Where should I ask half-hardware-half-game-related questions?

Question

If I had a question about hardware and a game itself (in particular, my hardware is malfunctioning and not all games/programs detect the hardware), should I be asking it here (at Arqade) or Super User?

In case, the question is:

What should I do when my controller isn't detected by my system (isn't displaying in Device Manager/Printers and Devices), yet it is detected by only by Valve programs; Steam Big Picture and Source Games (Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and Team Fortress 2)? How do I allow it to run on other programs/games (that support the controller) as the system driver for it does not exist?

Answer 1

IMO, you could ask the question in either place. If you want to concentrate on the problem of getting other games to recognize the device, you could post in Arqade. We might suggest programs that mimic driver behavior for console controllers in games. I'm fairly certain that there are already questions like that for specific games, e.g. Diablo 3. What game do you wish recognized it that does not? If you post something tagged with a specific game, someone may already be using a similar setup. In the Diablo 3 example, someone was using a program called Xpadder to use an Xbox 360 controller. More console questions on Arqade.

If you want to concentrate on getting the controller recognized by the system (possibly to make it work like a mouse), you could post at superuser. That would be concentrating on the driver/hardware problem, which is where their expertise lies.

Note that in either place, you are likely to get some people arguing that you should post in the other place. That's just the nature of how the communities work -- some people interpret the rules strictly and want to minimize the questions asked. Also, remember that your actual question should include more details about the controller (brand, model, how does it connect, etc.) and possibly about your PC (OS, version, etc.).

Answer 2

Our acid test for questions that are related to a game, but aren't actually about a game is as follow:

Remove the game from the question. Does the problem go away with it? If so, it's on-topic here.

We deal with games and their problems; take a look at How can I play games which are really old Java applets, for example. There's a specific game being asked about. It's not working in modern browsers, for some odd reason. Now take the game out of the equation. Does the problem still exist? It doesn't look like it; everything else is working fine in the browser. So the problem goes away along with the game. That means it's fine here. The root cause is Java and the browser, yes, but the issue itself is still a gaming problem, as this is the sort of thing gamers are going to run into.

This also applies to other things that aren't games, but that we support, such as Steam, consoles, and other gaming specific hardware and utilities. Just replace games in the test with said system, and see if the problem still exists

I think controllers meet the definition of gaming specific hardware rather well; I mean, you don't use controllers for much of anything outside of games (or at least, I don't. If you do, I'm curious what you use it for). We probably have more experience in installing and configuring controllers than any other place. We can help with that with no problem, I think.