Talk:Development of L.A. Noire/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: Czar (talk · contribs) 05:28, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

I'll be offline and on the road over the next week. I'll review this then. czar ♔ 05:28, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

GA review – see WP:WIAGA for criteria

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Please respond below my signature so as to leave the original review uninterrupted.

1. Is it reasonably well written?

   A. Prose is "clear and concise", without copyvios, or spelling and grammar errors:

   needs concision esp vis-à-vis proseline

   B. MoS compliance for lead, layout, words to watch, fiction, and lists:

   lede needs expansion

2. Is it factually accurate and verifiable?

   A. Has an appropriate reference section:

   B. Citation to reliable sources where necessary:

   see minref comment below about citing direct quotes

   C. No original research:

3. Is it broad in its coverage?

   A. Major aspects:

   B. Focused:

4. Is it neutral?

   Fair representation without bias:

   weight

5. Is it stable?

   No edit wars, etc:

6. Does it contain images to illustrate the topic?

   A. Images are tagged with their copyright status, and valid fair use rationales are provided for non-free content:

   B. Images are provided if possible and are relevant to the topic, and have suitable captions:

   some need refs

7. Overall:

   Pass or Fail:

   On hold for a week. Posting this from the road, so I'll be freer to respond over next weekend

• The article abruptly starts on July 21 with 45kB of text—where did it come from, a single draft?

 Done Have added Split from and Split to templates to the talk pages of both articles to point out attribution. - X201 (talk) 14:42, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

• "Throughout its seven-year development, which included a change of publisher and platforms, L.A. Noire was delayed numerous times." is awkward, I'd recast
• Parallelism: "The development team conducted field research in Los Angeles throughout the game's development, as well as compiling multiple aerial photographs taken during the time. " They "conducted" and then they "compiling"? Or they "conducted" and then "compiled". For the future
• compiled aerial photos for what? clarify in lede
• Not sure the last sentence of the lede is necessary
• Lede doesn't reflect article. Is every section of the article represented? There is very little about the development team in the lede for an article essentially about them
• "In October 2003, Brendan McNamara, director of The Getaway (2002)," lots of commas—perhaps recast something like "In X, Team Soho's director of 2002 video game The Getaway BMN left the London company to form ..."
• Quotes such as with the next-gen Sony platform need direct citations per WP:MINREF
• I'd recommend changing much of the article out of WP:PROSELINE
• That pullquote is huge, consider turning it into prose
• The first section is difficult to read. It would be better if the dates weren't repeated and if the point is that the game was delayed multiple times, the prose just say that it was expected on X, was delayed until Y, was delayed again due to Z (rather than a simple listing of every news snippet about the delay in order)
• "showcased" used twice in close proximity
• link jargon, e.g., (game) engine, desks
• "A total of 16 cases were " should be explained that these are missions
• MotionScan is overlinked. It's also somewhat overmentioned. Almost seems like it would make more sense to put the production first and put the business and release second, so you don't need to allude to MS throughout the first half of the article before explaining it (since it plays such a big role)
• utilising → using (almost always a better choice)
• Bao quote could be rephrased to avoid the [sic]
• "When Staton was cast ... agreed with the decision" clumsy, recast
• also the previous sentence should have the period inside the quotes, per the source
• Might want to mention McGrady's role when he comes up again since everyone's going to have to look back to figure out who he is
• [...] → ... per ellipsis in MoS
• "that Phelps' solves" no apostrophe
• that final note may fit best within the actual prose
• refs look okay
• captions are great but need refs if advancing new facts
• photo of the dev staff?
• images need to be reduced in size (L x W < 100k) and their FURs need to be updated with actual rationales for why the fair use is necessary
• so what about the staff, their roles and meetings, reasons behind the delays, how the MS technology has been used since, the production of the DLC, bugs and patches, how their proprietary tools were developed, etc.? Nothing?
• is there undue weight on the staff complains with that giant block quote?

• Love this game—one of my all time favorites—and this article did it justice. Great read. Thanks!

czar ♔ 23:34, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the review, czar! I’ve gone through and fixed most of your concerns. However, I have some remaining queries:

• Would you actually like me to put the "Production" section first, and the "Business" section second? I’ll definitely do it if you think it’s right, but I just want to make sure beforehand.
• What kind of "photo of the dev staff" would you like? According to Google, there’s only two free images of Brendan McNamara (1 & 2) and I’m not sure how they would look in the article. Alternatively (or additionally), I could add the image of The Real Tuesday Weld member Stephen Coates to the "Music production" section. What would you like me to do?
• Would you be able to explain more as to what you’d like me to do with the existing images in the article? Exactly what size should they be reduced to? Also, do you have an example of an image with a good FUR that I could base my edits off?
• I'm not sure what I could write about the staff, their role and meetings. Also, an immediate search doesn't return any information on the production of the DLC, or the bugs and patches. However, there's some information on the real cases that inspired the DLC; I can add some of this information if you'd like?

I feel like I'm asking you to do too much work just by answering these questions, but I'd really like this article to reach the highest standard possible. If you have any other concerns, including some above that I may have missed, please let me know. Thanks! -- Rhain1999 ^{(talk to me)} 04:45, 30 August 2014 (UTC)

Glad you appreciated the review. I think Production before Business makes the most sense for this article in the context of presenting the technologies used before explaining how the IP was passed around. Photo of the dev staff would likely come from emailing the company and putting it through OTRS. The McNamara photos on Flickr are not cc-by-sa or freer, so they would need to be released as such. Anyway, this isn't a top priority, but if you care about your article quality, having images is an obvious suggestion. These decisions are above the scope of the GAN, so I'll leave them for your discretion. I believe I tagged the images that were too large, but let me know if I haven't. A bot comes around to resize them when tagged. The FUR needs to describe why having the image is absolutely necessary, explain what it provides by being an image that could not come from prose, how its use is minimal and of little harm to the copyright holder. I don't have one place to point to, but I recommend just briefly expanding the rationales for now. Since it's a development article, I thought I would read more about individual staff members, e.g., how the level design lead Joe Blow ran into problems with X and resolved to do Y, how lead sound designer Q was inspired by Z, the time where the team met together and resolved to throw out B for C. Would be worth briefly covering these sorts of things if the coverage/interviews exist, for the sake of broadness. I'd say the same for the DLC and patch production. Commendable work thus far czar ♔ 05:00, 30 August 2014 (UTC)

I agree that moving "Production" before "Business" makes sense, so I've just made that change. Would it be possible for me to upload one of those Flickr images of McNamara (with a suitable FUR) or must I find a free alternative? I've just re-written the FURs of most of the images in the article; let me know if I need to do anything else with them. Also, I agree that reading about the individual staff members and their contribution to the game would be interesting, but a Google search doesn't seem to return any immediate results. I'll keep looking, but I seriously doubt that I'll be able to find any information to add. -- Rhain1999 ^{(talk to me)} 12:01, 30 August 2014 (UTC)

Fair use is a last resort, and if I recall correctly, we don't use non-free images of living people (since it is theoretically possible to take a free use photo). Let me look into it. The rest looks good. Nice work czar ♔ 12:43, 30 August 2014 (UTC)

Yeah, I thought that was the case. Thank you. -- Rhain1999 ^{(talk to me)} 12:55, 30 August 2014 (UTC)

I asked a flickr user for their McNamara photo and I'll add it if it comes through. No need to hold up the nom until then. The major points appear to have been addressed save for perhaps the resizing of the fair use images. They could use {{non-free reduce}} but I don't think it's a big deal since they're relatively low-res (ideally they'd be under 100k, which the tag does automatically). For future milestones, it would be good to have more dev interviews included, particularly with the other leads on the project. Any other unaddressed points are minor and possibly outside the scope of the GA criteria, so here ya go: czar ♔ 23:47, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

Thank you! I'll keep looking for any other developer interviews, and hopefully I'll come across something. Thanks for the review! -- Rhain1999 ^{(talk to me)} 07:28, 2 September 2014 (UTC)