Tiny Diggers – An iPad Construction Truck Game for Kids Age 2-5

Technically I should be packing or sleeping in preperation for traveling to PAX tomorrow, but instead I’ve spent the past few hours poking around with WikiScanner and found all sorts of shenanigans. Some innocent, some not so innocent.

For those that don’t know, WikiScanner is a tool written to check anonymous wikipedia edits. This is done by comparing the IP ranges for various companies, governments, and organizations. WikiScanner was recently popularized by Stephen Colbert and especially because people started finding out about edits by EA and the ESA.

Well, let me share some interesting tidbits I found…

I’m sure you’ve heard about EA’s not-so-ninja edits. For another example, one need look no further than the Pogo.com entry, where they removed Club Pogo information and added, “Club Pogo is a very strong and tight-knit community. Players can choose to chat and socialize while they play any of the Club Pogo games.” Gee thanks, EA, for clearing that up for us. We were worried that the Club Pogo community wasn’t strong or tight-knit enough.

Naturally one wonders how the big three are behaving. Surprisingly, they’re behaving pretty well. Microsoft has done some sneaky edits of Apple entries, but in the game-related realm most of the Microsoft edits consisted of factual, grammatical, or spelling errors without resorting to any editorial changes.

Oddly enough I also found several edits by an “AWF” fellow, though they were almost always NEGATIVE of the Xbox 360 in some way. Like this one mentioning the large amount of power consumed by the 360.

The worst I could find from Sony were some edits on Raph Koster’s entry. The editor added links to Raph’s website and book, which I can only presume means it was Raph himself. I’m not sure anyone else would give a care. (I kid… I kid…)

This SOE edit was kind of humorous. They took it upon themselves to remove the following from the SOE entry: “The developers involved in Star Wars Galaxies have been described as ‘a bunch of mindless jerks who’ll be the first against the wall when the revolution comes.’” Heh, I guess there was some bitterness about the NGE.

Nintendo has edited a LOT of entries, but only relating to itself. Again, all of the edits I looked at were merely correcting factual and grammatical errors. Nothing nefarious from Nintendo, it seems.

Wish I could say the same for Activision. Someone using an Activision IP has been editing Travelers’ Tales entries like crazy. A couple of which related to the game Rascal. They deleted mention of Rascal from one entry but then added that it sold 500,000 copies to the wikipedia entry dedicated to game failures.

Someone over there at the new “#1″ also edited the Tony Hawk Project 8 article. First, they tried removing the entire section of the article relating to the story (or lack thereof). When that didn’t work, they tried another strategy. They sugar-coated the hell out of the story section… and then removed the part about lack-of-story.

I guess it just goes to show, that being #1 also means that you’re going to get disgruntled employees. Like this guy who added a rather long rant to the Video game developer entry. I sure hope that guy found a better job.

When it comes to wikipedia self-determination, the award definitely goes to id Software. I’m not even remotely kidding. Just look at these edits.

First of all, I have no idea why someone at id was so obsessed with Stevie Case back in 2003. I mean, Romero wasn’t working there anymore. Who knows, maybe Carmack was jealous or something. Okay, I got nothing.

Secondly, looking at the edits, you might as well just bank on the fact that most of the id Software entry was written directly by someone at id. My favorites were when they just up and deleted John Romero and Tom Hall, Trip-Hawkins-style. Then, there’s the editing of American McGee’s entry from “one of the premier level designers” to “a level designer.” Kids, make sure never to quit id Software. They WILL ruin your internet name. Oh, I almost forgot to mention that they also don’t like criticism, no matter how well-written or relevant it may be.

Well, that brings a close to this edition of “Who’s Editing Your Wikipedia.” Hope you enjoyed the ride, and remember, if you read about yourself on wikipedia, it was probably written by you.