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Metacritic style

Two questions. First of all, do we have a policy that we should not highlight Metacritic scores if they are drawn from 4 reviews or less? At that point, it's not really an aggregation, so a number isn't likely to be meaningful. It might be fine to have the top-level summary ("Generally favorable reviews"), but don't say "75/100 based on 4 reviews" or the like. I'd be in favor of adding such a line to the guideline explicitly - definitely not if less than 5, and ideally not if less than 10, too.

Second, there's a line that is in the spec that I don't think matches current practice:

Reduce minutiae inappropriate for a general audience. For example, avoid scores and statistics in prose, which are hard for the reader to parse and often impart little qualitative information. {{Video game reviews}} exists for such a purpose.

Review aggregator Metacritic gave the PC version a score of 76 out of 100 based on 45 reviews from critics, while the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions received scores of 77 and 79, respectively. ... The first review was published by Official Xbox Magazine, which gave the game a 9.5 out of 10. IGN gave it 8.5.

Okay, listing every reviewer's score out individually is not good, i.e. the second half of the bad example. But when there are sufficient Metacritic reviews for the aggregation to be meaningful, I don't see the problem with the first half, "a score of X out of 100 based on Y reviews"? That's just accurate, and important information. Tons of video game articles include this information in prose, correctly IMO. This isn't unique to us; The_Dark_Knight#Reception is a featured article promoted in 2023 over in film, and it also includes the full metascore. To be clear, I'm not saying that the actual number should be mandated, but I don't understand why it's currently discouraged. I'd be in favor of shortening this guidance to just "don't list every single score in prose." SnowFire (talk) 03:02, 2 October 2023 (UTC)

I believe the "avoid scores and statistics in prose" is there because we still use review boxes that contain the scores, so it'd be somewhat redundant to include them in prose and {{Video game reviews}} in an article at the same time JOEBRO⁶⁴ 03:12, 2 October 2023 (UTC)

Specific to First of all, do we have a policy that we should not highlight Metacritic scores if they are drawn from 4 reviews or less?, do we need a guideline? I thought Metacritic didn't assign any quantitative score when less than four. Has it changed? Four is when Metacritic generates a score. This was in contrast to GameRankings, which showed a score with even 1 review. -- ferret (talk) 12:37, 2 October 2023 (UTC)

Correct, MC themselves doesn't aggregate a number if the number of reviews are that low. Sergecross73 msg me 12:46, 2 October 2023 (UTC)

I thought the same, but I thought that MC might have changed it after seeing Metascores based off just 4 reviews. Guess the cutoff was one lower than I thought. That said, I'd argue that MC should have set the cutoff higher... I definitely think that just 4 reviews isn't enough to qualify as an "aggregation" and we'd be better off just citing individual reviews at that point, skipping MC.

I'm not sold on the redundancy argument. When there is a substantive metascore, then I think it's relevant enough to discuss the score directly in prose. If the table also confirms it, that's fine, it's useful redundancy for a key fact then. It's not uncommon for a piece of information to be shared between, say, image captions and prose if sufficiently relevant enough. SnowFire (talk) 15:41, 2 October 2023 (UTC)

And how to deal with the OpenCritic's "Critics Recommend"? There is no qualitative summary for the OC recommendation rate. For example in Signalis#Reception, the "Strong" rating is based on its rank of the average score, but not the "88%". --Lopullinen 14:44, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

You just say "According to OpenCritic, x% of critics recommend the game." -- ferret (talk) 17:49, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

Quotation marks for specific maps?

Should the title of articles about video game maps (e.g. Inferno (Counter-Strike)) be in quotation marks? MOS:VG says: "Individual video game levels, chapters, or episodes of a standalone video game should use standard double quotes". To me this clearly includes video game maps in addition to levels, but this doesn't seem to be a consensus view.

As for other similar articles, 2Fort, Tilted Towers, and Nuketown (Call of Duty) include quotes in the intro only (and sometimes in the relevant navbox). Blood Gulch does not include quotes for the main term, but does add them for other names.

(This comment is largely copied from one I made on the Inferno article.)

Brad (talk) 19:46, 1 November 2023 (UTC)

At least in a quick browse of the references used in 2Fort and Blood Gulch, it's pretty inconsistent, but generally most mentions omit the quotes entirely. Basically, treating the map as a place rather than a media title. I think the only real advice here is to make it consistent either way and follow what the sources say. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^talk 19:52, 1 November 2023 (UTC)

I had removed the quotes from Inferno (Counter-Strike) as I've found while editing CSGO/CS2 articles that multiplayer map names (at least for those games) are almost never put in quotes. E.g., Dust II, Inferno (Counter-Strike) and Nuketown (Call of Duty) are the most-sourced articles in Category:Multiplayer maps and none of the sources for those three use quotes. IMO there's a difference between multiplayer maps and the types of "levels, chapters, or episodes" referenced in the MOS, which are more analogous to chapters in a book or other story-based artform. Alyo (chat·edits) 16:09, 2 November 2023 (UTC)

I fear that looking to cited sources for formatting advice is a bad idea. Wikipedia's use of italics, for instance, would never happen if this were the case -- I don't think I've ever seen a newspaper use italics for titles; they use quotes. Brad (talk) 20:05, 2 November 2023 (UTC)

Release dates in infobox

Release dates are provided for primarily English-speaking regions, especially if the game is produced in those regions, but when there are multiple releases from different regions and the first release is actually in a non-English country, should the collapsible list's |title parameter be that first non-English release or not? I'm referring to this recent edit, Japanese release is a couple of days before the release in English-speaking regions. ภץאคгöร 17:25, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

Yes, it should the first release date anywhere in the world, English-region or not. Masem (t) 17:49, 3 December 2023 (UTC)