Forum:We need a policy on videogames

Index → Panopticon → We need a policy on videogames

Spoilers are strongly policed here.
If this thread's title doesn't specify it's spoilery, don't bring any up.

With the arrival of Doctor Who: The Adventure Games comes a problem that's been bubbling around unresolved for a very long time on the wiki. Are games actually canon? There is precedence for not allowing games as valid resources on this wiki. Per our canon policy, FASA roleplaying games are flatly disallowed, and I do think there are many problems with using videogames as valid resouces. Frankly, Attack of the Graske is tricky enough, and, to my mind, only exists as canon inasmuch as it gives the tiniest sliver of information about the Graske. But I do not believe the events and storyline described in that game actually exist in the DWU. The Doctor did not stop by your house one day and invite you on a test to see whether you could be a companion. Players of these games — that is to say we — are quite clearly not a part of the DWU.

The other problem with videogames is that, depending on how they're constructed, multiple outcomes can be possible. Thus comes the ugly and thorny issue of which outcome is canonical. Going back to Graske, we can't say whether the outcome where you lose and "don't have what it takes to be a companion" is the one we should adopt as "canon", or whether it's the "happier" ending.

If you'll note at the canon policy page, the policy on games is still said to be "in flux". We need to really hammer that out before we start incorporating material from videogames into articles. My recommendation would be to hold off citing from these things until we have a clearer notion. What would be a nightmare, I think, is if people started playing these new adventure games, while furiously jotting down notes and filling up the articles on Amy Pond, the Daleks, and the Eleventh Doctor — only to find out months from now that in fact the game had a branching architecture and it didn't actually include the same information every time it was played.

To sum up, we need:

1. To clearly enumerate which games are canon and which aren't (cause clearly they aren't all canon)
2. To decide whether a 3rd person perspective aids a game's case for canon statue, versus a 1st person perspective
3. To decide how a game with a branching narrative shall be treated (does the fact that it can have multiple outcomes immediately render it outside canon, since its results aren't static?)
4. To better explain at canon policy why the FASA games were "outlawed"
5. To decide whether it might not be reasonable to impose a ban for a length of time on posting information from certain videogames (notably the most current ones), in order to give people time to actually play them so that their structure and outcomes can be fully understood. Indeed, with the Adventure Games, it may turn out to be important to play all of them to completely understand the narrative contained within.

There may be other points that arise, but these seem to be good starting points. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 21:43, June 9, 2010 (UTC)

First, people have played City of the Daleks all the way through. Within less than a day, there was a complete walkthrough available online, and I posted a link to it in the forums here where someone was asking for help.

Also, Wegner and Moffat have told us the games are canon, and part of series 5.

But I still agree with the main point. Even though City is a pretty railroaded adventure game, there's still certainly variations within the details. When I played City, the story went something like this: "The Doctor began sneaking around the Dalek, then stumbled into a run and was exterminated. Time was magically reset by a few seconds, and this time he was able to sneak around the Dalek. Then he ran back and forth for a few seconds in hopes that it would convince Amy to walk around a wall that she was on the wrong side of, finally convincing her. Then..." Did that really happen in the Doctor Who universe, as Piers Wegner said?

And then there's my friend's playthrough, which could be summarized, "Amy wiggled her butt in a variety of different ways for a while. Then she and the Doctor stayed in devastated 1963 London for the rest of their lives." I find it hard to consider _that_ canon.

In fact, even within a perfect playthrough, is it canonical that the Doctor stopped on his way to the TARDIS to pick up and look at a card showing a picture of Captain Adelaide Brooke as a "friend of the Doctor" from the series Doctor Who?

And it's not guaranteed that all 4 games will be as railroaded, or future games that the BBC decides to release. Especially given that, as CzechOut pointed out, Graske had two endings.

What's canonical has to be (at best) that some particular playthrough "actually happened", while all the other possibilities are just that--possibilities that could have happened but didn't. But, except in dead-simple cases, who decides what the "right" playthrough is? Especially since the BBC (presumably) isn't going to? --Falcotron 22:28, June 9, 2010 (UTC)