Talk:Unreleased Half-Life games

Page size fork

@Popcornfud: Respectfully, I don't believe the original parent article or this content are nearly large enough to warrant a SIZEFORK. -- ferret (talk) 13:10, 19 July 2020 (UTC)

Ferret, really? I think I require more persuasion than most editors for forks, and I think the Episode Three section alone was becoming ungainly. Additionally, having a separate article allows us to properly account for the various projects that seem to have come under the names Episode 3 or Half-Life 3, the edges of which are not always clearly defined. But I'm happy to see what the consensus is. Popcornfud (talk) 13:20, 19 July 2020 (UTC)

@Popcornfud: We're talking 15kb of wikitext out of a 60kb wikitext article. It's not a lot in the grand scheme. Readable prose text wise, roughly 7.5KB out of ~26KB. WP:SIZERULE states anything below 40KB of readable text should not be split for size reasons alone. To be clear, I'm not saying this isn't a possible topic, but that the size argument on it's own doesn't work in my view. -- ferret (talk) 13:36, 19 July 2020 (UTC)

Ferret, well, I don't think this is only about size.

Before the split, in the "Games" section, we had 1188 words covering the released games - though imo many of those could have been trimmed, especially as those games have their own articles - and 905 words covering the unreleased games - though imo that was ripe for expansion thanks to detail in recent coverage. We therefore had almost as much coverage of the unreleased games as the released ones, even though the unreleased ones are obviously far less important to the subject (ie the Half-Life series as a whole).

So I think the split is justified per WP:SPINOFF:

There are two situations where spinoff subarticles become necessary, and, when done properly, they create the opportunity to go into much more detail than otherwise permissible:

1. Articles where the expanding volume of an individual section creates an undue weight problem

2. Large summary style overview meta-articles which are composed of many summary sections.

Anyway, feel free to set up a RfC or even nom for deletion if you still disagree. Popcornfud (talk) 13:54, 19 July 2020 (UTC)

No, I don't think either option is required at this stage, I just wanted to address the SIZEFORK concern. I'm sure our project is active enough that if there's other concerns they'll get voiced in due time. -- ferret (talk) 14:07, 19 July 2020 (UTC)

• I think an article on this topic is more than warranted. I've done some looking and it's received an insane amount of coverage (not to mention that Episode Three is arguably the most famous case of vaporware in video game history). JOEBRO64 15:25, 19 July 2020 (UTC)
• I'll add my voice that I think this was unnecessary to split, SIZE being part of it. The other factor is comprehensiveness, not so much for the series page but for this content. Taking this content out of the context of the history of HL loses comprehensiveness of why these cancelled games were a big deal. --Masem (t) 13:41, 21 July 2020 (UTC)
• I agree with Ferret and Masem, splitting this from the Half-Life article wasn't necessary. This feels like something that would fit in the series article and not a topic that necessarily needs its own page. Namcokid47 ^(Contribs) 15:18, 21 July 2020 (UTC)
• Question for those who want to merge back: is there is no WP:UNDUE problem? The sheer volume of coverage for the unreleased games compared to released games is what caused me to split it in the first place, per WP:SPINOFF. I haven't seen anyone respond do that yet... and WP:SPINOFF also refers to "Large summary style overview meta-articles which are composed of many summary sections" which seems to be exactly our situation here. (As an aside, this is a novel experience for me - I can't think of a situation where I've argued to split rather than merge before.) Popcornfud (talk) 15:28, 21 July 2020 (UTC)

  I don't think there's UNDUE here, with the current size and level of content available. Only one section has any substantial size, and if some of that content was worked into Half-Life (series)#Development, it would reduce the size of the entry about the cancelled game itself. Glancing at straight prose, yes, it can appear as though the unreleased games have substantial prose compared to released games.... but there's an argument to make that the released games need improvements to their prose as well. For example, the series article currently lacks any reception prose, which is typically found in such articles either as part of the subsections with a quick sentence or two, or a dedicated section. -- ferret (talk) 15:40, 21 July 2020 (UTC)

  Ferret, I do think the prose in the series article needs a lot of work generally, though I think that would include a lot of trimming too. Popcornfud (talk) 15:53, 21 July 2020 (UTC)

• I’m actually with Popcornfud on this one, I actually think it’s a valid split, and I, like him, have a high threshold for splits too. Sources endlessly cover both the series, and the unreleased games, so I would think expansion would be possible on both. Maybe re-address in a bit if that’s not true and progress isn’t likely? Sergecross73 msg me 12:32, 22 July 2020 (UTC)
• I think the split was warranted, given the sheer wealth of information on cancelled Half-Life games that is out there, some of which has yet to be added. I just significantly expanded the article with information on Hostile Takeover and the EA Montreal project, and I intend to add information about Half-Life's cancelled Dreamcast port soon. The Ravenholm section could also use expanding, there's a lot more information that was revealed in the documentary and other sources than what's currently in that section. -JFWillson (talk) 04:50, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

  Thanks for expanding the article. I had never heard of Hostile Takeover.

  However, I wonder if we need all the info on the Dreamcast port. That strikes me as the kind of thing that can be sufficiently covered in the Half-Life article, since it's just a port of that game rather than its own thing. Oh no... now I'm going round in circles. Popcornfud (talk) 13:19, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

  Hmm. There are also some citations we can't use on Wikipedia, such as forum posts. Popcornfud (talk) 17:34, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

  Oh, sorry about that. Feel free to remove any information that was cited from sources that are not compatible with Wikipedia and I'll try to find alternate sources that are so that I can add it back. -JFWillson (talk) 18:15, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

  JFWillson, I'm afraid I've removed the entire Hostile Takeover section as pretty much all of it was cited to fan sites and forum discussions. It would be good to have information in the article so please re-add it if you can find better sources. WP:RS and WP:VG/RL might be useful. Popcornfud (talk) 17:34, 28 July 2020 (UTC)

  Understandable. I've rewritten the Hostile Takeover section using only sources that Wikipedia considers unquestionably reliable - with one exception. See below... -JFWillson (talk) 03:52, 11 August 2020 (UTC)

Verifiability of Hostile Takeover section

While several people with knowledge of the project, such as Marc Laidlaw and Benson Russell, have since gone on record to confirm its existence, almost all of the information has been collected on fan sites, wikis, and forums, which are not accepted as valid sources on Wikipedia. Writing the Hostile Takeover section has been challenging due to how little the subject has been reported on in what Wikipedia considers reliable sources, but I think I've managed to present sufficient proof of its existence using only three of them: Gamespot, the United States Patent and Trademark Office, and The Adrenaline Vault (AVault). However, although Wikipedia agrees that the first two have always been reliable sources, there has been enough debate about the third one to the point where it is now considered an unreliable source - at least partially. WP:VG/RL lists material published by The Adrenaline Vault from 1996-1998 as reliable despite the fact that the publication is listed as an unreliable source on WP:VG/RS. Upon further investigation into AVault's reliability (which was discussed here, here, and most recently here), I discovered that AVault was once considered a reliable source of gaming news, owed to the fact that many of its staff worked in the games industry, until internal conflict in the mid-2000s tore the site apart and caused its staff to be replaced by volunteers who tended to report less reliable news, tarnishing its reputation.

Despite the fact that I believe AVault's report on Hostile Takeover to be legitimate due to the fact that it was published back when they were still considered reliable, I would have used an even more reliable source with this information to avoid potential conflicts with Wikipedia policy, but in this case, there is no more reliable source. The information presented by AVault in their two reports is key to understanding Hostile Takeover's nature and development in this article; without it we only have the the report from Gamespot that a then-unnamed expansion was being developed by 2015, and the trademark listing of a game named "Hostile Takeover" from Valve appearing in the USPTO database almost two years later. Also, the fact that the name "Hostile Takeover" was reported by AVault long before Valve filed the trademark listing is another piece of evidence that points towards their reports being legitimate.

Please consider these points before removing the citations from AVault from the article. Perhaps it would be worth petitioning to amend their current reliability status on Wikipedia... -JFWillson (talk) 03:52, 11 August 2020 (UTC)

JFWillson, thanks for doing the legwork to find better sources. I'll leave it up to editors if anyone has any problems with Adrenaline Vault. You could start a conversation about that source on WP:VG/RS if you wanted another evaluation. Popcornfud (talk) 15:56, 11 August 2020 (UTC)

Title

It's possible this article should be titled Canceled Half-Life games, as this seems to be what other similar pages are called. I don't have a preference, but just bringing it up in case someone does. Popcornfud (talk) 16:01, 19 July 2020 (UTC)