**Big releases don't always mean lots of questions right away**. Some of our biggest tags with the most questions are ones where we didn't get a lot of questions right away. The contests really just brought a concentration of questions, not more. ##AAA Releases [I've created a query][1] to chart the number of questions we get a day for any given tag, and let's take a look at what the biggest releases for 2014 look like. - [Assassins Creed Unity][2] - [Civilization: Beyond Earth][3] - [Destiny <br>][4] - [Super Smash Bros 4][5] - [Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare][6] - [Shadow of Mordor][7] - [Watch Dogs][8] [![][2t]][2][![][3t]][3][![][4t]][4][![][5t]][5][![][6t]][6][![][7t]][7][![][8t]][8] I think we're a little too close to Civ and AC to really examine those well, so I'm going to take a recent one, but not so recent as to be too close to tell: Destiny. ![Destiny Chart][9] The ones before the release were from the beta, and can probably be safely ignore for our purposes. But it has had a fairly steady stream of questions coming in all the time. A couple a week isn't bad, and it is already doing pretty well. There was a definite spike around release, but at 13, it wasn't anything that was going to blow other tags out of the water. ###Now let's take a look at some of our top tags - [Borderlands 2][10] - [Mass Effect 3][11] - [Starcraft 2][12] - [Pokemon X & Y][13] - [Skyrim][14] [![][10t]][10][![][11t]][11][![][12t]][12][![][13t]][13][![][14t]][14] The most interesting one I want to focus on here is Starcraft 2. For SC2, we both did, and did not have a promotion event for it. For the initial Wings of Liberty release back in 2010, we did not do any real promotions for it. It puts it into a unique situation of being 1. A popular AAA title 2. A good candidate for questions (single player, multiplayer, and complex) 3. Good for comparisons against itself ![Starcraft 2 Chart][15] When SC2 first came out, Arqade was still growing and getting traction, but you will notice a pretty significant bump around the release date in number of questions asked. The second massive spike there is from the release of the sequel and the [AnswerSwarm Event][16]. But if you look at the scale of that chart, it still only got, at peak, around 40 questions a day for the tag. Now, that's a lot for sure, but in the grand scheme of the 1400+ questions asked on the tag, it isn't much of a dent. The bigger thing is the number of questions that keep coming in after the launch. Another thing to look at is the drop off in the questions. We went from 40 questions to 2-3 a day in a few days, where as with the first release, we did that over a week. In those weeks, about the same number of questions ended up coming in, they were just spread out the first time, likely because there weren't prizes for the people who asked. Another great example to look at is Pokemon X & Y. We didn't do an event for that, it was a recently released game (relatively speaking at least), and is one of our most popular tags (ranked 26 at the moment). ![Pokemon X & Y Chart][17] Just after release, it was getting less than 10 questions per day. That's not a lot. But, it adds up, because it is currently at over 300 questions. Not too shabby. And if you compare this chart and the one for Destiny, you'll notice that that one looks a lot like the beginning of this one. ## It's All Relative I suspect you're comparing it against how it felt around the time of the big events Arqade hosted. And you're right, we have far less questions being asked here than we did when there were prizes to be won. I don't think anyone can (or would) deny that. But that doesn't mean we're in bad shape. Those events drove people to ask *a lot* of questions on the site, but they weren't always the best quality. And those events [didn't necessarily drive traffic to the site][18] and were expensive to do. Now the questions come in a bit slower, instead of racing to get them in. Of the top 10 SE sites, we are second lowest for number of questions a day. But we still have a very active user base, and a fair amount of questions coming in for all types of games. And we have one of the highest answer rates of SE sites as well. [I'm always for lowering the barrier of entry in asking questions here][19] but we want to be careful how we do it. We are not a discussion forum, and for a lot of people, that is what they are looking for. Sometimes we're not going to be the best site for a person, and that's alright. But I don't think we have a problem with users, with questions, or with big game releases. We just may have to get used to less of a rush of questions if things aren't driven by prizes. [1]: http://data.stackexchange.com/gaming/query/248204/tag-question-timeline#graph [2]: https://i.sstatic.net/i1M42.png [2t]: https://i.sstatic.net/i1M42t.png "Assassins Creed Unity" [3]: https://i.sstatic.net/ln8oK.png [3t]: https://i.sstatic.net/ln8oKt.png "Civilization: Beyond Earth" [4]: https://i.sstatic.net/w3GQv.png [4t]: https://i.sstatic.net/w3GQvt.png "Destiny" [5]: https://i.sstatic.net/pZ7EQ.png [5t]: https://i.sstatic.net/pZ7EQt.png "Super Smash Bros 4" [6]: https://i.sstatic.net/cyoiU.png [6t]: https://i.sstatic.net/cyoiUt.png "Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare" [7]: https://i.sstatic.net/Xx7qR.png [7t]: https://i.sstatic.net/Xx7qRt.png "Shadow of Mordor" [8]: https://i.sstatic.net/C77Bg.png [8t]: https://i.sstatic.net/C77Bgt.png "Watch Dogs" [9]: https://i.sstatic.net/w3GQv.png [10]: https://i.sstatic.net/GvMMO.png [10t]: https://i.sstatic.net/GvMMOt.png "Borderlands 2" [11]: https://i.sstatic.net/foRAB.png [11t]: https://i.sstatic.net/foRABt.png "Mass Effect 3" [12]: https://i.sstatic.net/dQdiC.png [12t]: https://i.sstatic.net/dQdiCt.png "Starcraft 2" [13]: https://i.sstatic.net/fvpOY.png [13t]: https://i.sstatic.net/fvpOYt.png "Pokemon X & Y" [14]: https://i.sstatic.net/ZONr1.png [14t]: https://i.sstatic.net/ZONr1t.png "Skyrim" [15]: https://i.sstatic.net/dQdiC.png [16]: https://gaming.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6857/15643 [17]: https://i.sstatic.net/zVMOL.png [18]: https://gaming.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7039/did-the-starcraft-2-hots-contest-answerswarm-increase-site-activity [19]: https://gaming.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5040/what-about-the-new-user-experience-here-is-turning-people-away