Forum:Infobox images for Doctor Who: The Adventure Games

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I notice that for Template:Infobox Story/doc/video game, it mentions that the page image should not be a screenshot, but a cover or title card. The Adventure Games obviously don't have covers, due to being free downloads, but I'm not a hundred percent sure they have anything qualifying for title cards either, or if they do, it's only for Doctor Who: The Adventure Games as a whole, not for individual titles like City of the Daleks or The Gunpowder Plot. -- Tybort (talk page) 12:52, March 15, 2012 (UTC)

Well, obviously that language can't encompass every scenario. And indeed, it might need to tweak that language to include "in-game title screens", in order to cover more of the Flash-based games. Even so, there are a few, like Ood Escape and our old anomalous pal, Attack of the Graske, that don't have any sort of promotional image. There's just a pic of the character next to the link, and then you immediately start playing, without any sort of title screen. In this sort of case, you've got no choice but to take an in-game screenshot.

But this is atypical. And it certainly doesn't apply to The Adventure Games. There are the equivalents of "covers" for TAG. Most of the games in fact have two promotional images, conveniently labelled "poster" or "generic" by the BBC Online webmaster. There are obvious non-narrative shots available, which are used to market the game at bbc.co.uk — or indeed outside the UK, where the games are of course not free.

The point of the language at the documentation page is really to get people to think of these as merchandise, rather than stories. And like any other merchandise, we go with pictures of the cover. We don't identify the novel of Human Nature of The Well-Mannered War by their e-book illustrations. We go with the cover. We don't identify DWM 174 by a panel of the comic inside. We go with the cover.

So to the extent possible, treat videogames like the products they are, and use promotional, non-narrative images for the infobox pic.

(The other reason you want to do this is because most DW video game imagery, prior to TAG, has featured primitive graphics that just won't look like much at 250px widths. An image of a side-scrolling game at 250px is dismally unattractive.)
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍ 15:26: Sat 17 Mar 2012