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The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was promoted by Ian Rose via FACBot (talk) 08:41, 16 April 2017 [1].

Phantasmagoria (video game)

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Nominator(s): Hunter Kahn, GamerPro64 16:32, 17 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Hunter Kahn did the vast majority of creating the article to the way it is now. I've asked him if I could nominate it on his behalf which he allowed. (conversations 1, 2). Made by one of the most important women video game designers Roberta Williams, this horror game was a far cry from the type of games Sierra On-Line made back in the day, such as Space Quest and Police Quest. Still the history behind the creation of this game, along with the controversy and banning from Australia once it was released, a fascinating look at gaming back in 1995. GamerPro64 16:32, 17 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Comments from Indrian

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A lot of good things happening in this article, but a few areas where I feel it can be tightened up a bit.

Plot
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  • "who had five wives who all died mysteriously" - We can come up with a better verb than "had."
  • "Hoping to find an inspiration for her next novel, Adrienne begins having nightmares immediately upon moving into her new home" - As written, this sentence is describing how Adrienne deliberately induced nightmares to find inspiration for her next book.
    • Changed "begins" to "starts". GamerPro64 20:11, 18 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]
      • The problem was that the introductory clause is linked to the action verb of the sentence, so it reads as "because she wanted inspiration for her novel, she decides to induce nightmares." I took the liberty of rewriting this myself to avoid this connection.
  • "culminating in a controversial scene in which he rapes Adrienne" - I don't think culminating works here, as the culmination of his bad behavior is really when he starts killing everybody.
  • "Meanwhile, Harriet, fearing for her safety, decides to leave with Cyrus as Don becomes more abusive and erratic" - Meanwhile is not the proper transition here, as it denotes something happening at the same time as the events of the previous paragraph when it is actually something that happens later.
Writing
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  • "Williams had previously created suspenseful murder and crimes stories in her earlier mystery games, Mystery House and the Laura Bow series" - the use of "suspenseful" feels like unnecessary puffery to me.
  • "She felt the horror genre had not yet been properly explored in computer games yet, and that most attempts were just "a lot of hack and slash (where) the whole point seems to be to kill everyone and blow them away" - This is the first instance of what will become a recurring theme in this review: this is Williams talking to a house organ specifically to promote her game. As such, this may merely be sales puffery. I would take it out.
  • "Williams found it stressful working on two major games at once and said she had "some difficulty keeping both games in my head", but felt each received her undivided attention during the most crucial times in their respective developments." - Well she would feel that way, right? Is she going to say she neglected her games? This biased opinion does not really add any understanding to the creative process of the game.
  • "She said having a female lead in Phantasmagoria was not a ploy to attract female gamers, but rather felt like the correct choice for the game." - If she just chose a female protagonist because she wanted a female protagonist then there is really nothing to see here. This sentence does not really add to the article.
Casting
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  • "Morsell said appreciated that her character was intelligent and not a typical horror film heroine, saying: "She doesn't do incredibly stupid things. You don't see her screaming in her underwear. The character isn't about decoration. She's a very real person." - This is just an actor promoting a project. I would not consider that source a reliable read of her feelings on the project.
  • "Homb compared acting in Phantasmagoria to working in an entirely new medium, and called it "one of the best experiences I've ever had in the entire entertainment business"." - Same as above but even moreso. Lots of actors talk about how great their experiences were when promoting a project, which was the entire point of the source in question.
  • "Unlike Homb, Miano primarily played antagonists throughout his career; he estimated "90 percent of the time, I play the bad guy." - This quote does not really add to our understanding of the subject.
  • As a general note, I have examined several FA-quality film articles, and virtually none of them list extensive CVs for cast members. This info seems excessive here, especially for the actors that have their own articles on Wikipedia.
Filming
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  • "with the average scene taking about an hour to shoot, while others were significantly longer or shorter" and "The average filming day began at 6 a.m. with setting up the studio, with actors coming in at 7 a.m. or 7:30 a.m. for make-up calls. An hour-long pre-production meeting would detail what would be shot that day to ensure all necessary backgrounds and props were ready. Shooting would begin around 8 a.m. and conclude at 6 p.m. or 7 p.m." - So in other words, it followed a similar filming schedule to any other special-effects driven movie. This does not seem noteworthy and encompasses a level of minutiae not found in other FA-quality articles.
  • "Williams had no experience working with actors and feared it would be difficult due to "huge Hollywood egos", but she instead found the actors to be professional and hardworking" - Again, this may well be true, but it is drawn from a promotional book. These always go out of their way to emphasize camaraderie and harmony and are not really reliable for facts like these.
  • "They normally had two grips on set, but needed six for this scene, and Wolfe used friends who were visiting from out of town to help throw the props from ladders, boxes and scaffolding" - This feels like an unnecessary level of detail.
  • "At one point in the film, Carno lies in the hospital bed after having just survived a fire, his face wrapped in bandages with blood leaking through. During filming, Miano spontaneously sat up and started singing Al Jolson songs, making the crew laugh hysterically." - That's a cute story, but again seems out of step with maintaining a summary style.
  • "The Doberman Pinscher simply barked behind a fence during his scene, and was trained to bark on command using different hand signals. The scene with the rats simply involved them running along a wall in a basement, which they were trained with to do using food." - These are standard practices not unique to this game, so it again seems like an unnecessary detail.
Effects
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  • "He said the game reminded him of working on one of his earliest movies, the slasher film The Slumber Party Massacre (1982)." - Another extraneous detail taken from a promotional source.
  • "Morsell had to have her face covered in plaster when the model of her head was created, and she experienced some anxieties during the process, saying it felt "like being buried alive".[87] Robert Miano had similar feelings of anxiety when a model of his body was created, which was used in the game for a scene when Carno is set on fire. Miano had to sit on a chair for hours as the crew put plaster all of his body and face, during which he had to breathe through straws in his nostrils." - More extraneous anecdotes of a common type for actors having plaster molds made of themselves.
Release
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  • "and one of the first horror games from any company written specifically for adults" - So says Sierra's house organ as it tries to promote the game. It is not a reliable source for this type of information.
  • "Phantasmagoria was the first game to get an "M" rating for "mature" audiences" - No it wasn't. When Night Trap was released on the 32x in 1994 it boasted an M rating. Same with the DOS version of Mortal Kombat II in 1994. I think there were a few others as well. This is why house organs can be of limited utility as sources.
Sales
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  • "InterAction, a magazine published by Sierra On-Line, wrote: "Never before has a new product jumped to number one on the charts so quickly." - I highly doubt that, and I would certainly never trust a company organ to tell me the truth about that.
    • Actually found the issue online. Page 25. The quote isn't the same as what InterAction wrote, though. But would the InterAction work as a source here? GamerPro64 20:50, 19 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]
      • @GamerPro64:It still feels a little promotional in nature, but I assume InterAction has a decent handle on how the game did relative to Sierra's own releases. I would be okay with the magazine being used as a source for the claim that Phantasmagoria jumped to number one faster than any other Sierra game, but clearly the bit about fastest in computer game history is marketing hype rather than fact. Indrian (talk) 14:55, 21 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • "Despite coming out in August" - Games achieve most of their sales in the first couple of months after release, so there is nothing surprising about a game coming out in August selling better than a bunch of games that came out in January or some other earlier month.
Reviews
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  • "The violent content drew a great deal of attention, with Lee S. Isgur of Jefferies & Co., a global investment bank that followed the computer game industry, wrote, "It's probably one of the bloodiest games ever."" - This is a statement from an analyst and is not part of a critical review of the game. It may fit in the article somewhere, but it does not belong here.
Legacy
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  • "While happy with the game, she said she did not expect to make another horror game again, saying, "It's not really my area"." - Yeah and after finishing Time Zone in 1982 she said she would never make another adventure game again. This statement really has little probative value.

And that's it. I really do feel the article is mostly in fine shape; it just needs a little bit of trimming here and there to retain summary style and needs to take a little more care in the use of promotional sources. Indrian (talk) 05:40, 18 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

  • @GamerPro64: It looks like all my concerns have been addressed. I have also made a few edits here and there to improve the flow of the article. There is just one more thing I would like to see before supporting: The book High Score by Rusel DeMaria and Johnny Wilson includes a little bit of info on the game and brings up two points that I believe are of interest for comprehensiveness. One is that the game originally contained nudity as well as violence and gore, but they decided to take it out. The other is that during post-production Roberta Williams became an absolute perfectionist and kept sending back footage that did not fully integrate the actors with the blue screen backgrounds so as to avoid a "halo effect" like that found in 7th Guest. If you do not have access to that source, I would be happy to add the info myself. Indrian (talk) 15:21, 25 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Comments from Aoba47

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Comments. As always, feel free to revert my copyediting. - Dank (push to talk)

Coordinator comment: I think we still need image and source reviews, which can be requested at the top of WT:FAC. Sarastro1 (talk) 22:36, 24 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I already made the request. Been waiting four days. GamerPro64 22:37, 24 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry, missed that, it's been a long week! Sarastro1 (talk) 23:02, 24 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, I didn't see an image review above or a request for one at WT:FAC, but checking the screenshots I think all have acceptable FURs so I think we can wrap this up. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 08:33, 16 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Source review

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  • No dead links or other problems of that sort.
  • I assume the plot section is like that of movie articles and is meant to be uncited. the rest of the text is well-referenced.
  • I changed a few dates to standardize them with the rest of your citations.
  • Everything else looks good to go. Good luck with the rest of the review. --Coemgenus (talk) 12:50, 7 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
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