Video Game Standards
 

Howdy, all. I'm new around here, so I'm not going to take offense if someone knows better than I do about any of this.

IMFDB is a site that I'm thrilled to see exists, (Is it relatively new?) and the level of insight contained on some of the better-researched pages is appreciated, especially those that describe common "stand-ins" that movie armorers use for more difficult-to-obtain or expensive weapons.

Perhaps it's an issue that alleviates itself over time as more and more people participate (or perhaps it gets worse), but there seems to be a lack of standardization in the presentation of information, particularly in the Video Games category.

I think it might be worth considering a separate set of Rules, Standards and Principles for Video Game pages.
While (with some notable exceptions) guns in movies often serve as little more than instruments of the characters or simple props, guns in video games are often elevated to the levels of characters themselves, given whole sets of statistics and behaviors and considerable screentime. In some cases, they closely mirror real-life weapons, while in others they can exhibit subtle differences, significant departures from reality, or outright fictionalization.

It seems to be an (unwritten, as far as I can tell) policy that completely fictional weapons fall outside the purview of IMFDB, and I agree with that. There are simply so many completely "fake" guns in video games that meaningful inclusion of them would overwhelm the site's intended real-world content. Personally, I think this should be added as a written policy.

However, what of fictional guns that contain significant inspiration from real-world weapons? The example that comes to mind is a science-fiction weapon in Wolfenstein, of which the back half is taken from an MG42.
There's a parallel here with films like Blade Runner and the Star Wars saga where fictional weapons are depicted with descriptions of the real weapons used in their fabrication.

Several other issues complicate Video-game weapon pages:
- Which should come first, the in-game name or name of the real-life counterpart, and how should this be formatted? Obviously, I think both should be present.
- What is the recommended formatting for images? A single in-game image? An in-game image with a real-life counterpart shot? An additional image of the model when "dropped" for a full view? Menu images? This one seems tricky to me, since movies usually only provide a limited set of opportunities for most weapons, while games potentially allow a weapon to be seen in a menu, in hand, slung, in another player's hand, dropped, etc.
- Should there be mention or comparison of real vs in-game statistics? As much info as possible, or just mention of noteworthy similarities or departures?

Personally, I think it would be helpful for the admins\moderators to select (or set-up) and lock one or more examples of well-formatted video game pages as examples of how to best handle them. (In fact, that might be helpful for movies as well, though I see there is a rolling "featured" film on the front page.)

Since screencaps from movies are allowed, I trust screenshots from games are allowed as well? (For the games I might look to update, I'd anticipate capturing the shots myself.)

On a more general note, I've noticed a good deal of dispute\discussion on different film or firearm pages. Obviously, this is a problem for many wikis, but users should be educated on leaving discussion to discussion pages, and attempting to simple summarize the "current best information" on the page itself.
For instance:
Based on the user's confidence, that should have been
or For clarification, what's the moderator\administrator opinion on hidden comments for disputed items?
That is to say, something like this that would only show up when attempting to edit the page:
As an aside, are forum avatars an "earned" privilege? I didn't see the ability to add one. Oop, nevermind. I see that only GM45 has one, I was thinking I'd seen more.

I think the Far Cry 2 page should be the standard.

http://www.imfdb.org/index.php?title=Far_Cry_2

Yes, even the delicious humor.

The Far Cry 2 page definitely had a lot of effort put into it, and the result is a very thorough treatment, but it does raise a couple of issues:

Most of the movies have nothing dedicated to the movie itself, instead jumping into a listing of the guns used in the film. The Far Cry 2 page dedicates a paragraph to the game itself before an additional "Overview" of how the game's weapon system works.
Is a game's overall weapon system noteworthy? If so, should it be listed at the beginning or end of the document?
If the game has noteworthy aspects or behaviors that are common to all or some of the game's weapons, should that be listed somewhere in the document?

How much is "enough" and how much is "too much" when it comes to documenting the operation of the weapons?

Personally, it seems like a brief description of the game's "wear and failure" system might have been more appropriate than images of each weapon worn, jamming, and failing.

Again, there's a double standard comparing video game articles to movie articles, but on the other hand they are significantly different in terms of how firearms are featured.

I think there should be a overview of the weapon system. But only when there is a weapon system.

The overview should be listed at the beginning of the article.

I agree; Video game standards need to be addressed.

As I said, the Far Cry 2 page should be the standard.

Now, if we could only get Vangelis back here.

oh gawd no, he's the one who insisted that this>
http://images3.wikia.nocookie.net/pe.../bb/Dragon.jpg
is this>
http://world.guns.ru/assault/hk_g36_ag36.jpg

Yes. But he learned his lesson and was a very good user.

Anyway, I think we should have screencaps of all the animations.

Funny thing is that someone has made a page for the crappy Myspace/Facebook flashgame "Mafia Wars". I'm sorry but that game while occationally a fun little timewaster is not IMFDB class material. It's a bloody flashgame.

At the risk of being controversial .... VG game page builders are usually lazy. ;) Sorry guys. I can't count how many VG pages where the builder didn't even BOTHER to put in the Cover art, like we put in the movie poster. We don't have that problem with a lot of the Movie or Television pages. I don't touch the VG pages. But then I have a prejudice against pages in which there were no actual weapons present (only an artist's conception of one). ;)

So the OP is right. There should be better standardization on VG pages. the tables are an ongoing process, and should be forgiven when mixed in with 'old style' lists. But you guys are on your own when it comes to VG pages. The pages should be done by guys who know the games inside and out. That precludes many of the good page makers on IMFDB.

Actually, I agree, just couldn't bring myself to say so. A lot of our VG pages are in awful condition, and I kinda gave up hope on the category in general. Though definitely all aren't bad...the "Global Operations" page is coming out pretty well.

As for artists' conceptions of weapons, though, remember that many of the artists nowadays base their depictions of the weapons upon firearms that are supplied to them by professional armorers like yourself. Our own Steve Karnes has worked on several video games (including the "Call of Duty" franchise).

That's a SMALL minority of the games. I'll wager that the majority of games have frankenguns based on a vague understanding of what an MP5 looks like. And then there's the lower end games which have the rectangle with the two handles that some IMFDB member will insist is a FNP90 with EOtech sight. The Vast majority of games don't bother asking the armorers. Which is why the weapons in so many games look weird.

I wouldn't be surprised if it became more of a trend in the future. Professional games by major development studios have huge budgets these days. For games that are supposed to realistic (in the loose sense of that word), having an armorer over is affordable and desirable.

There's' what you think is reasonable ... and there is what actually happens in the industry. I have a lot of friends who work in the VG industry. It is rife with stupidity. The cool stuff only happens when a meddling middle manager gets fired as the result of a monumental battle between the people with talent and their bosses (who do not have any talent).

A minor digression back to the movie world:

The real world is shocking in it's incompetence. Which is why younger people are idealistic, and older people are cynical! LOL! We've seen the same stupid mistakes made by high level morons in our 20s. We've seen the same disasters in our 30s, by the time we get to our 40s, we've pretty much given up on the notion that idiots won't try to ruin everything good in the industry. We've seen these morons running things and are astounded that they get into all the HIGH LEVEL positions. They succeed off the backs of more talented people who toil at the lower levels, and still manage to screw things up.

Every script or movie that seems disastrous, .... the crew already KNEW it was a disaster when they were filming it. When no talent higher ups meddle constantly with a project, it is doomed.

I remember everyone wanting to be on Last Action Hero, because of the success of Terminator 2, but that was all Cameron, and he had control of the project. I remember how disappointed everyone one was (but they didn't say anything out loud, lest they lose the paycheck), when we saw the script. I didn't work on that one but I was friends with a bunch of the SFX crew. Boy was the crew making fun of the movie when it was being filmed. We all knew it was going to be a bomb.

I could tell you things about LXG ;)

Despite all the complaints about LXG from cast and crew (including those of Connery himself), I still don't think that movie was as bad as many said it was. Or at least, I don't think it was as retarded an idea as "Last Action Hero" obviously was.