Talk:Team Fortress Classic

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Team Fortress Classic article.
Article policies
Archives: 1
Famicom style controller This article is within the scope of WikiProject Video games. For more information, visit the project page, where you can join the project and/or contribute to the discussion.
Start This article has been rated as Start-Class on the assessment scale.
Mid This article is on a subject of Mid priority within gaming for inclusion in Wikipedia 1.0.
This article is supported by the Valve task force.
VG To-do:
Maintained The following user(s) are actively involved with this article and may be able to help with questions about verification and sources:
UBeR (talk • contribs • email)
This in no way implies article ownership; all editors are encouraged to contribute.


Contents

[edit] WP:VG assessment

I'm running an assessment for this article in response to a request made at WP:VG for assistance. I may be able to help with some of this when I get the time. I'm rating this as a start-class article, of mid importance. For examples of how best to approach articles, see the featured and good articles on WP:VG, or even just Team Fortress 2, which is rated as a good article.

  • The structure here is in need of major revamp. There is no reception section, and this section is vital to displaying the notability of the game. A good basic structure to follow is as such:
    • Lead section
    • Gameplay
    • Development (the section currently entitled History)
    • Reception
    • Cultural impact - TFC is one of the key games in MP history. It should have something here.
    • See also
    • References
    • External links
  • Alright, now lets get to content. The gameplay section is far too long, and is not written from a particularly encyclopedic view point. It needs to only be a brief summary of what is necessary for a reader who has not and may never play the game to understand the subject. Do not talk about material that can be considered game guide-esque. You can use subsections for game types and classes, but the classes in particular need to be cut back - a class by class analysis with indepth information on how to play the class, the damage the class can take and what the class is equipped with is completely unnecessary. The article is not meant to cater for fans. It should be a couple of paragraphs in its entirety, outlining the role of each class very briefly. This was done for Team Fortress 2, it can be done here.
  • The competition section is unnecessary. A note that it is used for competitive play may be useful in the gameplay section (or a cultural impact section), but listing the leagues is unnecessary to a reader who has not played the game - again, this article is not here for the fans.
  • The history section also needs work. Talk about the game before release (check previews on places like GameSpot and IGN), its actual release and make some notes of after release support (release of new player models, move to Steam, etc). Again, see the example articles on WP:VG for how to do this. The stuff on bots is probably best left as a sentence in the gameplay section, and the NeoTF stuff needs to be cut down if its even notable. If it is not covered in reliable third-party sources (not fansites) it should not be there at all. The contemporary issues section is very POV, and should probably be disposed of entirely.
  • The see also section is largely redundant, as most of those should be wikilinked within the article. The only one I can imagine should be there is Fortress Forever, but only if its not covered in the legacy section, as I've mentioned below.
  • Do the moby games and open directory links actually add anything to the encyclopedic understanding of the article? In most cases they do not, and if that is true here, get rid of them per WP:EL.
  • There is no reception section. Get one, fill it with information on how the game was received by critics, awards and sales information. If you can find information to construct a legacy section discussing long term effects of the game, do so. Fortress Forever could probably be mentioned in this section.
  • The most important element is the lack of references. There are absolutely no references on anything. You need references on everything, based on reliable third-party sources. The edit page says "Encyclopedic content must be verifiable" just above the edit summary, so verify everything possible and get rid of anything that cannot be verified. This will affect the bits on custom content such as bots and NeoTF, if it cannot be verified by reliable third-party sources then it is not notable outside the game community and should not be there.
  • When everything is upped in quality, redo the introduction to summarise the article per WP:LS. You're looking at around three paragraphs: the first one should cover the developers and designers as well as release dates and platforms, the second should summarise gameplay while the third should talk about reception and impact.
  • Some work on the infobox is also required. The designers should be the actual names of the people (John Cook & Robin Walker and one other I can't remember), not "Valve". Reference the release date and throw in any extra fields that can be filled in with useful information. I'm also positive that there is a proper box art image out there, I recall one with the original heavy model on a Half-Life style box art (I'll dig it out later and upload it). Make sure all images have fair use rationales as well. I'd recommend getting a better shot of gameplay, and if possible a collective image of all the classes in a single shot.

Be sure to give Wikipedia:WikiProject Video games/Article guidelines a look over, and as previously stated, the FA and GA articles on WP:VG and Team Fortress 2 itself can provide good examples. I'm going to shove up a multiple issues template to cover all of this, but I hopefully should have some time soon to help work on some issues. If you have any questions, please ask. -- Sabre (talk) 10:21, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Reception - or the lack thereof.

Surprising to find a dearth of information regarding how well received TFC was. This is especially unfortunate because of how difficult filling the reception area is going to be as a result. What I have culled from the interwebs though, can hopefully help.

  • The MobyGames TFC profile lists two reviews, one from Finnish CVG magazine Pelit, the other being a review from 2404 gaming community [1]. The problem with Pelit is that I don't read Finnish, nor do I have a copy of the magazine with the review (May 1999, almost a decade ago. Phew!), and the problem with 2404 is whether we can use it as a source as I'm not sure it'd pass as a reliable source.
  • Gamerankings is a bit more comprehensive, with 7 reviews. We can certainly use the ratings found here. What we won't find though, is any usable quotes. It's got a pre-2003 Gamespot review that is non-existent due to what I assume to be a site restructuring of Gamespot in 2003, it's also got PC Gamer UK and Game Informer which are are magazines, along with PC Accelerator which is a very very defunct PC games magazine. Which leads us to the rest on that list which I can't find anywhere on the internet.
  • 1up has a feature on it though, a 2005 article that retroactively looks at the Half-Life series, including Team Fortress Classic.

So. Can we expand on what is effectively one, maybe two links as references for a reception section? Or is there a way to cite the magazines as well? Chan Yin Keen | Talk 18:03, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

I ran into the same stuff when I looked a while back, couldn't find enough to write the section. We can't create a reception section based on review scores alone, as we're meant to provide commentary on reception, not random numbers that are meaningless in themselves. I consequently started a topic over at WT:VG, which you can see here where it was put forward that this article may have to rest on the strength of its development section and simply not include a reception section, unless a decent number of reviews can be produced, whether they are in magazines or online. A properly done development section on its own should be enough to show notability for the subject. The development section as it currently stands is rather poor, but the archived WP:VG topic I've linked to there has produced multiple sources that can be used for construction of a decent development section. -- Sabre (talk) 20:22, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
Thanks for that, I'll pop a read and see what I can do, if anything :) Chan Yin Keen | Talk 20:54, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Release date

I think it's April 7th online (Half-Life update)[2][3], and the date mentioned by GameSpy seems to be a NA or US only retail release.[4][5] --Pizzahut2 (talk) 00:12, 13 June 2008 (UTC)