Talk:Climate change video game

Untitled

I'm writing this page still and it should be done by 5 PM CDT. James2c19v 18:30, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

Not a speedy, but maybe this should be a category, or maybe it fails WP:NOT#DIR

The speedy deletion criterion applied here is definitely not correct. This is clearly not a test article. However, I question whether this makes sense as an article... it seems to be a list of serious games relevant to global warming, which may be too much of a directory to really fit Wikipedia. I dunno, I have skepticism about this article.

But the CSD is definitely wrong. I am removing it. --Jaysweet 21:05, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

I’m tempted to delete the section on the V Gas game. I can’t find any evidence that it’s still available. Loupgrru (talk) 20:58, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

I definitely fail to see how this article is an advertisement. Could whoever added this tag please explain to me what they feel needs to be changed? 22:38, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

Don't delete this article! It was invaluable for me while researching possible alternatives for the curriculum in my school. It is articles like this that make Wikipedia a great resource for us teachers! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.134.57.26 (talk) 19:42, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

Feedback on assumption

Hi. I’m adding a lot of climate games as part of a project between Wikipedia, climatesteps.org (where I work) and Earth Hero. One of the games I’ve added was developed in association with the Africa Climate Change Resilience Alliance. I wanted to include a citation for this organization, but the only things I can find online are not from them but refer to them, and they’re all fairly old. I think they’ve dissolved, but I can’t prove that. I’d like advice on how to proceed. Thanks in advance. Loupgrru (talk) 14:40, 16 August 2023 (UTC)

Hi @Loupgrru! Most content on Wikipedia should be supported by reliable, secondary sources. That is, independent journal articles, news media, entertainment media, games media (for video games), and so on. So yes, we're specifically looking for sources that aren't affiliated with the organization. The source's age does matter for content that is likely to change over time (as with medical claims, or other scientific or academic fields). For a video game, it might not matter much at all.

I noticed that most of the games you've added recently are cited to the developers, publishers, supporters, etc. That's really the opposite of what we're trying to do here. We don't write about subjects that simply exist, but subjects that are covered by reputable media. Look at this this way: anyone can develop and publish and game and then write about it on their website. What makes a game (or app, or anything else) noteworthy is when reliable, secondary sources consider it worth covering. That doesn't necessarily mean coverage on a huge games site like IGN or GameSpot, but the publisher does need "a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy". (You can find information about specific sources at WP:RSP and WP:VG/S.) Where I think you may run into issues is finding independent sources that consider these games worth mentioning—though maybe I'm wrong. Are you aware of media coverage for these games?

Another potential concern here has to do with any conflict of interest. If you or your organization/employer are involved with any of these games, you should refrain from writing about them directly and make suggestions here, on the Talk page. If you're being paid to write anything on Wikipedia, you would also need to disclose that. Please don't take this as an accusation because I don't know your circumstances. If these policies might apply to you, I suggest reading those links in full. If you have any other questions, feel free to ask here and I or someone will (hopefully) be along to answer them eventually. Woodroar (talk) 16:32, 18 August 2023 (UTC)

Hi Woodroar. Thanks for the feedback and advice. I was aware of the requirement for recent, reliable secondary sources and have been particular in choosing them for some other work I’ve contributed to as part of the Climate Steps project with Wikipedia that I’m working on. And I hear what you’re saying: for games, it might not matter how recent the review was. But I am new to this, and I’m always worried about getting the protocol for adding citations correct. As far as the games page is concerned, I was looking at what was already here and trying to mimic it, and what I’ve been doing reflects what I thought I was seeing.

And no, I don’t think most of these, regardless of how worthy they might be, are discussed by what WP would consider to be reliable independent media. I suppose the games coming from the Red Cross Red Crescent and especially the United Nations might be exceptions to that, and WP editors might think they’re fine, but a lot of the other ones might not be.

I’m not being paid by any of these game producers, but I am paid as part of the contract between Climate Steps and Wikipedia. Loupgrru (talk) 18:57, 18 August 2023 (UTC)

I was hoping that because I’m not making any value judgements about how well the games are designed nor whether they successfully teach what they were intended to, that it would seem objective enough for Wikipedia. But I see that’s not what’s bothering you; you want to know if respectable, independent sources consider them to be worthwhile. Loupgrru (talk) 19:13, 18 August 2023 (UTC)

I wonder if they are secondary sources that could be considered reliable outside of sources like the UN, the New York Times, secondary/review articles in peer-reviewed journals, etc. Perhaps we can find a specialist source that’s known for reliable, objective game reviews. Loupgrru (talk) 19:30, 18 August 2023 (UTC)

You could try looking for sources with our WikiProject Video Games' custom Google searches (the second bullet point at WP:VG/LRS). Otherwise, if you're looking for sources and wondering about their status on Wikipedia, WP:GAMESOURCES ranks video games media on their reliability and Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Perennial sources ranks more general publishers. I agree that the games affiliated with the Red Cross/Crescent and UN are more likely to get mentioned by secondary sources. That being said, I've noticed citations to journal articles about stock-trading and strategy/4X games, so maybe journals have mentioned some global warming games? Woodroar (talk) 13:57, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

I found good citation sources for about half of what I’d like to add (I haven’t added everything I wanted to yet), but I’m not sure I understand. When I’ve included citations in other articles, it was to back up claims made in the article. I’m not claiming anything here, only listing them to raise awareness that they’re available and thereby, hopefully, raising awareness of global warming as well as mitigation and action options (although I’m not advocating for anything on this page). Since I’m not making claims, do I really need citations about the games from independent sources?

Also, is it possible that this is the wrong sort of entry for these games. I know Wikipedia publishes lists, but I haven’t worked on those. Are the criteria for lists different? Loupgrru (talk) 16:27, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

It seems like if I do it as a list, I can include games that don’t have reviews. From the Wikipedia guide for lists:

“One accepted reason why a list topic is considered notable is if it has been discussed as a group or set by independent reliable sources, per the above guidelines; notable list topics are appropriate for a stand-alone list. The entirety of the list does not need to be documented in sources for notability, only that the grouping or set in general has been. Because the group or set is notable, the individual items in the list do not need to be independently notable….”

At least two of the references I found are reviews from secondary, peer-reviewed scientific journals that talk about climate-warming games as a set. If it’s published that way, I wouldn’t have to find citations for each game, just write up something short about what these reviews have said and then a list like I already have (so I could just cut and paste) saying who developed/created them, who they’re for, what they do. Loupgrru (talk) 16:45, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

List articles on Wikipedia can be complicated. When it comes to video games lists, we have articles like List of massively multiplayer online games, which function the same as categories with links to individual game articles. We also have articles like List of massively multiplayer online role-playing games and List of MUDs, which include more details but also link to individual articles. For most video game lists (and increasingly for all lists across Wikipedia), the threshold for inclusion is to have an article, which means the game needs to meet our notability requirements. There are some lists that include non-notable entries because a discussion or discussions happened and the consensus was to allow them. That's often the case for the "group or set" lists, which I'll get to in a moment. In the early days of Wikipedia, lists were mostly "red links" (links to games or other subjects that didn't have articles) simply because those articles hadn't been written yet. As the project has matured and we've written articles about most of the notable games, the trend has shifted to treating lists more like directories to already-existing articles (which also means we generally remove red links when we see them). That trend isn't universal, of course—and you're always going to find articles that some editor has added tons of non-notable links to without anyone noticing.

Now the "group or set" lists that you mentioned, those tend to be seen as an exception because reliable sources cover the list/group/set itself and because they're typically very limited in scope. At one time, List of people who have walked on the Moon was an article. Everyone on the list is notable, but they didn't have to be, since plenty of reliable sources discuss the relatively small number of people who have done so. (That article has since been redirected to a subsection of List of Apollo astronauts.) Signing of the United States Declaration of Independence has a "List of signers", which could theoretically exist as a standalone list because plenty of sources have discussed that group of people as well. Then there's Lists of people executed in Texas, which includes sub-lists with plenty of people who don't have articles, but the lists exist because reliable sources have discussed them. It was remarkably difficult to find examples because, (again) as Wikipedia has matured, we've created articles for most of the things that meet our notability requirements.

I should also mention that this article technically isn't a list, it's just an article about the "global warming game" subject—and which happened to mention some notable games in an earlier version. It's similar to Massively multiplayer online role-playing game, which doesn't include a list of games but does call out specific games mentioned in reliable sources. Any list component in this article should probably be (a) limited to the highest-profile notable games that reliable sources discuss, or (b) spun out into a separate List of global warming games article that only includes notable games. Unless I'm mistaken and there are reliable sources discussing the list as a group or set, but I've done a little bit of digging and haven't found anything like that. Woodroar (talk) 18:05, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

I’ve added links to independent, reliable reviews for most of the games I added. Do you think that’s sufficient? Loupgrru (talk) 20:48, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

I'm sorry, I haven't had a chance to follow the recent changes to the article. Looking now, I'm not seeing much improvement, to be honest. There are more journal articles, to be sure, but they're largely by people associated with the games. Even scholarly sources need to be independent. I noticed this article from the Guardian, which is ostensibly a reliable and independent source, but it's based on promotional claims from the developer. That's not useful because we're looking to summarize what the journalist thinks of the game—in most cases, that means post-release coverage. (Unfortunately, even reliable sources aren't immune from churnalism-like summaries of press releases.) I also saw a Forbes Contributor article, which isn't considered a reliable source. (See WP:FORBESCON.) There was also a database link to BoardGameGeek, which is unusable as it's user-generated content. (See WP:USERG.)

As I mentioned above, this really isn't the type of article for exhaustive lists of games, notable or otherwise. We haven't had a chance to get into our due and undue weight policy, which is part of the "core content policy" NPOV. What due and undue weight means, in short, is that we should try to write in proportion to the available reliable, secondary sources. If one game gets significant coverage in reliable sources—say, multiple dedicated articles or even books about it—that's a good sign that we should devote a reasonable amount of space to the game. But in an article about the genre and not the game itself, that "reasonable amount of space" probably amounts to a sentence or maybe two. If a game gets a single-paragraph mention in one article (like the CNET source), devoting multiple sentences to it (let alone giving the game its own subsection) is far too much weight. When there's only trivial coverage of games, we generally don't mention them at all. Woodroar (talk) 22:25, 25 August 2023 (UTC)

Hello, just adding to the above concerns as another observer that this article has multiple issues. I think the state of this article should be considered under a merge or deletion discussion, but understand it is currently still being worked on and will wait for that work to settle. The core issue, as stated above, is that there is very little content supported by independent, reliable sources used to describe the subject matter itself. Most of the article is directed to primary sources that give examples of types of game, with many having dubious standalone notability. The article isn't a list of games, so its structure really should provide information on the subject matter first and foremost. When you take these examples away, it is an unsourced stub. I appreciate this page is the product of a lot of work and there is plenty to leverage here, potentially in terms of new articles about notable climate-related games, a list article of games with these themes, or a merge as a section into a larger article, but just wanted to flag the overarching approach being taken isn't quite in the right direction. ＶＲＸＣＥＳ (talk) 23:32, 25 August 2023 (UTC)

I just finished cleaning up some of the additions I made to the game. Last month, after @Woodroar’s comments about the lack of trustworthy secondary sources, I stopped adding any games I couldn’t find such citation for, but I didn’t delete the ones that I had already added for which I couldn’t find trustworthy reviews. Today I went back through all the games, cleaning up the language, adding information about how the games work where necessary, and deleting one game (V Gas) added by the original editor(s) of this article, because I could find no evidence online that it still exists.

If there’s a consensus that the games that have no independent reviews should be deleted, I’ll do that.

This is all part of a project between Wikipedia, Climate Steps (climatesteps.org) and Earth Hero (earthhero.org). Loupgrru (talk) 15:49, 6 September 2023 (UTC)

Anything not supported by reliable, secondary sources should be removed. (That includes games covered by ostensibly secondary sources which were written or published by the developers, producers, associated organizations, etc. As far as Wikipedia is concerned, those are primary sources.) Games with existing articles (and which presumably meet the WP:GNG) should get moved into a list section or a standalone list, depending on how many of them there are. Games without existing articles but with significant coverage could get moved into a (very) short section, really no more than a sentence or two of sourced examples, and even that's debatable. That's probably the best we can do for this article, given its relatively scant coverage in reliable, secondary sources. I mean, as it is, the lead has one source that's more about what games could be than what they are, the "Objectives" section is completely unsourced, and the "Xbox 360 Games for Change Challenge" section has a primary source and a mostly-primary interview that's more about Games for Change than our subject (the "global warming game" genre). I'm not entirely sure that this article itself meets our notability requirements. I certainly wouldn't have much policy-based reason to restore it if another editor came along and gutted the entire thing.

As far as the project goes, I'll be honest and say that doesn't mean much at all. Wikipedia has all sorts of editing partnerships, perhaps most notably with the Wiki Education Foundation, where teachers get students involved with article creation. But they don't "own" the articles they've created and they're not exempt from our policies on notability, behavior, and so on. Every article, no matter who wrote it, is subject to our core content policies requiring reliable sources, avoiding original research, and a neutral point of view based on sourced claims. Woodroar (talk) 23:05, 6 September 2023 (UTC)

Hello. This is Annette, working with Mark (@loupgrru) on this collaboration. I would say first that Mark was not saying that we own the page at all - please don't misinterpret our goals. He just wanted to help in the Move, and he was earlier saying that the information had been sought after (as part of a larger collaboration) by Wikipedia to bring in information to users on how to fight climate change. The page about these types of games already existed, and our plan in our project was to just add more to the page. We newcomers to WP (myself a scientist) now totally understand now that for a page/article on climate change games, which was, unfortunately, a lot more work than what Mark had time for. Mark was paid (and volunteered on top of that) only to construct a list of "climate games." Whereas, for a page/article, WP is searching for a summary of secondary resources on the topic of climate action games, such as, are climate action games useful, do they create actual change or are they a waste of time? - what do game reviews tell us, and more? Also, that reviews of specific games have to be secondary.

So.... We thank you for moving the list of games that Mark assisted on into a List page. Thanks especially to @Vrxces

In the meantime, we have learned a lot from this discussion. I am grateful for your initial replies and comments to Mark to help him and especially me understand the goals. @Woodroar AnnetteCSteps (talk) 22:50, 3 March 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for your understanding @AnnetteCSteps and @Loupgrru, I understand Wikipedia policies can be a bit inscrutable and frustrating and I hope this hasn't been a deterrent. I am happy to assist in volunteering to work further on this to build research and sourcing on climate games; please get in touch if this would be of interest. ＶＲＸＣＥＳ (talk) 22:54, 3 March 2024 (UTC)

Thanks, @Vrxces, I appreciate that, and collaborating with you on this may be something that I can devote time to in the future. If you’re interested in taking a shot at it in the meantime, that would be fine, and we’d greatly appreciate it. Loupgrru (talk) 15:11, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

Great! I think this topic has the potential to bring in readers to climate action information; our Climate Games page on CSteps is one of our most popular. https://climatesteps.org/resources/games/. Hopefully we can help expand the main article for this. AnnetteCSteps (talk) 19:02, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for your thoughtful reply and further work on the article. I think as noted below that the article is a list masquerading as an article, and the premise of the article probably doesn't meet the site's notability requirements. I enjoy writing articles, so one idea I would be happy to work with you on is thinking about which of these games have sufficient notability to be adapted into articles of their own. Let me know if this sounds like something that would be helpful. ＶＲＸＣＥＳ (talk) 23:14, 6 September 2023 (UTC)

Requested move 4 October 2023

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: moved. To alternate title: List of climate change video games (closed by non-admin page mover) - 🔥𝑰𝒍𝒍𝒖𝒔𝒊𝒐𝒏 𝑭𝒍𝒂𝒎𝒆 (𝒕𝒂𝒍𝒌)🔥 14:11, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

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Global warming game → Climate change game – This article was created in 2007. 'Climate change' has since become a more common nomenclature, which replaced the use of 'global warming' several years ago. The article contains no sourcing suggesting that the term 'global warming game' has particular significance. Where the term 'video game' is used, Google Scholar yields 41 results for 'climate change game', and 6 for 'global warming game'. Some top-down studies that may help the notability of this article using this language are here: [1] [2] [3]. Ngrams shows searches for 'climate change game', but not for 'global warming game' [4]. This article has a lot of issues, but addressing them by focusing the article on more relevant and notable terminology is a good start. ＶＲＸＣＥＳ (talk) 11:49, 4 October 2023 (UTC) — Relisting. BegbertBiggs (talk) 12:42, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

• Support per above analysis. Woodroar (talk) 21:16, 4 October 2023 (UTC)
• Alternate move to List of climate change video games. Ever since it was made, it has mostly just listed individual non-notable games. The majority of non-list content is original research. It would need a total rewrite to actually address the topic of climate change games. ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ (ᴛ) 08:59, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

  I think there is a space for an article about climate change games and a separated list. I agree though that the present state of the article is dire. Whilst I've started to look into secondary sourcing, it may have been more appropriate to approach this as a draft. ＶＲＸＣＥＳ (talk) 20:41, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

  While the article right now is essentially a list, I believe most of that will be removed once we look at reliable, secondary sources. Maybe there's room for both? I'd be happy to help with it in November, when I have more free time. Woodroar (talk) 20:52, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

  There is actually a moderate amount of literature on it, fortunately. I've started to process of actually trying to create a sourced article. Happy to chat down the track when you're free if you'd like to help. ＶＲＸＣＥＳ (talk) 21:08, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

• Support alt of List of climate change video games per Zxcvbnm - "need a total rewrite" is accurate, and both "global warming game" and "climate change game" appear to be purely descriptive terms rather than a fixed-phrase. Walt Yoder (talk) 22:17, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

I added the majority of what’s now here as part of a contract between Climate Steps and Wikipedia. I’d like to be included in whatever you all feel is the best fashion to deal with this. Thanks. @AnnetteCSteps Loupgrru (talk) 14:42, 11 October 2023 (UTC)

• Support List of climate change video games per Zxcvbnm. BilledMammal (talk) 13:35, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.