Troping user-generated content

How should user-generated content (UGC) for Video Games be troped? There are multiple approaches I could see being used, alongside their possible downfalls:

1. lumping it together on the main page and subpages. Probably a recipe for future confusion. This is how Super Mario Maker's subpages and Everybody Edits handle it. Admittedly, I'm responsible for the latter and I'm hoping to get it moved because it's getting kinda messy.
2. giving it its own conglomerate work page like Minecraft Adventure Maps. I can see this being discouraged, as pages like that are an anomaly and similar pages like the "non-canon" ones have been cut entirely.
3. giving it its own conglomerate subpage like how FanWorks.Vocaloid was used once, though it was unorganized and the trope list has since been removed. It would probably use a different namespace instead to avoid redundancy.
4. splitting it into Recap sections or pages like Star Trek Online. This is probably not a good idea since having Recap pages implies it's recapping the actual work, not its Fan Works.
5. treating them as independent Video Games like the games listed on Roblox. The case could be made that UGC is different than Video Games, as you can't distance UGC from its original work, unlike other kinds of video games with their Game Engines. For example, you can't fully hide that a game is made with Roblox because of the standard interface and account functionality.
6. getting its own namespace. This is my personal preferred choice for larger UGC works. It might lead to debate about what is UGC and what is a Video Game however, which seems like a natural next step in this discussion. It could also lead to discussion about what UGC is considered tropable. The standards for tropability of small works seems to be pretty vague at the moment.
7. giving Creator pages for creators of UGC and listing their tropes there. Compatible with most of the above. My preferred choice for smaller UGC works. This would probably require the least change of all the options (if any).

1. 5, I'd say. We do not trope fan works on the page of the main work.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

Depends on the level of user-generated content, at least... not every single user-made thing is likely to gain enough tropes/content for its own page. the current standard is that something needs three tropes for its own page, even if I'd always advocate for five. Honestly I'd support 5 and 6, maybe 7.

Edited by Piterpicher on Oct 10th 2021 at 11:08:18 AM

Currently mostly inactive. An incremental game I tested: https://galaxy.click/play/176 (Gods of Incremental)

Alright, thanks for the input. I think having a unique namespace is preferable since UGC is a special case and would be worth considering its own kind of work. If something like, a large Minecraft adventure map got its own page, it would be misleading to put it in the VideoGame/ namespace since it's not a video game. I think a solution needs to be officialized on a page like namespace because it's really unclear how this should be handled. (And evidently so, since Recap.Star Trek Online and VideoGame.Minecraft Adventure Maps are still where they are.)

Why wouldn't that map be a video game? I don't know a ton about Minecraft, but what would be the use of troping a map that isn't in some way interactive? Is it the lore behind the map?

Current Project: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

In this case we're not talking about how they play, but how they're published and how they function as Fan Works.

• Animation accessed through the web is considered Web Animation. This means it uses Web Animation a medium. A Minecraft map by definition is accessed in Minecraft—the medium is Minecraft itself. As namespaces are split by medium (among other things), this would suggest UGC could get its own namespace.
• Fanfics have their own namespace, meaning that Fan Works can get their own namespace for that reason alone. Admittedly this is weaker reasoning as all non-fanfic Fan Works share namespaces with original materials, as well as the implied requirement that fanfics share storytelling elements with their source material (unlike, say, a Minecraft map, whose narrative can mostly ignore that it's a Minecraft world, arguably making it not a fan work).

In my mind these two distinctions (mainly the first) make it worthy of a namespace.

The closest comparison would be Recap pages for series. This comparison is imperfect because a series is not interactive, meaning it can't be a medium used to access works. But it still has a similar idea of "work families." A UGC namespace would work for similar reasons the Recap namespace does—it helps organizing better than having an individual Series/ or Film/ page for every episode of Friends.

edit: fixed wording

Edited by N1KF on Oct 10th 2021 at 8:00:03 AM

Calling a map a fanwork of MC is like calling sumfin' made in Scratch a fanwork of, well, Scratch.

"Listen up, Marina, because this is SUPER important. Whatever you do, don't eat th“ “DON'T EAT WHAT?! Your text box ran out of space!”

No, those are two different situations.

Minecraft is a fully functioning game, and a map is a fan-created modification of it. "Fan work" is probably the closest designation we currently have. You can't put it under "Video game" because it's not a standalone game, you can't put it under "Minecraft" itself because it isn't part of the official game.

Scratch is a programming tool/language that's used to create other works. It's no more a tropable work than C++, Python, or Ren'Py, so it can't have "fan works".

Minecraft maps are not mods. Minecraft is not like other games, where the world is preset and the same for all players.

"Listen up, Marina, because this is SUPER important. Whatever you do, don't eat th“ “DON'T EAT WHAT?! Your text box ran out of space!”

ELI 5: what's a Minecraft map, and how is it made?

If I'm reading Hermit's post right, they're not calling it a Game Mod, they're saying it's made by modifying and utilizing infrastructure Minecraft has already put in place, so I'm inclined to agree that it's closer to what we consider fanworks than standalone works.

What do you mean?

"Listen up, Marina, because this is SUPER important. Whatever you do, don't eat th“ “DON'T EAT WHAT?! Your text box ran out of space!”

A Minecraft map is a custom Minecraft world that is published online and can be downloaded by other players. Unlike things such as Roblox and Scratch, Minecraft is not designed to be an a engine for making your own games, so I’d agree that maps would count as fanworks, in a way.

I’m not sure what namespace they’d go under, however. Fanfic/ wouldn’t fit, since Minecraft maps aren’t written works.

Edited by jandn2014 on Oct 11th 2021 at 3:29:50 PM

back lol

To suggest that a Minecraft map is the equivalent of a game mod or a fanfic would be to suggest that a saved game of Skyrim is a unique work. Yes, it presents a unique configuration of the assets that Minecraft has to offer but there is nothing present that is not part of the intended experience of the game, plus or minus any content modified by mods used in the creation of the map.

Any game that offers a platform for creative expression will generate a copious variety of such fare; I remember when Happy Wheels was a big deal, or heck, Doom levels.

Broadly speaking, user-generated content is not tropable unless said content is packaged and published as a discrete act of authorship and contains some creative expression other than a particular arrangement or configuration of in-game assets. This might include a distinct story in an adventure map, for example.

As for where to put this sort of thing... have we developed any precedents? These are indisputably fan works, but they aren't written fiction and therefore don't go under fanfic. I would hesitate to list them under Video Games because that's just a mess. They also aren't Game Mods, technically speaking.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

Excactly!

"Listen up, Marina, because this is SUPER important. Whatever you do, don't eat th“ “DON'T EAT WHAT?! Your text box ran out of space!”

First of all, we need a trope for this type of content. When I read this thread's title, I thought it was asking about examples from a playthrough of a game. The user experience of interactive fiction (the specific way you played Skyrim or your playthrough of a Choose Your Own Adventure book) is not tropable. That interactive fiction has its own version of Audience Participation, encompassing what is effectively an independent work, means we need a way to refer to that concept specifically. Official Fan-Submitted Content is not exactly what we are looking for here, as that is reviewed by the creator(s) before being added in, and the examples of Minecraft maps and Mario levels aren't.

It isn't exactly a fan-made work because the content we are talking about is an intended part of the audience experience. The game includes the content generated by the userbase. There will be an EULA players agree to about their submissions becoming the property of the work's creator instead of the player's IP, much like any of your edits to this wiki are owned by the wiki, not you.

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If it isn't clear from the previous paragraph, I'm inclined to say such elements should be troped as part of the main work, which fits under (1) and (4), because the recap pages are a type of subpage to the article.

However, I'm not opposed to the proposal of (6), granting this type of content its own namespace. I'd say one existing precedence for this action is Machinima.

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Suggestion (7) is simply bypassing this problem, finding a place to add examples that aren't on a work page. It doesn't really solve the issue at hand.

I'm against the suggestions (2) and (3), undecided on (5). I feel that they're all somewhat imperfect attempts to handle the fact that we are potentially speaking about an independent work within the "medium" of another work.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

So to bring some life back into this discussion I will bring up some more points of possible confusion.

If we decided UGC got its own categorization, would officially recognized UGC be tropable as the source work? What if a series of UGC is partially officialized, but the rest of it hasn't been? What if the creator of the UGC is a fan before being promoted? These might just seem like ideas but I can think of some examples for all of these.

I am also interested in having a Tropability policy, which would finally put some clarity into when a work is "big" and "fictional" enough to trope, and could help keep UGC from being given too many redundant pages. The 3 trope minimum is a start, but it's kinda lacking when you could declare any song or picture tropable if you just find three tropes, when that's not how we actually handle things. That might be better for another thread, though.

So where would this put games like Roblox and Super Mario Maker? They're essentially game-making tools in their own right, opening the floodgates to a lot (and I mean A LOT) of user-generated content.

Part of why I want this to be addressed is to handle the "floodgate" games. Roblox already has 31 UGC work pages listed on it, all using the Video Game namespace. We need to decide if this is the right place for it so that wiki editors know what standards these pages are held to.

Fighteer brought up that much of UGC isn't tropable, which would exclude lots of UGC such as many Super Mario Maker levels. Still, even if we had the minimum of "UGC must have a narrative", this could theoretically allow users to make hundreds of pages for things like Roblox and Minecraft adventure maps, which would be a pretty big deal. And let's not forget Crosswicking. Could UGC get its own folder on trope pages?

Badly formed question here; how do you identify a Mario Maker level which is available for everyone to play but was made by an audience member as "officially recognized"?

We still don't have a final agreement on how to identify content in the original work that is available to all players, but was created by players, in terms of where to trope it. I don't think we can even consider asking this question because different answers there can lead to different answers here.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

Yeah that was a messy question. I meant to ask about Ascended Fanfic-style cases, like player-made campaigns in Everybody Edits being released as a part of Everybody Edits Offline.

I was getting a bit ahead of myself, so some kind of consensus would be needed to figure out where to go with this. I made a list of pages featuring UGC at User Generated Content.

First off we need to decide if VideoGame/ is the right namespace for UGC. What would be the best way of going about this? Should it go through the Media namespaces thread?

Well, Fighteer has summarized my thoughts for me, but here are my two cents.

There need to be examples of "tropable UGC", meaning which content is specific to UGC and which is just user's ability to interact with everything. If the game doesn't have a Descending Ceiling scene, and doesn't acknowledge you making one as some sort of Easter Egg, creating a Descending Ceiling trap by using object physics is the same as saying "there are no thrones in the game, but you can make one from randomly scattered cardboard boxes". One person's experience not worth a mention, except maybe if that person has a Let's Play/ page.

But let's say someone does the above, maybe sets 5-10 unique events, and publishes it so others can experience it in some intentional way. Does it now count as "Work", a separate narrative from the main game? There Is No Such Thing as Notability may imply that it's now worthy of its own page, and we do have plenty of Fan Works pages made with that logic.

Now the namespaces... The question is if it's structurally different from the main game. If yes, it's basically a mod, refer to FanWorks.Video Games for examples. If not, and it's just a specific narrative made within the game environment, it may be some form of Roleplay/, like how we pages for custom campaigns in existing Tabletop Game/ sets.

That being said, if the game is indexed as Game Maker (Roblox and Everybody Edits probably should be), I think it's reasonable to show examples of fanworks on the game's page, as being able to make them is part of the game's intent, but they need some uniform formatting.

TroperWall / WikiMagic Cleanup

Again, I'd like to have a Tropability policy to help determine when a work has enough unique tropable content. This subject would also affect other namespaces, mainly Art.

Deciding a minimum for UGC in particular would be tricky, as we'd have to draw a line that's fair and does't lead to imbalances. For example, is a small segment of UGC with four tropes less deserving of a page than a tiny game with only three tropes? That said I'll try anyway.

An example of a minimum criteria (the exact numbers could be adjusted) for a UGC page could be:

1. having at least 5 Narrative Tropes that aren't just inherited from the source material, or
2. having at least 10 tropes not inherited from the source material

I don't quite understand what you mean by "structurally different". If a game provides parts and players make stories out of those parts, is it really a Game Mod? It's changing the game from the inside, not from the outside in the way Game Mods do.

I wouldn't consider Everybody Edits a Game Maker since you can't significantly change the game's physics, gameplay, or graphics. The editor allows lots of Emergent Gameplay though, so levels can have hours of content and have their own stories more easily than, say, Super Mario Maker.

I’ve thought about troping a fan-made level storyline made with the Level Editor of a game, and I always assumed that if I made it, I would make it as a separate page (option 5 of the og post), like with the mods of Friday Night Funkin', and create a separate index for other fan made storylines, also like with the aforementioned page. I think the storylines are tropeable, seeing as they have developed plots and characters. I’ve also thought of putting the name of the game where the storyline is from in the title, maybe as an alternate title, as to not totally distinguish it from the base game?

Edited by TheBigCrunch on Nov 11th 2021 at 4:38:54 AM

The minimum number of tropes required for a work to have its own page is three. I agree that for UGC they shouldn't be inherited from the source material though, or at least they should have their own spin on them.

So for example, if the source work provides a "man riding a bird" sprite, dropping that onto a map would not count as Horse of a Different Color. But if you combine a "man" sprite and "bird" sprite into a "man riding a bird", then that would count.

Any such policy would fold into There Is No Such Thing as Notability.

Note that child works do not inherit tropes from their parent work by implication. Any content in a child work that is copied from the parent belongs to the parent, not the child. This includes "rearrangements" of parts of the parent, such as putting a man sprite on a pig sprite.

Only genuinely new creative content can be stated as belonging to the child work. This could include storylines and voice acting, but explicitly not use of existing art assets.

Edited by Fighteer on Nov 11th 2021 at 5:51:52 AM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"