What is "best" anyway?

This page goes over the conduct, philosophy, and is the guideline for editing of this wiki.

first of all- definitions.

"Best Way To Play is a wiki designed to give information on the best setup to play video games."

The term "best" in the context of this wiki is to be interpreted as "producing the greatest utility and satisfaction" and the term "setup" refers to "the hardware and software used to get a video game running".

Words, I know.

Second first. 'Setup' includes but is not limited to

• The version and platform a game is best experienced on
• Quality of Life patches (translations, resolution/aspect ratio)
• The best controller for gameplay (if particularly relevant or non-standard)

and First second; It's cute to have a Websters citing, but what do we really mean here?

"greatest utility and satisfaction" is subjective, it's a "I know it when I see it" sort of thing really.

Now it is ultimately subjective (as art is) as to what the best way to play some games are. Some games have mutually exclusive platform dependent content while others have different controller based play experiences. In these cases when games diverge, both are to be listed.

Conduct

This wiki is first and foremost a resource to give information on the best way to play games. Despite the fact that this wiki constantly states the "best" way to play a game, it does so via the (dubious, but inevitable) invisible authority of the gaming community at large. And simply presents this information from a neutral point of view. If there is a split it is the responsibility of the wiki to list both setups as long as there is reason to believe that both setups are valid as to the best way to play a game.

Quality of Life

Most would agree that better performance leads to a better game. (Except the cut-scene of the 4 giants stopping the moon in Zelda: Majora's Mask. The lag-reduction on re-releases of this game make the music in the cut-scene get abruptly cut off instead of being timed properly to the lag.)

Many would also say that widescreen is also a great improvement for most games (except first person horror games that intentionally have a limited FOV)

Many would say that backporting the spindash from future titles to Sonic the Hedgehog would also be a great improvement (except the game plays differently without it, and the nuance of the momentum based mechanics are lost upon adding this ability)

Notice how each example given has issues? It's a slippery slope to list more quality of life features as the "best" way to play a game as the artists intent gets left behind. This wiki is coining this term QoL-creep.

Dude, this wiki is here so that you know to play Arkham City on PC instead of the WiiU. Not so that you can autisticly list all 7000 Skyrim mods you have together and say it's the "best" - BWTP_Admin

The general policy of handling QoL is to only recommend that which can be reasonably inferred as the developers original intention- except in the case where the artist is an idiot and their game needs fixed.

Legality

As per conduct, this wiki is a database of the most commonly accepted opinions of the gaming community as to the best way to play a game. If it includes information of a DRM crack of a game that gives better performance; or builds of leaked source code that give the best way to play- it is an obligation of this wiki to provide that information. Being said this wiki will never link to any pirated content. The purpose of this wiki is to provide information on the best way to play a game, not make a moral or legal judgement.