New category requests thread

[funkychinaman]

Originally Posted by Mazryonh

Those 5 combined with Romeo + Juliet and Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet make 7. The Philip K. Dick category was created with only 6 of his eligible works available (I'll be adding A Scanner Darkly soon).

Netflix had both Macbeths streaming a while back, but now you have to get the discs.

Originally Posted by Mazryonh

So if we want to do that, we just enter "Category: (Something)" in the "Create New Page" form, then press that button?

That works. I usually just edit an eligible page, add the category, and then click on the red link.

Originally Posted by Mazryonh

I'd be making more video game pages myself, if I had reliable method of getting screenshots from console games.

Video games, especially console video games, are hard to do. Not only do you need a good device for capturing screenshots, you also need to spend hours playing the game, unlocking all the weapons. (I'd finish the Army of Two: The Devil's Cartel page tomorrow if I had a decent capture device.) You also have to cover DLC, so for a Call of Duty or Battlefieldgame, you're paying out $120 just to do a page. Compare that to doing a movie, which is just two hours and it costs a dollar or two to rent. (Or free if you go to the library.)

[Mazryonh]

Originally Posted by funkychinaman

Netflix had both Macbeths streaming a while back, but now you have to get the discs.

Since they're both Shakespeare movies, I wonder if they'll be available in libraries (probably not the Blu-ray versions, though).

Originally Posted by funkychinaman

That works. I usually just edit an eligible page, add the category, and then click on the red link.

Thanks for the tip.

Originally Posted by funkychinaman

Video games, especially console video games, are hard to do. Not only do you need a good device for capturing screenshots, you also need to spend hours playing the game, unlocking all the weapons. (I'd finish the Army of Two: The Devil's Cartel page tomorrow if I had a decent capture device.) You also have to cover DLC, so for a Call of Duty or Battlefieldgame, you're paying out $120 just to do a page. Compare that to doing a movie, which is just two hours and it costs a dollar or two to rent. (Or free if you go to the library.)

I think we need to make a stickied thread showing just what kind of console-game-compatible screen capture devices we've used for this wiki so other users can learn from those experiences. And DLC expenses are becoming the standard now, ever since big-name publishers learned that they get more profits by selling game content in dribs and drabs (though expansion packs on discs came long before DLC ever existed).

[funkychinaman]

Originally Posted by Mazryonh

I think we need to make a stickied thread showing just what kind of console-game-compatible screen capture devices we've used for this wiki so other users can learn from those experiences. And DLC expenses are becoming the standard now, ever since big-name publishers learned that they get more profits by selling game content in dribs and drabs (though expansion packs on discs came long before DLC ever existed).

I can't really fault game companies for DLC prices. I believe video games are far cheaper than they should be. Twenty five years ago, I remember getting TMNT: The Arcade Game for the NES on sale for $40. A game today, with many more hours of content, only costs $60. I think there's just some psychological price barrier people aren't willing to break through, and DLC is just trying to compensate for that.

As for capture devices, I don't think an HD one exists for less than a hundred bucks.

[Mazryonh]

Originally Posted by funkychinaman

I can't really fault game companies for DLC prices. I believe video games are far cheaper than they should be.

I believe this is partly because of the rise of digital piracy; if you're trying to sell something, you can't beat "free and easy" (in the mind of the consumer) by cutting prices and still have the producer stay in business. You can read a revealing piece written by a PC game developer destroyed by piracy here.

Note: "Free and easy" is what counts. I'm sure a lot of firearms owners here wouldn't mind the lowered ammunition costs of handloading, if setting up a well-stocked and well-functioning reloading apparatus at home didn't involve a fairly large start-up cost for machinery and componets, and a lot of time spent getting things to work. Once it's up and running it you can assemble your own ammo for a lot less than buying it at retail, but the work involved undoubtedly puts many people off of such a prospect.

Originally Posted by funkychinaman

Twenty five years ago, I remember getting TMNT: The Arcade Game for the NES on sale for $40. A game today, with many more hours of content, only costs $60. I think there's just some psychological price barrier people aren't willing to break through, and DLC is just trying to compensate for that.

Ever since gaming went mainstream people have been less and less willing to pay higher prices for games. Furthermore, as hardware has gone up in capability and complexity, so have development times/difficulty (and the money needed to pay such skilled people) for anything not casual-oriented or meant to be played on limited hardware like phones.

Take a look at Diaspora: Shattered Armistice. It's an excellently made "total conversion" mod for the famous Battlestar Galactica TV show that, in my experience, is the best simulation of combat in a Colonial Viper available. But it took 4 years for the first release (containing only 6 missions) to be finished, and this is even with an older engine that has had both its source code and mod tools released. Yes, if it were a full-time paying job for the developers rather than something they did in their spare time they might get it done faster, but it does highlight just how much work is involved in game development. Work that, by all accounts, is being respected less and less, with people feeling entitled to more and more content for less and less money to the developers and publishers, assuming the consumers aren't outright pirating the content.

There's also the fact that people will, in all likelihood, prefer to pay a lot of money in dribs and drabs rather than all up front. You can see this phenomenon in the success of "microtransaction" games, and you can read an article about how one such monstrously popular title regularly drains its customers dry here.

Originally Posted by funkychinaman

As for capture devices, I don't think an HD one exists for less than a hundred bucks.

Damn, that puts a damper on my prospects. And to think that for PC games, screenshot utilities can be had for free, or are built into the software platform (such as Steam). I wouldn't be surprised if some of the game screenshots on this wiki actually came from console games played on PC emulators for that reason.

(I actually heard once that some HD games, such as the best-selling Metal Gear Solid 4, are actually still lower-resolution, just upscaled so as to keep framerates constant. This may change with the now-current PS4 and Xbox 1.)

Anyway, I'm done going off-topic. I made this thread so that users here could petition the mods for mod-privileges-requiring activities like Category creation or redirect-page alteration, but now that I know how to create Category pages without requiring such privileges, the mods here can close this topic or create another "petition the mods here" thread if that's a good idea.

[funkychinaman]

DO NOT go about creating categories willy-nilly. If a director or writer has met the requirements, then proceed, as well with as any necessary "<country> Produced/Filmed" categories. Please consult the admins before creating any genre categories.

[Mazryonh]

Originally Posted by funkychinaman

DO NOT go about creating categories willy-nilly. If a director or writer has met the requirements, then proceed, as well with as any necessary "<country> Produced/Filmed" categories. Please consult the admins before creating any genre categories.

I didn't say I would go and do that, did I? Besides, I'd rather stay a "straight shooter" here and have my work remain than risk being blacklisted. If I need to create a new category I'll do as you suggested and make some pages for the mods' scrutiny first.

I believe now it would be a good idea for there to be a sticky thread titled "Message the mods here" about category approval requests and the like that needs to be brought to their attention. It'd be a far more efficient method of contacting the mods than leaving messages on their talk pages (you only contact one mod per talk page message that way and many may not have the time to respond). Perhaps a separate "report spammers" sticky thread would also be warranted.

[funkychinaman]

Originally Posted by Mazryonh

I didn't say I would go and do that, did I? Besides, I'd rather stay a "straight shooter" here and have my work remain than risk being blacklisted. If I need to create a new category I'll do as you suggested and make some pages for the mods' scrutiny first.

I believe now it would be a good idea for there to be a sticky thread titled "Message the mods here" about category approval requests and the like that needs to be brought to their attention. It'd be a far more efficient method of contacting the mods than leaving messages on their talk pages (you only contact one mod per talk page message that way and many may not have the time to respond). Perhaps a separate "report spammers" sticky thread would also be warranted.

There have been very few spammers since the new registration system came into play. We've only had to ban seven of them since August 2012. I've thought about a "Ask an admin" page on the main wiki for a while now.