Many games allow you to create games in them, such as Minecraft or Roblox. I'm not talking about modding.

Are questions about these considered on-topic? I know questions like "Minecraft keeps crashing" are definitely off-topic, but what about questions like "Counting players with command blocks"? (I never played Roblox, so I can't say anything about that).


Where's the line between game developement and gaming? Is something considered game developement, if it creates a standalone game? Is there an overlap between the two?

  • \$\begingroup\$ Is there a specific question you have in mind? \$\endgroup\$ – Josh Mar 19 '17 at 15:20
  • \$\begingroup\$ @Josh I just saw a question about Roblox crashing constantly and I got curious if it'd be on-topic, if it was a question about actually making games with it. \$\endgroup\$ – Bálint Mar 19 '17 at 15:30
  • \$\begingroup\$ I think this is the question @Bálint was referring to. \$\endgroup\$ – Pikalek Mar 20 '17 at 19:50

I don't see why the topic of "developing games within existing games" would be off-topic.

A game is being built by leveraging an existing game as a toolset. I don't see this is as fundamentally that different from modding, and even if somebody were to disagree with that it's hard to disagree with the fact that a game is still being developed.

As to your specific hypothetical "counting players with command blocks" in Minecraft question: given that the audience for modding here is small, and the audience for Minecraft-specific modding is even smaller, I'd say a user is more likely to get a better answer to that question on Arcade, where such queries are on-topic (as of this writing) and the subject has a wider base.

But as per above, I don't think it would be off-topic here, so if we ever saw such a question I'd probably just leave a comment suggesting Arqade might have a more appropriate audience and offer to migrate the question if the poster wanted, but wouldn't otherwise do anything.

  • \$\begingroup\$ Agreed. Since questions about developing games using an engine is (very) on topic surely questions where an existing game serves as the engine should be on topic. \$\endgroup\$ – Charanor Mar 19 '17 at 15:49

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