Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/BioShock 2: Minerva's Den/archive1

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 Ealdgyth via FACBot (talk) 22 May 2020 [1].

BioShock 2: Minerva's Den

Nominator(s): Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^talk 15:17, 10 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Produced by a small team almost as an afterthought, Minerva's Den has been called one of the greatest video game expansions of all time, and served as a stepping stone to one of the most popular games in the "walking simulator" subgenre. Article recently passed GA and went through a GOCE edit, submitting for y'all's appraisal. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^talk 15:17, 10 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Comments from JM

I didn't play Minerva's Den, but did play Bioshock 2. Probably my least favourite of the three - though Infinite was one of the best games I ever played.

" the city's supercomputer, the Thinker ... download a copy of the Thinker" Is The Thinker a computer or software? You can't download a supercomputer. (Can you?)
"ideas he originated in his hiring interview" Is originated the best word, here?
Some wikilinks for "free will" and "identity" would be helpful.
"Both Porter and Wahl wanted to use the Thinker for their own ends" Why past tense? Is this no longer true by the time of the events of the game?
"suggested the possibility technology from Rapture" I'd put a that there, but I know some people think I overuse the word.
"Gaynor reasoned Rapture advanced using genetic technology, but the residents of Rapture explored other technological dead ends. Rapture citizens built areas devoted to robotics and automation in Minerva's Den" Again, I'd add a that, but, more importantly, I think these sentences could be better linked. The sentence following this passage, meanwhile, is on a completely different topic. The paragraph feels jumpy.
"they also adjusted the order" I assume they is the designers, but this isn't clear.
"In contrast with previous DLC releases for the game, Minerva's Den is the only expansion to offer new single-player experiences." Redundancy. I recommend the sentence is completely rewritten.
"The game was updated to support Steam achievements, Big Picture mode and controllers. Minerva's Den was free for players who owned BioShock 2 before the patch." What are Steam achievements, Big Picture mode, and controllers? What patch?
Ok, call it a pet peeve, but I really dislike the way you personify publications. Why attribute a view to The Daily Telegraph when you could attribute it to the particular reviewer? (Another example: "Reviews from GameSpot and Eurogamer". Why reviews when it would be much more natural to write reviewers?)
"considered the expansion offers" Odd construction - is considered the right word, here?
"GameSpot's Kevin VanOrd wrote the setup for the expansion is familiar to BioShock players—voices on the radio telling the player where to go—the appeal lies with its "personal nature" and Porter's character." Is this missing a word or two? while the setup?
"perception of the meaning of make games" ??

Hope that's useful. Please double check my edits. (I'm taking part in the WikiCup.) Josh Milburn (talk) 21:15, 10 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Hey J. Thanks for the review. If the article has not convinced you, I'd recommend playing the game, even if you were down on BioShock 2 generally :P

I believe I've addressed most of the above concerns.

I left Porter and Wahl wanted to use the Thinker as past tense, as Porter's goals have substantially changed and it matches the tense used for the description of Porter's past life. So I think it's the right choice.
Regarding the personifying publication thing: this has been an issue on many an FAC, and I get conflicting advice constantly; some people like stripping out critic names entirely and just using publications, other people prefer the opposite. In my experience the former is quite common in film criticism, especially. I don't necessarily think either is wrong, in there are tradeoffs (it's easier for people to keep track of publications than names, especially in more dense reception sections, while I generally agree with you that people write reviews for publications, and not the personifications therein.) It's not something I've found useful feedback on in style guides. In this case, I tried to only mention names when they were being outright quoted. I guess I'll leave it open for any other reviewers to chime in on this case? Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^talk 17:09, 11 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

These look like good fixes. On the past tense, maybe you could say something like "prior to the events of the game" or "after the Thinker was first created" or "while initially working alongside each other" or something to contextualise when this was the case. On the personification... I realise that there's some disagreement about this, and it's not the hill I want to die on, so I'm not going to make any demands. Happy to see what other reviewers think. Josh Milburn (talk) 20:31, 11 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I've had a good sift through Google Books and Google Scholar. To my surprise, I've only really come across one source worth citing. Page 115 of 'Videogames, Identity and Digital Subjectivity has this this nugget: "The Bioshock 2 expansion Minerva's Den, meanwhile, proves that games are capable of nuanced and thoughtful engagements with the history of AI and the questions it raises. An allohistorical narrative incorporating references to information theory, cybernets an the Turing test, Minerva's Den eschews lazy human/machine dichotomies to offer a gratifyingly complex account of how technology, gender, race, education and class factor into notions of 'the human'." (The context is simply that there are examples of AIs in scifi video games worthy of scholarly analysis, even though that's not the focus of the chapter.) Worth citing, I think, just so we have a nod to the scholarly literature, but only if you agree with me. Josh Milburn (talk) 20:54, 11 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- I've added a line using the source you mentioned; I've also swapped around the sentence ordering and added some wording to the above bit about tenses (it flowed a bit more logically regardless to mention Porter's background and then Porter and Wahl rather than digressing.) How's it look now? Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^talk 17:08, 12 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Just a note to say that I haven't forgotten about this - I'm waiting to see what other reviewers think for now. If no other reviews are forthcoming, I'm happy to revisit. Josh Milburn (talk) 16:28, 1 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

"The player assumes the role of Subject Sigma, an armored human known as a Big Daddy" I'm imagining I've never played Bioshock and trying to understand this sentence; how about "The player assumes the role of Subject Sigma, an armored human or "Big Daddy","?
" to download a schematic to the city's supercomputer" Ambiguous; could mean "to download a schematic into the computer" or "to download a schematic of the computer".
"As an Easter egg, the names of the members of the development team were given to slugs scattered around the game's levels." If "the game" is BioShock 2, what is the significance of this? If it's Minerva's Den, why mention this here?
"had to reuse as many assets as possible" Could this be explained?
"to become smarter" more intelligent, perhaps?
"level designer J.P. LeBreton and the lead level designer of BioShock" I'm struggling with this a little
"In comparison to the long development and narrative of the main game, Gaynor enjoyed the opportunity to tell a shorter story in which players understood the characters." This doesn't quite work for me. How about something like "Contrasting the long development and narrative of the main game with those of Minerva's Den, Gaynor said that he enjoyed the opportunity to tell a shorter story in which players understood the characters."
"the gameplay was repetitive" Presumably you're meaning to say repetitive after the main game had been played? I wonder if this could be rephrased a little. "To prevent players who had already played BioShock 2 from feeling that the gameplay of Minerva's Den was repetitive", perhaps?
"BioShock 2 and all of its DLC were released" I'd say was, but I might be wrong.
Apologies if I've already said this, but I personally find attributing views to publications (e.g., "Rock, Paper, Shotgun wrote") a little sloppy. Particular reviewers say things rather than particular publications - indeed, publications will sometimes carry multiple conflicting reviews of the same work. Other than that, though, I think that's a great reception section.

I'd be happy to support (subject to a satisfactory source review) once the issues above are looked into. I think this is a great article. Josh Milburn (talk) 15:55, 3 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Hey User:J Milburn I believe I've addressed all the above minus the reception bit which we talked about earlier. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^talk 17:23, 5 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Support. Josh Milburn (talk) 18:05, 5 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Image review

File:Minerva's_Den,_Title_Screen.png: FUR needs to be completed. Nikkimaria (talk) 01:32, 15 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- Well that was a dumb oversight... adjusted. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^talk 13:30, 15 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Comments from theJoebro64

Looks like a nice article, but it also looks like it needs another review. I'll get in some comments throughout the week. JOE BRO 64 18:00, 28 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

OK so I've done a read-through and not much stands out to me. Here are my comments:

Any reason the Switch isn't listed in the infobox yet? I know the Switch port hasn't been released yet, but that doesn't mean we should exclude it.
"Minerva's Den is a shooter game with gameplay that is experienced from a first-person perspective." I think this is overly wordy and clunky and could be simplified to just "Minerva's Den is a first-person shooter."
"The player uses similar weapons and plasmids (genetic modifications that grant superpowers) though the player obtains them in a different order." I'd revise to "The player uses similar weapons and plasmids (genetic modifications that grant superpowers), but obtains them in a different order."
"... and for Apple Macintosh in 2015." It was OS X at the time, not Macintosh.
"... the rest of BioShock 2 were re-released in a bundle..." "Rerelease" does not need a hyphen.
"Minerva's Den received generally favorable reviews and a Metacritic score of 82/100 for the Xbox 360 version based on 12 reviews." I don't see why only the Xbox version's score is referenced in prose, and it's unnecessary to state it anyway because there's a review box containing it. I'd revise to "Minerva's Den received "generally favorable reviews", according to review aggregator Metacritic."
Kotaku and Engadget should be italicized per Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Titles#Major works: "Online magazines, newspapers, and news sites with original content should generally be italicized"
"The game's twist ending was positively received..." A generalized statement like this needs direct refs, because it could be challenged.

Once these are addressed I'll support. JOE BRO 64 17:29, 3 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Hey Joe, thanks for the comments. I've addressed most of the above. The only thing I'll push back on is the first point. Yeah, it seems a bit clunky, but just saying "BioShock 2 is a first-person shooter" doesn't actually tell you much if you don't know what video games are or aren't familiar with FPS. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^talk 19:44, 3 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Support. Looks great. JOE BRO 64 17:46, 15 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Comments from Mike Christie

The lead has "travel through Minerva's Den, the technological hub of the underwater city of Rapture" and "an unseen part of the underwater city of Rapture, the technological hub Minerva's Den" in the course of just four sentences. If you combine the first two paragraphs it might be possible to rephrase to avoid the repetition.
Can I ask why Kotaku and Paste are called out in the lead? Is it because they are prominent review vehicles? If you're just citing them as examples I'm not sure we need them in the lead.
concurrent with the events of BioShock 2's story mode: do we need "mode"? Does Bioshock 2 contain events in other modes that are not concurrent with Minerva's Den?
leaves a letter in which he apologizes for trying to bring her back using the Thinker, and saying he has decided to let her go: "apologizes" and "saying" are parallel so should match in tense. I'd make it "says he has" but you could make it "a letter, apologizing for" instead if you prefer.
Though many companies would treat DLC as a "cash grab", the lower expectations also enabled more creative risks to be taken. I'm not really seeing the connection between the two halves of this sentence. I'm guessing that the intention is something like: DLCs are often treated as opportunities to get money with minimum effort so the development teams are not given much resources, but in this case the limited resources and consequent low expectations allowed the team to take more creative risks". If that's right, I don't see why this team is different from any other DLC team -- is this a general statement about all DLC development, or am I missing something specific here?
The final gameplay sequence, in which the player walks through Porter's living space, was important to give players time to reflect on the character's journey. I think this sentiment needs to be attributed to Gaynor, or whoever it comes from. Perhaps "...important to Gaynor, to give...".
Not relevant to the FAC, but I was interested to see that Minerva's Den was free to players who already owned Bioshock 2. Surely that means that at least in this case the cash grab effect is somewhat lessened? Presumably the marketing plan is that the DLC attracts new buyers of Bioshock 2, so it's not just a cheap enhancement for existing players; it must draw in new buyers?
Kotaku found the gameplay repetitive, especially reusing "tedious" elements from the base game while Engadget said players had to perform certain gameplay sequences repeatedly. Suggest "Kotaku and Engadget both found aspects of the gameplay repetitive, such as the the reuse of "tedious" elements from the base game, and the need to perform certain gameplay sequences repeatedly."
Shouldn't "GameSpot" be italicized?
Reviews from GameSpot and Eurogamer noted...: avoid "note" as a verb for reporting opinions; see the last bullet in section 3 of WP:RECEPTION for the reasoning.
After moving to Irrational Games and his dissatisfaction with the sprawling development of BioShock Infinite: I don't follow this -- two unrelated thoughts? He moved because of his dissatisfaction?

This is in good shape overall; just a few points above. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 10:59, 30 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Hey Mike, thanks so much for the review. Responses to bullets below.

Adjusted the wording and collapsed to two paragraphs of the lead.
Kotaku and Paste are called out just to specifically cite exactly which publications actually called it one of the best expansions of all time (since I feel like that needed a bit more specificity.)
I have "story mode" because BioShock 2 has different settings for all its components; the story mode takes place in 1968, the multiplayer in 1959, and other DLC takes place shortly before the story mode of the base game. Just trying to clarify (without going into a lot of detail.)
Adjusted verb tense.
I tried to rework the "cash grab" statement a bit more; Gaynor's talking about how many people see DLC as low-effort cash grabs, but that he found it a bigger creative opportunity.
Adjusted statement about the final gameplay area to make it clear it's Gaynor's opinion on its importance.
As to why they released Minerva's Den for free for PC players, I assume it was just a value-add thing since they'd probably gotten most of their sales already.
Reworded repetitive statement for reception, italicized Gamespot, and removed the "noted" use.
Reworked the sentence about Gaynor leaving to make it hopefully clearer that he left to join Irrational Games, and his sour experience there led him to leave.

--Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^talk 19:41, 30 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Support. The fixes all look good. Josh, I see you were waiting for more reviews before revisiting; there are a couple of supports now. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 22:00, 30 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the ping - I'll aim to revisit this weekend. Josh Milburn (talk) 07:19, 1 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Coord note

I think we need a source review for reliability and formatting? Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 01:49, 8 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

FWIW, images are properly licenced and tagged and seem to be in the right places. OKish ALT text. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 11:43, 12 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Source review by Red Phoenix ^talk

Declaring my intention to do the source review needed, per the request at Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates/Image and source check requests. Prepare for incoming review, with a few spot-checks. Red Phoenix ^talk 20:37, 12 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

We need a bit of consistency in linking and listing websites and publishers in the references. For instance, Eurogamer is not linked in reference 13 but is linked in reference 34. Ref 13 also does not list a publisher, but 34 does (Gamer Network). This isn't the sole occurrence; there are numerous instances of this, looking at the ref list. Less often an issue but still present is that some publishers are linked, such as CBS Interactive, but others, such as Ziff Davis, are not. I would expect to see reference consistency in an FA-level article.
Any reason Joystiq (source 26) and Destructoid (source 32) are non-italicized like they're listed as publishers instead of websites? It's inconsistent with the rest of the references.
A few sources are also missing archives, and I don't think FAs should be prone to link rot. If this was archived by bot, I've had issues before where I've had to go onto web.archive.org and force an archive.
Aside from issues with reference formatting, as an editor very familiar with WP:VG/S, I'm satisfied that all of the references are reliable. I checked on the ones I was not familiar with and am satisfied that reliable sources are being used.
Below, I will list my spot-checks:
- Source 4 is to 1Up.com, a former website owned by Ziff Davis/IGN Entertainment. Information cited is faithful to the source with no close paraphrasing.
- Source 17 is Gamasutra, which includes an interview with the DLC developers. I checked all five occurrences of this source, and all five are cited faithfully without close paraphrasing.
- Source 18 is Rock Paper Shotgun, operated by Gamer Network and listed at VG/S. It is faithfully and reliably cited for its one statement in conjunction with the source 17 cite in the same statement.
- Source 24 is to Wired. Only really cited for the date, but faithfully and reliably cited, no close paraphrasing.
- Source 34 is Eurogamer, a Gamer Network site listed at VG/S. Faithfully and reliably cited, no close paraphrasing.
- Source 44 is also to Rock Paper Shotgun, and is faithfully cited. But, usually with reviews it's my understanding we state the review and opinion is of that contributor (if we have the contributor's name), not the publication itself, so instead of Rock, Paper, Shotgun wrote Minerva's Den... we should have "Alex Meer of Rock, Paper, Shotgun wrote Minerva's Den.

So, here's the long and short of it: Spot-checks look good and well cited. No concerns with ref reliability, but reference formatting needs some work for consistency to be FA-level. I think a few fixes ought to have it in shape. If anyone is looking to reciprocate, I'm looking for a source review at the FAC for Sega here. Thank you. Red Phoenix ^talk 21:17, 12 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Red Phoenix: Thanks for the check. I believe I've addressed all the above formatting and archives; I've removed links for the publishers and standardized website formatting; websites/work are now uniformly linked, and I've added archives for the remaining cites. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^talk 21:03, 14 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@David Fuchs: Looks very nice; this was a fantastic article to read and review. I can see my concerns have been addressed. Support on sources. Red Phoenix ^talk 03:17, 15 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

SG note

Reviewing from the bottom of the FAC page (wow, two months at FAC :/) All of the basics I usually check for are good, but ... I am concerned that Bioshock 2 is going to need some WP:NBSP work so we don't see a hanging 2. I would do them myself, but many of them are at the beginning of sentences and could be overkill, so will leave that to David. Otherwise, good. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:23, 13 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Hey Sandy, I think I've addressed the spaces throughout. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^talk 22:56, 16 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Support, looks like all is in order here, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:08, 17 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Closing note: This candidate has been promoted, but there may be a delay in bot processing of the close. Please see WP:FAC/ar, and leave the {{featured article candidates}} template in place on the talk page until the bot goes through.

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.