I believe that TASVideos should standardize the movie description length. The movie description is analogous to the abstract of a journal paper. It should provide a concise summary of the movie, explain key results of the TAS, help viewers determine whether it matches their interests before checking the full movie/submission text, and provide relevant keywords increasing its visibility in searches.
Unfortunately, a number of movies fall short of this goal. I ran a python script that checked the word count of all 6810 movie descriptions (as of this writing). In practice, the median word count for movie descriptions is 94 words, with a standard deviation of approximately 44 words. Thus, approximately 98% of movie descriptions are below 182 words. Therefore, I would suggest standardizing all movie descriptions to
100–180 words (5–9 sentences).
This pastebin provides the word count for each movie. The movie descriptions with the lowest word count contained only 6 words: (1) "
Here's another "Chip carries Dale" movie" and "
"Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles on hormones." Similarly brusque movie descriptions unfairly downplay the effort that went into such movies. Often a description follows a basic format of "X is a Y type of game. Author improves on the previous movie by Z seconds."
I would suggest at least a 5-sentence format like so for all movie descriptions:
(1) Introduce the game. Example: "Bionic Commando (1988) is a platform game with a hero who can't jump but can quickly latch onto objects with his bionic arm." (23 words.)
(2) Establish the main character's purpose. Example: "Simon Belmont must fight his way through the castle and destroy Count Dracula." (13 words.)
(3) Describe the gameplay in more detail. Example: "But Karnov is no ordinary hero: his fiery breath incinerates foes, his boomerang makes enemies disintegrate, and his summonable ladders bend reality itself." (23 words.)
(4) Specify the author's general approach. Example: "Most of this run features Link's racing across Hyrule so fast that the screen can't keep up and inexplicably warping between places that shouldn't be connected." (26 words.)
(5) Summarize the specific results of the run. Example: "This run improves the previous movie by 00:08.719 seconds thanks to use of zipping to skip some boss fights." (20 words.)
Total example words: 105.
Additional sentences can be added as necessary. Example: "This run was shown at Awesome Games Done Quick 2016 during the TAS block."
This idea is proposed as a collaboration between editors and publishers, with the aim of improving movie descriptions under 50 words (16% of descriptions). This issue is not limited to older movies; for example a movie published in 2025 has a 26-word description.
