morgan_echard's profile

2 Messages

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160 Points

Sunday, August 19th, 2018 8:43 PM

6

"Episodic" sub-type needed for video games that are released like shows (Telltale games, Life is Strange, etc.)

In its current form, IMDb is unable to accurately capture the nature of certain games due to a lack of sub-categories. Most games are released all at once, like a film, in which case the IMDb system is fine. However, certain games (such as those made by Telltale) are released in seasons and episodes, like a television show. At the moment, such games have one title for each season, without any acknowledgement of individual episodes.

In order to remedy this, I would like to propose that IMDb adds "Episodic Video Game", "Video Game Episode", and "Video Game Mini-Series" sub-types to the video game title type. These should function exactly like their television counterparts, with episodes being added to the overall series and cast/crew/director/writer info being added to individual episodes. Episodes should be sorted into seasons where applicable and titles representing different seasons of the same game should be merged. Finally, episodic video games should either be listed as continuing or have an end year.

For example, The Walking Dead (2012), The Walking Dead: Season Two (2013), The Walking Dead: A New Frontier (2016), and The Walking Dead: The Final Season (2018) should be converted to Episodic Video Games, merged into one title with a year span of "2012-2018", and have cast/crew/director/writer information added to individual episodes. Meanwhile, The Walking Dead: 400 Days (2013) should be made an episode of this series (with no season) and The Walking Dead: Michonne (2016) should be a separate video game mini-series.

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6 years ago

Morgan: How would this compare to the current policy for episodic videogames, as found at https://help.imdb.com/article/contribution/titles/title-formatting/G56U5ERK7YY47CQB#?
Episodic Video Games 

Episodic Videogames, such as those developed by Telltale Games, do not fit neatly into any of our existing title types.

In order to avoid duplication of credits we would prefer to list the collected episodes of a season as a single title i.e. The Walking Dead: The Game - Season 1.

Individual episode titles should be submitted as Alternate Titles with the attribute (videogame episode) to distinguish them.
For example - The Walking Dead: The Game - Season 1 would have akas of 'The Walking Dead: The Game - Season 1. Episode 1: A New Day', 'The Walking Dead: The Game ? Season 1. Episode 2: Starved for Help' etc

Individual release dates of these episodes should be listed in a similar fashion, again distinguishing between them with attribute for each episode - in this case (videogame episode 1), (videogame episode 2) etc. 
As I understand it, this is a workaround to fit the relatively new idea of episodic videogames into one of the existing title types, rather than trying to create a new title type for episodic videogames, which would likely take a great deal of effort. Similarly, when music videos and commercials were made eligible for IMDb listing, they were put into the made-for-video title type rather than being established as new title types. In fact, I don't think IMDb has put a new title type into effect since TV episodes were added, and that was more than a decade ago.

2 Messages

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160 Points

That workaround works as a way of submitting the episode titles, but that's only a small part of the data that's missing. What I'm most interested in being able to add is the number of episodes a cast/crew member is credited for, which can only be done by adding individual episodes.