Wikidata talk:WikiProject Board Games

Property for designer/author of the game

Discussion from project chat

Hey everyone,

I've noticed, that there's no consistent way of stating the creators of board and card games.

The two mainly used properties are:

• Author(P50) which I think is wrong since this is the property for creators of a written work according to the definition. I can see how this happens al lot though, since in German it's called the "Spieleautor" so people resort to P50. Example

• Developer(P178) which isn't technically wrong since it's intended for creators of software, games etc. but it's mainly used for software/digital products so it might be confusing to use this one. Example

And then of course there's the generic Creator(P170) which can be used for anything but doesn't seem to be used for board games much.

Many items don't have anyone stated as their creator even when there are a handful of other statements there. Don't know if it is directly connected to this issue though.

I think we should decide on which property is the right one to use for board and card games.

My questions are:

• Should it be the same one used for computer games?
• Should game authors get a separate property?
• ...

Any ideas/opinions would be very welcome! Incabell (talk) 16:16, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

-- just saw that BoardGameGeek calls them designers. Incabell (talk) 16:37, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

I agree "designer" is the right term for board games, e.g. it's echoed on Wikipedia as well, and there's often a dedicated credit for that role (even to the point of being a selling point for board games). Does "designed by" property therefore work? Then, the designer can have "game designer" assigned to their item entry, as appropriate? Video games, on the other hand, have more varied and elaborate credits, particularly for larger projects. For example, Sid Meier is listed as "director" of Civilization V, yet according to MobyGames, he's technically the "Creative Director" while there are also 3-4 other people in different "director" roles on the game, plus another person yet (not Sid) who's listed as "designer." Should all these credits be modeled? Maybe, maybe not; and complicating things further, this mix of roles is probably different between studios or even projects. So, "designed by" for board games, more discussion for video games? Argotechnica (talk) 02:16, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

I think it's not that easy: The term "game designer" is common in the englisch language, in German the same person is named "Spieleautor" while the designer is that person who is responsible for the artwork (artist in english board game descriptions). Therefore I would say that "Spieleautor" = "game designer" should be a property by it's own to avoid the problems described above. -- Achim Raschka (talk) 09:29, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

Good point - and someone listed on a game under the "game designer" property may not necessarily be considered to have the "occupation" property of game designer. So - new property, "game designer"? Argotechnica (talk) 18:13, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

I like that idea. Just for clarification, would this then be exclusively for non-computer games i.e. board- and card games? If we make the German translation of "game designer" -"Spieleautor" this will not be usable for computer games at least from the German language side. Otherweise it would probably need to be something like "Spieleentwickler". Incabell (talk) 11:07, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

IMO it would be better to use quite a generic property - eg creator (P170) or contributor to the creative work or subject (P767), and then a qualifier to indicate the exact nature of the role. That is how film and music articles typically work at the moment, using P794 (P794) with a value to give more detail on the nature of the contribution; eg:

• Jasper and Horace (Q27145519)contributor to the creative work or subject (P767)John Lounsbery (Q1773633), P794 (P794) animator (Q266569)
• Sleeping Beauty (Q215617)director (P57)Clyde Geronimi (Q579241), P794 (P794) supervising director (Q28381391)
• The Rite of Spring (Q3226844)film crew member (P3092)Wolfgang Reitherman (Q703588), P794 (P794) supervising animator (Q28007056)

object named as (P1932) can be used to give even more information:

• Sleeping Beauty (Q215617)screenwriter (P58)Erdman Penner (Q11285682), P794 (P794) story artist (Q20002503), object named as (P1932) "Story adaptation"

The film industry has evolved fairly defined terms for particular roles; for video games things may be a lot more fluid, so more generic properties like creator (P170) or author (P50) may be a good idea. The advantage of using something fairly generic, and then qualifying it, is that the grouping together makes searching a lot more straightforward, so that doesn't have to search separately for "director", "supervising director", "sequence director" etc; but one can still extract any of those particular roles out if one wants.

There is a general preference on Wikidata not to multiply the number of properties unless really necessary: to prefer properties to be generic, and specify details using items. This principle will probably be argued to you in opposition, if you propose a new highly specific property without a very good case. Jheald (talk) 14:22, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

I should add that P794 (P794) is currently being discussed, and may be divided into two new qualifier properties, "subject has role" and "object has role"; but the principle stands. Jheald (talk) 14:30, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

Text section copied from project chat.

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Property Game mechanics (P4151)

We have a property Game mechanics (P4151) but its values are game systems (a game system is a set of game mechanics).

Question : Do we ask a new Property proposal for "Game system" ? Pmartinolli 20190813

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New discussion continues after this line. --Incabell (talk) 10:52, 16 February 2017 (UTC)----

Probably the property is just wrongly used... --Infovarius (talk) 10:04, 15 August 2019 (UTC)

Is there a property for play time?

Many board games have an estimate of the play time on the box, is there a way we could express that in wikidata? I looked at a few popular board game items and none of them seem to have a statement for that.

Is there an existing property I am missing that could be used or should a new property "Play time" be proposed (it could also be useful for Wikiproject Video games)?

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Notified participants of WikiProject Video games PaperHuman (talk) 17:14, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

I don't think duration (P2047) would be appropriate since it is describing the game, and not a single round. I would support a new property for this. HowLongToBeat (Q22222506) contains a lot of data for video game completion times. -wd-Ryan (Talk/Edits) 17:17, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

I looked into the process of creating a new property, but I am afraid I am not able to make a reasonable proposal due to lack of experience.

For example I am not sure whether there should be one property for the minimum play time and one for maximum play time similar to minimum and maximum number of players or whether it should be done with a qualifier (I think this would be better and allow to express HowLongToBeat's different completion style play times?). I also don't know what the property type should be, something similar to duration?

Would any of you be willing to create the property proposal?

cc User:Keplersj (I am not sure if you would get notified with this comment, I am sorry if this is redundant) PaperHuman (talk) 21:09, 18 March 2024 (UTC)

I agree with Wd-Ryan, this is likely a good candidate for a new "advertised/estimated play time" property. Shy of that though using duration (P2047) qualifiers has characteristic (P1552) estimate (Q37113960) may be sufficient. But ideally a new Q-item to indicate applies to part (P518) "game session" is created in the duration with qualifiers route. Keplersj (talk) 07:41, 16 March 2024 (UTC)