"Why did They design it that way, anyway?", and why do we allow or disallow these?

Question

We get an unusually large number of questions along this line. This question comes up because of this recent closure. I'm bringing it up because our handling of this is... inconsistent.

This question is roughly identical in nature to the above, except it's not downvoted at all (possibly due to being slightly less ranty-looking?) and it is not closed. They're both asking "Why did developers/publishers make this choice in this situation?".

I had an early spot with badp during our Beta about this question that approaches a different facet - "Why did the game developers design the mechanics in this fashion?", as the superset. I've always stated that this is a side of game development, as it deals not with the game, but the motivation behind the design. And there's also the part where sometimes the answer simply is "They wanted to make it that way."

A lot of these motivation-behind-design questions, sometimes we'll know a general answer (as demonstrated with the region-lock), and sometimes we just know it's simply a matter of design decision.

What do we think about our policy for this? It's honestly in limbo right now. I originally continually espoused that "This is off-topic for us, it's a matter that is primarily known by the game developer, and while it may impact gamers to an extent it is not always a matter that gamers will, or should, answer." But this policy hasn't really ever gone through any review, so I've honestly been lax on its enforcement. As such, let's spend some simple time to decide how these should be handled. Do we accept "Why are games made in this way?" questions, only under certain circumstances, and most importantly, how can we make it a simple policy that is both easy to enforce and easy to explain?

Answer 1

They should be disallowed.

The whole "Because they did, OK?" problem has been discussed, so I won't go into that.

Their often greater suitability to Game Dev has also been discussed.

The other problem I see: They're not real questions. Beyond the facet that many aren't answerable, they contradict this guideline from the FAQ:

You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face.

"I'm wondering why they did this" is not a real problem needing a solution from the perspective of a gamer. How to deal with or alter the game mechanics may be a problem, but the "why" of it is not. Game devs might legitimately wonder about this as they design and market their games, so again they might be better on Game Dev; but they are not useful here.

Answer 2

I think the general questions about why people would even consider things like region-lock or different release dates in different countries are certainly answerable. Game Dev might be a better place to get answers about them, but since the people that are asking are asking from a gamer perspective, not a developer one, they seem to fit OK here.

Questions about why a specific decision was made in a specific case seem unanswerable unless we happen to have someone who was actually involved in the decision, so I think those should be considered "Not Constructive".

Answer 3

Honestly, I think those questions belong more in game-dev than here, but I admit gamers are often the best equipped to answer some of them. I'm not sure they are close-worthy, but I personally often downvote questions that have a "why" in them based on the "not useful" guideline - they do not help any other gamer.

Answer 4

I think that question should not be closed. Or not if they can be turned into an intersting question.

With the region locked topic, the best answer talks about legal restriction and so on, providing interesting content (and not too localised, but example could serve a general purpose after all).

But we absolutely need to avoid question like the trial one. Eventually, if this question was oriented on "Why there is a trial version for this game in PC but not on XBox", this would have raise interesting answer on reason that can bring devs to do demo on some platform and not the other. This can be due to the console distribution system or Idk.

Question is : how do we make people change orientation of their question? Maybe we need a special close reason for gaming, like : this question is solely dependent of editor's decisions. If problem is larger than this, please enhance the scope of your question. Or something like this.

But maybe we'll stay in topic that are too subjective after all...

Answer 5

These questions should not be closed.

An earlier post by Matthew Read quoted the FAQ. Specifically:

You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face.

Just look at other Stack Exchange websites with the exact same statement in the FAQ... Science Fiction & Fantasy, English Language & Usage, even our beloved Stack Overflow.

Every one of these sites contains a plethora of questions about "Why is x designed this way?":

• Why was there only one Sorcerer's Stone?
• Why is there no logical XOR in Javascript?
• Why is the word "Pants" plural?

Beyond that, all of these questions reference some point in the development process (story design, programming language design, English language design.) So, what is the goal of removing these questions on gaming?

As others have mentioned, it only hurts our site when these questions are dismissed. It is my personal theory that this misguided policy came about from a misunderstanding of the official FAQ. The intention of the FAQ is to prune unnecessary chattiness and speculation, not to eliminate relevant and factual information from being presented.

When a question has a clear answer, and it is related to game history or canon, it should be allowed.