User blog:Random-storykeeper/Prepping for Icebreaker iOS

By now, you probably know that Icebreaker iOS is coming out on June 20! That's exciting stuff, right there. Are you going to get it? I almost certainly am!

Well, yeah. Almost certainly. It depends on how much the app costs. While Nitrome has been my favourite game developer for the past five years, I just can't give all the money in my iTunes account. Here's to hope that it will be under the amount I'm expecting...

So, the game's release date has been confirmed, and that means preparing the wiki for a whole mass of information that will be certain upon its release. Nitrome has been giving a whole lot of updates that I've sluggishly followed...not really, but sort of... Anyways, it was enough to generate a flowery 91,495 bytes page. Just think what will happen when the game is actually released. Major lag, I predict.

I spent all morning going through our current Icebreaker: A Viking Voyage article and yes, I did delete a whole lot of content. There is a lot, but it takes up too much space, so I had to sort of look back and think, what content could be combined with other sections? I tried to do it so that five paragraphs could be explained in one, and that large gaps created by single galleries could be taken care of. Fear not, most of this deleted content has been moved to User:Random-storykeeper/Icebreaker iOS so that it can be put onto separate articles if necessary.

Actually, I think it is necessary.

The thing is, why weren't these pages split in the first place? If you are given that many sources that go into detail about what these features do, then it could easily be its own article. You see, the only reason why the "no articles on upcoming components" policy was implemented was because all of the games, up to this point, revealed only images and video to preview their games. These visuals are meant to be teasers, and as such, some of this content does not make it to the final product of the game. We don't know, at that point, whether any of the content in an image or video trailer will also be part of the final release. So creating an article about a character within that previewed game means having to draw inferences based on one person's perception. This could be easily disputed amongst multiple readers, and as such, an article without any solid source does not do very well in existence.

However, Icebreaker iOS is completely different from Nitrome's previous Flash games. Since 2012, Nitrome has been revealing in-depth information about each feature and the game's overall development. You can create articles given the information on these sources. Trying to force it all into one article just makes it more unpleasing.

I think, overall, the Icebreaker iOS article needs to be reduced more in size, and I'll reexamine it over the next few days. Like the other game pages, the focus should be more on the game itself rather than its fancy features. Consider what new information could be added as soon as the game is released!