Forum:Huff the Game Namespace

Forums: Index > Village Dump > Huff the Game Namespace (talk)

Note: This topic has been unedited for 4971 days. It is considered archived - the discussion is over.

Before you all groan "oh no, not this again", I've already read up on the issues surrounding the Game namespace and, more importantly, the arguments for keeping it around. I don't intend for this to be another forum where extreme solutions are thrown back and forth. Instead, this is going to be an analysis of what the Game namespace is good for, where it fails, and where it adds needless complications to the wiki.

The Game namespace has its good points

Take a look at Game:Zork. It totally belongs here - a parody of text-based games in the style of a text-based game. If that's not Uncyclopedian to you, you haven't looked at Category:Pages that look like the things they're about (or its partner in crime, Category:Pages that look like the things they're about (hidden)). No, it's not a good actual game, but it also doesn't need to be - it's a goddamn parody.

We have similar articles in the Game namespace that I feel belong here, e.g. Game:Pick Up the Phone Booth and Aisle, another reference to an actual game taken to ridiculous extremes. I'm sure some of you Game namespace fanatics can think of more. But these all share one fact in common...

"Games" don't need their own namespace

These aren't "games". You can't have proper "games" on a MediaWiki wiki (more on that later). They are articles that look like the things they're about, which we already have a category for. These "games" could easily exist in mainspace without any complaint. There are few enough of them (that is, properly executed games) that they don't need their own namespace, less their own Main Page.

There's been a lot of discussion about how a game ought to be judged, and I'm here to say they ought to be judged as articles. Does a game serve a satirical purpose? Great! It's an article (that looks like the thing it's about). Otherwise, it's VFD fodder, or a personal project that needs to be kept in userspace. Most games we have now are not funny and/or do not need to be written in the game format. People assume the Game namespace is a free pass to make a game. It's not; an unfunny game is no different than an unfunny article. If we move games to mainspace I think it'll be clearer just how many games are conceptless bunches of text. And furthermore...

MediaWiki is not a game engine

Is your game a standard text-based game? No? Then it's based on a fucking hack.

Specifically, the hack in question stems from - of all things - how our forums work. I actually investigated this junk and managed to create a few new templates to set variables. But the important thing is our more complicated games are based entirely on our forum extension. If that forum extension ever changes how it works, all the advanced games are totally screwed.

Think about that for a minute. If the forum extension manages to fix itself up, our Game namespace is toast. That includes at least one featured Game. That is not a gamble I want to see us taking. No other namespace - heck, no article - is dependent on a MediaWiki extension hack to operate. CSS hacks, yes, JS hacks, yes, but something server-side, something dependent on Wikia, something that might be declared a "bug" and expunged later? Certainly not.

At this point you might be tempted to suggest that, should this ever happen, we'll tell Wikia to keep the outdated forum extension indefinitely. This is an incredibly stupid idea. Refusing an update to an extension just because it has a bug you like to exploit isn't a good enough reason.

So what do we do?

There aren't any reasons to keep games under their own namespace. It confuses things. Because it's its own namespace, we have the impression it ought to be big. And because it's relatively isolated from the rest of the wiki, we (for some reason) imagine that it has different quality rules than everything else. Instead, there are only a few games that have a reason to be presented as games, just as there are only a few articles that have a reason to be presented as something they aren't. There isn't any need for new quality standards. Something should only be in the game format if it has a reason to be presented as a game.

The solution is simple. Kill the namespace, move everything into mainspace, VFD the things that aren't funny - just like everything else. I know everyone might not agree with this, but I haven't seen a single valid argument for keeping the namespace. So please, if there's a good reason to keep it separate, tell me. But all I see are reasons it's harming the wiki and making things more complicated than they ought to be. – Sir Skullthumper, MD (criticize • writings • SU&W) 17:51 Apr 04, 2011

The game hack uses DPL forum? Nevermind how completely idiotic that is, it should be possible to swap that out for regular old DPL, which is a lot more... not likely to change so much, since it's not for forums, but for general things... like that. Hells, though, if we lose either of those altogether, a good chunk of the Uncyclopedia namespace will be kind of completely screwed, anyhow, as well as some actual projects that also use DPL and forum functionality, and don't think there wouldn't be more indirect impacts from losing maintenance, review, votes, etc, on the rest of Uncyclopedia. So... eh.

That said, the hacks are in templates, so it should be simple enough to change them to something less stupid when it breaks.

More of an issue would be the sheer number of subpages the non-compressed ones have... and how many of those tend to be completely pointless. I suspect that why the Game namespace was established may have had something to do with that, though, keep all the subpages out of Special:Random and whatnot... this would, however, be solved by compressing them, killing most of them, and/or adding some magic word to the subpages to hide them, assuming one exists, which one probably does, since that'd be a little too useful to have gone unconsidered. Anyone know it?

1234 ~ 18:53, 4 April 2011

Ok, here are the games I think should be kept:

• Zork (1 - 3)
• Grueslayer (A lot of effort clearly went into this)
• Abyss (Same as Above)
• Oliver Twist (featured)
• Game:Pick Up the Phone Booth and Aisle (featured)
• Game:Alone in the dark (featured, Top 10 10)
• Game:TheBlueScreenOfDeath (Is actually Funny)
• Game:Pixel Hunt (Flash, kept on VFD)
• Game:Oregon Trail (Has it's own article)
• Game:2012 II (Work in progress, I've been working on it nearly none-stop.)

What do you think?? - LOL vandalz 18:01, April 4, 2011 (UTC)

Just because effort went into something doesn't mean it belongs here or is even any good. I could point to a few things in particular, but my lawyers have advised against that.

1234 ~ 18:53, 4 April 2011

Sometimes I just wish that people would stop caring about things that shouldn't really be cared About. - LOL vandalz 18:55, April 4, 2011 (UTC)

Not doing much of anything right now

Hi, my name is Something "Socky" Sockadelic. You might remember me as being an "editor" of the "wiki," or you might not. Despite what you may think I've been an excellent doer of things lately. I'm going to break my streak though, as I always do when I see something so impossibly stupid I can't help but comment.

Now, while this forum contains a great deal of stuff I could be commenting on, I'm gonna be lazy and concentrate on this:

“ But the important thing is our more complicated games are based entirely on our forum extension. If that forum extension ever changes how it works, all the advanced games are totally screwed. ”

Sorry to break this to the world, but if that forum extension changes how it works, or stops working altogether, the important thing to me would be how all the forums will be screwed. —Sir Socky (talk) (stalk) GUN SotM UotM PMotM UotY PotM WotM 21:30, 4 April 2011

We could always get rid of the forum namespace. It's pretty useless. MegaPleb • Dexter111344 • Complain here 21:36, April 4, 2011 (UTC)

Let's but this:

“GAMEY HUFF!! LET'S A HUFF 4000+ PAGES! YAAAAEAEAEAEEEEEAASAAAAAEEAAASAAAAAAAAAEAAAAAY!1”

~ Skully on The Game namespace

- LOL vandalz 21:47, April 4, 2011 (UTC)

I like the game namespace

Even though it really isn't as popular as it was a while ago, I think it still has promises. I like it. -- Lollipop - CONTRIBS - WRITINGS - SHOP - Now adopting! 21:49, April 4, 2011 (UTC)

I have to agree with Lollipop. - LOL vandalz 20:03, April 5, 2011 (UTC)

Me too. But I have my schoolwork and part-time job to do, so I can't contribute in here. I even have no time for zh-tw.

(We find out a way to play dependent background music continuously)--Sunny周 18:21, April 8, 2011 (UTC)

"A lot of effort clearly went into [Grueslayer]"

Thank you for deciding to NOT huff Grueslayer in the event the entire Game namespace gets snorted up ChiefjusticeDS' nose. You're right about the effort thing except for the past year and a half. I REALLY want to start working on it again and I have outlined several plans on the game's talk page, but I don't have the Internet at my house and coordinating the revival of Grueslayer with all the other shit I do during WiFi visits would be...not very hard, actually. What I need to do is delete most of the actual game, re-do everything that's left, then get a team of Implementors and start again. I could start looking through the game tomorrow or on Friday, it depends on my schedule and my amount of laziness. If anyone wants to help, i'm usually on the #uncycloepdia IRC channel a whole lot, contact me there or something.

As for the actual topic: deleting the namespace would free up a whole lot of space and create less cruft, but it would also close the doors on people who could make potentially awesome games. Me and Emmzee created Grueslayer on early 2007. The game consisted of a shitty fucking ONE-LINER until April, when someone reminded us about it and the rest is history. If that had happened in early 2010, instant huff. I personally think we should keep the game namespace open, but with stricter moderation. PuoppyOnTheRadio has the right idea. --Trar (talk|contribs|grueslayer) 21:44, April 6, 2011 (UTC)

Exactly, whqat POTR said. Games like "Alone in the Dark" and "Pixel Hunt"...this isn't an online gaming website...it should just be text games, and even then, guidelines. -- Lollipop - CONTRIBS - WRITINGS - SHOP - Now adopting! 21:53, April 6, 2011 (UTC)

Why limit youself to only make text games?--Sunny周 18:18, April 8, 2011 (UTC)

I'm, sorry to say, But we can't use Flash. The website which owns us (Wikia) Strictly forbids it. Also, the majority I've seen on English and Korean Uncyclopedia range from Average to Broken, and maybe even Unplayable. Sorry about that, But Flash SERIOUSLY Doesn't work. - LOL vandalz 18:28, April 8, 2011 (UTC)

Basically, the majority is done by me. I sometimes hear that the uncyclopedians in here can't play my games. Recently, I think I know the reason.

There are at least 3 of my games are based on fullwidth forms Chinese characters. Therefore foreign computer probably can't display my games so well. (Maybe Korean doesn't have this problem. I have rent computer there when traveling and it seems okay.)

My UnTunes Hero is unplayable for some keyboards and computer. I don't know. I can't control that game with my new computer either. But I have no time to remake it.

So, maybe it's my games giving you a feeling that Flash Games are not suitable for Uncycloepdia. It's my mistake but Flash Game IS a one of good directions for Game Project to develop.--Sunny周 18:47, April 8, 2011 (UTC)

I just played grueslayer for the first time, made me laugh so hard my roomy's ran in to see if I'd finally gone mad! How do I edit? What can I do to contribute ? :) Lock'd And Loaded ~CUN ~ (Shoot!) 22:24, April 6, 2011 (UTC)

HUFF ME

• Support. Mister Victim (talk) 07:13, April 9, 2011 (UTC)

  You?

1234 ~ 11:46, 9 April 2011

For inspiration's sake

I think there's actually a pretty good reason for keeping the game namespace. Sure, a lot of the crappiest stuff goes into that space, but there is an advantage of keeping the namespace- inspiration!

As Mr Skullthumper himself said, games like Zork are actually parodies of real-life games which are written in the style of their subject. Indeed, most of the acceptable content in the namespace has to have a similar idea behind it.

And that's where the inspiration comes in. Everybody knows that the Game namespace is still part of Uncyclopedia, which is a parody website. So I think it could be an excellent breeding ground for some bright minds to present some of their work in such a manner. Maybe making fun of things by making a funny game about them is precisely the kind of work where they will shine.

I know a lot of the Game stuff has ended up on VFD. But the namespace could inspire a lot of people to come up with innovative ways of making us laugh, couldn't it? --Scofield 18:16, April 9, 2011 (UTC)

Correct. We simply need a way to keep shitty cruft from popping up less often than it does now, and ensure quality control throughout the namespace. --Trar (talk|contribs|grueslayer) 18:38, April 9, 2011 (UTC)

I Agree with Trar. I Even made an Article about it. （・Ａ・） - LOL vandalz 18:51, April 9, 2011 (UTC)

Hey, I remember something like this

And Skullthumper, twit that he is, has put it far better that I ever could. Remove this worthless namespace post haste and replace it with something better. Like pictures of kittens. Or video of dudes getting hit in the nuts. Or a video of Skullthumper getting hit in the nuts with a kitten. -OptyC Sucks! CUN15:30, 10 Apr

• For Skullthumper getting hit in the nuts with a kitten. --UU - natter 20:13, Apr 11

My Opinion

Of the text games on Uncyclopedia, very few are any good. Most are just stupid IP creations that go around in circles. I notice this pattern with most games:

1) Some anonymous user gets bored and decides to make a game

2) Several days of irritating users with the constant creation of subpages

3) People play it and realise that it isn't really any good

4) Goes to VFD

5) Gets votes for deletion with a huge consensus

6) Zombiebaron deletes all the pages and subpages which also clogges up the recent changes log

7) Back to step 1

I admit SOME games are reasonable, and should be kept and protected. But largely the games are all stupid, not fun and a waste of time. If a user is really desparate to make a game, thats what their userspace is for. - Frosty dah snowguy contribs KUN PLEB 10:33, April 11, 2011 (UTC)

This is mostly accurate for modern games, created in this day and age. Back in MY day we had shit like this EVERYWHERE. It wasn't ALL bad, really, just...mostly bad. Mind you that was the age of Famine and Nintendorulez. I think. --Trar (talk|contribs|grueslayer) 13:14, April 11, 2011 (UTC)

Let's get back to the important stuff

Like this. That's kind of important. MegaPleb • Dexter111344 • Complain here 08:30, April 12, 2011 (UTC)

It's only a matter of time before the Empire changes the forum extension on us. The forums, the advanced games lauded by so many - destroyed within seconds. We need to either have a backup plan or make our games simpler like Zork. --Trar (talk|contribs|grueslayer) 17:45, April 12, 2011 (UTC)

Lyrithya had some suggestion on that, I think.... --Scofield 21:05, April 12, 2011 (UTC)

Fresh, New Idea!

Stop worrying about how to delete half the website, and figure out a way to make this site Fresh. And possibly New. (See what I did there?) Or am I the only one who thinks we spend too much time worrying about worthless, idle drivel? Be funny, you dicks! Woody On Fire! Talking Woody Stalking Woody 21:33, April 12, 2011 (UTC)

Yes, we need lots of buzzwords and buzzphrases!

Uncyclopedia: Now with less faggotry!

Uncyclopedia: Fresh and Newer than your disabled granny's diaper!

Uncyclopedia: Keeping things funky and fresh for centuries.

&c. Mister Victim (talk) 16:45, April 13, 2011 (UTC)