Community talk:Eras
Comments from User:ZS
First off, thanks for providing a platform to voice my concerns. Got plenty of things to explain with regards to the argument for using "Era".
The eras are a logical grouping that is obvious to anyone who has played or seen multiple GTA games. Everyone can see that GTA San Andreas is very similar to GTA Vice City and GTA III, but very different from GTA 2 or GTA IV.
To clear matters, the grouping of the games itself is somewhat justified. Each of these successions of games are distinctive not only by canon but also by their game engines. So even though GTA 1's storyline isn't necessarily related to those the GTA London series for example, both games share the same technical construction to be tied together (GTA V is likely to be an exception to this rule though; see last point).
The problem lies more in the naming itself, as well as the need to use it as a be-all and end-all term when discussing anything.
"Era" is supposed to commonly refer to a very long period of time usually measured in decades, centuries, millenia, or even longer; in comparison, most of these successions of games last anything from only a year to seven years. Wouldn't its use make us look pretentious by placing too much importance on something that Rockstar North didn't even need to give names to?
Compromises were considered to substitute "Era" for another fan term. "Generations" was considered (GTA 1 and GTA London would be classified as "first generation games" while GTA IV and GTA Chinatown Wars are "fourth generation games"), but I wasn't sure if it's acceptable, seeing how it's no different from using "Era". "Canon" is also a viable candidate, although it turned out the terminology works best only when discussing fictional elements in a storyline; nevertheless, there are prospects on using that term instead (I can explain a little more on that if you want).
Using eras gives the wiki a simple way to refer to these groups of games. For example, when mentioning features, vehicles or characters that appeared in one era but not another. The usefulness of eras can be seen at Special:Whatlinkshere/GTA III Era, which shows hundreds of links to the GTA III Era page.
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If we used 'from-to' terminology (like "From GTA III to GTA San Andreas"), that requires people to know the order of every GTA game to understand. Does III-SA include GTA Liberty City Stories and GTA Advance or not? That is not obvious, and would require the user to check every time or potentially misunderstand things. This becomes more complicated when considering whether the games are grouped by release date or by canonical order. Using Eras is much more intuitive.
One notable example is Wanted Level, which shows the very different systems between eras. Without Eras, we would have to use Wanted Level from GTA III to GTA Vice City Stories (with the above problems) or invent false names like Wanted Level System A.
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So whilst Eras aren't official terminology, it is the simplest and best way of explaining a very real grouping of GTA games, it's well-understood, accepted by many users and sources, and is already used widely on this wiki (so nothing would have to be changed).
This boils back to the constant need to simplify, resulting in the unwarranted aversion towards using article names that utilize brackets for disambiguation, for example.
Take Wanted Level in GTA III Era; an alternative could be to use "Wanted Level (GTA III - GTA Vice City Stories)", with redirects created for respectable games that lead to that article (Wanted Level in GTA III, Wanted Level in GTA Vice City..., Wanted Level in GTA Vice City Stories), something that would be straight to the point to your average reader. So a reader wouldn't want to type "Wanted Level (GTA III - GTA Vice City Stories)", but does that matter when they could search using a redirect's name?
Yes, we'll need to overhaul a shitton of articles, but that's the price we have to pay for being so rigid with how we named and wrote articles. I have ideas on how to go about it, even with the GTA 1 Era, GTA 2 Era, GTA III Era and GTA IV Era articles.
Without eras, every page would need to have a huge awkward list of every game that it refers to, instead of simply "XYZ appears in the GTA III Era".
"XYZ appears in the GTA III Era" actually confuses a reader even more than just mentioning the games flat out. How would a new reader know what "GTA III Era" means anyway? In terms of the writing in the article itself, it doesn't hurt to type a little extra. After all, we have Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V, right?
Whilst Rockstar doesn't publicly use Era terminology, the groupings themselves are officially accepted by virtue of new numbers only being given to certain games.
Which is ironic because I originally introduced "Era" to the fandom through Wikipedia's GTA article and navigation box six years ago. But I didn't know better back then; everyone was doing that sort of thing with their articles and navboxes, but it turned out it doesn't work for every series. By the time I realized it, everyone in the fandom, including the original Wikia crowd, were using it casually.
I'm also unsure if this the "new numbers" argument holds water in light of what GTA V has to offer. It runs on the same game engine as GTA IV, plus a few vehicles are directly ripped out of GTA IV. If we have to discuss a vehicle that appears in GTA IV and GTA V, would that mean we have to create separate sections based on this argument, even if its design is nigh-identical?