately popular game I've never seen). The only reason I even checked is because someone was trying to use the inbounds as an argument for keeping the name as it is. If you ignore the inbounds, then what we have is a bad case of Trope Namer Syndrome, and an underperforming trope. That's a solid argument for renaming.

4 wicks are about Half Life. 3 are indexes, 1 is this very trope's laconic. Most of the inbounds are about Half Life. The page image is about Half Life. Half Life takes half the page.

I find it unhealthy when a work takes over a trope so much just because of the name.

edited 30th Nov '12 11:32:00 PM by lu127

and .

And I really dislike how the image is about Half Life. It just reinforces how ridiculously narrow the trope description is.

edited 1st Dec '12 4:30:09 AM by DoktorvonEurotrash

This looks like a rename needed case. And a situation where we need to strip out all this Half-Life stuff.

I think a rename would be a good option, considering what points towards it.

I'd support a rename and a revamp to make it less Half Life-centric (a new pagequote and a different picture would be a good start). The trope is about levels that have little in the way of actual gameplay (except, possibly, a Justified Tutorial) in favor of letting the player get a sense of the setting's atmosphere without having to worry about getting killed. In the Half Life example, you get to see Black Mesa as a vast underground research facility of dubious morality. In the Halo 2 example, you get to see wartime Earth (well, Earth orbit, anyway). This is usually (but not always) at the beginning of the game — a midgame example being Portal 2, when you spend a goodly amount of time falling down an elevator shaft just to reinforce how farking huge (and deep underground) the Aperture Science Labs are.

Single-prop crowner here.

First line of description, emphasis mine.

^ So you're supporting the suggestion of Tour Level? I agree that that would probably work. Would be nice to come up with something that has a little more zing, though. Bland names are better than misleading or too-obscure names, but when clarity is present, interesting names perform much better.

Since it's related to Scenery Porn/Scenery Gorn, maybe something like Scenic-Tour Level? That at least distinguishes it from a level that's merely a guided tutorial.