Do we permit questions about games which can be defined as video games in the technical sense of the world, but that serve as a true-to-source emulation of real-life games? And if we do permit them, under what conditions?
For instance:
- Any video-game implementation of Chess, Checkers, Go etc.
- Any true-to-source video-game implementation of more complex and recent board games such as Settlers of Catan or various wargames (see this previous discussion).
- Card games that can be played without a computer (e.g. Klondike solitaire).
- Card games that represent games that were not around before computers and may not necessarily be playable without one (e.g. specific shuffle of cards needed).
- Collectible-cards games (e.g. Magic the Gathering) in which the gameplay is completely identical to real-world gameplay.
- True-to-source emulations of electronic or mechanical games such as pinball machines (see this question about them).
- Games that just facilitate playing a real-world game - e.g. a web application through which you can play a game with friends.
- Video games that have later inspired board games which contain the exact same rules and gameplay (I don't know of anything like that, but for some video games - especially puzzle games - it is certainly possible).
- etc.
Some of these topics were already covered in the links above, but I wanted a more general question to cover these cases as well as potential future ones.
Also, do we also care about how many people are playing the digital version of a game as opposed to the real-life one? e.g. if a new popular indie puzzle games for iOS comes out and it turns out later it's actually a true-to-source implementation of an ancient Incan board game played by ~150 people worldwide, should we suddenly declare it off-topic? Then again, the number of people playing Klondike on a computer is probably orders of magnitude higher than the number of people who ever played it with real playing cards, yet we have migrated a question about it to the Board and Card Games StackExchange.
Finally, what about video games that do have some differences from their real-life counterparts, but those are very minor and/or affect only specific parts of the gameplay?