Discussions on Computer games
Question for the Administrators
Do administrators get flagged when a post goes up in their domain? Or do you have to scan around?
I'm just wondering if it's better to leave specific posts in the type I'm talking about or up in the hierarchy?
We have an internal tool staff can use to see recent edits to a specific domain or to any domain. That said, it's still in development and not everyone uses it regularly.
Sorry, I meant posts, not edits.
Type error
I've been adding the computer game type to a couple of games, and it seems that when I add a character to the game they
wind up getting created in my types. What's up with that?
I can't imagine why that's happening. Could you point to a place where it's happened? It will help me diagnose it.
Don't know...
I entered God of War as a new Computer Game, with Kratos as its character, then God of War II. Added Mario Bros.
Added GTA: San Andreas as a Comp Game, with Carl Johnson as a character played by Young Maylay.
The result was God of War, God of War II, Kratos, Mario Bros., and Young Maylay all wound up in my domain as topics I'd created,
each with a blank page even though I'd picked existing topics from the list.
Of course I just tested it with Blasto, adding Capt. Blasto and Phil Hartman (had to create Capt. Blasto,) and Phil didn't show up.
So I'm not sure what's going on.
I also had an issue adding D+D to the RPG type; wound up creating a Dungeons amp; amp Dragons topic... ?
The ampersand problem is also a known bug and will be rolled out in a week or so with a bunch of other fixes. Sorry for the inconvenience!
FYI
Just added GTA Vice City as a game, inputed Tommy Vercetti as the character, and Ray Liotta as the voice. (Tommy was already
in the database, just clicked the auto-search.) Now I've got Tommy Vercetti in my created Topics. Hope that helps
Given how prolific you are, I'm assuming you are a fast typist. We have a known bug (currently being fixed) that if you hit enter before autocomplete happens, a new topic is created. Others have noticed this as well.
Try slowing down a bit for the time being to see if that helps until we get the fix rolled out. I apologize for the inconvenience.
I'm very happy you're so into this and I look forward to any more feedback you have.
Is that bug...
When you say 'hit enter before autocomplete,' I'm assuming you mean on the keyboard?
Because I was selecting the autocomplete subject with the mouse, then selecting save.
Otherwise, if you mean clicking on the autocomplete subject before the rest of the autocomplete is finished I'll have to remember
to give the system more time. Thanks.
I've only seen the problem via keyboard. It seems possible that you may have encountered another bug.
Could you give a step by step account? It would help to detect and fix it. Thank you so much!
Game addition
Can I suggest that Computer Game have a Sequels link?
Computer game now has a prequel and a sequel link.
And/Or
Could use a Game Collections type like Film's got to bunch together series. Final Fantasy Series, Mario, GTA, Dragon Quest, Contra
etc. and so on.
I just added both prequel/sequel and game series.
50 cent tick
From the Freebase home page.
1.Searched for "50 cent bulletproof"
2.Selected "50 Cent: Bulletproof"
3.Double clicked and added type "Computer Game," then saved
4.Double clicked Character and added Character "50 cent"; typed '50 cent' and clicked on the first autosearch for
said Musical Artist
5.Selected Voice Actor and repeated previous step
6.Clicked save
Result: 50 Cent showed up in my Created Topics
Additional Info: So far this has been a sixty percent bug out of around ten attempts
Half-Life
From Freebase home page
1. Searched for "half-life" and selected Half-Life (already typed Computer Game)
2. Double clicked Character and wrote Michael shapiro; clicked on resulting voice actor in autosearch
3. Typed "barney cal" and selected Barney Calhoun from resulting autosearch
Result: Michael Shapiro showed up in my Created Topics
Hope that helps
Backward
In that second case I put Shapiro in the wrong category, maybe that's it? Putting a person in as a character is causing them to
get added in my topics? I tried it with Rod Stewart as a character in Final Fantasy and he got added to my CTs.
Finally
Generally speaking, anything I add into Character in 'Characters' is showing up (tried Mario in SM2)
Wow. I can't reconstruct it. What browser/computer/OS are you using?
Also
So yeah, work computer, XP I think. IE6. All the computers around here do the same thing, I haven't tried it at home.
Separate issue; do you think you can modify the Character input so that we can put in characters without voice actors?
Characters like Mario, Link, Samus- old school characters- don't necessarily have voices, but just inputing the character doesn't
save.
IE6 could be the problem. We've just got that one working, so it may have a couple quirks. I'll have our QA team look into it.
Also -- I have a feeling that the character without the voice actor problem is also related to IE6, since it appears to work fine on Firefox. I'll have that looked at as well.
Just added 8400 games
250 game genres, 1100 game designers among other data from Wikipedia infoboxes. Please take a look!
Console machines
Is there any interest in a "Game Console" or some other game hardware type? There's lots of technical information out there about the various generations of consoles, and it would be cool to see a historical archive of gaming systems...would probably have "Game Platform" as an included type..
ESRB Rating
I'd suggest an ESRB Rating property for games, probably as an enumerated list.
Probably a property that can contain Country & Code. In fact a Computer Game Rating type wouldn't be a bad idea since different countries have different rating systems - not to mention the fact that each country asigns codes individually.
This is a really good idea and is something we should readily be able to get right out of Wikipedia. I disagree that countries be tied to these ratings in any way; rather, ratings boards (there seems to only be a handful of them) are responsible for the ratings given, but I'm not sure what domain a Ratings Board type would fit in, since in some cases they rate more than just video games. Ideally all this would be modeled in a way that shows off the controversies often linked to game content and the resulting ratings.
As for how the ratings themselves would be modeled, I think a ratings type is definitely necessary. One question is whether these should innately be tied to a particular ratings board (via some property) or whether that board should be supplied through a cvt. I'm leaning towards the former, so I'll try some of this out on sandbox :)
I just now noticed the Film rating-related types we've got. I guess the answer is to create parallel types for Video Game ratings.
Computer Mod
Should a type be created for computer game mods, or should they be tagged as computer games of their own?
I think so, mainly because
- they are an additional part of a game
- cannot usually be used without the original game (as opposed to derivatives which only need the engine, e.g. Blue Shift for HL2)
- but are not core components of the original game.
ESRB Rating
Good point, a rating should be linked to a board not a country - Im just not thinking complex enough. (-:
Alright, I've come up with something on sandbox, modeled after the film ratings types:
Rating: http://sandbox.freebase.com/view/schema/user/vtalwar/default_domain/video_game_rating
Rating system: http://sandbox.freebase.com/view/schema/user/vtalwar/default_domain/content_rating_system
Some examples:
ESRB
ESRB's Teen rating
Please let me know what you gamers think :) This is the first time I've done any real modeling...
These have probably been wiped away by the refresh. Because of the present lack of a community interested in the cvg domain (at least I think there is...if I'm wrong, please butt in!), I'll hold off recreating until there's some more activity.
When the rating related types get recreated, perhaps they should be attached to versions of a game rather than the main game article itself, especially now that there's a region attached to each version.
Sorry for the delay in recreating the types! I will try to get to doing that tomorrow. I have yet to investigate the Computer Game Version type in detail but it seems like one would have to make a new instance of this type for every {Region,Platform} combination there is for a given game?
Is it frequent that the same game is rated different on different platforms? I don't know any such game off the top of my head, but I bet they exist or you wouldn't suggest that ratings be attached to versions instead of the main game. If it's an anomaly maybe ratings can be attached to version ALSO instead of only to the versions.
Here is the revived set of types on sandbox, accessible through this game:
http://sandbox.freebase.com/view/guid/9202a8c04000641f800000000008f68d
I was think more along the lines the since different regions have different rating systems, the versions would carry the rating field, since each version will be region based as well, but I can see how it would make more since to attach all ratings to the main field.
One instance, though, where I can think of attaching two different ratings to different versions of the game is, of course, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. There are basically two versions of the game out on consoles; one with "Hot Coffee" and one without. Those early versions would have to be marked as AO for the ESRB rating and M for the later versions.
Using Computer Game Version
I would love to use date from Freebase to write a program to manage my video game collection. To that end I would want to use the Computer Game Version type for it's platform-specific approach. One thing I'd like added, though is a sort of "region" field for Computer Game Version, as there can be major differences between the same game in different territories. Also, if the rating types are used. You could attach them to a game version instead of having multiple ratings attached to the main article. What do you think?
Duncan -- sorry for the delay. I added a "Regions" property (that expects the type "Computer Game Region") in the Versions type.
The region property looks good. I was wondering if it was possibly to expand the Computer Game Version type to the same level of the main Computer Game type. The Computer Game type works for general information about a game but for a collector, there are so many nuances between version that it would make sense for each version to maybe have its own page. This would also be nice for Collector's/Limited Edition of games, where the extras can be detailed in that version's page. Would that be possible?
Musical game
Hey, I have a type in my domain, Musical Game that is for games like Guitar Hero, Rock Band, etc.. I've got a 45 games co-typed and have songs entered on a bunch of them. Anyone interested in including it in this domain?
Looks good to me! Another interesting property is the kind of "input method" (as wpedia calls it) used to interact with the game (such as guitar, bongos, dance pad, etc).
Oh, nice. I like that.. though I wonder if "input method" is unique to Musical Game or it might make sense at the video game level? I'll add it to Musical Game now and we can always move it later...
'Soundtrack' Property
Would it be possible to add a Soundtrack property to provide a link to songs found in a computer game? This would be very useful for rhythm games (Dance Dance Revolution, Rock Band, etc.) and games with licensed music (Madden, Tony Hawk, etc.)
Take a look at the "musical game" type linked in the previous post. I think that has what you're looking for.
I figured there was one for the Musical Game type. I guess I'm thinking it should be part of the main Computer Game type to accommodate the games that have licensed songs but aren't music games. Of course it could also be extended to original songs in more traditional games, as well (Final Fantasy series, Super Smash Bros soundtracks, etc.)
That makes a lot of sense. There's tons of games that aren't "musical games" in the same sense as Guitar Hero or DDR. I guess the real question is whether the property should be a link to a soundtrack or a list of songs like the Musical Game type has.
I think that a list of songs makes more sense, primarily because I can think of a couple of instances where songs in the game aren't on a released soundtrack. That way, the true list of songs can be kept as well as a link to a released album, if need be.
Virtual Console vs. Wii
Virtual Console is typed as Computer Game Platform. Should this be used as the platform VC releases or should we stick with just Wii. Furthermore, should WiiWare be typed as Computer Game Platform and used in the same regard?
This is an interesting problem. You certainly wouldn't want people to have to add Virtual Console to hundreds of old games.
Assuming that VC is fully compatible with old platforms, we may need to have a property such as "compatible with" that asserts VC is compatible with other consoles. When somebody queries freebase, then, they would be able to see what directly supported platforms as well as what compatible platforms the software would run on.
And WiiWare seems more like a distribution channel/brand. I'm not sure it's really a platform.
Definitely a distribution channel. The platform is the Wii. Wiiware is a delivery mechanism to allow on e to purchase/download to play on the Wii.
I would probably make the platform Wii, since that's the system that the data is tailored for. I think stuff like Virtual Console would be best described as a distribution mechanism. Perhaps a property for that would be advisable.
As for WiiWare, I would agree. Xbox Live Arcade is listed as a platform, though, and should be changed if WiiWare is also not a platform.
Looks like before you remove/move the WiiWare and Xbox Live Arcade, some sort of reworking of the version property needs to happen.
And furthermore, is the Frogger available as an Xbox Live Arcade game really the same Frogger that is an Arcade game or an adaptation of a later console version? Galaga...Is it the same software just adapted to run on a new console/emulation?
Both games are different from their respective originals, so they could be considered different games.
It really brings another problem into focus: do enhanced versions of a game count as separate topics or versions of the same game? Is Resident Evil for Gamecube a different topic from Resident Evil for Playstation?
DS vs. DS Lite
Typing DS Lite as a Computer Game Platform seems kind of confusing, as there are no technical differences between it and the original DS. Should this really be a platform, or should we consider a new type for console revisions?
There are two approaches to this I think:
1. Don't treat DS Lite as a distinct game platform. Instead, assert that the platform is DS. That is, if all games that work on DS work on DS lite, then this is probably the right answer
2. If not all titles are compatible, then keep DS Lite and for all games that are compatible, add this to their platform property.
Also, to support option 2, we could better possibly create a relationship between DS and DS Lite. This could be called "similiar platform".
Do you know of other examples of this kind of problem?
The DS Lite is just a newer form factor for the DS. There should be no difference in compatibility as far as software goes. It's pretty much the relationship between the Game Boy and the Game Boy Pocket and Game Boy Light; different form, but runs the same software. Another example would be the Sega Genesis and the Sega Nomad.
From these examples alone, I could see the virtue in somehow identifying the different hardware revisions of a given system. There are also multiple incarnations of the NES, Super NES and Genesis. From a collector's standpoint, it would be useful to distinguish between these separate hardware designs. Perhaps another type is in order?
New Property for Computer Game Performance
I think it might be useful to add a "Playable" property to the Computer Game Performance to distinguish between characters that merely appear in the game and those who can be controlled by the character.
How common is this, do you think? It certainly could be added, but there is a tradeoff between complexity and completeness.
I can think of a few examples.
Fighting games can sometimes have characters that are encounterable, but not playable. The most recent example I can think of is Ridley, Meta Ridley, Master Hand, and Crazy Hand in Super Smash Bros Brawl. Sometimes boss characters (like Geese in Fatal Fury) will be unplayable, though they might become playable in a later installment of a series.
Some character are known to make non-playable, cameo appearances, like Link and Samus in Super Mario RPG, or Mario in Punch Out.
Game Platform and Computing Platform
I see that there's some duplication between those two types (and also some other types--for example, I just added all Computer Games into Software).
I just don't know how to fix this. There is a Linux Game Platform, and a Linux Computing Platform. I was thinking of just adding all Game Platforms into Computing Platform, but maybe that would cause duplication?
Yeah. There are two Linux objects. One is a Game Platform, Software, Topic, etc. The other is an Operating System, Computing System, etc. The second one should be assimilated into the first one because the first one has a short URL (the other one uses a large ID). This could happen with other platforms, too, although I haven't checked just yet. How can one fix this?
If they're really just duplicate topics, you can flag them to be merged by clicking the little arrow button that appears next to the "edit" button to the right of the the topic's title.
This specific problem is addressed here: .
What! The website errased the URL! Oh well. It's freebase.com /discuss/threads/en/linux
