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 00:50, 16 April 2008.

Guitar Hero (video game)[edit]

Self-Nomination - Article was in decent shape before (compared to Guitar Hero II and Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock, both already FAsGAs I helped with), its been polished up on references and other details to complete it to a comparable quality as the other games in the series and other FAs I've helped on. I've skipped the GA since I knew this article should eventually qualify as an FA, and with GA overloaded right now, have brought it straight to FAC. MASEM 17:22, 27 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose Needs to be expanded. And even though GA is is busy, perhaps because of its renown, it can speed up a bit faster. --Sunsetsunrise (talk) 19:59, 27 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Expanded how? I will point that Guitar Hero (series) covers the overall aspects of the series. --MASEM 20:07, 27 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I understand. So I suppose that will be most of it. --Sunsetsunrise (talk) 21:29, 28 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not going to be reviewing this article, but I've noticed that ref 28 leads to the website but not the actual article, so the ref is useless. I checked after being unsure of the grammatical correctness of a "cultural phenomena". Please check all sources. Ashnard _Talk ^Contribs 20:24, 27 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, that was a moved link. The rest all report as ok with the link checker tool (the NYTimes one has a weird redirect sequence but the URL gets you to the article, so no idea what's going on there). --MASEM 20:35, 27 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

• Leaning Support, but haven't done a close evaluation yet. I'm actually inclined to believe that this is a most appropriate size for an article about a single video game. On first glance I thought the article needed expansion, but the things I would have suggested for expansion were indeed covered in the Guitar Hero (series) article, and by covering these matters in a central article, it allows GH II, and III to be kept to reasonable lengths as well. --JayHenry (talk) 00:51, 28 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

FWIW, GH was a hit, but GH2 is really what generated the huge support for the series. If there's any need to bring in more from the GH(series) page or seealso to it, please say so. --MASEM 13:57, 28 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, some small niggles:

• In the lead, I wonder if "controller" is better than peripheral? Not sure if peripheral is common terminology outside of video games, whereas controller I think is acceptable to all?
• the meaning of "billion-dollar Guitar Hero franchise is unclear. Worth a billion? A billion in sales? A billion in profits? Three distinct possibilities.
• In Guitar Hero Three you can also activate star power with the select button on the guitar peripheral. Not in this one?
  • It's a detail in the series article that that section references.
• "affect the behavior of the Rock Meter in a positive manner." Sort of awkward. Just "increase the level on the Rock Meter?"
• In describing career mode it says "Players can choose their on-stage character, their guitar of choice, and the venue in which they wish to play; these elements have no effect on gameplay but affect the visuals during the performance." Is this accurate? I don't believe that you can pick the venue in career mode. Only in quickplay, right?
  • Technically also after you've cleared that arena in career you can go back and play an unlocked song in it, but that's too difficult to state easily.
• I'm not sure what this means "the software... allowed them to reauthor a song".
• Did IGN really say "the mini SG makes is what makes Guitar Hero, rather than what breaks it"? Makes twice?
  • Yes, yes they did (I just checked) I'm going edit this to remove the extra bits.

I support. Article is short but to the point, and I don't think articles on relatively simple video games need to be lengthy. --JayHenry (talk) 03:02, 10 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

• • All other points should be addressed. --MASEM 04:49, 10 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

• Support Yeah, I agree. Also, I worked on Guitar Hero 3 and also liked reading this article. Gary King (talk) 00:27, 29 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

• Support I think the article is just the right size- the only reason most vg articles are longer is due to the plot section, which this game is lacking. There are a couple of redlinks that need to be created or delinked, though. --PresN (talk) 04:59, 29 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Ooh, almost missed it- I don't like the way you started off the development section. Once sentence para/self-stating ref seems...unencyclopedic. There's got to be a better way to say that the details came from Ron Kay than to say... that the details came from an interview with Ron Kay. I'm not going to bother to strike my support, but fix it anyway. --PresN (talk) 05:01, 29 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Fixed. --MASEM 05:08, 29 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

• Support - agree with above. The article is (for the most part) good enough. --Shruti14 ^{t c s} 00:50, 12 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

• Comments

All other links checked out fine with the tool. Ealdgyth - Talk 19:43, 29 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Points addressed --MASEM 20:21, 29 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I"ll assume that the borked site will return, everything fixed! Ealdgyth - Talk 22:23, 29 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Just in case this sourcing is a problem, I've added a secondary source that lists the awards; the IAA site is still borked. --MASEM 21:50, 31 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

And the site is back to normal, no more borked link. --MASEM 22:28, 1 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Waiting on improvements. The prose is not uniformly professional, as required, and there are MOS breaches.

• MOS requires the final punctuation of quotations begun within WP sentences to be after the closing quotations marks: and started with "super-basic Pong-style graphics" for the game display; through this, they found that "the controller really was the kind of magic sauce for what we wanted to do." There are other examples, too.
• "The team did not have any initial idea ..."—The team had no idea initially?
• "Harmonix continually had to modify the track list as certain songs were cleared or removed based on licensing issues, balancing difficulty and popularity of the track list, which continued concurrent with the development of the game engine and up nearly to the shipping date." Cumbersome sentence, and you have to disambiguate "as" in reverse.
• Caption: "The controller that was packaged with the game, an approximately 3/4 scale reproduction of a Gibson SG."—It's just a nominal group and thus there should be no period at the end. See MOS. Tony (talk) 09:58, 2 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • I've gone through and tried to correct some additional longer and awkward sentences in addition to the above. I will note some quotes are full sentence quotes that, per MOS, should include the trailing period inside the quote, but I've gone through to move the period on partial quotes outside of the quote. --MASEM 13:46, 2 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment: Most FA videogame articles have the gameplay before development. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^(talk) 20:06, 6 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Is this necessarily a problem? The order feels better with dev before gameplay, but its not like it can be changed around without any work. --MASEM 20:59, 6 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comments

• I agree with Fuchs that gameplay should go before development. Personally, the order feels better the other way around...
• Newspaper publishers in references (NYTimes etc.) need to in italics (changing publisher= to work= in cite web does the trick here)
• "This article is about the 2005 video game. For the series, see Guitar Hero (series)." - I don't think this is necessary; unlikely to type "GH (VG)" in the search box when looking for the series (more likely to type "GH", which redirects to the series).
  • Likely from when there wasn't a disamb for "Guitar Hero", gone now.
• "The gameplay is very similar to the GuitarFreaks" - "the" is unnecessary
• "player uses the guitar controller to hit musical notes as they scroll towards the player on screen." - the second use of "the player" could be avoided...perhaps "player uses the guitar controller to hit musicl notes as they scroll towards the top of the screen." (I think that's what the GH (series) article, which I reviewed the other day, uses)
• Ref 1 confuses me...it doesn't seem to have an article title, and seems to have two authors (but not placed alongside each other...)...enlighten me please :)
  • The "Laurence King" is the publisher name, not an author (aka, that's a cite book template).
    • I feel enlightened. :) dihydrogen monoxide (H₂O) 06:43, 9 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• "The controller initially has pressure-sensitive fret buttons" - keep paste tense
• "to provide a little more depth to the game — some replay value" - em dashes shouldn't be spaced
  • This is a quote from a source - should we modify it to fit WP's MOS?
    • I don't know. You'll need to ask someone...leave it for now. dihydrogen monoxide (H₂O) 06:43, 9 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Also, that area quoted above talking about Star Power is a good example of why gameplay should come before development...
• "The game was to focus mostly on hard rock songs" - wlink hard rock, and also the title of the Ramones song, if there's an article on it
• A few redlinks - notable?
  • With the Drist addition below, that's three redlinks, but they are redlinks of businesses or groups. Mind you, it would be really simple to create a stub page for them, but when I did a previous FA that had a redlinked company name, it was passed ok.
    • Yeah, that's not a big deal. dihydrogen monoxide (H₂O) 06:43, 9 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• "Marcus Henderson of the band Drist provided many of the lead guitar tracks for the covers" - again, wlink Drist
• "In the case of Black Sabbath'" - need an s after the apostrophe
• See also link in Gameplay section should point to Guitar Hero (series)#Gameplay
• "Cowboys From Hell by Pantera" - missing quotation marks around song
  • While the song's in the game, to keep down the personal bias, the examples of the songs in the game is based on a list in that cited ref; however, people do manage to add their personal favorites here, and that's how that Pantera song got in there without quotes. It has been removed.
    • Not sure how a Pantera song would be a favourite, but anyways...! dihydrogen monoxide (H₂O) 06:43, 9 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• "Many reviews praised the game's learning curve and difficulty approach" - in what way? Is there a long or short learning curve, is the game easy or hard, etc.?
  • Added details here.
• "Since then, the game has sold nearly 1.5 million copies through September 2007" - typical question - any more updated figures? Check the list of best selling video games (I think that's the title...), that one is kept up to date really well and should have the most recent figures
  • Adds another 30k to the value.
• "Harmonix has since left the development of the series due to being acquired by MTV" - this needs a ref (the fact that they did it because of MTV)
  • Added refs for this.
• Do refs 42 and 43 have publication dates? (date=)
  • Year dates, but not exact; added anyway.

Rock on. dihydrogen monoxide (H₂O) 07:59, 8 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

• Couple points for you to double check. --MASEM 15:42, 8 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. dihydrogen monoxide (H₂O) 06:43, 9 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

• Notes; this article doesn't appear to have been reviewed for MoS issues in spite of two weeks at FAC. Please ask User:Epbr123 to run through, and ping when done. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:37, 9 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

• • Pinging here; Epbr123 has been asked, and he's gone through for MOS fixes. --MASEM 04:49, 10 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose Mostly prose issues; the article assumes far too much knowledge on the part of the reader, and is confusing to those unfamiliar with these types of games. Some examples:
  • Lead should be expanded to include a summary of its development.
  • "The gameplay is very similar..."
  • "the player uses the guitar controller to hit musical notes as they scroll towards the bottom of the screen." If you can, think about this from the perspective of the reader that is unfamiliar with the game. What image does "hit musical notes..." convey? Much better would be a more literal description of the gameplay (something like "hit buttons on the controller...").
  • "spanning five decades of rock, from the 1960s to current music" Avoid terms that will become dated, such as "current", which is imprecise anyway.
  • "more than one billion dollars in sales" -> US$1 billion?
  • "The gameplay is similar to other music and rhythm video games, in that the player must play scrolling notes to complete a song." Similar problem here. If a reader is unfamiliar with this genre, this description is not helpful. The reader is left wondering what "scrolling notes" are and how exactly to "play" them.
  • "The guitar peripheral works by pressing the fret buttons simultaneously with the strum bar, while on the standard controller one simply presses the corresponding button." Not a single link to explain any of the terminology. "the corresponding button"?
  • Spot the logical break in the first paragraph of Gameplay. It would work much better as two paragraphs.
  • "The player is awarded points for correctly hitting notes, chords, and sustains, and gains multiplier bonuses for consecutively playing notes correctly." Again, no links to help readers unfamiliar with some of the terminology. There's a less awkward way of phrasing "consecutively playing notes correctly".
  • "using the whammy bar during sustains" And the "whammy bar" is...? I see it's linked far down; it should be linked on first mention.
  • "pressing another button on a standard controller" "Another" implies there was some other button mentioned previously; this does not seem to be the case.
  • "play across the other game modes" I'm not sure "across" is the best preposition here.
  • "Players can choose their on-stage character and their guitar of choice." Spot the redundancy.
  • "Quick Play mode is a simpler method of playing songs, as it allows the player to select a track" "As" does not work as a connector here. Better to break this into two sentences. Is it really a "simpler method of playing songs"?
  • "the player is given a score and a rating based on five stars" Is this only for Quick Play mode?
  • "Two fret boards..." No description of "fret boards" earlier, so the less knowledgeable reader is left confused.
  • "The game supports toggling..." Why is this a one sentence paragraph?
  • I'm stopping here with my specific comments, but I've skimmed the rest of the article, which needs a copy-edit as well. BuddingJournalist 22:43, 11 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    • All above issues are fixed and I tried to identify similar ones later one, though once the terms are wikilinked, that sets them for the article, so... --MASEM 04:44, 12 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
      • "All above issues are fixed". Not exactly. And, like I indicated above, the entire article needs a copyedit for prose issues, so please do so. I should not be able to skim through and easily spot grammatical glitches, punctuation errors, awkward phrasing, etc. in an FA-quality article. Once the whole article has been copyedited, then feel free to bring me back here for a second look. BuddingJournalist 06:36, 12 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
        • I have asked someone else who hasn't had major involvement with the article to check the prose as I am not seeing the issues (not yet done yet, just to note here). --MASEM 00:42, 13 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose - LAck of sources. I added to ref tags both were simply deleted. Clearly it is not possible to reference these facts, so the editor simply removes them. --SSman07 (talk) 19:30, 12 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • The points being asked for sources are either sourced in the same sentence or in the following sentence; it's the same book reference that's used about 8 other times during the development section. --MASEM 21:01, 12 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    • Sandy: The ((fact)) tags have since been removed. dihydrogen monoxide (H₂O) 00:11, 13 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
      • Noted: it's not necessary to cite the same source twice in one sentence. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:17, 13 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
        • Agreed. I have also noted that on SSman07's talk page. Lightsup55 ( T | C ) 05:25, 13 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

• Support: Article is comprehensive, well-written, and adequately sourced. I see nothing lacking and no outstanding issues that prevent this from achieving FA status. Good job guys. -- Noj r (talk) 03:36, 15 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Support - Could only find problems with some of the prose. I've given it a copyedit to fix problems I've spotted - feel free to revert if you're not happy with the changes.--Gazimoff (talk) 21:43, 15 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

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