RubilacEx

Your edits to Live A Live

I noticed that you accomplished an epic rewrite to Live A Live, with promises to do further work in the future. From what I could tell, you work in most of the article was a great improvement, especially for an understanding point of view (important to me, since I've never played this game before).

My only complaint is in the plot summary. The wise ones at the Wikiproject have a rule of thumb for plot summaries that establishes a (negotiable) limit of about 700 words. Prior to your rewrite, it was about 1000 words; kinda long, but they might go with it. After your rewrite, it was 1700 words, more than twice what the rule allows. Removing the gameplay information from the plot summary, it would be 1300 words; better, but still about 500 more than they like. I'll go through it and give some exact tips for cutting those extra words. Larrythefunkyferret (talk) 07:33, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, I appreciate the encouragement and advice. Live A Live is sort of a special case, it seems, as it has seven loosely-connected stories rather than one cohesive plot, making it difficult to summarize. I feel the gameplay information for each chapter should be kept, as it is important, so perhaps it should be moved to its own section rather than deleted. I thought it worked better for the information to be grouped by chapter rather than heading, but I bow to your superior knowledge on the subject.

Looking back on it, I did write far too much for the Medieval chapter, so I'll work on trimming that section down in particular. One thing the article is missing, that I am sadly unable to provide as I have no knowledge of the subject, is a section on its reception. I have heard that the game is quite popular in Japan, as evidenced by its monstrous Wikipedia page in that language. I've even heard that there was a play written about the Medieval chapter. --RubilacEx (talk) 08:05, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Indeed, that whole episodic nature does complicate it; what it does is make lots of little stories that each have to be summarized seperately. This is the best I could think of in the way of tips.

1. The introductory paragraph for this summary is much improved; I would only add a single-sentence note about the last two chapters opening up after the first seven are finished, or remove the whole paragraph altogether.
2. When you move the gameplay data to the Gameplay section, it may fit best if it's all placed in a single paragraph, talking about the differences in the chapters.
3. I gotta applaude you for chapters 1, 4, and 5; they are more summarized than they were before (ignoring the aforementioned gameplay data), and I believe they may read better, too. The last four chapters, on the other hand, are all longer, King of Demons being the biggest offender. Mechanical Heart is not significantly longer, so that doesn't bother me, and the Final Chapter is better for it's extention (I'll make a minor edit to it, just to remove some possible gameguide material you accidently put in). Flow and King of Demons, however, I think would best be fixed by reverting them (and only them) to the way they were before, increasing their size if needed. I'm willing to discuss.

As an aside, you may want to add a Development section to hold interesting information about the game's development. You may be able to use the Reception section from the Japanese article to help develop a Reception section here. Find an editor that can read Japanese to help you with that.

As for the big day on June 9th, good luck. Larrythefunkyferret (talk) 08:37, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

I've made the proposed changes and cut it down to about 1000 words. We're back where we started, but the words are better now, at least. The episodic nature of the game may excuse its slightly excessive length. King of Demons is still the longest, but by a much smaller margin.

I'll see what I can do about Development and Reception. What are your thoughts on adding a Characters section? --RubilacEx (talk) 09:17, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Oh, also: I don't know what you mean by June 9th. What happens then? I labeled the talk section for June 09 as in 2009.--RubilacEx (talk) 09:21, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Character sections can be fun, but they are always tricky little buggars. Looking at Featured articles, there seem to be two popular ways to handle them. The first mathod, usually used for articles on obscure or unpopular games, is to have a section for the plot, with subsections for the characters and the story. The characters subsection is always in prose format, never in list format, and it consists of two or three paragraphs talking about the main (possibly the minor, as well) characters of the game and their involvement in the story. The second way, usually used for popular games like the Legend of Zelda, is to create a seperate article to discuss the characters, leaving the main game article to focus on the game. I tend to prefer the former, since lists of characters tend to languish in Start class, while game articles with Character sections tend to have a greater chance of advancing to B or GA class. Which way we go, though, I'll leave to you.

June 2009, not June 9th, you say? Is my face red! I was envisioning you yanking out your hair trying to get the rewrite done by the 9th so you could post it on that date. Larrythefunkyferret (talk) 05:49, 3 June 2009 (UTC)