Preliminary Swag category Style Guide

[tripredacus]

Soon I will be creating a thread in the Adv Guide for the Swag category. It will first be created with (Preliminary) in the title because I want to get things fleshed out in there first. This thread will be discussion on how to handle certain aspects, or for you to put your ideas down here to be put into there.

The type of information I am looking to get from this thread are:
- Naming convention
- Description
- Box Text

The sub-cats in Swag, with brief comments on each.
General rules:
- Developer should not be set.

Magazine
Strategy Guide
Print Media
All three of these are going to follow the same rules.
- front art is for front, back for back, cart art will be blank
- naming is already set on Strategy Guides but not Magazines. Print Media will likely follow Strategy Guides. Comic books also need to be considered.

Artwork
Currently consists of posters, promotional flyers, banners, etc. These terms should be lowercase in item title.
Need to have some dedicated terms for things so we don't have some entries say flyer or others that say leaflet.
Calendars are in this section need to be moved to Print Media.

Carrying Cases & Bags
This section is largely not needed as many of the items inside should be moved into the appropriate console accessories sub-cats.

Clothing Items
Apparel

Food Items
Entries are for packaged items. Those who have opened or just the empty packages will have to use Note field to indicate it.

Promo Videos/Movies
Was supposed to be just for actual promotional videos (such as the N64 TRU VHS) but has been expanded to include any physical video media for a video game related property, or one that includes a video game related property on the cover (but not in the video content) and any video media that is included in video game releases. In this scenario, video game related movies (such as Tron) are not allowed but specific editions such as this BD+DVD combo pack would be allowed.
The naming format is
Name (Type) [TLD]
Thinking whether to make it mandatory to use (Type) [TLD] on all entries or not. For example it is not particularly needed for the US DVD of Alone in the Dark to have this information with the other versions missing.
https://vgcollect.com/search/advanced/382/%22alone%20in%20the%20dark%22/no-filter/ALL/ALL/ALL/ALL/ALL/no-filter/no-filter/no-filter

Whereas Type list would be:
- VHS, DVD, BD, BD+DVD, LD, VHD, etc.
In description: for entries lacking a TLD, the release country must be noted. Broadcast standard can be put into description also.
This section will need to be "Verified" to deal with generic entries to make them specific.

Retail Code Cards

Soundtrack
Similar to Movies, would need a format descriptor such as: LP, Cassette, CD
Description can have the tracklist but only if not applicable to box text.

Toys/Novelties
Toys/figures will get this naming convention from this post in another thread:
https://vgcollect.com/forum/index.php/topic,7129.msg113846.html#msg113846
Note: most of that thread is talking about Interactive Figures and Amiibo cards which are not relevant to this discussion because they are not in the Swag category.

Future new sub-cats[/u]
Currently the Toys sub-cat is the catch all for Swag items that are not in any of the other categories. Depending on whether we find it needed, we may consider making an Other sub-cat in swag to put things that have no specific category for it.

Let me know your ideas on this for when I start working on this section.

[dhaabi]

Artwork
"Advert" or "pamphlet" are other considerations. "Flyer" seems to be most common for existing entry names, though.

existing terms that need naming consensus:
poster, promo poster, promotional poster
advert, flyer, leaflet, pamphlet
lithograph, print

Promo Videos/Movies
Personally, I am against the idea of a forced descriptor and TLD for items unless it is needed based on how they are applied currently to other entry names. That being said, once the category is thoroughly cleaned, it should be pertinent for this information to be mentioned in the Description field.

On that note, if new entry forms are created aside from the general Game form that is used for everything, a new field for Promo Videos/Movies could even have a drop-down menu for video format (VHS, DVD, etc.), whereas a form for Soundtrack could have its own relevant formats selectable (LP, Cassette, etc.) Then when the same entry name does appear, a Descriptor could be used. That being said, I don't think new forms for Swag should be as detailed as what is currently used, as these categories aren't VGC's focus in addition to there being much better alternative sites to use for cataloging these types of items as you've discussed before.

Since this specific category has expanded beyond what its name implies, is a name like "Videos" more applicable?

Clothing Items
existing terms that need naming consensus:
shirt, T-shirt, tee
hoodie, hoody, jacket, jumper, sweater, sweatshirt
cap, hat
shoes, sneakers

The type of information I am looking to get from this thread are:
- Naming convention

Similar to how we treat hardware and accessories with Manufacturer ItemName, should something like that be used for items in certain Swag categories?
For example, instead of "Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow - Nintendo Power Poster," it could become "Nintendo (Power) Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow poster."

Carrying Cases & Bags
This section is largely not needed as many of the items inside should be moved into the appropriate console accessories sub-cats.

One problem with re-categorizing SteelBooks is that many are for multiple systems, such as PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. I suppose these items would be placed in the broad Accessory category with information added to the Description field then?