Forum:We need a policy on videogames

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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)

The thing is, the plot of the story is canon, not how the player plays. For example, the cutscenes are completely canon. You don't count incomplete versions of the gameplay so the whole they stayed forever in 1963 doesn't count. The other things that count as canon are the things which every player has to do to complete it, so sneaking around daleks on sentry will count, as will crashing the taxi, etc etc. I think rather than having a policy, we'll have to talk it through each game. But right now, the type of game it is is not one where you can make your own changes to the plot etc, it is a linear game (of sorts). --The Thirteenth Doctor 00:29, June 10, 2010 (UTC)

To me the games are like all Doctor Who stories. Although only few games have been told where exactly they take place. Dalek Attack takes place between Toy Soldiers and Head Games. Destiny of the Doctors, bit confusing although the Fourth Doctor's placement is when he's just with K9 Mark II. Mines of Terror takes place sometime when the Sixth Doctor after Trial of a Time Lord. --Vitas 02:02, June 10, 2010 (UTC)

While Doctor Who: The Adventure Games has brought this discussion to the fore, it certainly is not the sole reason for the discussion. This facet of our wikia's policy has remained on the backburner for years. I mean, Vitas says above that he considers Dalek Attack and Destiny of the Doctors canon. Perhaps most interesting, he claims Dalek is set between Head Games and Toy Soldiers. I personally can't make any sense of such a rationale, since Dalek Attack lets you be either Two, Four or Seven, and yet offers player two only Ace and the Brig as companions. I mean, fair enough the Brig, but Ace? I'm fairly sure the game gives no narrative rationale for how Ace could possibly be with Two and Four. How, exactly, could the game be set between the Seventh Doctor novels Head Games and Toy Soldiers if you're playing with the Second Doctor and the Brig? Or with the Fourth Doctor and Ace? And, seriously, the cut scenes in Destiny are ridiculous, camp, and fourth-wall-breaking. They turn the thing into a first person adventure, more or less like Graske. In order to believe it a part of the canon, we ourselves would have to be a part of the DWU.

On some of the points raised about Doctor Who: The Adventure Games themselves, though, I would rush in to refute this notion that the BBC "have said they're canon". No they haven't. No exec at the BBC ever uses the word "canon" in their official capacity —unless we count Moffat's pre-Eleventh Hour musings that canon and Doctor Who can't be used in the same sentence. There has never been a statement to the effect of, "these Adventure Games are canon". Yes, they're set during Series 5, and various people have tried to sell these as "additional episodes of the series". But that's all it is: salesmanship. Whether, at the end of this series of games (and not just the current City of Daleks, but the whole range), we can sit back and say, "Well, yes, obviously that integrates into this series quite well" is unknown at this point.

Don't misunderstand me. I'm not saying that these Adventure Games are out of bounds. I'm saying that I don't know if they are, and that, based on the implausibility of most videogame play in the past, we need to sort out our canon policy in a more detailed manner than currently exists. Ask yourself this. In the article on Ace, are you prepared to write this sentence:

Once, Ace, or possibly the Brigadier, assisted either the Second Doctor, the Fourth Doctor or the Seventh Doctor with a Dalek attack on the planet Skaro. (Template:VG)

If you're not, and I rather suspect no one reasonably is, then why? Why are we willing to accept The Adventure Games, but not other videogames? What are we willing to accept from City of Daleks? With, say, Doctor Who and the Mines of Terror, are we willing to accept the narrative events in the manual, or is it just what's actually in the game play itself? For example, can the assertion,

Heatonite has a highly complex structure that, at least partially, contains uranium, zirconium and flourine (Template:VG)

—a fact that's only in the manual —be accepted into the body of this wiki? If we do accept material from videogame manuals, then what's our rationale for having definitively rejected material for manuals accompanying the FASA roleplaying game? At what point is the narrative "good enough" that we can assert in a character's article, "<x event> definitely happened to <y character> (Template:VG)." CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 12:40, June 10, 2010 (UTC)

I'd say the point where we can say "<x event> definitely happened to <y character> (Template:VG)." is when the player doesn't have a choice. When they have a choice like the one with Ace above, on the character's page should be something along the lines of "In the Game Dalek Attack, the player had the opportunity to play as Ace and assist either the Second Doctor, the Fourth Doctor or the Seventh Doctor with a Dalek attack on the planet Skaro. (Template:VG)" Then after it we can say "However, due to the nature of the game, it is debated as to whether these events are canon or not." Like I said above, I think we have to take each game as it comes, and not have a strict policy. --The Thirteenth Doctor 13:18, June 10, 2010 (UTC)

Well if anyone HAS read Head Games, the Doctor puts to exact detail what happened in Dalek Attack and that it was still in the Land of Fiction. So we assume the Fourth and Second Doctors were conjured up in the Land of Fiction and is definate that Davros and the Daleks in there also part of the land of fiction. But put it this way, for example in the Star Wars video games, the games are all considered into consideration of being canon even with all the choices that are made. --Vitas 13:29, June 10, 2010 (UTC)

Destiny of the Doctors would have worked far better as a CDROM based encyclopaedia than a game (fighting an Auton with a fire extinguisher...)

I think all video games should sit in the 'Secondary Sources' section of the canon policy (much like the Target novelisations), they can be used as sources but they can't be the only source. Perhaps even put Attack of the Graske in there also? --Tangerineduel 14:10, June 10, 2010 (UTC)

Star Wars can't be used as a model for us, because LucasFilm has a very specific canon policy/hierarchy. They have a team on staff, led by a guy named Leland Chee, that actually works out these details, and they ordain that a particular outcome is canonical, whereas others are not. They also determine that some things are a part of "game mechanics", and therefore not canonical. See this article for more details. Also, the possession of a canon hierarchy means that things "lower" on the pole can be "overruled" by things higher up. The BBC's canon policy affords us nothing like this. Therefore, we, as a wiki, must come up with our own individual plan. As for your Head Games theory, well, that's just it: it's your Head Games theory. We don't assume anything. You do. And that's not having a go at you specifically. That's the generalized "you" of the second person. It's just that there's not a real clear explanation of all of Dalek Attack's possible permutations and so we have to assume things. As someone who has read it, I think Head Games is specifically only talking about the version of the game in which Seven and, more arguably, Ace are used. Head Games is silent upon the game if it were Two and the Brig, for instance. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 14:35, June 10, 2010 (UTC)

Okay, here are my specific questions for City of the Daleks.

1. Skaro still exists as a place that can be quite normally visited by both TARDISes and Daleks? Really? Surely that contravenes everything we've been told about the Time War. So Gallifrey coming back in The End of Time was a Big Damn Deal, but Skaro's been there all along? That makes a nonsense out of every televised Dalek story ever. Why on Earth would desperate Dalek survivors worry about Earth when they could go back to Skaro and re-arm themselves. How can we possibly integrate this information into our articles about Last Great Time War, Daleks, and others? You can't explain the plot of this story without completely ripping the fabric of the Time War narrative that has been fundamental to the series since 2005.
2. The Eye of Time? C'mon, everything the Doctor says about it indicates that it is actually the Eye of Harmony. Do we really want to draw such a fundamental part of Time Lord society from a videogame?
3. How do we treat the info cards that you occasionally find in the game? Are they facts in the DWU? All that info about Hansom cabs and acid rain — does it exist in the DWU?
4. Loved the Varga plants, but the game strongly implies they don't need soil in which to grow. Are we really going to put at Varga plants that they're ambulatory plants that don't require soil? CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 14:59, June 10, 2010 (UTC)

Well with Varga Plants, could simply go to the conclusion of evolution. And really, we should put all the video games in the same kind of placement we put the books, audios and other expanded universe media. I mean with any video game, the same conclusion is the objective to win which you would get the ending of the story. Also how the Doctor can travel to a place like Skaro, it's kinda explained in War of the Daleks but other than that, whibbly whobbly, timey whimey. --Vitas 08:33, June 11, 2010 (UTC)

I'm going to repeat what I said above. Treat the City of the Daleks as a secondary source as we do the novelisations. --Tangerineduel 13:58, June 11, 2010 (UTC)

Yes like the novels, books, comics, annuals etc. And just to say Attack of the Graske is an interactive episode, not a video like City of the Daleks. Big difference. --Vitas 08:47, June 13, 2010 (UTC)

No, the novels, etc. are primary sources for this wiki. It's only novelisations that are secondary sources. And, unlike, say, Star Wars, there are no "levels of canon" within the primary sources; there's just primary and secondary. So, if something in an EDA contradicts something on TV, you have to weasel around it and say there are conflicting accounts or the like; you can't just say the EDA is wrong. But if an EDA contradicts a Target, or a video game, the Target, or the game, is wrong. See Tardis:Canon policy for details. (I can't say this is the same decision I would have made, but the reality is that we needed a decision, and I'm happy he's made one.)

Also, the distinction between "interactive episode" and "video game" doesn't seem particularly important for a discussion of canon. Graske has multiple endings and involves the viewer/player as a character, while City has a single ending and has the viewer/player controlling the Doctor, so Graske is actually much, much harder to fit into continuity, not easier. --Falcotron 11:28, June 13, 2010 (UTC)