Deltarune has a pretty iconic animated background pattern used in-battle, generally regardless the battle setting itself. See examples below:

post #1704177 post #1712396

Pokémon does too (varying by the generation).

post #4131271 post #4020960

As you'd expect, some of these images certainly depict fight (usually not battle) - though not all, as in the first and fourth thumbs above, or, you know, sex.

Is there any consensus on which tag(s) to use to identify these background settings? For Deltarune, I noticed geometric_background on the first thumb above. I'm assuming this doesn't count as pattern_background because... 1-by-1 tessellation doesn't count? Probably? I'm unclear on the differentiation since this is my first encounter with geometric_background.

Do these backgrounds qualify as detailed_background? It's simultaneously specific enough to identify a setting that is clearly the same visual setting as in other posts, but it's also a fourth-wall feature and doesn't represent any physical presence about the setting.

All the above tags represent visual aspects of backgrounds, and can be figured out case-by-case (e.g. I assume we should apply the same tags for all instances of Deltarune backgrounds, but those would be different tags from all those of a given generation of Pokémon backgrounds). What they don't represent is the running theme: posts that are set within a game universe, viewed much the same way as if you were really playing a game with that combat scene. I don't know of a particular tag for that motif.

There are other tags to do with video games as well, e.g. gui and hud (the latter seems to be used a bit gratuitously). Also specific features like health_bar and text_box. These are often present alongside a background, but they're clearly a different scope. They don't cover the first thumb above and they do cover this post, despite being set over a very tangible / non-abstract background:

post #3901412

So they can be aids in finding this sort of image, but aren't one-for-one replacements for an "abstract video game background"(???) sort of tag.

Last caveat right before posting, lol: we do have the game_background tag. It's quite obscure (only 138 posts) yet still a little too broad, in my opinion: posts like post #3996615, post #3372713, and post #3145908 clearly benefit from being associated with some in-game location, but it's a deliberately general tag and so doesn't represent battle settings in particular (regardless whether the subject matter is violent or not, regardless whether there are GUI elements or not). Of its uses I found only a few in-battle settings:

post #1574357 post #613909

Obviously, there are a lot of posts flat-out missing this tag, but in passing battle scenes seem to represent a small enough portion of game backgrounds that they would warrant a more specific tag.

Curious on others' thoughts about this. These posts aren't super common but they certainly represent a particular recurring idea - common across most RPGs - so I feel a dedicated tag would help with confusion and ensure more of these posts get tagged at all, since many of them just aren't. Whatever the name for the tag is, it would always imply game_background.

everybodyknowsuradog said:
Also specific features like health_bar and text_box. These are often present alongside a background, but they're clearly a different scope. They don't cover the first thumb above and they do cover this post, despite being set over a very tangible / non-abstract background:

post #3901412

So they can be aids in finding this sort of image, but aren't one-for-one replacements for an "abstract video game background"(???) sort of tag.

Just wanted to touch on this part since I realized it's more contentious than I first thought! You can see the elliptical "battle area" beneath the Pokémon above, so this does fit under the running theme I suggested: "posts that are set within a game universe, viewed much the same way as if you were really playing a game with that combat scene."

If the game_background tag were far more comprehensively applied, then we could probably apply filters on it most of the time. For example, the Deltarune battle setting is always going to get geometric_background (again, perfect world where that tag is consistently applied). So slap 'em together and deltarune geometric_background game_background is your golden search. Or, pokemon game_background fight.

But there are two problems:

1) Those searches are empty. You can argue against it by identifying that if you're searching for Deltarune backgrounds anyway, for example, then no need to go to the trouble of including game_background; just search deltarune geometric_background (which does have several results).

2) It's too specific. It inherently requires outside knowledge of what a battle scenario in a particular game looks like. These are real issues for searching, both from a usability standpoint
(you'd better be able to place exactly which tags are common — then hope everyone has applied them equally) and for inclusivity (how do you search for this theme across multiple games??).

So I would still argue for a dedicated tag. This isn't something a computer with no knowledge about any particular video games could apply to an arbitrary set of pixels/visual subject matter, and honestly that gives it more value, in my eyes. As far as I can tell, there just isn't a way to carry a running theme across posts which may be completely visually different without creating a tag for that specific theme.

everybodyknowsuradog said:
Is there any consensus on which tag(s) to use to identify these background settings? For Deltarune, I noticed geometric_background on the first thumb above. I'm assuming this doesn't count as pattern_background because... 1-by-1 tessellation doesn't count? Probably? I'm unclear on the differentiation since this is my first encounter with geometric_background.

There's also abstract_background, which may be a bit more generalized than geometric_background.

everybodyknowsuradog said:
Do these backgrounds qualify as detailed_background? It's simultaneously specific enough to identify a setting that is clearly the same visual setting as in other posts, but it's also a fourth-wall feature and doesn't represent any physical presence about the setting.

Detailed_background needs to "place the scene in a clearly defined location". That is, something along the lines of "This could be a place somewhere", not "I can tell where that's from". So the examples like
post #1712396 post #4131271
wouldn't count. Aside from the grassy ovals in the pokemon one, there's just a highly pixelated color gradient behind it, giving no sense of location. However,
post #3901412
would count IMO, since it has additional trees, grass, hills, and a sky with clouds, that all work to define the location. Basically the rule of thumb I go by is, if I could imagine standing in the image and look around at the scenery (however stylized it may be), it would count. But if all there is are abstract shapes, or a color gradient with sparse details, it wouldn't count.

everybodyknowsuradog said:
There are other tags to do with video games as well, e.g. gui and hud (the latter seems to be used a bit gratuitously). Also specific features like health_bar and text_box.

GUI is a Graphical User Interface, and HUD is a Heads-Up Display, they're specific things you can see and don't rely on external context to identify. They can be in video games, but don't have to be. There are plenty of uses of them outside of games.

In contrast, a "background from a video game" is vague and generic. It can range from 'a background in something like looks like a video game' to 'a background that's a screenshot from an actual video game'. The appearance can be minimally detailed and highly pixelated, or insanely detailed and crisp. A video game background can range from highly stylized and look like a still from an animated movie, to hyper realistic and confused for a real-life photo, to the post-modernist abstract, and everything in-between and more. Basically any background you can think of can be in a video game.

watsit said:
In contrast, a "background from a video game" is vague and generic. It can range from 'a background in something like looks like a video game' to 'a background that's a screenshot from an actual video game'. The appearance can be minimally detailed and highly pixelated, or insanely detailed and crisp. A video game background can range from highly stylized and look like a still from an animated movie, to hyper realistic and confused for a real-life photo, to the post-modernist abstract, and everything in-between and more. Basically any background you can think of can be in a video game.

Right. That's my point. It doesn't represent something visually constant across everything it's tagged on; it's a description of the setting which has a common and very specific definition that is visually consistent for a given game, but visually different across games. This is something which current tags don't handle.

It's very similar in idea to character lore tags, just for the setting rather than the subjects.

everybodyknowsuradog said:
Right. That's my point. It doesn't represent something visually constant across everything it's tagged on; it's a description of the setting which has a common and very specific definition that is visually consistent for a given game, but visually different across games. This is something which current tags don't handle.

It's very similar in idea to character lore tags, just for the setting rather than the subjects.

Sounds like it's just trying to get video_games back, and all the problems it had that led to it getting nuked.

watsit said:
Sounds like it's just trying to get video_games back, and all the problems it had that led to it getting nuked.

I hadn't heard of that tag before, nor the discussion around it — definitely looks like required reading for the history of e6 tagging. It hasn't been intentional of me, but I understand if similar arguments have been addressed in that thread before.

If you don't mind I would be interested to hear about those similarities, though. It feels to me like I'm referring to something which has a specific, concrete definition: a scene pulling from the visual elements of an in-game battle interface. Not "an in-game interface" or "a background from a video game", a battle background. Those just don't exist in 90% of action role playing games, platformers, etc, where all action happens in a concrete setting. When they do exist it feels very obvious to me.

Actually, walking through that out loud, I think I understand what you're getting at. Even if those backgrounds are concretely defined per video game, we don't need a tag which spans all (applicable) video games (in an abstract way) for the same reason that we don't need video_games. So you would recommend combining those particular TWYS tags, e.g. pokemon abstract_background fight, on a game-by-game basis. And this wouldn't bring about any conversation along the lines of "what really counts as a video game background?", instead emphasizing the value and importance of TWYS. The fact that there's no tag which non-visually spans a range of subjects is arguably a limitation of TWYS, but that's the framework we work by on e6 and for good reason (else it wouldn't have stood the test of time in most cases).

Let me know if anything about that seems off, or if you want to go into more particular detail. I'm still pretty new to the conversation around how tagging is structured here so I most want to learn.

Worth noting that there is a pokemon_battle tag as well