Game developers are notoriously bad at archiving. In fact, Kotaku wrote a whole piece about how some games are in danger of disappearing forever, partly because of just how bad game developers are at archiving. Nintendo loses code. Floppy disks decay and crumble. Long-lost prototypes lie in dusty drawers of filing cabinets sent to landfill. There are some things we will never be able to get back, barring random games getting unearthed in some attic 50 years from now.
But this lack of preservation and documentation doesn't just affect consumers and historians. It often comes back to bite the devs in their disorganised bums, too. Tim Schafer, the designer behind Psychonauts, Brütal Legend, Broken Age, and Grim Fandango, tweeted yesterday that he wanted to "thank fan sites and fan wikis everywhere" for both their support and their unwitting contribution to the development of games.
"I wonder if you know how often game developers pull from your sites," Schafer said. "When you're making a sequel, and you want to make sure something matches the original, it's faster to get the information from a fan site than from my musty, disorganized, and possibly-on-a-zip-drive archive. Or, god forbid, my brain."
Games, especially huge ones that span a whole series with more lore than a single human could ever feasibly read in one lifetime, are impossible for any one developer to keep track of. Imagine you need to know Sonic's height for some piece of key art that you need to make for the Switch eShop page - do you scroll through hundreds of pages of (often poorly-organised) documentation, or do you open up the Sonic wiki, where you'll find out that Sonic is exactly 100cm tall, with a head to height ratio of 1:2.5? We know which one we're more likely to do.
It raises an important question, though: should these fan sites get credit in games? Most, if not all of these wikis are run and edited by volunteers, so game developers are profiting off their work and knowledge without acknowledgement. It's a tricky thing to get right, since no one person is responsible for the work of a collaborative wiki, and it would be even harder to figure out how to pay them.
Do you think wiki writers and editors deserve more dues? Have you ever used a wiki to remember something about a game you made? Let us know in the comments.
[source twitter.com]
Comments 14
(Edit) My mind has been changed. Credit should be given. Credit comes at no expense, just as the fansites' information comes at no expense.
One time I tried to add intel on Disney's Recess and som sot mod banned me from Wikipedia. I read later that their mods are infamous.
@PoorGeno Wikipedia have hard-working mods because of the years of stupidity shown by users. It was affecting the credibility of the whole site to the point that schools weren’t allowing the use of it as a source. Now it’s a hugely respectable site with a whole lot of well-researched and maintained pages. The mods might be a bit overkill but their standards have definitely improved for the better.
I'm the lead editor over at WiKirby (it's a wiki...about Kirby!), and...it's definitely nice for our work to be recognized. It's volunteer work though, and we know that; we don't expect anything in return, we just do it for our fellow fans, and having a comprehensive wiki as the product of hundreds of editors over 11 years is a reward in itself.
Makes me feel better about myself, when I have to look up something that I should know but haven't used in 15 years.
My personal opinion would be that if they do reference the work to complete the project, they should acknowledge that in the credits somewhere, at least.
@nessisonett You know, you're not wrong. They tend to be more accurate now. I go there most for band discographies and to be asked for money that I don't care to spare.
@YoshiFlutterJump this comment made me realise that I had completely forgotten to actually LINK to the Sonic wiki that I was referencing! Anyway, that's fixed now.
I do generally do a better job of linking to a wiki when I use them! I can't take credit for knowing these things off the top of my head!
Hey Tim Schafer when are we going to get ports of Day of the Tentacle, Full Throttle, Psychonauts, Brütal Legend, Costume Quest 1 & 2 for Nintendo Switch?
I met him once (was working for a videogame magazine in germany when I was a youngling) and he is really a teddybear. Still have my signed Grim Fandango copy. Which is my favorite game of all time and probably always will be.
I’d say put the fansite in the credits. Although I wouldn’t have told the public that. Now someone is gonna start putting fannon in there hoping it gets included.
@YoshiFlutterJump
As the one and only dev of Picross Wiki - which wanted to keep it mostly "silent" till it becomes more "completed" and comes out of the WIP stage - I was shaking when someone in the Picross subreddit linked to the wiki.
P.S.: Shhh. You heard that first. One of my final goals is to join the wiki to NIWA — someday.
@YoshiFlutterJump just commenting to say that WiKirby is a fantastic name! I love it when you can get a bad pun into fan wiki names.
I browse a few Nintendo wikis a lot since I enjoy reading up on the info they have, so I'll contribute edits if there's a typo, something poorly worded, something inaccurate, et cetera. It ain't much, but I like doing it
As someone who actually edits on a Fandom wiki on Logos (believe it or not), I just wanted to say thanks Tim Schafer. Now give us Psychon--
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