Wikidata:Property proposal/Maximum number of playable characters

maximum number of playable characters

Originally proposed at Wikidata:Property proposal/Creative work

Not done

Description	Number of total playable characters in a video game.
Represents	player character (Q1062345)
Data type	Quantity
Domain	video game (Q7889)
Allowed values	numbers
Example 1	Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 (Q2073725) → 51
Example 2	Injustice 2 (Q24717189) → 38
Example 3	Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga (Q55214) → 160
Example 4	Mortal Kombat: Armageddon (Q1299648) → 63
Example 5	X-Men: Mutant Academy 2 (Q4021195) → 19
See also	maximum number of players (P1873)

Motivation

(Add your motivation for this property here.) Cwf97 (talk) 15:07, 24 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion

Notified participants of WikiProject Video games--Trade (talk) 20:22, 1 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Support David (talk) 16:28, 24 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Comment Is there some reason you picked String datatype instead of Quantity (integer values are fine) or even Item (we have items for all integers up to many thousands)? ArthurPSmith (talk) 19:24, 24 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Was changed to Quantity in Special:Diff/1019484244 Jean-Fred (talk) 15:49, 30 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Comment I’m not convinced by this proposal:
- not sure I understand the “maximum” part of that proposed property: a video game does have a certain number of playable characters, but it’s not a quantity that varies between a minimum and a maximum
- There is already a way to model player character (Q1062345), using characters (P674), see example on Super Mario Kart (Q1061560): Super Mario Kart (Q1061560)characters (P674)Yoshi (Q214174)object has role (P3831)player character (Q1062345) − the count can then be easily inferred. And games in general do not have that many player characters that listing them is prohibitive (even the 108 characters of Suikoden (Q209612) is manageable :)
Jean-Fred (talk) 16:30, 30 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I'm also skeptical about this property. IMO characters (P674) would be enough in this case. Sir Lothar (talk) 13:49, 3 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
- That means one would need to know all characters, enter all characters, be sure that a given Wikidata item includes all characters. Not sure how one could do the last one and if it's efficient to do the first two in advance. --- Jura 15:43, 4 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  Hmmm, looking deeping, I guess there is some precedent for that, with things like number of children (P1971), number of episodes (P1113), number of seasons (P2437) (although, for the last two, the count is inferred via inverse properties) ; or the combo number of parts of this work (P2635)/tracklist (P658).
  
  I find the argument “how can we be sure that characters (P674) is complete” a bit curious to be honest − it could apply for a lot of properties − “number of actors” for cast member (P161), “number of editions” for has edition or translation (P747), “number of parts” for has part(s) (P527), etc. − no?
  
  Also, is this supposed to be qualified to make the difference between, starter characters, unlockable characters and downloadable characters? How about palette swaps?
  Jean-Fred (talk) 17:04, 4 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  “one would need to know all characters” → Are there cases where one would know the number but not have the list? Jean-Fred (talk) 17:05, 4 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  Having a list isn't enough, we also need someone to add all of them to Wikidata in a structured way. Which is a ton of work and IMO way more work than the few people currently active in that area on Wikidata are able to handle. --Kam Solusar (talk) 15:24, 5 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  
  I'm not sure about the need for this property as I don't edit these items, but I tried to spell out what would the underlying assumptions of the "use P674" argument. I don't think it's comparable with "number of editions" as that is not a static number. --- Jura 11:39, 5 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  Well, from a gamer's point of view, i just don't see how this property could be useful, that's why I wrote I'm skeptical. It's much more informative to write for example, that one can choose Raiden, Sub-Zero or Scorpion in Mortal Kombat (Q150294), than to say it has max. number of 7 playable characters. Sir Lothar (talk) 08:39, 7 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  I imagine it would be useful in infoboxes for example. --Kam Solusar (talk) 15:24, 5 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  Which one for example? I don't recognize any Wikipedia project which would use such information in infobox - as they would be treated as not encyclopedic and trivial (see for example video games articles on pl.wiki and en.wiki). Sir Lothar (talk) 10:31, 24 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support, this is an important parameter for computer games.--Arbnos (talk) 16:58, 21 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. List the characters with characters (P674) / object has role (P3831), per above. --Yair rand (talk) 17:31, 12 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- Comment @Yair rand:, that only works if every player characters each have their own item. --Trade (talk) 19:06, 12 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  @Trade: Any character that doesn't have its own item can have one created. That's how such properties work. --Yair rand (talk) 20:08, 12 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  Can have its own item. Unfortunately, in practice, that's not the case, not even remotely. Creating items for all characters takes time and effort, even more so if we expect those tens of thousands of character items to contain more than just a label and description in one or two languages plus a instance of (P31) statement. I've worked quite a bit in this area here on Wikidata and AFAICS we only have very few game items that have a complete list of all characters (playable or otherwise). There simply aren't enough active users here compared to decdicated gaming databases, and not enough users willing to invest all that time and work to create, expand and source thousands of such items manually. Plus users of our data have no way of knowing whether a game item has a complete list of characters or if some/most are still missing. Which would make numbers of characters derived by counting the listed characters inherently unreliable. At least for the forseeable future. --Kam Solusar (talk) 15:24, 5 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support Yes, in theory the number could be derived from the characters listed on the game's item. But we're very, very far from having items for each and every character and no way of marking a character list as complete. At the current state of things I really can't see us getting to the point where it would be a reliable method, at least within the next decade or so. But a simple "number of characters" statement as proposed would be way less work to implement and would be reliable and of use for users of our data instantly, instead of potentially being somewhat reliable many years down the road. --Kam Solusar (talk)
Strong oppose I think doing Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga (Q55214)has part(s) of the class (P2670)player character (Q1062345)quantity (P1114)<160>nature of statement (P5102)maximum (Q10578722) is sufficient. --Tinker Bell ★ ♥ 21:16, 4 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose I personally don't see any value in adding this property. The number of characters should be derived from the list of characters. Yes, it's a lot of work to add each character for each game, but that's the nature of a database. If it's important enough, someone someday will do it, either manually or automatically. What we should be doing today is setting up the foundations for that to be possible. I'm still too new to Wikidata to say with confidence whether Tinker Bell's approach is the best one, but from what I can tell, it makes sense to me. Keen to see what others have to say about this, though. Macrike (talk) 22:36, 21 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Not done MSGJ (talk) 12:04, 30 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]