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Regarding this question, why is it off-topic?

I can see that you want to argue that is it "identify this game", however this is not what I'm asking. I want to know if a very specific baseball mechanic has ever been emulated in a video game.

I'm not asking something broad like "Has there ever been a video game where the protagonist doesn't jump"; I'm asking a very specific and obscure rules question against a relatively static set (baseball video games) of options.

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    Let's assume that there is a game out there with this mechanic... The answer to your question is "yes". Is that helpful? No, the only way an answer would be helpful is if it also mentions what game used this mechanic. That's what makes this an "identify this game" question.
    – Mage Xy
    Jun 13, 2017 at 18:37
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    It's a shame, I really liked your question, but I also agree with the rules that limit this type of question on the site. When putting it in context to other questions similar to this one, I tend to lean on the side of closing it.
    – FoxMcCloud
    Jun 14, 2017 at 2:22

1 Answer 1

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Why I closed it

In this question, we decided not to make exceptions for finite subsets of the entire gaming universe for identification questions.

In the off topic ruling I used, it explicitly says:

Questions asking for help identifying a game, based on a description, feature list, or any other criteria are off-topic

Emphasis mine.

You are asking a question to identify a game based on a list of criteria. Your question clearly fits into this description, and therefore it is off topic under current rules. The difference between "did any game ever do X" and "what was the first game to do X" is a semantic one at best; the ability to answer the question is the same, and off-topic rules should apply equally to both.

If you want to change this, you need to provide a strong case for why the specific type of question you have in mind provides value despite the fact that we have already determined that the broader class of questions this fits into does not provide value.

Why it's a bad question for Arqade

It's not a practical question based on an in-game problem. It's trivia. It's not actually useful to anyone except to scratch a curious itch. Our site's focus is primarily to solve practical gaming problems. While we do allow some trivia, it's not meant to be a focus of this site, and the fact that it's simultaneously trivia and clearly off-topic makes it not a fit for us.

Appendix

The old text for this close reason was:

Questions asking for help identifying a game, whether based on a description, or feature list, or any other set of criteria (i.e. "What was the first game to…") are off-topic; this blog post might help. We allow an exception for identifying games based on an actual piece of the game, such as screenshots or audio clips.

We had to shorten it for technical reasons, where we removed this specific example from the text. Removal of the example, however, does not remove the concept that it is off topic.

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    Plus for "Do any games contain X?" questions there is essentially no good way to answer with the sites format. If the answer is "yes" it's not that bad; list applicable titles and move on (again still not really a good question type here). A big problem is what if the answer is "no". How do you prove that? It's extremely difficult to back up the claim, because the amount of extant games is way too high. Proving a negative is way too difficult.
    – JMac
    Jun 13, 2017 at 18:36
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    I'd just like to add that the trivia questions we allow might be better described as "fact finding" questions. The expectation of the asker is that the answer will allow the asker to make meaningful decisions about how they play a particular game, and as such the question shouldn't be of a trivial (i.e. insignificant) nature.
    – MBraedley
    Jun 13, 2017 at 18:36

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