Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Braid (video game)/archive3

The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was not promoted by SandyGeorgia 02:29, 6 February 2010 [1].

---

Braid (video game)

Nominator(s): MASEM (t) 16:40, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

• Featured article candidates/Braid (video game)/archive1
• Featured article candidates/Braid (video game)/archive2
• Featured article candidates/Braid (video game)/archive3

Braid has gone through two FACs before; the second one failed mostly due to the lack of discussion about interpretations of the game's plot (which has been purposeless left vague). Since that time, two additional ports for the game have come out and I have watched to see if any further statements about the game's plot (and any other details) have been made by reliable sources, but there really hasn't been any change. Nevertheless I was able to find some sourced missed the first time through that explore the plot a bit more, as well as addressing comments on the two ports. MASEM (t) 16:40, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

• Comment Check the toolbox; there is a dead link. Dabomb87 (talk) 03:24, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
  • Grrr, GameCulture's done this to me before; they recently remapped their URLs and lost a lot of older content. I think it may be at archive.org [2] but presently getting a data retrival failure. If this fails to resolve, I can rewrite to take out one direct quote and will have to rewrite the last section. --MASEM (t) 05:52, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
    • It can take 6-18 months before results appear on the Wayback Machine. You can also try contacting GameCulture to restore the URL or turning into a dead tree reference (with their help). If you suspect something like this to happen in the future you can preemptively archive it using WebCite (this can be semi-easily done through Checklinks). — Dispenser 05:54, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
      • I've had little success retrieving the original article, but found enough interview material elsewhere that all I needed to do was remove a quote paraphrase it; the GameCulture cite is no longer needed or in the article. --MASEM (t) 21:43, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Oppose on sources What makes these reliable?

• http://www.penny-arcade.com/2009/05/20/braid-mac/
• http://www.northcountrynotes.org/jason-rohrer/arthouseGames/seedBlogs.php?action=display_post&post_id=jcr13_1170707395_0&show_author=1&show_date=1
• http://play.tm/review/20503/braid/
• http://presspausetoreflect.blogspot.com/2009/06/reflections-with-jonathan-blow.html
• http://blogs.magnatune.com/buckman/2008/08/braid-video-gam.html; http://magnatune.com/artists/albums/braid-soundtrack/
• http://tigsource.com/articles/2009/05/11/tiginterview-jonathan-blow
• http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?s=8d068bb328099201a1cbc71696764ea5&p=9619208#post9619208
• http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2009/04/15/deconstruction-complete-braid-level-editor/
• Ref 25 needs a retrieval date.

RB88 (T) 13:07, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

• • Penny Arcade link replaced with statement from J. Blow's own website on release date.
  • The "North County Notes" is an article by Jason Rohrer who is also an established name in the independent gaming development area; it is his expertise that is the source of reliability for this point.
    • Please provide sourcing that confirms Jason Rohrer is indeed jcr13. RB88 (T) 20:29, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
  • Play.tm's is on the edge of reliability (formal web content publishing company with editorial staff), but the point here they are used for is to establish the name of the constellation for the meta game. (I have another source to establish there's a meta-game of collecting hidden stars, that's fine) Surprisingly, this is established well in the source from forums and blogs, but not main lit.
    • If the other source is reliable, then definitely use it. Otherwise, I'm leaving it for editors to decide for themselves. RB88 (T) 20:29, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
  • The Magnatune links are both from the music clearinghouse that J. Blow used to get music for the game and where players could purchase the music themselves if they wanted; they would be the primary expert source about the soundtrack availability.
  • The Steam Powered forum post is a direct source from J. Blow himself (confirmed identity on the forums) for the game's level editor, which the Rock, Paper, Shotgun link reiterates. I can replace the RPS link with something more reliable, but all reliable sources that talk about the level editor point back to that forum post to describe its features. Which is why I'd prefer to keep that forum post and back it with at least one more reliable source to assert it. (RPS itself can be considered a reliable source due to their editorial process and staff, but I've replaced this with a more established RS )
    • I'm not convinced about this without hard evidence. Again if you have a reliable source use it instead. RB88 (T) 20:29, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
  • The remaining two sources (presspausetoreflect and tisource) are admittedly not normally reliable sources, but both are straight up interviews with J. Blow. 90% of the information of these interviews agree with other data points he's stated in interviews with other, more reliable sources (suggesting that these aren't faked), but the bits that I use from these interviews are unique to them. I can't offer any more than that for these sources.
    • I'm leaving these for editors to decide for themselves. RB88 (T) 20:29, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
  • I also point to the past FACs discussions for more review of the sources if there's still questions. --MASEM (t) 14:57, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Leaning Support

• I went through and performed some copyedits, you might want to check and see if I inadvertently changed the meaning of anything. Mostly it was cutting down redundancies and changing some parts to active voice where possible. I had a few questions, below.
  • " "Oracle Billiards", in which the result of a billiards shot would be shown to the player before he made the shot. Blow came to realize the result was informative, but did not work well as an entertaining game mechanic." What exactly does this mean? Where is there a billiards game in Braid? It's not mentioned before.
  • I was bold and removed the legacy subheading, because talking about the character being used elsewhere doesn't exactly strike me as "strong" enough for its own heading. Thoughts?
  • The third "paragraph" of the release section isn't really a paragraph, which by definition need at least three sentences. You need to merge it or expand it.
  • Methinks that File:Braid-art-1.jpg and File:Braid-art-2.jpg could be shrunk slightly to, say, 475 x 267 pixels (about .11 megapixels) from their current .19 megapixel resolutions without damaging the ability to see the small details (the key, Tim, etc.) They would also probably scale better if they were PNGs, and it would be nice to have stronger FURs. In the article, it talks about time moving back to Blow's original designs for the levels, is that something like the art-1 file? If so that could be added.Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs^(talk) 17:38, 31 January 2010 (UTC)
    • I've reordered the first point to be clear where the billards doesn't come into play. Expanded a statement about how Hothead is seeking to port additional games but strted with Braids. Images reduced, I don't know exactly if -1.jpg is what you can rewind time to, but it is certainly part of his concept during dev. I'll make the image furs a bit tighter. --MASEM (t) 20:44, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Comments: Overall, the article is in good shape. Here are the issues that stood out to me.

• Minor style points that could probably be ignored based on personal preference.
  • Jason Rohrer's commentary in the gameplay section seems out of place to me. I understand what it's doing there, but it almost seems like it belongs in the "Reception" section.
  • In the "Plot" section, the sentences about the final stage use "reverse" twice. The second time made me re-read things again, even though the gameplay section properly explained things.
  • A caption for the artwork in the infobox would be nice.
• Maybe I've been staring at the screen too long, but "...to show the player the expected result of an action they work take;" in the second paragraph of the "Development" section doesn't make sense to me. I underlined the part that confuses me.
• The "Reception" section uses a lot of partial quotes. I understand the use of most of them, but it still seems like too much. I know this is also personal taste, but I found the some of the sentences' flow to be disjointed because of the constant switching between quoted and regular content.
• I know you've probably defended the sources ad nauseam, but there are some I feel need to be questioned.
  • Ref 75 NowGamer
  • Ref 84 AtomicGamer
• Most of the citations that use the official website credit "Braid-game.com" as the publisher and Blow as the author, but ref 8 and 33 list Blow as the publisher and author. One format should be used.
• Computer and Video Games is a magazine and should be italicized in ref 57 and 95.

Other than that, the articles looks good. (Guyinblack25 ^talk 22:49, 3 February 2010 (UTC))

• • • NowGamer is linking to a podcast where the details of the interview (again) can be confirmed; itself NowGamer does appear to be part of a larger editoral network on the UK side, so may not have the impact of IGN but seems several steps above a standard blog. AtomicGamer is providing one of the few reviews of the PC version that I could find, and thus is reliable for their opinion (And they too are several steps above a standard blog). I believe I've addressed the other points listed. --MASEM (t) 06:48, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

• Leaning towards support: The recent changes really tightened up the article.
• Sorry, I didn't really inspect Now Gamer before. It is part of Imagine Publishing's network. However, rather than use the Now Gamer page, why not use the Total PC Gaming (also by Imagine Publishing) page for the podcast?
• I'm on the fence about the Atomic Gamer. Is the content essential to the article? There isn't much mentioned in the way of the PS3 and Mac ports.
• The excessive quoting still bugs me, but not enough to oppose. (Guyinblack25 ^talk 15:51, 4 February 2010 (UTC))

• Comments
  • The lede doesn't seem to express just how big a motif the passage of time is in this game. From reading the lede I had the impression that it was just like Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (you can press a button to mess with time when you need to), but after reading the gameplay section I see that it's a much more complex and pervasive feature than that. I think the time-related aspects of gameplay deserve a bit more explanation in the lede.
  • "to deconstruct traditional gameplay concepts, such as several borrowed from Super Mario Bros., and rebuild them in the game..." What concepts are borrowed from Super Mario? Jumping on bad guys? This is what I assumed, but it's not clear. (I just noticed "the princess is in another castle", but that's not mentioned until later in the text.)
  • The plot section seems pretty vague...it says some general things about how the game progresses but little about what happens other than the ending. But you can take this comment with a grain of salt because, not having played the game, I don't know exactly how much or little detail is warranted here.
  • "Blow wanted to include consequences of rewinding time, features not found in games such as Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, Blinx: the Time Sweeper, and Timeshift." This is also a bit unclear—what "consequences" are being referred to? Stuff like undoing switches that were pressed, etc.?
  • Do the 6 worlds need to be played in a specific order? This isn't stated explicitly in the gameplay section, and the stuff in the Development section talking about skipping puzzles made it hard for me to tell.
  • How do boss fights work? The Development section mentions that there are bosses, but it's not clear how big a deal they are (when reading the Gameplay section I had been under the impression that there were no bosses, like in Ico). Are there any special gameplay mechanics or puzzle elements to the bosses?
  • The bit about Invisible Cities and its homage to Einstein's Dreams fell a bit flat with me, as I don't know what those books are and no explanation is given in the text. Sure, a reader could click through the links, but ideally the article should be more or less self-contained. Perhaps a brief appositive or extra sentence explaining what these are and how they influenced the game (as well as what it meant for Blow "not to take the story in that direction") would help.
  • In the Artwork section, what world is this image from? Since the text mentions different moods that the art created for each world, we might as well take advantage of this image to illustrate that.
  • "Both Kammen and Sieber received positive comments about their music as a result of their inclusion in Braid." – not exactly sure what this is intended to mean. That Braid brought attention to them?
  • "These ports represented the start of similar platform ports for other smaller independent games, such as a Windows port of the Xbox Live Arcade game, The Maw." – not sure why this is included, as it doesn't seem particularly important or relevant. Judging by the wording in the source, Braid just happened to be the first one of several games that were ported, but wasn't necessarily particularly important or influential in that respect.
  • There do seem to be a lot of references to Braid's website. The only one that particularly caught my eye was the Braid blog being used to reference the fact that it was the "most highly-rated Xbox Live game". I assume that can be verified by checking Metacritic itself (although, of course, scores might change), but I'm not even sure if this is a meaningful metric. Do other, independent, sources make as big a deal out of this as Blow himself does?
  • This is not really an actionable comment, just a curiosity...a lot of the descriptions of gameplay, plot, and stuff reminded me of Shadow of the Colossus and Ico. Have any of the published reviews or commentary drawn any comparisons with either of those games?
  • The "Reception" section might benefit from some subsection headers.
• rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 04:13, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
  • • I believe I've addressed the points above with a few necessary workds or more. Just FYI, while blogs will put Ico/Shadow in the same sentence as Braid, it's not otherwise reliably stated. --MASEM (t) 06:48, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
      • Support. I think there are still things that could be tweaked here and there (as there always will be—the perfect article is unattainable!) but this article certainly meets the FA criteria. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 07:09, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

• Oppose, 1a (still). I don't think it's entirely accurate to say the last FAC was archived "mostly due to the lack of discussion about interpretations of the game's plot". You had two significant opposes on prose, and other comments on prose from Steve. Shouldn't you have gone to Peer Review or at least sought an independent copyeditor before bringing it back here? Pardon me if you did, but I don't see significant progress on the quality of prose since the last FAC. It's not elegantly written, and almost every sentence needs some kind of attention. Please get a strong copyeditor to go through all of it. Examples just from the "Release" section:
  • First sentence is a highly unwieldy amalgamation where you manage at least four prepositional phrases before finally getting to the point.
  • "Several other developers followed suit and later withdrew their games" What is "later" adding to the sentence? You already said they followed.
  • "Braid was originally developed as a Windows title with possible console versions" Accessibility: Imagine reading this as a non-gamer.
  • "Blow signed up with Microsoft to release the game on Xbox Live in mid-2007, with that version officially announced at the 2007 Tokyo Game Show." Do you mean signed a contract with Microsoft? The clumsy "with" connector confuses the sentence further.
  • "he believed the effort to meet all the requirements could have been better spent on polishing the game" You don't spend an effort "on" doing something, you spend it doing something.
  • "At the same time, the certification team allowed him to retain certain aspects of his vision for the game that were otherwise contrary to the process, including giving the player immediate control of the game instead of requiring a start-up title screen." This is a training wreck... by time we get to "giving" and "requiring", we've lost all sight of the original subject of the sentence, which was "the certification team".
  • "The Windows version was originally slated for a late 2008 release but slipped to at least October 2008" How is October 2008 "slipping" from "late 2008"? If anything, it sounds earlier.

--Andy Walsh (talk) 15:58, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.