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OK, I feel like this should be on meta, because it is a very meta question, but I thought it would be interesting to discuss here. it is relevant and it might provide a little break from coding.

Using these sites you can essentially get a very good answer to any problem. In fact I think it would be safe to say you can pretty much get people to discuss the best algorithm for any given problem.

I was wondering if it would be interesting to create a whole game this way. you would ask the first question for instance:

What type of game would be the best game to make if the project was going to be worked on by an unknown amount of designers and developers?

The answer would be subjective, but people could discuss and after a time the answer with the most votes could be chosen and the question locked out. This would be the hardest question I suppose, because after that you would get more and more technical and the questions would become more and more like the questions you ask on these forums.

What would be the best class structure for this segments of a game?

What would be the best way of testing for collisions etc..

Do you think it would be possible to create a whole game this way? Sorry if this seems bizarre or annoying, but I think it might be worth a try! Think of this as the zeroth question. What do you think?

Dollarslice
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    What is the question? – Daniel Oct 13 '11 at 17:15
  • that would be the last sentence - what do you think? – Dollarslice Oct 13 '11 at 17:53
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    I think maybe a game development, solutions focused forum like StackExchange is not the place to ask not-a-question to take a break from game development =) Maybe rephrase it into a specific game design problem, an question of code patterns to handle unknown data, or even an example that needs some help to whip into shape? – Patrick Hughes Oct 13 '11 at 20:19

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This kind of question isn't really what SE was designed for ... it works better to have focused, objective questions than to have 100 questions about "What is the best kind of X?" For example, Question 1 in your series is the canonical question that I hate on Gamedev.SE: "I'm about to make a game! What language/platform should I use?!?!?! Please suggest the best possible engine"

I've also seen disaster cases on StackOverflow where a programmer who obviously has no idea how to program tries to use a series of StackOverflow questions to do his job for him. The questions wound up being too localized, and not very useful to anyone other than the OP.

Addenddum (Meta-Answer)

What is your goal with this "meta-game"? Would you actually continue building this community-driven game as people answered the questions? Or was this more of a meta-question?

  • Are you bored? Go out and make a game.
  • Trying to get ideas to make a game? You could take just about any idea and run with it. The biggest challenge in a hobby project is sitting down and doing it. It is not hard to come up with seeds for a game itself. See this question What are good games to "earn your wings" with? for some ideas to start with.
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Jimmy
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  • I am making a game, I just thought this might be interesting, and I have no shortage of idea. The difficulty is picking only a few and designing gameplay which is realistic for your team to make.

    I think actually with too many cooks you might just make a really generic game, but it would be an interesting experiment. Or not as the case may be.

     – Dollarslice Oct 13 '11 at 17:52
  • and yes, I thought that if it took off, you could try and build a small game out of peoples answers and see what you ended up with. – Dollarslice Oct 13 '11 at 17:55
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    Asking questions and then sticking the answers into a project folder will just result in a horrible mess of code. – thedaian Oct 13 '11 at 18:15