Creating Franchise Pages Wherever Appropriate

VideoGame/ was just a redirect to Franchise/. It was on Main/, then it was moved to VideoGame/, then to Franchise/, then back to VideoGame/.

Another one that looks like it might want a Franchise page: Buck Rogers. Started as Literature, grew into a long-running comic strip, has movies and tv shows (the tv show has a separate page), and maybe some others (I think I remember seeing a tabletop game once). :)

Still hoping for a second opinion on Dune (novels, movie, mini-series, tabletop game, multiple video games).

edited 24th Mar '13 9:17:29 PM by Xtifr

Franchise.Dune qualifies under our Franchise/ criteria.

Another item: Prince Of Persia. How many media does that have?

Just some games, and a movie adaptation of Sands of Time.

Well, using the private message technique, I've tried asking over 30 tropers for their opinions on setting up Video Game Series pages.

@ a troper: That's a good point. The super-page would be very different from the rest of the work. For instance, you should see the Secret Files page. It's essentially one page that covers three games. I can tell you that it makes indexing a little difficult, since you would have to list one big page in the index pages, as opposed to each entry in the series. That doesn't each touch on whether pages should be made for each game in the series or not.

How many opinions should I get to make a reasonable decision?

edited 26th Mar '13 4:40:23 PM by TiggersAreGreat

I'll give the permission to publish my response. The next time though remember that PMs are private.

edited 26th Mar '13 12:14:18 PM by SeptimusHeap

I see a media franchise as something that spans multiple forms of media (as opposed to just being a series, such as those found on TV or film sequels.) Thus, if you see a Beaker Man action figure, it would be just a toy by itself. If you start seeing TV shows and comic books later, then it becomes a franchise.

A franchise would be a loose collection - if it's narrow in scope (i.e. just a series), then it's not exactly something worthy of a page in Franchise space and more of a series of stuff. The Wikipedia page seems to use a much looser definition, and thus it might not be a true franchise as such.

In the meantime, there's the choice between putting the series as either Metroid or Metroid Series. Either one of those is acceptable and is merely a discussion on a color to paint a bike shed.

edited 26th Mar '13 12:43:35 PM by DelShiftB

Oh, sorry. I'll keep that in mind next time.

Oh, and there's also Quake, which lists the games of the series and has Quake as an attempt to distinguish the first game from the super-page.

edited 26th Mar '13 12:42:28 PM by TiggersAreGreat

The dictionary definition isn't really important (and, like many English words, "franchise" actually has many meanings, including "the right to vote", and "a sports team"). "Series" can mean a whole lot of things, but we reserve the Series/ namespace for television shows. Likewise, we reserve the Franchise/ namespace for cross-medium works with at least three media. (And maybe some other stuff—I'm not sure how well-hashed-out some of the details are, but the core is well-defined.)

edited 26th Mar '13 12:54:38 PM by Xtifr

Speaking of franchises, they aren't really meant to be bare-bones disambiguations as is Yu Gi Oh GX.

Regarding how to handle video game series which have the same name as the first game: current practice is to use Name and Name I or Name1 (depending on how the series is numbered). That said, I wouldn't necessarily be opposed to switching over to a more literature-like format, where you use Name Series and Name. My biggest question is whether or not X Series has enough use off-wiki that its use here won't be confusing. Book series are almost always referred to as such (often even part of their official title); does the same hold true for video games?

So, why do we avoid creating Franchise pages unless they meet up with some arbitrary restrictions anyway?

Personally I think it's far more preferable to create a Franchise page for a Video Game series so we can avoid putting that extra 1 there where it doesn't belong.

The discussion leading to the creation of the namespace. I don't recall where the "three medium" guideline came from, but I assume it was a) because of Rule of Three as in many things on this site, b) to prevent namespace inflation and c) because many works get adaptations; that doesn't make them a "franchise".

It possibly should have been called MultiMediaFranchise/ to avoid the sort of confusion we're seeing now, but that's too long. So, just as you think "TV series" when you see Series/, you should think "multimedia franchise" when you see Franchise/. Because that's really what it means. That's the need the namespace was created to fill.

And if you want to complain about the name, you should also complain that Series/ should be used for novel/comic/film series, to be consistent. Otherwise, if you can figure out that Series/ really means "TV Series", then you should be able to figure out that Franchise/ really means multimedia franchise.

edited 27th Mar '13 1:08:48 PM by Xtifr

Sorry, I just drop here to say that I support the general idea, and I'll try to come back and read it. I hope I can come back and read the thread in whole...

@ScoutsGirlfriend: You forgot about Prince of Persia: The Graphic Novel, which could use its own page (it isn't adapted from any one of the games or the movie).

I'm worried that franchise pages are popping up for series which never existed in much more than one medium: why should Franchise.Archie Comics or Franchise.Road To exist?

edited 30th Mar '13 9:09:01 AM by Prfnoff

Archie: Comic books, six animated shows, A Live-Action television movie, a bunch of albums and singles.

edited 30th Mar '13 1:37:11 PM by m8e

Good point, but Franchise.Road To is definitely not what we want. That should be under Film/.

Here's a quick one: What namespace would we use for pages about individual (original) Lego Themes? Sure, several of them have game and/or CGI tie-ins but they are first and foremost toy lines.

Universal Horror seems like a good candidate to be moved to Franchise/. It's currently in Main/.

Seems more like Creator/ to me.

Wing Commander has a video game series, a book series, and a (bad) movie, all of which have pages here. Shall we?

@Stratadrake: A Toy/ namespace has been proposed but it stalled.

edited 1st Apr '13 1:10:42 PM by StarSword

There's already a Franchise.Wing Commander page. It doesn't often get wicked though because the media-specific pages are usually more appropriate.

You also forgot Wing Commander Academy.

@ Prfnoff: Sorry, didn't know there was a graphic novel.

Re: Universal Horror: No, I don't think it's a Creator. Sadly I haven't yet seen any of them, but as I understand it the Creator is Universal Pictures. Universal Horror, on the other hand, is a collection of horror films made by the studio. It's multimedia, extending beyond just films (as shown on the page, which lists an Expanded Universe, videogames, theme parks, and trading cards), and there's somewhat of shared continuity between some of the works.

edited 2nd Apr '13 3:32:26 PM by Morgenthaler