Game Design Support seems to be inconsistently enforced with the rules when it comes to being on-topic, and it’s as simple as that.
For example, one would see a post about scripting in the art category likely moved, but the same doesn’t apply for game design support.
Wow, I hadn’t noticed this until now. Seems similar to the situation with Development Discussion.
Not really much you can do but flag. But unlike #development-discussion, this is at least somewhat under control. Basically what @souppression said
I don’t see any specific issue with this category.
If topics that you feel don’t belong in the category aren’t moved by staff, it might be worth flagging them with the Something Else option so you can give an explanation as to why you think the post should be moved. I’ve seen a few topics which don’t belong in there and on almost every occasion they have been either moved to the correct category or taken down.
Thank you for making this topic @iGottic, I’ve been wanting to make a topic about this for a long time now, just couldn’t be bothered to make it lol.
I think the issue with the category is that many people think that “Game Designer” is a catch-all game development role for jacks of all trades, when it is actually its own role. Game designers design the user experience of the game, the general flow of the game, all of that good stuff.
So this needs to be more clearly communicated.
As of Feburary 20th, 2021, 5:41PM PST, the entire front page can be flagged.
None of these are questions
however it’s basically become the standard for this category to become a dump of miscellaneous development help inquiries.
That said I believe it is time to support this feature request even more:
I think the Game Design Support category is fine; the real problem is that there’s a lack of categories for other platform-related issues and development and a fundamental misunderstanding of what design is, so it really comes down to these options:
The category guidelines aren’t enough to explain. People don’t read, respect or care about them, they just want their questions answered and that’s the bottom line. A proper category for asking these questions would allow for broader support without getting pointlessly flagged.
This is likely because many of the moderators don’t have the game development experience to distinguish a meaningful game design question from another development question consistently.
