TVTROPES: GETTING GAMES THAT DESERVE IT, AND OUR COMMUNITY, A WORTHY SPOT.

First off, I want to put it out there that this is less of a 'discussion' topic and more of a 'do shit' topic. We as a community do enough discussion as it is. Is discussion bad? No, of course not; that's what forums are for. Is discussion bad when it's backed by actual action 1% time? Yeah, that's when you're dancing the line of being full of shit. So if you're going to discuss something in this topic, it'll behoove you to have that preceded or taking place after you've already done something related to what this topic is about.

So just throwing that out there.




On to the topic! This is the topic that my 'TVTropes Exposure Movement' is going to center around. I made this new topic because the old one wasn't really as well organized as I would have liked it to be. I think TVTropes is a crazy addicting and interesting site, and it's introduced me into a lot of stuff I would have never read/watched/played to beforehand, and its given me a different insight into what creative mediums I've already enjoyed beforehand. I think the games of this community (and others) are worthy to have a spot alongside the already famous titles that get to have their 'tropes' displayed and discussed by fandoms from every franchise that you can think of. Now it's our term to get OUR niche noticed in the trope world.

Lost? Alone? Don't know what to do? Trust me, I'll help you out. Upon glancing at an average Tropes page, it can look intimidating. Games like Final Fantasy VI or even popular freeware games like Cave Story with their long encyclopedic lists of tropes can look staggering and impossible to recreate. But don't worry! Even the biggest pages started out with just one or a few people slowly adding in entries. It's not all up to ONE person to do it, everyone does it; and it slowly grows, it's an organic effort.

So how do you get started? First, I recommend you mosey on to the Freeware Games part of the TVTropes website. From there, you're going to see an index of various gametype folders. Look for the game for the game you want to add tropes for and see if its there. If it's not any in the folders, you have to create a page. After following the easy instructions, the 'Trope Page' for the game you want to honor now official exists, but it's blank and empty. What to do?!

First off, you're going to want to know how to properly format stuff on the site if you don't know how to among other guidelines. These pages can help.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WelcomeToTVTropes
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TextFormattingRules
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HowToWriteAnExample?from=Main.GoodStyle

After that, the easiest thing to do to get your feet wet is to upload and add a picture onto the page to give it a flair and make it eye catching. For our purposes, the best kinds of pictures to upload would be the ones that most would resemble the 'logo' or visual 'calling card' of the game; creative Trope creators do stuff like can crop a game's title screen and upload it onto the trope page. Be creative, and do the game justice; don't be sloppy.

Now comes adding the Tropes themselves. TVTrope addicts will probably remember a lot of tropes by name and they're able to directly plug them in their game page of choice. I'd also like to add in Craze's advice for adding tropes.

-Check out your favorite games that you've beat so that you can read all of the associated tropes! Apply any that fit Balmung/HR/whatever to that project. For example, I found Limit Break under FFXII
-This is not the place to be snotty. Leave that in your head; be a cool dude there and here and everywhere ("here" is one letter away from "hero" - be a hero here!)

Also, put in both 'sides' when you enter a trope in a game's main page; when you give a game a trope example, go back and put the game back on the trope's page. Example; Hero's Realm's trope page has 'Homage' as one of the tropes that the game has in it. Likewise, the 'Homage' trope page has Hero's Realm as an example on that page. So on and so forth. Make sure to format the links correctly so that the pages are linked as opposed to regular text, or worse, red text that leads nowhere. Don't forget to list the game page back in the Freeware Games index when it has enough content!


This sounds like a lot to digest at first, but assuming that everyone who reads this contributes at least a sentence to their game of choice like, every few days, this will grow exponentially. Let's all give it a shot! Pick a game and start troping! Post in this topic if you need any help, advice, or guidance! Don't worry about making mistakes, we should be happy to help each other fix them.

Here are some pages that we're working on right now! I'll edit more pages in as they're made!
-Balmung Cycle
-Hero's Realm

Update us in this topic when you make a new edit!





Questions? Of course.

Q: What is TVTropes anyway?
A: I'll let them speak for themselves on this one. TVTropes has gotten extremely popular in a short amount of time, and the site gets at least 3 million hits a month. The site is especially famous for dragging people in it, causing people to start reading one entry on their favorite movie and spend hours reading, and reading, and reading. Not everyone 'gets' it, but a LOT of other people DO.

Q: Why should we do this, anyway?
A: I've always believed that one of the most important things a game can attain is getting the recognition it deserves. This is not the same thing as saying a game should be obnoxiously proliferate, spamming itself all over the internet, no, but I don't believe that any great game should be a super hidden gem that only three people in a basement know about.

Sure, anyone can tout how good their own game is via adverts and such, but one of the best honors a work can get is to have fans lovingly give back their interpretations of the game via a site like TVTropes. That's one of my favorite things about the site; whether I'm reading a trope about Mass Effect or The Godfather, I know I'm around fellow fans. This type of 'subtle' exposure will have a lot of impact in the big picture, I believe. But this is only what I subjectively believe.

Q: Whoa, that sounds pretty cool. Can I put my own game up?
A: Absolutely not, please don't do this. The entire point of this endeavor is to do something that not only unites us as fans to indie games as a whole, but to help out the scene as a whole, as in, the other guy, and NOT directly yourself. This is to honor games as a fan, not to jerk yourself off. If your game is that good, hopefully this event will inspire someone to make a page about YOUR game.

I mean that's like making a Wikipedia entry on yourself. That's tacky as hell, bro. I'm Lord Ego and I wouldn't even do that shit.

Q: What if the gamepage I want to fill up already exists?
A: Games like Exit Fate or Alter AILA already have quite a large amount of Tropes currently on their pages, and don't really need a boost up or extra help. So how does one give cases like that more exposure? Using the 'reverse trope' thing I mentioned above.

Here it is again; put in both 'sides' when you enter a trope in a game's main page; when you give a game a trope example, go back and put the game back on the trope's page. Example; Hero's Realm's trope page has 'Homage' as one of the tropes that the game has in it. Likewise, the 'Homage' trope page has Hero's Realm as an example on that page. So on and so forth. Make sure to format the links correctly so that the pages are linked as opposed to regular text, or worse, red text that leads nowhere.

How many of those tropes listed on the aforementioned Exit Fate or Alter AILA, pages have the games listed as examples on tropepages themselves? Make the door revolve both ways!

Q: Can you give us some other guidelines?
A: Yes. Completed games ONLY, please. For obvious reasons. Don't be a jackass. Be creative. Don't be afraid to ask for help. Don't put your game up. Be factual. Don't point to RMN unnecessarily; no bias! Also

author=Solitayre
That's pretty much all you can expect from this community.

For reference, a while back I created this page.

I shared it with that game's community, they thought it was neat, and they quickly pounced on it, adding tropes, descriptions, theories, discussion, all kinds of stuff. The creator's of the game thought it was really cool to see other peoples' interpretations of their game.

When I brought this idea to this community, people mostly scoffed, thought it was stupid, complained that they didn't think anyone would make pages for their game, and didn't accomplish anything. So no, I don't really have any faith in the community to do something like this. In fact, the staff has come up with a couple ideas over the last year or so that we ultimately decided not to go forward with because we knew the community would ruin it.

Prove this guy wrong! He would want you to!

Get troping!

Wow, good stuff, Yeaster!