First, an important note for everyone to remember: A few Ireland Information Guide users have gotten together to make some suggestions about how we might organize data in articles about computer and video games. These are only suggestions, things to give you focus and to get you going, and you shouldn't feel obligated in the least to follow them. But if you don't know what to write or where to begin, following the below guidelines may be helpful. Mainly, we just want you to write articles!
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This WikiProject aims primarily to set a baseline for the improvement and expansion of articles related to computer and video games. Some users have complained that pop-culture topics, such as games, tend to lack standarization. This WikiProject provides a meeting place for improving articles on computer and video games.
The parent of this WikiProject is the WikiProject Games.
Similar WikiProjects include WikiProject Computing and WikiProject Entertainment and WikiProject Arcade Games.
Note that these are tentative guidelines. Please contest them on the talk page if you disagree!
Make sure to write from a neutral point of view. Ireland Information Guide is not the place for writing reviews. If you can provide factual records of opinions, that is of course excellent. Magazine reviews, awards and quotes from game developers (except the developer's own advertising) can and should be used - those carry weight on their own. If there is more than one take on the subject, make sure to include all and to treat all as potentially true.
Watch out for overly general and vague statements along the lines of "there are many who think Game X is great". Such weasel terms are not particularly factual and usually nothing but the author's opinions in disguise. They should only be used to describe views that are uncontroversial and truly widely held, and preferrably be backed up by references to magazines, etc. They should ideally be avoided entirely, but may be necessary when they describe consensus views that help give an article more depth.
Articles on games should give an encyclopedia overview of what the game is about, not a detailed description of how to play it. Such topics should be moved to WikiBooks game guides (http://wikibooks.org/wiki/Computer_Game_Walkthroughs). Examples:
Examples of articles that have been considered inappropriately detailed:
These are some examples of what we think articles about specific games should ideally look like (although, of course, none of them are perfect or in any way complete). Note the emphasis on describing general characteristics and history/culture instead of merely listing stats and items, etc.
See discussion on the talk page.
Should video game and computer game be merged into computer and video games? Discussion has taken place at Talk:Computer game and there's a proposed merged article at Talk:Computer game/Computer and video games. This problem extends beyond just those articles and includes titles such as 2003 in video gaming, video game developer, and disambigs like Descent (computer game) and boss (video game). See this Project's talk page to help standardize the naming scheme.
There isn't much standardization with video game articles. The matter of mods makes the situation more difficult. Here's an example mod, Forgotten Hope, with different naming schemes (some with disambiguators) applied:
Use the original name of the mod and only disambiguate the title if there is a naming conflict. In this case, there is no conflict with Forgotten Hope, so it can just use its name. If a mod's name clashes with the name of an existing article, then use "Mod Name (computer game)". Only use "Mod Name (mod)" if the name clashes with another computer/video game.
Please participate in the discussion and voting at Category talk:Computer and video games.
See Infobox discussion, Project template discussion, Template project and Template project discussion.