Talk:Maze (1973 video game)/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: Indrian (talk · contribs) 00:27, 23 June 2022 (UTC)

Another early game article by PresN often means another GA review by Indrian. I will take care of this within the next couple of days. Indrian (talk) 00:27, 23 June 2022 (UTC)

This article is truly outstanding; I made a few grammatical edits and only have a few really minor points for you to look at. If the review seems a little nitpicky at times, it's only because everything is already so good.

Lead

• "and could be played on two computers networked together with a wire" - This is technically correct, but something about saying it this way just sounds odd to me. It might be my problem. "Networked together with a wire" just has me picturing a piece of string dangling between two machines, even though I know that's not what the article is saying. It might be fine, but if you can think of a less awkward wording, I am all for it.
• "This version of the game was improved by other programmers at MIT and went on to be playable over the nascent ARPANET between players at different universities." - This sentence is also a little awkward. "Went on to be playable" is wordy, and "playable [...] between players is a bit repetitious.
• "It was very popular at the universities" - which universities? I know we don't want to list them in the lead, nor should we, but by using the definite article "the" its implying reference to specific institutions, which have not actually been identified.
• "It was very popular at the universities, with the laboratory managers at MIT both playing the game and trying to restrict it due to the large amount of time students were spending on it, and there are reports that the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) at one point banned the game from the ARPANET due to its popularity." - This sentence is really long. The wording is fine, but maybe break it up.
• "Maze was later developed into several other versions" - Passive voice.
• "This version" - I know this refers to the Xerox version, but since the previous sentence mentions two versions, this is vague.
• "prior confusion over the development timeline of the game has led to it being considered, along with Spasim, an early 1974 space flight simulation game by Jim Bowery, to be one of the "joint ancestors" of the genre." - This info is important in the body, but it may be just a bit in the weeds for the lead.
• "first avatars" - Link avatar?

Gameplay

• "along with an indicator of which direction they are looking" - What is the nature of this indicator?
• "the target has a short time to move away before they can be shot again" - Do we know this time increment? No big deal if we do not.

Maze

• "The game was inconsistently named both Maze and Maze War: while Thompson and Colley, writing 30 years later, refer to it as Maze, Palmer refers to it as Maze War. Both names would continue to be used for the next version of the game although the source code titles itself "Maze"." - I already made a couple of light edits to this section for flow, but there is also a chronology problem to address. The sentence about "the next version of the game" comes after a sentence describing how Thompson and Colley referred to it "writing 30 years later." This order implies that the next version in question arrived over 30 years after the original.
• "he made them adjust to move slower when their score reached a limit." - Awkward
• "The game was popular around the lab as well as with MIT students from other labs and outside the building, as any student or professor could set up an account on the system, and they would come by just to play Maze" - A little long and awkwardly worded. Rework.
• "The Maze code was developed by other people as well as Thompson and Lebling" - Passive voice.

The Maze Game and Mazewar

• "rewrote Maze for the Xerox Alto computer, which could communicate with each other directly using the nascent ethernet networking protocol" - Some subject verb agreement issues here since we start be referring to the Xerox Alto computer, singular, but then transition to talking about multiple Alto computers networking together.
• "Wahrman had played the game at MIT in 1976 while they both worked at RAND Corporation" - "They" is lacking an antecedent.

And that's it. I will put the review  On hold while these minor issues are addressed. Indrian (talk) 16:27, 23 June 2022 (UTC)

@Indrian: All done now; I thought I didn't have the grace time before shots work again but it's listed in the source code. Thanks for reviewing the article and dealing with my run-on sentences! --PresN 21:55, 26 June 2022 (UTC)

Thanks. I should be able to wrap this up at the end of the week. Indrian (talk) 15:59, 29 June 2022 (UTC)

Took me a little longer to get back to this than I anticipated, but after making a few more small changes for flow, I am ready to promote. This is another fine early video game article, well done! Indrian (talk) 13:39, 5 July 2022 (UTC)