Unreleased Work Page Cleanup (Speculation, Spoilers, ZCE etc.)

Maybe it's just the fact that it's E3 time so that's what everybody's hype about right now, but I'm beginning to think that the fact that the release date rule is more restrictive on video games might be a feature, not a bug.

Video games are much more prone to long hype cycles in which what's shown in early trailers may have little to do with what the final game ends up being like, especially when those trailers are long on cinematics (whether pre-rendered or in-game) and light on representative gameplay footage, or when a game's graphical style and/or engine get a big overhaul over the course of a dev cycle that is closer to a decade than a year.

Additionally, the fact that trailers are an inherently passive medium whereas video games are an inherently interactive one makes it especially problematic to try to infer things about the final product from the trailers... but that's not stopping people from trying.

If keeping the release date rule relatively strict is what keeps people from trying to justify making wild assumptions about what gameplay systems will be like based on a blink-and-you-miss-it shot of gameplay in a heavily edited trailer, then that works for me.

Edit: And yeah, as crazysamaritan says, game companies are always happy to take your money in exchange for promises. Accepting pre-orders isn't much of a guarantee of anything.

Edited by HighCrate on Jun 10th 2019 at 5:22:15 AM

I made a sandbox page for Watch Dogs Legion. Does it look good enough to be made into a real page?

Some of the information comes from articles written by people who actually got to play the game at E3. Footage of their playthroughs isn't available. Is that acceptable, or should this information be cut until it's shown in a trailer?

I think we're gonna have to wait until we clear our ZCE etc. backlog until we can discuss the release date rule again with any long-term result, regardless of whether the result of that discussion is to stick with Nombretomado's original rule or not. Otherwise it's putting the cart before the horse.

Edited by Albert3105 on Jun 10th 2019 at 9:11:25 AM

This was a decent idea. The pinned header and thread title have been updated.

I feel that the parentheses and what's inside them make the title too long.

That would fall into the category of descriptions of the game (with press releases and websites), vs. representations (trailers). It could be troped as advertising, but not as game content.

Problem is that:

1. E3 game demos are not necessarily (or even often) representative of the final shipped product.
2. Testimonial evidence is not verifiable.

Checking out some commented-out examples in Spiderman Far From Home. Most seems like they're commented out for context, citation, or speculation, but putting a few back out here for discussion:

• Busman's Holiday: In the trailer, Peter is genuinely hoping to just take a break from being a superhero while in Europe, only to end up getting roped into assisting Nick Fury. The fact the class trip happens to be caught in the middle of the Elemental attacks doesn't help matters.
• Movie Superheroes Wear Black: Spidey wears an all-black costume at one point in the trailer (a Stealth outfit, not the Symbiote), and his regular costume is red and black this time around, akin to the original Lee/Ditko design.

Busman's Holiday could stand the lose the second line.

x6 Yeah, just thinking out loud as it were, not pushing for anything to happen right now. We've got a course of action that we've agreed to for the moment, we should stick to it.

Busman's Holiday can at minimum lose that last sentence, but it could also use a little more context. How does Peter show in the trailer that he's "genuinely looking forward to taking a break from superheroing"? What is he assisting Nick Fury with, and how does he get roped into it?

Movie Superheroes Wear Black appears to be shoehorning. That's about superheroes switching to darker costumes overall because those look better in live-action, not wearing one once for stealth purposes.

Edited by HighCrate on Jun 10th 2019 at 7:32:19 AM

The first seems like it fits the definition. The second does not, since (a) Spidey has a black suit in the comic book as well (IIRC), so it's not a deviation; (b) he normally wears the red and blue thing in the films, so it's not a typical thing.

I think the demand for context might be taken a little too far. Peter is hoping to enjoy his vacation with his school friends, he gets roped into heroing due to Nick Fury and the Elementals. It's a plain, simple to understand example. Don't go too nuts.

Edited by Fighteer on Jun 10th 2019 at 10:32:15 AM

So is the Elden Ring page gonna be restored once we get more details and a release date or is someone gonna have to manually remake it?

Anyone can choose to be responsible for making a new work page. Such editors are held responsible to make quality pages upon launch. Failure to make quality pages has been reason for suspension of wiki privileges several times in the past.

I forgot if moderators do have access to the contents of the deleted pages, but I'd wait until more info is revealed about Elden Ring in particular.

Edited by Albert3105 on Jun 10th 2019 at 12:22:58 PM

We do.

We may get some more video game announcements from Sega, Nintendo and so on at Gamescon in Cologne, Germany (which will take place in Cologne, Germany from August 20th through the 24th); the Tokyo Game Show in Tokyo, Japan (which will take from September 12th through the 15th); as well as the Eurogamer Expo in London, England (which will take place from October 17th through the 20th). There might be more tropes to add by then through the usual trailers and gameplay videos. Thoughts?

If a work fits the requirements, a page can be created.

Could an exception to the release date rule be made if a game has a playable demo? Cris Tales' release date is just "2020" so far, but a demo version is on Steam. Would it be acceptable to make a page to list the tropes that appear in the demo?

EDIT: Also Watch Dogs: Legion has a Fridge page, whose examples are pretty speculative.

Edited by Zuxtron on Jun 11th 2019 at 10:05:52 AM

Re: Cris Tales, I would suggest making the page in a sandbox and posting a link in this thread so we can look it over and give feedback before deciding whether to make the page live.

I'm not opposed to it in principle; a publicly-released playable demo or beta for a video game is much more tropable than a non-interactive trailer, and is arguably even more tropable than a trailer for a movie.

That said, enough people have used any movement toward loosening the restrictions as an excuse to abandon the rules altogether and indulge in speculation for speculation's sake that I'd like to move very slowly and carefully any time we consider making an exception.

Also, yeah, Fridge.Watch Dogs Legion is bad. Two entries, both of which are "if then" statements relying on wild speculation to make any sense at all. Motion to cutlist.

Edited by HighCrate on Jun 11th 2019 at 7:15:16 AM

I agree. Cut and locked it.

I repeat my question from last page. Should Dead Island 2 be grandfathered.

It's reasonably well written, although the spoiler tags are ludicrous. Why the hell would anyone worry about spoiling a trailer?

It should probably be locked pending more information about the game or a concrete release schedule.

I wanted to make a sandbox for Cris Tales, but I messed up and made it in the Video Game namespace instead. Does VideoGame.Cris Tales look good enough to keep?

I take it that if I put the tropes in the "Demo Tropes" folder, I don't need to specify that these tropes happen in the demo before each example?

So to clarfiy us making a sandbox for the work to act as a temproray way to trope the work without needing to worry about adding speculation to the main page is fine?

Then later changing it into a proper page when its close to relase?

Several of us have expressed reservations about what you're describing; what we don't want is people going wild on sandbox pages and then copying them over with no or minimal alteration as soon as the work meets the minimum requirements to have a live page, resulting in a big mess that needs cleaning up.

I think we should consider the Cris Tales situation a testbed to see if those concerns are warranted. I also think that early signs are not looking good.

We haven't really talked about creating folders or AC headings for separate "things" (teasers, trailers, demos, what have you), so that's probably something that could stand to be discussed.

At first blush, I'm against it; it seems like yet another way for people to try to evade the rules against speculation. For example, in the very first entry on the page as of right now:

• Choice-and-Consequence System: The player may have to make difficult choices, and the ability to see the future means that the consequences are seen happening when you make the chioce [sic]. In the demo, Crisbell sees a future where two of her neighbors' homes have been destroyed by Ash Blight, but there is only enough ointment to save one house, forcing her to choose which one will end up homeless.

The first sentence is explicitly speculative: the player "may" have to make difficult choices. This seems entirely unnecessary, considering that the text then goes on to describe a situation in the demo where a difficult choice happens. There's no need to speculate. Just describe what happens in the demo.

That said, it's still not enough context to count. Choice-and-Consequence System has three requirements, according to the trope description:

1. As the name implies, there have to be multiple possible outcomes the player can choose from.
2. It must have a lasting effect on the narrative. If all it does is change the next line of dialogue, it's not this trope. If what you say gets brought up later on, it does. Stat increases or other changes limited to non-narrative game mechanics don't count, either.
3. The consequences must be a logical result (by whatever passes for "logic" in the game) of your decision.

The entry describes multiple possible outcomes the player can choose from, but it does not properly establish a "lasting" effect on the narrative. If you then walk away and never see these two characters again, then there's no lasting effect on the narrative.

I'm skeptical that the demo is long / extensive enough to fit all the criteria for this trope within the demo itself. And tbh, if this is the kind of thing we can expect when we grant an exception to the rules, I'm skeptical about whether that's a good idea.

I have copied the contents of VideoGame.Cris Tales over to Sandbox.Cris Tales. I motion that we cutlist the former while we continue to workshop the latter.

Edited by HighCrate on Jun 11th 2019 at 8:28:01 AM

Thats not what I mean.

I mean as a way to use it to weed out speculation since its just a trail run.

You can see what to fix