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I know it is a brand new game, and thus a lot of people are playing it, but according to the current question count, there are around 7 times as many questions regarding StarCraft 2 are there are questions regarding World of WarCraft or Modern Warfare 2.

Perhaps I am tilting at windmills, but I'm concerned that during the beta, rather than becoming a gaming Q&A site, the site is becoming a StarCraft 2 Q&A site. While it is probably OK for the site to be flooded with questions regarding the game du jour once it is up and running, is it OK for that to occur during the beta? Should we be making a conscious effort to ask questions regarding other games, so that the list of questions, as well as the medium and high rep users, when the site goes live represent a cross section of gaming, and not just PC RTSers?

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  • For reference, 253 questions are tagged starcraft-2. There are 1867 questions total. Also, WoW is bound to be low because there already exists a specialized SE1.0 site just for WoW questions.
    – Larry Wang
    Aug 27, 2010 at 20:07
  • While there are 1867 questions, most of those are not tagged with a specific game. Dwarf Fortress is next with 107, then TF2 with 47, MW2 at 36 and WoW at 33. I compared SC2 to MW2 and WoW because the latter two are played by huge numbers of people, but are not in a "just released" period.
    – au revoir
    Aug 27, 2010 at 20:10
  • @kae there is also a starcraft se1.0: zergoverflow.com
    – tzenes
    Aug 27, 2010 at 20:53
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    Call of Duty: Black Ops will be released in two weeks. Expect an influx of questions about that (though perhaps not as many because the game mechanics are less complex).
    – sequentiallee
    Aug 28, 2010 at 2:13
  • My above comment is incorrect. It'll be released 9th November. Ambiguous short-hand dates have no place on a global internet. The point stands: the "problem" should evaporate away as major titles are released.
    – sequentiallee
    Sep 5, 2010 at 2:07
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    Do like I did and add starcraft-2 and dwarf-fortress to your ignored tags list, then go into your preferences (it's a tab on your profile page) and check the "Hide ignored tags" checkbox. I'll warn you though, this site only appears to have only 10-20 new or updated questions a day if you do this.
    – user2974
    Sep 9, 2010 at 13:40

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As much as I'd love to see more activity from games I actually play (the amount of interesting questions I see on the homepage every day is depressing), I just don't think we can ask people to limit the SC2 questions.

What we can do, instead, is ask more questions that are not about Starcraft 2 (or Dwarf Fortress, for that matter).

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    A great idea! If we want to see more questions about other games, the obvious solution is to ask them. If you can attract people from those communities to come and answer, they may in turn reciprocate with their own questions about their games.
    – Grace Note StaffMod
    Aug 27, 2010 at 20:07
  • I would never propose limiting questions - I think all the SC2 questions are fine. I just was considering making a concerted effort (myself and possibly with others) to ensure that questions on other games are being asked during the beta.
    – au revoir
    Aug 27, 2010 at 20:13
  • I think that we have a number of experts at starcraft; by comparison I'm not seeing a ton off mw2 or wow experts
    – tzenes
    Aug 27, 2010 at 20:55
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Yes, there are too many for many people's liking (mine included).

Should we do anything about it? No.

Far more than any other SE site, gaming tends to have fads. During private beta, alien swarm was released and we had a (relatively) large amounts of question for it. It's likely in the future we will have other games with similar effects.

But, these fads wear off soon. And the amount of obvious questions for SC2 will deplete eventually.

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  • Indeed. We had a whole lot of TF2 and RDR questions during the private beta as well. But we still got, and we still continue to get, a good number of questions about other games. So I don't see any real problem. And I'm the import/niche gamer!
    – Grace Note StaffMod
    Aug 27, 2010 at 20:06
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    Agreed, gaming is susceptible to "fads". But not only is that just the reality we need to deal with, it is also great for our traffic. New users will come for the game of the moment, but are likely to stay because they are bound to be gamers after all.
    – Oak
    Aug 27, 2010 at 20:32
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I look at that 253 number and I smile a little and feel better about the work we've done here.

I don't think anyone looks at 1867 and pats themselves on the back.

The truth is that while this site has been radically more successful than its SE 1.0 contemporaries, it is still not a success yet.

I know I look at this graph and I am very concerned about our future.

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After 51 days we seriously lag behind the original trilogy. Now certainly you can say that they had advantages, and that's fine, but we (as well as the other SE 2.0 sites) seriously lag behind them. We have yet to do in 51 days, what any of those sites did in 30. The fact that Starcraft 2 makes up 13.5% is not a comment on Starcraft 2 as much as a comment on our other games.

I think the large disparity is in part the "fad" nature of games, but also in part due to the level of expertise that have been brought to the Starcraft 2 questions. If we ignore Starcraft 2 and instead look at Dwarf Fortress we see a game that has been around for 5 years, and still has plenty of questions (almost 6%). This is largely due to the level of expertise that has been brought to those questions. If we look at:

we see high quality answers, which answer the question at hand and often provide more information. Compare this to the 36 questions on Modern Warfare 2 (an hugely popular game), and some of the answers there.

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