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Talk:Spark the Electric Jester/GA1

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Reviewer: IceWelder (talk · contribs) 15:57, 15 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Will review in the coming days. IceWelder [✉] 15:57, 15 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Infobox
  • Per template guidelines, a series should only be listed in the infobox if it has an article. This is not the case here, so it should be removed.
  • There are currently six composers listed. The limit for the credits fields is usually three. Did any of them have a lead role?
    • Not particularly. According to the soundtrack's Bandcamp page Tunstall, Falk, and Funk Fiction composed five songs, Staple and Bethers composed four, and Landino composed three. I've ordered them by contribution if that would suffice. LBWP (talk) 06:57, 18 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Lead
  • Is the pseudonym relevant enough for the lead?
  • "Daneluz was previously known for creating a variety of ..." -> "Daneluz previously created ..."
  • "based off" -> "based on"
  • "which was to be his first commercial title" -> "his first commercial title"
  • "Outside of music composition, he developed the game alone using Clickteam software." - This is a bit ambiguous; on my first read, it sounded as though he did the music, just not with Fusion. Consider rephrasing.
    Also, is 'alone' correct here? What about Héctor Barreiro-Cabrera, who is credited for "base programming"? The body also states there to be a sound designer/concept artist.
    • You're right. Rephrased the sentence to "Aside from its sound and programming, he developed the game mostly alone" since it still seems like he did most of the work to me. Added information on Héctor Barreiro-Cabrera's involvement in the body as well. Is that fine? LBWP (talk) 06:57, 18 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • "Journalists" -> "Critics" or "Reviewers", as not all reviewers are necessarily journalists.
Gameplay
Plot
Development
  • Suggested imaged caption simplification: "The character Beam Sonic from Daneluz's Sonic: After the Sequel was the basis for Spark's design."
    The character is visible but very small in this screenshot. Would it be better to instead show his sprite singled out?
  • For consistency's sake, always use the game's full name when discussing it to avoid confusion with the character. The italics are easy to miss for some readers and will be almost completely lost for people using screen readers.
  • "Hailing from São Paulo, Brazil, Spark the Electric Jester ..." - This makes it appear as though Spark was from Brazil, which obviously is not the case. "To hail from" is also somewhat informal.
  • Modify "open-source game engine" per SEAOFBLUE.
  • "based off" -> "based on"
  • "would find" -> "found"
  • The previous game getting positive coverage is based on five sources that show individual persons' positive view. While I know that reception was positive, this could appear to some as cherry-picking. Unless there is a source that says -- verbatim -- that the game got positive reviews, the sentence should be removed. I also feel that the sentence as a whole is not too relevant for this article.
    • I included that sentence to establish the notability of those games to people who are unfamiliar with them. I revised it to say "The games were released between 2011 and 2013 and would go on to be downloaded over 120,000 times in total." This should also address another point of yours. LBWP (talk) 06:57, 18 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • "for what was to be Spark" -> "for what became Spark"
  • "Work on the game had begun by the time of Chrono Adventure's development." - Do we know when this was?
    • Unfortunately no. I rewrote one of the previous sentences to mention the years the fangames were released, which should give you a rough idea of when it did. Does that work? LBWP (talk) 06:57, 18 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • "July of 2015" -> "July 2015"
  • Remove erroneous spaces after "US$". Consider using {{US$}}, setting |long=no from the second occurrence on.
  • "... and planned to allocate ..." -> "... and he planned to allocate ..."
  • "Otherwise, the game was developed by Daneluz alone," - Same comment as in the lead section.
  • "Aside from Sonic, the Mega Man X titles and Kirby Super Star were its biggest influences alongside Bayonetta and the Super Smash Bros. series." - So were they all the biggest influences? Consider rephrasing.
Sequels
References
  • Is Hey Poor Player a reliable source?
    • I was hesitant about including that one. It is the most critical of the reviews sourced but yeah, probably not. I've removed information in the gameplay section sourcing it (was just one sentence) and will do the same for reception soon. LBWP (talk) 06:57, 18 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Ref #19: "(interview with LakeFeperd)" should not be part of the website name.
  • Ref #36: Assuming Landino is the only author on his own website, add him as the author and put "jameslandino.com" as the via.
Other
  • The "Official website" appears just to be the developer's website. The link should be removed.
  • The article is categorized as "Video games set on the Moon", but the Moon is not mentioned anywhere in the article.

@LBWP: Above is my initial review. Feel free to strike through or reply to individual comments as you work on them. Regards, IceWelder [✉] 15:42, 17 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@LBWP: @IceWelder: I'm just passing by, but here are a couple of suggestions. As I haven't played the game at all, I can't comment on its gameplay or plot:
  • I don't know if Destructoid is a reliable ref, but IMHO we need better refs. It's used for four refs, but it's a blog like site. According to Wikipedia:WikiProject Video games/Sources, [like] other blog sites, some content may be reliable, but only if the author can be established as such. Community user-blogs fail WP:USERG.. Is the author "established as such"? If not, IMHO rm of these are needed, especially the refs in reception, because that needs to meet criteria 2b.
    • I've removed two of those refs. As for the Destructoid review, the author's LinkedIn page says that he's written for "CGM, GameRevolution, Zam, Paste, Motherboard and others." GameRevolution, Paste, and Vice games (Motherboard is hosted on the same site) are listed as reliable sources, so it should be fine. The author of the July 2015 piece has also written for PC Gamer, PCGamesN, VG247, and Polygon, as well as a few other situational sources. The 2015 article isn't that vital to the article, being used as a source for one detail, but the author seems to be reliable. LBWP (talk) 07:37, 18 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Same with Hey Poor Player, it's on Metacritic, but its reliability, per our VGRS page, is said to be inconclusive. Is there a better ref, or this fails criteria 2b?
I agree on that it's probably unreliable. VickKiang (talk) 07:55, 18 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Is Gamespew an RS? Its about us or review page doesn't show editorial policies, IMHO. The staff number is very small, and I couldn't find the editor-in-chief being in any other RS (ping me if otherwise).
Thanks for your reply, I'm interested how the original reviewer thought for this. VickKiang (talk) 07:55, 18 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
There was a recent discussion about it on the video games sources talk page. Judging from that discussion, as well as the small editorial team of the site, I think I'll go ahead and write them out of the article as well. LBWP (talk) 08:11, 18 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Minor suggestion: I'm confused that the game received positive reviews. A) This is like OR, as no site (not even Metacritic say this), B) It seems to be a bit positive POV, as the reviews cited, such as Destructoid and Hey Poor Player, are iffy in if it's an RS.
    • I got that impression from the four reviews sourced and figured it would be an uncontroversial statement, so basically OR. Are brief critical reception summaries like that are inappropriate without a review aggregator source? I'm pretty sure the Destructoid review is reliable at least. LBWP (talk) 07:37, 18 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I've clarified that this suggestion is minor, but below is just my POV:
It might be an uncontroversial statement since the reviews are positive, but how many generally reliable reviews per WP:VGRS gave positive reviews? If there's only a few, IMHO the positive reviews seem to be a bit much, and borderline on if it fails 2c (since it isn't listed on Metacritic nor has won a major award), but I agree this is minor. VickKiang (talk) 07:55, 18 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Optional: I know ref 18 is probably fine, as it's a SPS but it's talking about itself on uncontroversial details, but could there be a better secondary ref? Same with the YouTube interviews (this is a POV from me, of course). This isn't directly included in criteria 2b, so is IMO an optional suggestion.

Many thanks for your help with this article, and taking this work for GAN! VickKiang (talk) 02:08, 18 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  • @VickKiang: Thanks! I've responded to your comments above.

@IceWelder: Thanks for the review. I believe I've addressed most of your points. I'll need a little time to rewrite the reception section to omit Hey Poor Player (and possibly GameSpew if we can come to a consensus on that). LBWP (talk) 06:57, 18 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Reception has been taken care of. I've completely removed the Hey Poor Player and GameSpew refs from the article. LBWP (talk) 10:05, 19 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@LBWP: Nice work! I applied some minor fixes I felt were faster done than explained. Feel free to revert parts you disagree with. One last thing I take issue with is Note a, which states that the story of Fark has been retconned. Only a source for the current state is provided, which does not verify there having been a change. If no source mentioning the change exists, I would suggest you move the "alternate world" bit in-line and remove the note entirely. Regards, IceWelder [✉] 16:07, 19 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@IceWelder: Done. I removed the alternate world detail entirely since I figured it wouldn't be relevant to the gameplay section. One thing I noticed is that the archive link for the Spark 2 interview was changed. It seems like the Wayback Machine failed to archive the video itself though, probably because of its length. I changed the link back to my Internet Archive upload but if I'm mistaken, you can change it back. LBWP (talk) 00:46, 20 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Well done!  Passed. Don't forget to create a Did you know nomination. IceWelder [✉] 16:45, 20 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
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