"Here is a thing. Look at the thing. Do you see the thing? I would like to know what this Thing is Called." A plea for sanity

Question

identify-this-game was a Bad Tag. It was applied to Bad Questions. It is gone forever, and I could not be happier.

But it appears, that we have been throwing some babies out with our admittedly filthy bathwater.

So, before I move on, I want to talk for a second about why identify-this-game is bad. Essentially, with ITG, you're dealing with little more than a game of charades. You are at the mercy of the askers inherently incomplete or inaccurate memories of a game, as well as their own limited capacity to express the content of their memories. And that's before we even get into the issues of being able to properly identify whether an answer is even correct. Essentially, the key problem with ITG questions, is that the whole core of the question is that the asker has no clue what she's asking about.

The questions I've linked asking for identification of a font in a screenshot, or a song in a soundtrack on the other hand, suffer from none of the solvability or lack-of-information problems that ITG questions do. People asking these questions are saying "Here is a Thing. Do you see the Thing? I've posted a picture of The Thing. Do you have any idea what this thing is called?"

These questions are finite. They are answerable in a way that not just the asker, but the entire community can evaluate and vote on effectively. They present none of the fundamental issues that requests for game identification based merely on a description do.

So then, if these questions don't present any of the problems of ITG, why are we closing them?

Addendum: Mark Trapp has raised a number of seperate, and somewhat orthogonal concerns regarding the specific examples that I've cited. While that's fair, it somewhat sidesteps the real question here, which is what do we do about requests for identification of various art and design elements in games that are not strictly in-game objects, such as fonts or music.

Addendum Number 2: Okay, here's a more concrete example of a pure gaming expertise question that meets the standards I've mentioned. It's also very purely and nakedly a request for game identification, but it's one which has none of the problems associated with identify-this-game that we've encountered in the past. What game is Jesse playing in the Breaking Bad episode, "Problem Dog"?

I'm of the opinion that this is a different class of question, and one which we can handle, and would appreciate some additional thoughts/discussion on the subject.

Answer 1

In general, I'm in agreement that a question which:

• Asks about a game thing
• Points to the thing in a concrete manner
• Asks what that thing is

is not off-topic simpliciter, but I want to point out that they do not automatically make a question on-topic either.

You've linked to four questions that have been closed:

1. What is the Font Used in Pokemon Conquest?
2. https://gaming.stackexchange.com/questions/73330/what-is-the-font-used-in-heroes-of-might-and-magic-3
3. https://gaming.stackexchange.com/questions/39631/christmas-song-in-the-polynomial-steamworks
4. What game is Jesse playing in the Breaking Bad episode, "Problem Dog"?

The first three you listed were, in my estimation, correctly closed even if they had only a passing resemblance to identify-this-game questions.¹

I agree with you on the fourth, especially after the screenshot was added. In general, I think the thing that people point to must be objectively ostensive: if they can't concretely point to the thing and ask "What is this thing called?"—whether it's through visual media or through a concrete reference—it's still just as bad as ITG.

To wit, there are other questions that roughly fit the category of questions you're talking about that I feel pass that test:

• Who wrote this incredible theme-song?
• Origin of the Qin Shi Huang music theme in Civilization 4?
• Who performed the works of John Adams for the Civilization 4 soundtrack?

So, after discussing it with you and others over the past day or so, this is more a problem of people leaving comments that mischaracterize the nature of a close (i.e., pinning the blame on a passing resemblance to an ITG question), and it's something we should fix in general.

Notes

^{Note 1:} Because there's some that say this answer is only highly-upvoted because I railed against the closed questions you mentioned in your question, I've completely removed the inside baseball and sausage making regarding why I think the questions you linked to should be closed anyway. My rationale—which I still stand by and will continue to use to defend the closure of the questions—is still available in the revisions.

Answer 2

We shouldn't be. Simple rule of thumb for identification questions: You must be asking for the identification of a real actual thing that somebody else can look at. Examples of acceptable formulations:

"What is the font in this screenshot?"

"What game is being played in this Youtube video?"

"What song plays during the 4th level of that Awesome Game?"

"Who is the voice actor that portrays The Bad Guy?"

The memories of the asker are not valid source material for identification questions. If somebody else can't click a link or load up the game and go to the point in question and see the element in need of identification, proceed to Kill It With Fire as per usual.

Answer 3

[I'm answering Should we allow questions asking to identify non-game elements in games? since murgatroid mentioned me in a chat post, I don't consider it same as this discussion on ITG posts but has been closed as a duplicate]

I don't consider answerable questions relating to games as off-topic, even if some of their actual expertise may overlap with other fields (font typography, statistics, graph theory etc.) I strongly disagree that inside knowledge of the game is not gaming enthusiast related, or that answers should be interesting to the majority to be relevant.

An example to show the notions of on/off topic in my opinion:

• Who was the VA for the baby bear in Goldilocks: On-topic, regardless if the actual answer happens to be a famous actor or the production company's janitor.
• What other performance is Goldilocks' VA famous far? : Off-topic, we don't care about non-game activities
• What other game voices has Goldilocks' VA contributed to? : On-topic, domain restricted to gaming (but may be ruled off-topic as its a list question)

Identify this font (or similar graphic doubts) must be accompanied by a screenshot, else it becomes a very subjective question that cannot be answered authoritatively. Re. why I consider it on-topic to ask about fonts; I remember playing Diablo and then going online to find out that it uses Exocet out of curiosity, this was completely unrelated to any interests in typography.

Even if the asker's intention is to take that info and apply it in non-game related contexts elsewhere (say they want to use it in a presentation) - that is not our call to make, so long as the question itself is gaming-related.

Answer 4

This is getting a bit ridiculous.

My problem right now is that we (and I mean all of us) are dancing around a set of bad questions and an ITG, and not the actual concern of game element identification (GEI). Mark actually linked to 3 questions, but they're all open (and don't look to have been closed), which leads me to believe this isn't really a problem after all.

I will not re-hash Mark's arguments about the questions LessPop initially linked to, as those arguments (as valid as they are outside this discussion) is partly what got us into this mess. Nor will I address the Breaking Bad question as I feel it's an entirely separate beast from the initial question. It is an ITG. Full stop. It should not be included in this discussion. I am open to discussion on it, but not here.

So, what do I actually think about GEI questions? The category itself is fine by me. Leave the good questions open, close the bad questions, which, as far as I can tell, is what's been happening. What I really want to see, and what I think would move this discussion forward, is if someone can point to a good GEI that was closed, especially if it was closed for ITG reasons. I haven't seen any evidence that that has happened. This all leads me to believe that the status-quo (as far as actually closing questions is concerned) is fine.

And because I know someone is going to bring up the Pokemon Font question in the comments, let me restate: I will not re-hash Mark's arguments, and it's a bad GEI question.

Answer 5

What game is Jesse playing in Breaking Bad?

If you take away the stuff about the television show from this question, what you're left with is:

It looks to me like a first person shooter. The enemy are bald guys with a sickle. Some of them also wear scarfs that cover the lowest half of their head. I believe the setting is rather new, since I can see graffiti on the walls. The part of game shown is in wet underground rooms.

I would like to know the name of the game. Does anybody have a clue what I'm talking about? I hope my explanation isn't too broad.

Which is a textbook identify-this-game question.

That said, I agree with Lesspop about the fact that this doesn't have any (or at least most) of the problems which plagued ITG questions of old, and I'm actually supporting it on the site. This is just food for thought.