User blog:Withersoul 235/Our New Policy on Fangames.

Hello everyone.

It's Wither here, and I'll start with the unrelated news that I'll likely begin contributing more often to the wiki.

Now, the real deal.

A few hours ago, Kirb released a blog post detailing what fangames we would or would not permit on the wiki. As we've revised this rule somewhat and also have something new to say, I have produced a new blog post to cover this.

Kirb's original draft of the rule was as follows:

"We only allow fangames if they have been approved by Puffballs or the Innersloth team, such as Attacking the Tower and Surviving the Snowstorm. This is to prevent the wiki from being overun with fangames. So before you decide to create an article for a Henry fangame you found on Scratch, just be aware that only fangames approved by Puffballs are allowed."

- Kirb

Our new policy differs both in scope and nomenclature.

Firstly, the nomenclature. We have elected to change the requirement of "approved" to "noticed", as we noticed that this gave off a vibe of Attacking the Tower as "superior" to or "better" than other fan works. In the words of one of AtT's developers:

"I should mention that I don't really like the term 'endorsed' used in this context. It's kind of correct but ... I feel guilty when people place AtT above every other fangame ever made with "Innersloth supports it" as one of the main reasons. Being noticed or supported by the original creators is cool, yeah, but we're not making the game just for them. So that's also why I kind of feel bad about this becoming the filter for fangames on the wiki and honestly it's not a terrible thing but just something that I feel a little bad about. I mean, most people don't even achieve this [In regards to a comment that Surviving the Snowstorm was "merely" noticed rather than approved, Ed.]. You can consider that to already be a milestone if you want. I just don't like the phrasing of statements that call the game officially endorsed. I also wanted to say that when Puff left a positive review on Surviving the Snowstorm, it was just because he likes showing support for fanworks like any creator would. Not because he wants to give the creator a way of asserting dominance over other games. It's just an act of kindness, and that's also why we appreciate him, but we shouldn't take his reviews that way because it doesn't make any sense. There's no competition between fangames.|undefined"

Put simply, we will not speak of a game being "approved" or "endorsed" anymore, because of the connotations it implies.

Now, as for the actual scope change: Rather than every fangame on the wiki having to be "supported" by Puffballs or Innersloth, it instead suffices if either the developer as a person or at least one of their Henry fangames is noticed by Puffballs or Innersloth. We have now gone from "per game" to "per developer". For example, as BioPlant's Surviving the Snowstorm was noticed by Innersloth, this provides BioPlant's other games with a pass as well.

Our rule regarding character, option, location, item and lore pages for fangames remains in place — they are to be


 * ➤ covered in a subpage of the fangame, e. g. Surviving the Snowstorm/Henry Stickmin, Attacking the Tower/The Lieutenant
 * ➤ explicitly marked as non-canon through both the template and the category

As a convention of style, we request that you use the DISPLAYTITLE template to remove the  part from the title, e. g.   on Attacking the Tower/The Lieutenant to make the name display as simply "The Lieutenant" (The backlink to Attacking the Tower will remain in place). It's okay if you don't know how to do this — I do, and I will manually install the template on any page where I see it is missing. No one will ever be penalized for not adding it or for accidentally using it incorrectly.

These policies will be added to our Rules page as soon as possible, as well as linked to from our main page. This will likely happen tomorrow, unless another admin or mod beats me to it.

If you have any questions, ask! We're here to help, and we won't judge you for asking directions.