The Guide For The Guide

so what do we need?

• Tone, Language, and Style Standardization
• Standard american english, standard capitalization and punctuation. Not essay!
• Vocabulary
• Article criteria (high-priority!)
• Anatomy of an Article (high-priority!)
• Description
• Why: cause fear/stress, challenge, introduce character
• Variations
• Examples
What makes an example important?
• Comparisons
• Footer (procedural?)
Link to games with this mechanic
• Incorporating media (videos and screenshots)

Tone, Language, and Style Standardization

Tone

The tone of our wiki is encyclopedic. This means a few things.

• Our goal with all written text is to be informative. Information may not all be comprehensive, but it should be true, and it should not be phrased as an argument or opinion piece.
• We are strictly descriptive about the things we talk about. We are not prescribing or making a judgement on specific mechanics, and we’re not gushing about how cool our favorite games are, we’re describing things that are observed.
• We are serious. Inane nonsense is to be kept off-site (that’s what the discord is for!), as is snark. We may write about silly things when appropriate, but the writing itself should be measured at all times.
• Our tone is reasonably formal. This has implications on formal elements – we use standard formal English grammar and punctuation conventions, and we avoid contractions – but it’s more a vibe than anything else.

Localization

This wiki is written in formal American English. As such, American spellings are used (color, not colour), and dates are in the order MM/DD/YY.

Links

One of the goals of this wiki is to be interconnected, which means pages should link to other pages. Any article should be accessible from any other article via direct linking, and we should avoid “orphaned” articles. Article links should be specified with brackets, as in [[Once-Per-Jump Rule]]. Note that an article should never link to itself. If a specific mechanic is referenced more than once in the body of an article, it only needs to be linked the first time (although you should continue to capitalize, for clarity). Articles that are linked in the body of an article can still be linked in under “See Also”.

Vocabulary Reference Guide (say this, not that!)

On our wiki…

• The “player” is the human being controlling and interacting with the game. The “player character” is the character or avatar that is controlled directly by the player in the game world. A “character” may or may not be the player character, although “player character” may be shortened as “character” in some contexts.
• When referring to a mechanic with a page, use the name of the mechanic established on that page, or another form of the same word (e.g., Jump can also be referred to as Jumps or Jumping).
• When referring to a game, use the name used in official materials for the game’s English-language release. Indicate the release year of the game in the format Game (XXXX), i.e. Celeste (2018). Games are referred to in italics and title case. In cases where release year is ambiguous, use what Wikipedia uses, using (Upcoming) for games that aren’t out yet (i.e. Ultrakill (Upcoming)) and (Canceled) for games that will never come out. Use a game’s official title, even when there is another more commonly used title (i.e. Resident Evil 4 (2023), not Resident Evil 4 Remake (2023)).
• The actions a player character can take during standard gameplay are “moves”, and a player character’s moves constitute a “move set”.

Article Criteria

Our wiki is intended to be a repository of gameplay mechanics and features that a developer would want to include in their game. Primarily this focuses on ways that the player can interact with the world, ways that world elements can interact with one another, and features of the world itself. When deciding whether a topic should be included in the wiki, consider the following criteria:

• Is the topic a narrative trope? If so, it’s probably not a mechanic. Consider TV Tropes instead.
• Is the topic an artistic or musical style? If so, it’s probably not a mechanic.
• How many games or series does the feature appear in? If the number is 1 or 2, consider asking for others to help find additional examples, widening the scope to include other similar features, or not creating the article at all.
• Is the feature one that a developer would deliberately program into their game? If not, it’s probably an emergent behavior or bug, which are not the subject of this wiki.

Ultimately, if you still aren’t sure whether a page qualifies, ask the group.
While the wiki does include pages for games, they are not the focus. At the time of writing, game pages are not being added to the wiki. As the wiki develops, this will likely change to allow games mentioned in articles or all games.

Anatomy of a Mechanic Article

Mechanic articles take the following format.

Title Heading
Examples heading See Also heading

Description

This first paragraph is meant to give a clear definition of what you’re talking about. The first sentence should be the clear definition, typically in the format of “[Article Subject] is a XX defined by YY”. Subsequent sentences can make the definition more clear by mentioning other commonly used names or specifying important parts of the initial definition. This is also where the purpose of a mechanic is generally specified, whether that be from the player’s perspective (how does the player use this?) or the designer’s (what mood does this create?).

Variations

The second paragraph is meant to discuss general trends in the appearance of the mechanic – anything important enough that it bears mentioning to understand how the mechanic works, but not ubiquitous enough to be part of its defining criteria. If the mechanic’s appearances can be divided into different “schools” or types, this is where you would put that.

Examples

• The example is in a genre or camera perspective significantly different from other items on the list (i.e. if a mechanic appears in top-down games, sidescrollers, and 3d games, it makes sense to have an example from all of those)
• The example exhibits a notable tendency or variant of the mechanic, especially things you deigned to discuss in the Variations section, not seen in other items on the list (i.e. if you said the mechanic often costs stamina, you should have an example of a game where it costs stamina)
• The example is subversive or unique in its application, purpose, or relationship with other mechanics in the game, or appears in an environment one would not expect it to

If you can’t enthusiastically answer “yes” to at least one of these criteria, that’s your sign that an example is not helpful for a given article. Tag search can be used to see every single game on our site tagged with a specific mechanic.

Note that some games may feature multiple instances of a single mechanic. For example, games like Ultrakill have a great many Advanced Movement Techniques. You only need to talk about one instance per entry, and are encouraged to stick to such.

See Also

Incorporating Media