Definition:Research

Research, as defined on this wiki, is the amount of external knowledge that a person is expected to know about the game before being able to play the game to its fullest potential. While well-designed games will have the foundations of their gameplay laid out to the player, you would be hard-pressed to discover a game that talks about everything that actually goes on within the game - such as mechanics that only the developers and anybody poking around in the games code know about.

While it is not necessary to understand every single tiny detail about a game to play it well (I'm looking at you, wiki dwellers), it certainly pays to bone up on some of your favourite titles during your off-time. Pretty much every decent wiki about a game will have a myriad of hidden mechanics, item statistics, strategy guides, useful trivia, and so on to the point where it puts the official 600-page strategy guides to shame. All of this is done by players in their free time, just for the sake of letting other players share the fruit of their research. How much of it you need to consume is dependant on how much you enjoy the game, and how you want to play the game.

Rationale
It is hard to find a game with a decent-sized fanbase that doesn't have a famous wiki to go to in times of confusion. The idea is that this type of knowledge is important, even if the most casual gamer just wants to look up the amount of weapons that are in the game (until their inevitable descent into Wiki Hell). Every user feels the need to know more about the game at one point in their gaming experience, so research is prevalent in pretty much every video game that exists.

So then it's just a matter of determining how much research a game needs. A straight-forward game that has basic mechanics won't need any external help. A game with 10 different characters, 100 different weapons, and 1000 articles on its wiki will require a lot of time and effort to learn about. This is especially so when it comes to RPGs and competitive multiplayer games.

It's harder to find star ratings of 2s and 4's that other ratings - games tend to verge on either being extremely simple or extremely arcane.

1 star
Simple games with simple game mechanics that a player can learn just by playing the game. Little, if any, research is necessary.

Use on game pages.

2 stars
Games with more complex mechanics that don't require much research, though a player will still find it beneficial to do a bit if they want to.

Use on game pages.

3 stars
The game mechanics become of decent complexity, where a player will want to do some research on the game in order to understand them. They can still be learned in-game with enough experience.

Use on game pages.

4 stars
The game mechanics are now quite complex, where a player would find it very difficult to learn it all just by playing the game. At this point, research is recommended.

Use on game pages.

5 stars
The game mechanics are so complicated and deep that it would be impossible to learn them all just by playing the game - even in hundreds of hours. Research is required for any serious gameplay.

Use on game pages.