text:
What should our domain be?

Possible Duplicate:
Write an Elevator Pitch / Tagline

Note:
We are closing this domain naming thread. It is asking the entirely wrong question. See this blog post for details: Domain Names: Wrong Question
We're going to keep the name gamdev.stackexchange.com. But we WILL be setting up redirects from the more "popular" domains names (e.g. seasonedadvice.com to cooking.stackexchange.com, basicallymoney.com to money.stackexchange.com, and others as we go through the list).
New question: "Write and Elevator Pitch / Tagline!"
Click here to contribute ideas and vote.
[original message text below]

Post your ideas for a dot-com domain name for this website, which captures the spirit and intent of the site, namely:

{name} is intended for expert and advanced gamers on all consoles and computers, including, but not limited to...

Game Design
Game Programming
Asset Creation
Writing for Games

…

Please follow these guidelines:

Check to see if the domain is taken or squatted before making the name suggestion. Squatted and taken names, however clever, are not helpful. You can use whois.net to check availability. (EDIT: Read this post regarding squatted names).
Post one domain per answer. This makes the voting process much easier. If domains are very similar (e.g. "dev" and "devs"), they can be in the same answer.
Make sure the domain wasn't already suggested. To search within this question, use a search query such as: inquestion:1 "example.com" replacing example.com with the domain to search for.
When coming back to this question, make sure to sort the answers "newest first", as to not miss new proposals.

Guess we should get started with that stuff here also :p

Use bust a name to generate domain names.

@Fire Bustaname only checks for 404 like content. I got a few false positives from it. Still pretty cool for thinking of stuff though.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897435.aspx ^^

Can we get a few game development domains that aren't programming-related? Coding is a relatively small part of the gamedev process, and I'd love to see some ideas that focus on the game part of things.

@ZorbaTHut Going to find thats what the bulk of the suggestions come from since this place spawned from a programming community.

Is finding a domain name still relevant? nothingtoinstall.com was only life for half a day before it was renamed back to webapps.stackexchange.com

I'm of the mind that gamedev.stackexchange.com is superior to all of the below suggestions, perhaps only short of my suggestion.  :)

Beyond Polygons
BeyondPolygons.com
Available.

I actually like this one a bunch. Stands out and is quite relevant.

This neatly nails my "something that isn't just about programming" request. It's game-related, without limiting itself to any particular genre or style of game - if anything, it explicitly avoids limiting itself to any particular style. I approve highly and would vote up multiple times if possible.

don't like it because it sounds like the site will be about 3D modelling to me. At least half the questions are about 2D games anyway.

Now registered by Stack Overflow! Looks like this will be our name :)

@Ricket: Registration does not indicate acceptance at all! I register any names that show momentum or promise. Carry on.

Gotcha, sorry. I didn't know you were actually preemptively registering domains, but I'm glad you are!

Seems to much driving on the graphics / 3D train to me. Games are not (only) that.

@Suma: That is what "beyond" is supposed to mean.

I am not native English speaker, hence my understanding is likely to be inaccurate. I understood Beyond like "the invisible background" (i.e. what makes polygons to be there).

I am not a fan of putting a 3D bent on the domain, either.

@Suma: beyond can mean "behind", or it can mean "in addition to". So in this case, "beyond polygons" can sort of mean "more than just polygons". You had the first or second definition, but it is implied to be the third: http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=beyond

This feels a bit too graphics oriented, however, the site is too programing oriented.  Maybe this will create some balance?

Dates the site.  Will be outdated when we render using nurbs.

GameTestPatch.com
Play on Game, Set, Match. Maybe we don't have that many game developers who are also tennis players.

I think it's cute.

+1 I like it a lot!

TheGameLoop.com

+1 Not taken, only problem is that people could type GameLoop.com instead.

I like it though I agree that simply GameLoop.com might be a better solution.

Yeah, but GameLoop.com has been taken already. They could try to buy it from them...

According to whois and some searching, this is the blog of gameloop.com's registrant. He also registered gameloop.net. According to the Wayback machine, it was a site for a "Gameloop, Inc." in 2001 but has been through various "coming soon" pages since May 2001. Asking might be worth a try.

@TomWij: gamedevs are the kind of usebase that would recover from that problem either by adding the, bookmark the site or use Google Chrome. ;P

it's a really great name but "the" in the beginning is not nice. It's probably to long but how about something like "brokengameloop.com" (not taken btw) which also keeps in spirit with stackoverflow and serverfault naming scheme.

-1 There is a game development conference held in boston called "Boston Game Loop" that actually has a pending trademark on Game Loop for conference purposes.
I talked to the founders and they're not going to be dicks about it or anything, but it will present some confusion.

I didn't like this one at first, but I've changed my mind. It's sort of catchy, describes community, and is common to most game developers.. not bad. I would think that a site that's been coming soon for 10 years is probably dead in the water and thus probably has an owner who wouldn't be beyond selling it.

I'm very torn. It's a nice name but "The" being in the domain really makes me hesitate...

Reminds me of "thefacebook"

Downvoted in current form. GameLoop.com would be perfect for me, however domain availability is a problem.

BoundingBoxes.com

InventingWorlds.com
Available (suggested since CreatingWorlds.com was a good suggestion but turned out to be taken)

+1 thanks for permutation :) it even sounds better to me

From the classic game architecture functions Update() and Draw(), we could have:
UpdateDraw.com
(Available)

And maybe the title could actually be Update();Draw(); or something?

InterestingDecisions.com
From "gaming is a series of interesting decisions", a pretty common (if controversial) quote.

BadVertex.com
It's a bit too 3D specific but it keeps in spirit with Stack Overflow and Server Fault.

GameBytes.com (available squatted)

My only problem with this is that it sounds like another gaming/community site. I don't think a developer would look at it and expect it to be about game development. I could be wrong though.

This is not available. (although it is for sale, so I guess it counts as squatted).

I'm not sure how I missed that. I wonder if I misspelled it when I did the lookup.

You wouldn't be the first here :-7

Polygon Builders
PolygonBuilders.com
Available.

WorldSpawners.com (Available)

WhenItsDone.com
Squatted, but might be ok: See blog.

GameBits.com (squatted)
I like bits, but only bytes is available.
Edit: I have moved GameBytes.com into its own answer.

http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/07/domain-names/ Squatted names may be possible, but please put your suggestions in different answers so they can be voted on independently.

DevelopAGame
available as .com, .net, .org, .info

DevelopingFun.com
We're having fun developing, as well as developing "fun" for the player. Pun-tastic!
Seems to be available.
Other possible puns: MakingFun.com, MakingOurOwnFun.com, etc.

PushingPixels.com
(squatted)

GameDevQuestions.com
Not terribly unique, but it is available.

FirstPersonDeveloper.com
Available.

OnlyTheGame.com
Available.
Play on words since: 1) game development is such an epic task that its only approached by the brave and 2) to those who build games, the only thing that matters is the game.

You only lost "The Game"

pathsolvers.com
(Available)

SynthesizingReality.com
Available, sadly not super easy to spell esp. if you don't choose the American side of the s/z "debate."  But it does explain what we do.

GameDevScene.com or Game-Dev-Scene.com
Both seem to be available.

 gameworkshop.com
Taken, but not used.

Would be confused with games-workshop, makers of Warhammer/40k and such.

DevDungeon.com (Because of the o'so many game dungeons we have completed/made)

I don't like it, it could seem like a D&D site...

adventurevat.com
available

MeleeHeap.com
Game related melee + Code related Heaps

InverseRoot.com or maybe InverseSquareRoot.com
In homage to the famous fast InvSqrt() function from Quake III Arena (and yes, 0x5f3759df.com is taken, but that's probably not most easily remembered/typed domain name anyway)

While I understand the reference, it doesn't exactly scream "Game Development" to the average game developer (or so I would think).

Cute, but impractical.

BrokenGameLoop.com

Level Too Hard
LevelTooHard.com
Available.

Fellow Robot
FellowRobot.com
Available.

Epic Effects
EpicEffects.com
Available.

creatingworlds.com Not available.

CreatingWorlds.com is not available. You linked to CreatingsWorlds (not nearly as good but, yes, that's available).

@Robert Cartaino♦: damn my typo... sorry and thanks for the correction

CodeInTheGame.com
Available.

It's not a dot-com. So feel free to vote it down if you are very strict about that. But I think this is an awesome name:
MakingTheGa.me
(available)

6to8weeks.com
:P

BehindPolygons.com
or
BehindThePolygons.com
available.
This is obviously a play on the BeyondPolygons name.  I think that behind better describes game development than beyond.

I think Behind Polygons would imply that we are a community dedicated to 3D game development. (Our work is what's behind the polygon) as opposed to the Beyond meaning more than just polygons.

CollisionDetect.com

This (and BoundingBoxes.com) just seem too specific to me. I don't think this is all about game implementation, it's also about design and the like. Many games don't even have collision detection of any kind.

GameDevExchange.com

Let's please stay away from notions of Stack Exchange or especially Experts Exchange.

Why exactly should we stay away from notions of Stack Exchange? The notion here is not very direct, does not seem to be a problem to me.

WorldViewProjection.com
As of right now, not taken.

makingitbreathe.com
available

AngryData.com
:)

Would fit better with a database or data mining website.

Maybe, but it also resonates about 'issues' and has a fun note to it. Game development should be fun.

WhileDeveloping.com

Doesn't indicate that it is about Game Development.

@TomWij yeah, but it was floating around up there and available so I just got it out :p

DetectingLeaks.com
Available for sale.

PlightSimulator.com

MMOGDC.com
(Massively Multiuser Online Game Developer's Community)

MMORPG is a mistake of our society and needs to be put down. Let's not continue it.

TightenUpThoseGraphics.com

byhumansforhumans.com
(available)

ItsDoneWhenItsDone.com

Maybe just WhenItsDone.com could work. (http://www.3drealms.com/duke4/)

@TomWij: that's what I was referring to :) whenItsDone is squatted but it might be bought if liked...

WhenItsDone.com seems to be taken though, maybe WhenItIsDone.com?

@TomWij: That might still be ok, see here

@TomWij: I made WhenItsDone.com a separate suggestion.

DevelUp.ga [me]

DevelUp.com, DevelUp.net, DevelUp.org are taken; not unique, not .com.

It was a nice play on words though! Oh well. :-\

Game-Invaders.com

source: Stack Exchange

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5/

sort: votes


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Programming Questions: Here or "Belongs on Stackoverflow"?
I know the features wouldn't be installed until this SE makes it out of the public beta. But in the event that it does, I think that this is something that we should be prepared for.
What would the criteria be for deciding if a question would be left here, or suggesting it be on Stackoverflow?

I feel quite strongly that GameDev should cover all aspects of "game development" (note the site isn't called "game design"), which should absolutely include programming. Just because there's another SE site that already covers some related topic (i.e. SO in the case of programming), doesn't mean that the content doesn't belong here.
My reasoning is that although the content of two sites may have some overlap, the audiences may not. If I want to know about a specific DirectX API call, or tips on doing efficient 3D matrix transforms, I'm much more likely to get a relevant/complete answer from professional game developers than I am to get them from a broader programming audience (even though they're "programming questions").
My feeling is that GameDev should cover questions relating to:

Game design (architecture, gameplay, ideas, mechanics, etc)
Game assets (creation, storage, editing, etc)
Game programming (coding, bugs, best practices, patterns, etc)
Game development (testing, team development, tools, etc)
Game release (hosting, publishing, etc)
Game industry (careers, trends, technology, etc)

However, I do agree, that at some point there will be a line where questions become too general and are probably better migrated to SO (or some other SE site). Basically we need to come up with a nice simple single rule that we can apply objectively to a given question to determine whether it's on/off topic. For example, on SO you can apply the question: "If I replaced the word 'programming' with the word 'knitting', would this still belong on SO". (so "What music do you listen to while programming?" is a bad SO question since "What music do you listen to while knitting?" is clearly unrelated to programming).
For GameDev I think that defining question is: "Would a professional game developer give me a better/different/more specific answer to this question than other programmers?". For example if I'm asking about a specific game engine API, then SO is probably not the best choice, since it's unlikely you'll find enough people with the right exposure (different audience). If I'm asking about, say, a path finding algorithm, SO is probably not the right choice since if its for a game, you'll probably trade off some accuracy for more efficiency (different needs/goals). But if you're asking how to reverse the order of an array, then a game developer is going to give the same answer as any other programmer, so it probably belongs on SO.
Buy hey, that's just my 2c... I guess we'll see how the votes turn out.

I see no reason why programming questions can't be here as long as they are related to game development. Saying this site should be for theory only, and not practice could really be hurtful.
I am sure you could find an answer to a programming question on SO, but you could possibly get more, and better answers here. We are the professionals, right?
Why wouldn't we want programming question here? Would it be harmful to allow them?

I see where you are coming from and agree that it wouldn't be harmful. I am suggesting that we stick to the theory so that we stand out from the 1001 other game coding sites out there (gamedev.net etc..) and preserve some uniqueness.

We somehow must figure out what 'are related to' means, a question that falls under the terms of StackOverflow and doesn't involve "Game Design, Game Programming, Asset Creation, Writing for Games..." should not be here. It would be logic and add to StackOverflow, but it would result in bloat here... Look at the list on the front page, would you want to see that cluttered with questions that can belong to SO and to which we can't add extra value? @SD021 The uniqueness is a good idea. :-)

I think the key in Joe's answer is that they must be related to game development. Bug fixing is one example of a programming question I think should be discouraged.

As stated in my comment to SD021's answer we need to draw the lines of what types of programming questions can and cannot be posed and place those in the FAQ...

+1 as I agree. As long as the question is being asked in terms of game development than I think it would be fine although there will probably be quite a few that could go to SO.

I propose a test for "related to": If the answers to a question would not be affected by it being about games, than it is not related. For instance, a question like "what's the specific behavior of typedef in this language construct" would have identical answers if the context is games or a spreadsheet app.
In contrast answers to the question "What are some good open source frameworks for UI?" could differ heavily between games and a spreadsheet.

What about for OpenGL related code that isn't technically for a game?  It's very useful for me to have the 3D coding focus (e.g. GLSL) but since it's not strictly for a "game" I find myself debating whether to post in SO.  Also what about someone coding a 3D medical application in DirectX or OpenGL?

I would personally prefer a lot that only game development specific questions are asked here, not general programming ones.
Moreover, when asking such question, I will definitely be asking it on SO and not here, because there is a lot of smart people in the general programming which are in no way related to games, and I would not like to avoid the chance of getting the answer from them.

About game programming, i think there are questions and topics that should stay on gamedev.SE if they are specific to game programming, some examples:

3D programming and/or maths that some programmers would be horrified by.
Design Patterns: well they are not specific to game programming, but if the question has a context about game programming, why not.
Optimisation: well it depends, because on SO it seems there are some strong C language advocates who will bash C++ because they do embedded systems or system programming, but in the game industry we need high level and speed, and also because well, most of the industry now works with C++, so I think it stills belong to gamedev.SE.

I think that this site should be more theoretical rather than practical. There are numerous sites, such as SO that will answer any coding question you have but not many that will help you with the theory behind game design/development etc...

I support this answer. If the question can be answered without knowledge about game development, the question should be on StackOverflow. Questions that you must think about in terms of game development should belong here... This still leaves the question: Where is the line between both?

I do not agree. There are tons of professional game programmers & developers that, at least based on discussions on Twitter, really would like to be able to contribute to a practical and concrete forum and site.
I think the value of that knowledge and interest is also much higher than theoretical discussions about game development.
Would love if we professional developers actually have a part in this site and it is not just yet another hobby game developer forum / Q&A site as well, which I think there is a higher chance for if sticks to only the theoretical.

There is a misunderstanding regarding 'theory' and 'theoretical', in the way SD021 it includes your 'practical' discussions but does not include 'just any coding questions', 'knowledge' and 'interest' is part of it too. What's in a word? A lot! I'm getting confused... :-D

theory is so.. theoretical though. Our Q&A engine is best at specific, concrete things.

As mentioned above, it is all about the Audience.

I disagree.  There's tons of theory out there, I want the answers that are more like "That's great in theory, but here's how it really works..."

The problem with using SO for game programming questions is that the hordes of business programmers with no game experience drown out the few decent answers pros with utterly wrong answers.

all_licenses: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5/


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"Close as off-topic" references webapps.

What? (padding for minimum characters)

The second option - "Questions on Web Apps are expected to generally relate to web applications, within the scope defined in the faq"

I think that the image you provided will only be shown on the beta site.

@TomWij I checked, the other beta sites show the correct text. And we have had bugs of this sort on them aswell. They were corrected after being posted.

Quotes are your friend! Pretend this post has the following topic: "Close as off-topic" references webapps.


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Possible bug in listing tags?
This could be more of a stack exchange bug, but I haven't seen it anywhere but here.
This question is tagged "xna" but the page to list the tag as nothing in it. Has anyone else seen this? Is is a bug?

It seems to take a bit of time for the listing pages to update.

Have seen such issue too on SuperUser when I adjusted tags and then looked on the front page, I also think that it is some kind of server side caching...


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How to move game-development tagged questions from Stack Overflow to here?
There are currently 1,475 questions tagged game-development on Stack Overflow. These would all be great seed material for this new Game Development site. Would it be a good idea for a moderator to move those questions here? Is there any reason it shouldn't happen? (for example, how would it affect my SO rep, having asked a number of these myself?)

that would be nice to see

indeed, but we might need http://meta.gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/3/programming-questions-here-or-belongs-on-stackoverflow done.

While it would be nice to see - I think it would set a bad precedent, giving some sites (technical ones) an unfair edge over others. Which has nothing to do with whether SE will do it, of course. :)

This wouldn't be done until the site proves it can survive public beta for the required 60  to 90 days.

Oo scary, I hope we survive!! :)

I don't think that migrating every single game development question from Stack Overflow to this site is a good idea.  We shouldn't be retroactively moving questions.  It would just be a mess over all.  The reputation issue that you mentioned is just one small issue amongst many.
The questions on Stack Overflow that are already there are asked and done.  If someone is unsatisfied with their answer, or rather wants to ask a new, game-development-related question, they are free to ask it over here on Game Dev.  That way they will get fresh, possibly more relevant answers from experts who actually work in the field of game development.
I don't know, it just feels like a complicated mess that is more or less unnecessary.  I'm sure the admins will agree as well.

To avoid the mess you could migrate X questions per day or cause the questions to not appear in the current list unless another action besides migration has occurred.

@TomWij, speed or Q/days isn't the only issue, as @Justin points out, reputation is a major issue, and there are others.

I agree that moving is not that great an idea. There are questions there from well over a year ago which, while unlikely, may need new answers/be out of date. Justin L made a good point that if the users want the answer they can just ask it here and get the most up to date info available.

I agree. Some of the questions tagged as game-development are of particular interest to game developers, but still are by no means offtopic on the general programming stack overflow. Why removing them? Is every game developer required to ask questions only here?
If such move will be prepared, I will probably consider removing the game-development tag from some questions.


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What to do when there's no satisfactory answer?
What should we do about questions that get one or more answers, but after 24 hours, none are acceptable as the accepted answer?
Do we just let the question go without an accepted answer?

We definitely don't want to checkmark answers just for the sake of checkmarking, so yeah, let it go. Just one of those things we have to live with... :)

If you have enough reputation you can start a bounty on the question and people would be more inclined to answer. Someone else could start a bounty if they find your question interesting.
Other than that, there's not much you can do other than editing your question to clarify it, or commenting on the existing answers and stating why you don't find them acceptable. 24 hours isn't that long, remember that we are still in private beta and there aren't many users, when the public beta begins in 6 days there would be more users and hopefully more answers.
You might find this discussion on meta StackOverflow useful.

I've got several questions on StackOverflow that remain uncheckmarked after literally months. Sometimes nobody has a good answer, but the question still theoretically has one. Just don't worry about it - the site will nag you to close it for a bit, but it'll shut up eventually.

I don't think it's technically encouraged/allowed, but... if you edit a question (even just to change a punctuation mark or add a space) it gets bumped to the top of the homepage on the next refresh (within 60 seconds). You can even time it right to get it at the very top, if you figure out the refresh time and save an edit just before the refresh... Do this around noon and you're sure to get maximal viewing. Do this several times and your question is automatically turned to Community Wiki though (due to lots of edits).
By "refresh" I mean the updating of the homepage. If you refresh the homepage quickly you'll see that the questions on the page don't change but once a minute, precisely every 60 seconds. I assume it limits database traffic or something.

One of the things that's built into the stack exchange software is the community bot that will occasionally bump old, unanswered questions to the top of the list to get visibility.  So if there is no acceptable answer it's in theory better to leave it un-checked (assuming you come back to the site if somebody eventually does answer it).
Another option is to just do the research yourself, editing the question with new data (which causes it to be bumped) and eventually answer it yourself.  There are badges to encourage this type of behavior.


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What is Community wiki?
I'm seeing posts show up that are labeled "community wiki."  What are these? It's not a tag and I can't list them all.  Can anyone explain?

What are Community Wikis?
You make a wiki by checking the box at bottom right, when editing a Q/A. This does several things.

It makes the question owned by the Community, so anyone (above a certain rep) can edit them.
You neither gain nor lose reputation based on votes.

It's intended for Questions that are not really good single-Answer type questions - if they are subjective, or have no single right answer ("what's a good gamedev book"), so you couldn't checkmark one as best.
Update - you can no longer make a Question into a wiki (unless you're a moderator).

Wiki Button - Missing, presumed dead - film at 11:00

I definitely need to improve the /faq in this area..

Also, being able to categorize and look at things that are all "community wiki" topics would be nice (as in reality, they tend to make up the FAQ for a given subject).

Great, I finally understand what they are.  Instead of a faq, you should just be able to click on the "Community Wiki" label to get a quick description of it.

How much reputation do I need to turn a question into a community wiki? Someone suggested I should do that but I can't really find that one checkbox!

@Edmundito, if you mean your own Question, there's no rep requirement - just edit it, and look for a checkbox at the bottom right. If you mean other questions, I'm not sure how much rep - might be 2K, or more, the FAQ isn't clear.

These questions on Meta Stack Overflow seem relevant:

What are “Community Wiki” posts?
When to mark the ‘community wiki’ checkbox on a new question?

all_licenses: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/


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Are questions about how to design an implementation of certain parts of a game appropriate?
When I'm stuck on some aspect in one of the many dead-end game projects I start, can I ask for advice about how to design it here?
If I have an idea about how I want something to work functionally, but am not sure of the best approach to implementing it, would a question about that be appropriate?
It's definitely about game development, so is on-topic. It is somewhat subjective, but I don't think to the extent that would be a problem.
I'm more concerned that it might be considered something that would lead to extensive discussion, and be more appropriate for some other forum.
What are peoples thoughts, or does anyone have any guidelines about how to ask this sort of question such that it would fit well with this site?
Edit:
I've gone ahead and posted my question:
How can I implement a command system for a point-and-click style adventure game?
Any suggestions on whether that is a good fit, or how it should be asked differently?

Conceptually it seems like an excellent fit for this site. A bit of subjectivity is fine, the only real problem, as you say, would be if it devolved too much into a discussion*. That being said, I think that if you choose the wording of your question carefully to keep it focused on one specific issue and not too vague, so that someone can clearly/directly answer it, you should be fine (you may find that it works better if you break your broader issue down into a series of simpler, answerable parts).
I'd suggest posting an example question or two while we're in beta to see how it goes...
* possibly a good opportunity for the coming "third place" chat.

Agreed. As long as it's kept academic it should be allright.

We are going to have to deal with a little bit of that subjectivity here. Different people will have different ideals about how a to execute a concept, but in general I see no reason why it shouldn't be.


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gamedev tag is useless
I see some questions tagged as gamedev. A similar issue was addressed on Stack Overflow Meta a while back.
Recommendation: This tag is useless and should never be used, since everything on this Game Dev site should be about Game Dev anyway.
Edit: I've removed all the gamedev tags I can

I agree. The tag is redudant, and should be removed

+1 I Agree: No need in the tag

Agreed. The tag must go.

See also: http://meta.gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/155/the-these-tags-are-useless-thread

This appears to be solved. The gamedev tag no longer exists.


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Required tags (discussion, bug, etc.) duplicated?
For some reason, when I try to add any of the discussion, bug, or status-bydesign tags to my questions here on meta, that tag is listed in the suggestions list twice. Then, once I choose one of them, my question is tagged twice (as can be seen by this very bug report).
Interestingly, this has allowed me to put up to 7 tags on this question (5 plus two duplicates)
P.S. - Perhaps this belongs on meta.meta.gamedev? :-P

Funnily enough they also have different counts on the right of the question. "bug x5" and "bug x3".

Yes, it seems that inside SE's database, it's conceptually 2 separate tags that happen to have the same name, and certain questions are associated with each one.

We have removed the duplicate tags.


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The word "game" in tags is redundant.
I've noticed a few tags of the form "game-design" and "game-engine". Well, yeah. It's about games. We're on the Gamedev beta.
I've gone and stripped out "game" from all of these, just to get it done with, but if anyone's got a reason to put them back, now is the chance.
Edit: Similarly, the tag "game" should just be removed whenever it shows up. If it's not about games, it's on the wrong site.

I agree, this is the right thing to do.

I saw a few more pop up so I took care of those as well

One concern I have is findability through search engines as well as expectability. I fear some people may come here searching for "game design" in the search box and end up being presented an inaccurate set of results.

It's possible that could be a problem, but if we don't get enough search engine karma via links, we're doing something wrong. I feel like it will only be a problem if it's nowhere near the biggest problem.

I think you made the right decision, as long as the stripped version is still clear and unambiguous. There may the occasional exception.
The WebApp folks came to the same decision and it seems to have worked out well for them.

The tag synonym feature should be used in this case I think example game-engine is synonymed to engine

Game-engine, sure.
Game-design, however, I think should stay. If you say "design", you could mean code design, ie analysis, design, & architecture. "Game design" excludes code-design, and as I've seen it in the game design community, is the phrase of choice.

As a fun fact, in Japan, "design" in the context of game development commonly refers to the -graphical- design of the game (art). Game designers are called "planners".


text:
What should our FAQ contain?
Since this is one of the 7 Essential Meta Questions of Every Beta...
What should go in our FAQ?
Most of the FAQ is boilerplate, but we need to determine the on-topic and off-topic subjects that go into that particular section of the official FAQ.  Those should be derived from the original site definition and the current set of questions.
Example template:
Following the example set out in the linked page, the section being discussed here might look like this:

{Site Name} is for professional and amateur video game developers, designers, artists; and anyone else who is involved in the games development industry.
If your question is about:

{On-topic subject}
{On-topic subject}
...

and it is not about:

{Off-topic subject}
{Off-topic subject}
{Off-topic subject}

… then you're in the right place to ask your question!

Answer format:
Please post one subject and specify whether or not it is an on-topic or off-topic.  Note that your answer should not be in the form of a specific example question; it should refer to an entire subject group.  Example of such a response:

{On-topic}
Tools used by Game Developers
(Optional  comments)

Please vote up answers if you agree with the proposed on-topic/off-topic status.  Vote down answers where you disagree.

CAPTCHA: Moscow aerosols

And yes, I mostly stole this from cooking.stackexchange

{Off-topic}
Hints, tips, strategies or cheat codes for games

A link to http://gaming.stackexchange.com would be nice after this sentence ;)

{On-topic}
Issues relating to game design, such as gameplay, ideas, mechanics, etc
(Taken from the bullet list in my answer here)

{On-topic}
Programming questions unique to video game development, or where a professional game developer would give a substantially different answer than other programmers (general programming questions should be asked on StackOverflow)
(Taken from the bullet list in my answer here)
(The language here could probably be tightened up a bit... and the statement about general programming questions could probably be moved to its own "Off-topic" post... feel free to edit)

Other than dropping the "video" I think it's about as concise as possible. But I'm not an English major or anything.

{On-topic}
Development practices relating game development including testing, tools, team collaboration, etc
(Taken from the bullet list in my answer here)

{On-topic}
Programming, designing, producing, marketing, or creating art or music/sound for games
(probably to be split into several bullet points)
(unsure about "marketing", and are there any areas I forgot?)

I think we should break this up a bit to make each point more vote-able.

{On-topic}
The creation, storage, editing and usage of game assets such as images, video, sound and music
(Taken from the bullet list in my answer here)

{On-topic}
The release of a finished video game, such as questions on hosting, publishing, marketing and monetization
(Taken from the bullet list in my answer here)

But deliberate advertisement with no/half-hearted/dummy/frivolous question is a no-no. Right?

{On-topic}
Questions relevant to developers about the video game industry, covering topics like careers, trends and technologies
(Taken from the bullet list in my answer here)


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Do mod- and map-making questions belong here?
Currently at gaming meta there are discussions about Do “mod-development” questions belong here? and Do “map-editor” questions belong here?. There was also a suggestion to send these questions to gamedev.
Should these questions be accepted here? Is modifying an existing game part of game development? These are definitely questions which could not be asked on SO or SU, and if gaming won't accept them, this would could the SE site for modding.

I would say absolutely yes--modifying existing games to create new games or content has everything to do with game development.

well, we as the community are the "admins", so any up-vote for your answer means consensus.

good point, edited that out

Some awesome games started as MODs to great games.

No
I'm going to dissent, since I just came across a mod question that really didn't seem to have much to do with game development.  To me, modding seems more like a creative use of an existing game, not game development per se.
I'll cave to the peer pressure if necessary, but I'd rather not see modding/map editing type questions here.

Which question was that?

I suspect he means http://gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/1363/is-there-a-mission-editor-for-startopia-available, which was definitely borderline.

on the other hand, modifying existing games/creating new levels - has sometimes been the basis for new commercial games (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counter-Strike). As well as getting people hired by companies, for their demonstrated game-development skills. Sounds relevant to me.

I think it probably hinges on the audience for the site. This question is more towards the consumer/gamer end of the spectrum, whereas a modding question is more towards the game dev end.
I think we should welcome this type of question because one path to game dev is map making -> modding -> full game dev.

I apologize for this borderline question, I just wanted to push the limits a bit... I hope I came up with a better question now, if that still counts as modding

In practice, most on gamedev are programmers who write games (from scratch), rather than modding them. And they (we) are who you tend to find on gamedev far more than you'll find modders. For those who are interested, I put up a proposal for a separate modding site on Area 51. Whether it comes to anything, only time will tell.

maybe. but did you try asking a modding question here? none of the (admittedly few) questions tagged mods has been closed or downvoted to oblivion

Yes, I had a look through the questions backlog a while back. Things like MineCraft tend to get a good-ish response. UDK? So-so from what I remember. And so on. In general, it's nothing like the response you see for more typical game development questions (more closely focused to building product from scratch). There's a qualitative difference in the sort of tasks being performed in each of these distinct areas. So in theory? Yes, keep 'em together. In practice? Not so sure it's working out as expected. It may be as much how gamedev is marketing itself as anything else.

One reason I'm in favor of leaving them open is to help attract more non-programmers (as distinct from bad / inexperienced programmers). Otherwise I have trouble seeing the mandate of this site separate from Stack Overflow.


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Answer with more votes than question has views?
This question's best answer has 37 upvotes, yet the question itself has only 33 views. Even if they were the same, surely not every person who viewed the question would upvote an answer?

The view counter is cached while the vote count is "real time". Jeff has posted about this on one of the other new meta sites, but as there's half a dozen now I can't remember which one.

I think there're bugs with the view counter, because it's also possible that an answered question have 0 views. It may also just be delayed like some of the other parts of the SO system. Reputation changes, for example are delayed between a site and it's meta and Area 51.


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Accepting Answers
I'm getting the sense that we have trouble accepting answers to questions. I don't know if this is because many of the questions asked are asking for general input to a question rather than a specific answer, or if people are just forgetting.
If it's the former, I think this is a good thing--up votes work well enough to sort which responses are good and bad without needing a specific answer.
However if it's the latter and we're forgetting, this might be something to watch our for.

@Geoff, do we really need a tag called accepted-answers? Is there a specific purpose?

@Cyclops Sean made that tag. Geoff just went through fixing the doubles.

Wups, sorry @Geoff. Guess I should have read the history more closely.

A lot of the types of questions we're asking are really the domain of community wikis, i.e. list of tips or resources.  Either that, or it's a subjective discussion (i.e. the "is the STL appropriate for games" question).
If there is no single right answer for a question, then the question author probably won't "accept" a single one.


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Should the "design" tag encompass architecture AND game design questions?
I'm a game designer and my main area of expertise is that, game design. While i find the technical aspects of a game program interesting, I expected finding game design related questions when selecting the "design" tag.
Shouldn't the technical and "end user" aspects of designing a game be under their own separate tags?

design as a tag isn't descriptive enough.  Just look at the questions with that tag: https://gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/design
I propose we break it up into 2 (or maybe 3) tags.

game-design Yes I know it violates the "games in tags is redundant" rule, but I think in this case it's worth adding for clarity since it obviously isn't unambiguous enough.
level-design
engine-design (maybe as a synonym of architecture)

I'd agree that design is used inappropriately in most of those questions, but I don't think that's an argument for new tags, I think it's an argument for the descriptions of the tags to be clearer, and for the mods to guide the re-tagging.
Design, covering both game-design and level-design, and Architecture, covering software-design.

Well what I would like to do is simply rename design to game-design, and start retagging "engine design" questions as architecture.  level-design as a tag was just an afterthought.  Other than that tag I'm not suggesting any new tags.

I like the specificity created by having game-design and level-design as separate tags. People are always going to be tempted to just use the Design tag, so like @MrCranky said I think it's really going to be up to people capable of retagging to go through those questions and tag appropriately (if not done by then, I'll do it when I get home). As far as synonyms/merges for architecture/engine-design and what else I am not that deeply involved on that side to make any real judgement about it.

I notice that there already is an Architecture tag, so I would say yes, design is different from architecture. :)

In that case should all non-game design posts under "design" be moved to architecture? Or should a more specific tag be added? I'm noticing that the word "design" can also interpreted sometimes as graphical design. A more specific tag might be welcome.


text:
How do I answer to an answer?
I see people starting discussions based on an answer, but I can only seem to reply to the original question?
I must be missing something for sure.

You need 50 rep to leave comments on posts that aren't your own.
https://gamedev.meta.stackexchange.com/faq

Darn, that'll teach me to finish reading the FAQ. But...programmers and 'reading the manual' seem kinda incompatible ;o)

PS you should totally mark this answer as accepted.

Whoops! Done!...


text:
Moderator Nominations
Some guidelines:

Each nomination should be a separate answer. Link the name to the user's profile so we can see their activity.
The nominee should indicate their acceptance by commenting on (or indeed editing) the answer.
The top voted nominations can go forward to the vote.
The voting will be done on a separate question.

The candidate:

Must be a currently registered user in good standing
Must have a reasonably high reputation score to indicate active, consistent participation.
Should exhibit patience and fairness at all times in their questions, answers, and comments.
Should lead by example, showing respect for their fellow community members in everything they write.
They should want the responsibility. Nominating users isn’t the same as an obligation. It’s purely voluntary!

Attribution goes to Jeff and ChrisF
More information on how this process will work here and here.

10 days, as good a time as any to get this discussion rolling.

I find it helpful looking at the Activity tab of a user's Meta profile to see how interested they are in the meta discussion. This kind of discussion will be necessary for any moderator.

Meta profiles are helpful, and mentioned in the blog. So I added links to the ones that needed it.

I think there might be some great potential mods who don't come on meta so won't see this thread - how can we let everyone know about this?

I'd nominate ZorbaTHut(meta). I don't know him but his answers and comments have been well written and helpful.

I'll accept the nomination, I don't plan on leaving this site anytime soon :)

Nominating myself: Tetrad (meta).
I wasn't a moderator, but very active on the Unity Answers SE site.

Munificent(meta) should be a candidate, if he wants it. Oddly, I didn't see his name in Meta, I thought it carried over automatically

That's very odd, with 159 and 161 being there. Maybe a bug?

OMG, he's become... invisible...

Looks like only users who visit Meta show up. Right now the user list for meta is 9 pages long but the parent site is 28.

Well, maybe, if you want to get technical, @Colin - personally I prefer the theory that he's developed super-powers. :>

@Cyclops Maybe that should be a requirement.

Unfortunately, if visiting Meta is a requirement, guess that rules him out :(

According to the blog post link that was just added, Meta involvement is a bonus.

Extreme Meta involvement is a bonus, but I think he needs to be a little bit active to at least accept his nomination :p

I nominate Ólafur Waage (meta). Currently the fourth-ranked user, has participated quite a bit on Meta.SO so he clearly knows the system well, and he's from Iceland. What more could you want?

Besides an ice cream sundae, I mean.

Can we nominate ourselves? If so, I'd like to nominate myself: Sean James, Sean James (meta)
I participated a lot in the private beta and now in the public beta (#4 in rep at the time of this writing) as well as on our meta. I really like it here so I'm totally up for it. I also have past experience with both website building/moderation from other sites I've worked on as well as experience with community building from my own sites, especially my XNA site innovativegames.net.
As far as domain specific knowledge is concerned, I've been building games for years now and programming for longer. While I don't work in the games industry I'd like to in the future. I'm writing a book on XNA due out around October and have a lot of games related stuff on my site linked above.

Noctrine(meta) seems like a good candidate. He has been involved in the meta site quite a bit, commenting a lot. He also has some good answers on the main site, and a lot of comments there as well.

Oooo. Well, if the people would have me then I accept.

Nominating Ben Zeigler(meta). He's quite active on the site (currently #4 in reputation) and knows what he's talking about.
In the interests of full disclosure, he's a friend of mine. However, I wouldn't be nominating him if I didn't believe he would do a very good job as a moderator.

Accepted. I'll be around here for a long time to go.

I'd like to nominate The Communist Duck (meta), who has done a lot of good work editing and cleaning up questions, and is still active on the site after months.
(Is this still a thing that's happening? A lot of the people suggested here have not been seen in a long time or are not nearly as active as they were, including moderator pro tem Sean James.)

The non-pro-tem moderators will be voted on using their fancy new server stuff, not a QA thing like we have here.  Example: http://math.stackexchange.com/election

If I'm being nominated, I would gladly take up the role if the community wants me to. :-)

Going to nominate David McGraw(meta). He has beaten me to answering a ton of questions, and usually comes up with solutions that are very well thought out and presented concisely.

If self-nominating is ok (I'll see based on votes!) I'll put my name (Kevin Bentley(meta)) out there too.
I've been involved in developing video games for over 20 years, I moderated three round tables at GDC in the late 90s, and have my name in the credits as a developer for several games. I don't work in games any more (although I do military simulation, which has a lot of similarities) but I am actively supporting Descent3 as a hobby, working on a new patch 11 years later!

I'd like to nominate myself Bryan Denny (meta).
Despite being more of a novice at game dev than a pro, I've been actively contributing (in the top 7) to the site with both questions and answers and hope to be doing so for quite a while as I write my first Android game.

The contribution is nice, and you have actively driven participation very well with some great questions / answers. The only thing that really prevents me from giving the +1 are those list-questions that while helpful, should really be CW.

@Noctrine Tetrad did that on a couple for me, feel free to switch any to CW that you feel should be


text:
Design for Game Development Site
Hi all. I'm Jin and I'll be working on the designs for the Stack Exchange sites as they graduate from the beta phase. Each site will have its own unique theme that will reflects its topic. However, all sites will share quite a bit of common elements so they feel like they're part of the Stack Exchange family.
After studying the type of questions on the site, I realized that Game Dev is such a broad field! It's more than just programming or graphics. It's a combination of both and so much more. My initial ideas were to have the design mimic the 3d modeling software interface, or programming tool's IDE UI(gray, technical etc). After talking to some friends who work in the industry, they informed me that they actually don't like the UI of their tools. What one friend said really inspired me, to quote him:

Programmers think they are artists and
  fine craftsmen, and I think that Game
  Devs are even more so. It’s not a
  cold, technical job. It’s a vibrant,
  living work of art.

I visited many game programming and art sites out there for design ideas. Unfortunately, most of them are rather poorly designed php bulletin boards. Luckily, I found some good inspirations in gaming magazines. The design goal is to keep the site structure you're familiar with, but adding a graphical "shell" to it that reflects the vibrancy of game development. The design should be inviting to new users who are interested in Game Dev, and in long term it should fade in the background as a "pleasant noise."
Design

click image above to see full res version.
I wanted the header area to be eye-catching, to offset an otherwise rather simple site. I think a CGed graphical header works here. I rendered the scene Cloud City from Bryce. The polygon fading to full render symbolizes conception to delivery.
In the background is a subtle engineering paper pattern. Game dev is just as technical than it is artistic, if not more.
Logo
I'm inspired by the logo Sean James came up with. I like the idea of having RGB in the logo, since they're the basic building blocks of anything graphical. Building blocks is the message I'm going after in the logo. I also like the hexgon shapes since they remind me of gaming magazines visuals as long as I can remember. You will see several occurrences of it through out the site. I'm using it on accepted answer background, tags and badges.
Feedback
I believe this design direction works very well for the Game Dev site. It provides a good balance of eye-candy and content. It adds new elements to the site while keeping the familiar structure. If you have feedbacks on specific details, please let me know!

I really like the cube/hex theme!

Funny, I was just showing the site to some other game developers and some minutes later, the thing looks completely different. Looks great though.

Jin, great work! May be .nav { font-size:13px; } would look better?

@topright, ha you're the first one ever to request a DECREASE in font size. I agree with you, 13px looks better to me aesthetically. will put the change in soon.

@Jin, thank you. :)

I just wanted to say that I loved the new theme. Thanks!

My only feedback is that I don't think the "Ask question" button is prominent enough.  It doesn't really look like a button.

would it be better if I left align it with the rest of the top nav links?

I'm just looking at some of the other sites done so far.  Webapps has a bright orange button.   Gaming/Ubuntu has a button that's offset from the rest of the nav links.  Most of the other sites' nav links are in individual boxes instead of just text on a solid background.  I'm not a designer, but if I were to guess what would feel better I would probably do something like ubuntu/gaming and put it off the nav link bar.  Maybe put some button-y graphic around it and make it stand out.  Probably with that maroon background color you're using for the tag buttons?

i think i'll add a background color to it to make it more prominent. thanks!

@Jin: utterly well done. we're lucky to have you <3

Wow, this is really good.
There is one thing i am concerned about: How do visited links look? On askubuntu they are more eye catching than new links.

i typically use a more muted shade of color for visited links (for question lists and post body links). normally i tweak that too, after the site is launched based on user feedbacks.

I love the design. It is by far my favourite from any of the stackexchange sites.
Programmers strive to have a place of their own where they can feel that they're home while working. Now we've been given another such place for when our minds need input from others.
It's very inviting with its cousy and warm feeling.
Thanks!

Looking pretty good! My only comment would be that on my monitor the pink that's being used for 'questions that have your interesting tags' is almost invisible - I have to shift where I'm sitting to see it. Any chance of darkening it a little bit?

it's supposed to be a light tanned color not pink. but in any case, I know some older LCD monitors won't display faint colors correctly, so I will darken it some. thanks.

Ahh, yeah, I really couldn't tell since it was so faint, but thanks!

I would like that the header area image make people remember games. The image you chose can be a 3d art for any type of application, including games. I just want to make it more specific. You can choose a PacMan-styled theme, or even Mario.

I wanted to focus on the "Development" part instead of "Gaming." I have used what you suggested for our actual gaming site. see gaming.stackexchange.com Although I'm open for the idea for using some profession game dev/artists work instead of what I did.

For what it's worth, I highly prefer the gamedev design to the gaming design.


text:
New Design Launched
Hi guys,
Thank you for your input on the design I proposed. The new design has launched, and let me be the first to congratulate you!
Please let me know if you see any css/styling issues on both the parent site or here on Meta. Please start a new post per bug report, and tag it with "bug" and "design" please.

This literally changed as I refereshed. It certainly was a shock. :P I don't think it deserves a thread, but is it just my computer making the text on 'Questions, Users, etc' sort of sharp rough edged? That sort of...I can't describe.

@TCD hopefully a pleasant shock :)

@The. if you can post a picture and your computer configuration it might help.

We have, the coolest Meta. Its actually different :O Just wireframes. Awesome.

It looks great, once again!

I salute you! The design is awesome!

New design looks great. As I posted on the question about spreading the word: it would be nice if there were a banner version of the logo so we could use it elsewhere when linking to the site, say for publicity items. Perhaps in a variety of sizes?

Thanks. Can you use http://sstatic.net/gamedev/img/apple-touch-icon.png? There are different standard banner sizes, let me know which version you need the logo for.

I was hoping to use the lovely background image (with the circular building shapes) rather than just the 3-cube icon, as it's in a blog post. Somewhere near to 400px wide would be ideal I think. Thanks.

Gentle Nudge...?


text:
Editing questions for spelling/grammar reasons
Is this a valid reason for editing? I'm not talking the extreme of:

hi i wnt 2 mk a gaem bt i dnt no how...

but since we do have a lot of non english native speaking people here, sometimes grammar and spelling does cause something of an issue when trying to fully understand what's being asked.
(Was not sure which mandatory tag to add)

Yes you should edit early and often. Most visitors come from google and having a clean question means the site seems more respectable.

Too bad now there are only 10 users and moderators able to edit peoples posts.  Rep requirements have converted to SO like requirements.


text:
Do we have a new favicon?
One thing I've noticed about the design is that the site icon is still the "sketchy" looking GD.  Is this just a caching issue on my end, or do we not have a new one yet?
Edit: the main site seems to have one now, but meta is still left out.

I'm seeing the new favicons.
You can try to load these two .ico files in the browser directly, and do a hard refresh:
http://sstatic.net/gamedevmeta/img/favicon.ico
http://sstatic.net/gamedev/img/favicon.ico
Otherwise I think browsers load the new favicons, eventually.

I shift-refreshed and they're showing up now.

favicons are cached really heavily by browsers, so it may take a while for it to show up.


text:
StackExchange notification icon badge slight bug
Not sure if this is a gamedev-specific bug or a stackexchange bug, but the red "number of replies" badge doesn't completely cover the stackexchange logo.  It looks like it's a pixel or two too low.  It's super minor, but I thought I'd point it out.

This is on Chrome on Windows.

I just noticed this too. The fix should be in the next deployment.


text:
Adding Steam OpenID?
Just wondering if it's worth adding the Steam OpenID Login to the list, like on the Gaming SE?

-1: I don't really think it would serve a purpose.

Wouldn't it serve the same purpose as all the other openID logins?

It would, it's just a shortcut in case people use Steam a lot. It made sense for Gaming, so I suggested it in case there are many Steam Users on GameDev. If not, then not.

If it wouldn't be huge efforts, then it would benefit.

Would be great because Steamworks is very popular among developers today.


text:
Eliminating word noise while editing a questions
By word noise I mean posts like.

Hi all you gurus,
  <question here>?
  thanks,
  -joe somebody

If I've already opened the question for editing, poor grammar and whatnot, should I eliminate the word noise?
It seems a no brainer, except there are more subjective cases like

Man! I've looked everywhere and google comes up with nothing.
  How does <question-here>?

I would normally say the first line is just noise, but there some question where the noise actually helps make the question a little more understandable.

Remove them.  There's precedence for this.
If it adds nothing to the question at all, feel free to remove it.  It can only improve the quality of the site as a whole.
Signatures are completely unnecessary since we have those little flair boxes.  "Hi" doesn't do anything.
Generally I won't remove them unless I'm editing the question for other reasons anyway, though.

However, if the user rolls back to keep their signature, one should respect that wish, as stated here. No point in edit-wars for minor reasons


text:
Cross posting programming questions on Stackoverflow and GameDev.StackExchange
What are the etiquette involved when cross-posting programming questions on StackOverflow and GameDev.StackExchange? Or is it a case of "don't do it?"

This has come up with other site pairs before, and the answer is don't do it.

I think that this would be a good case for don't do it.

I'm going for one or the other.

Wasting peoples' time
on both ends.
Likely indicates it doesn't belong here (programming with a slight gamedev issue).

And not just SO - I've seen many questions on here and on Gamedev.net, with post times ~5 minutes of each other.

+1 for "not just SO".

The case of an opener asking the same question in 2+ boards is not much different from a user answering 2+ different answers to the same question on 2+ different boards. The latter could be a direct consequence of the first, and both makes no sense. Even more with a largely shared user base and a lot or repetitive questions.

Another vote for SO xor GDSE. As another argument against both, we've had at least one case of a question getting migrated from SO to here after being asked both places, leaving us with a duplicate.

However, migrated questions can be merged, especially if answers are good on both ends, or deleted entirely.

As others have said and I'm sure you've realized by now, I would not do it either as it wastes people's time.
But I do wish the two sites were merged/combined - because points are divided, and the very issue this question raises.


text:
Game Development or Game Developers?
This site seems to have an identity problem. The site name in the logo is Game Development. But the page title is Game Developers, and that name is used in the FAQ as well. I know the site's name might change later, but it still looks weird now.
Can we have all references of "Game Developers" changed to "Game Development"?

Game Development has been decided as the correct name and has been adjusted.

@Geoff Dalgas: That's great. Not to be too picky, but it still says Game Developers Meta in the meta's page title.

Well, let's look at the original Area 51 proposal:

http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/2825/game-development
Game Development
Proposed Q&A site for professional and independent game developers who would like to discuss the various aspects of video game development and design.

Which is more correct?

Development is probably more correct.  The site is about the process more so than the people.

That's because the proposal form asks you to define who the site is for. The Photography proposal says it's for professional photographers but the site's name is still Photography.


text:
Reputation requirements increased; can (should) we undo this?
Now that the reputation requirements increased to the higher Stack Overflow limits, (and maybe it's been this way for a while now), even fewer users are able to edit posts and vote to close, which I believe are important parts of managing our community, especially considering how difficult it is to gain reputation. Do you think it would be a good idea for us to request that the limits be set lower again, so that more people can have these important privileges? What are the pros and cons that I haven't thought of? Is it even possible for us to request the limits to be lowered?

I don't think it's difficult to gain reputation really. We have modflagging and comments for editing, the high rep users are very active rather than just long standing, and the site's getting more active (Without scrolling down before my holiday, I was seeing up to 6 hours of posts. Now I'm seeing 2, on average).

No, that is not possible (well, at least not advisable).
Read through this blog post: When Will My Site Graduate?… particularly the bottom portion about not adjusting the reputation levels for new sites. "If the site is going to graduate, it needs to graduate."
There might have been an argument that Game Development wasn't ready to graduate, but you're a fully-fledged site now. There's no going back. The solution to your problem is to become more involved in the site and vote, vote, vote!


text:
How long between flair updates?
I have over 200 in reputation in both Stack Overflow and here (reached +200 yesterday or so).
How long is it between flair updates?

Flair generally updates every 24 hours or so; it is heavily cached, so patience is advised.


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Is the chat down right now?
I cannot access the chat right now. On Opera it was trying to get me to download some random file. On firefox it is saying that it is redirecting in a way that will never complete or something.
After a while refreshing with opera for a while it said it blocked me. But now its not doing it any more.

There was a DNS problem with chat (was resolving to NY instead of OR). Should be fixed now.


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Speculative questions: off topic?
There have been a rash of questions recently that basically are little more than speculative discussions.  To me, these questions seem to be more of a discussion starting point than an actual question to be answered.
I'm also on the fence about where these kinds of questions would lie on the good subjective/bad subjective spectrum.
These questions haven't as-of-yet been consistently moderated, so I'm looking to get a consensus from the community on the best way to move forward.
Examples:

Will multi-touch become an important/standard method of input for PC games in the future?
Will we see a trend of stereoscopic 3D games coming up in the near future?
https://gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/5024/what-will-the-real-time-3d-graphics-of-next-generation-consoles-like-playstation

Potential courses of action:

Do nothing. They're good questions and answers probably fall under the "expertise" section of the subjective discussion.
Convert them to CW to allow the discussion to continue but avoid pitfalls of rep farming
Close as off topic
Somehow handle on a case-by-case basis.

For reference, at least the Photo SE site has decided that speculation on future hardware is off topic.  Relevant discussion is here.  Some of the other sites are considering similar measures, but they're usually about unreleased hardware.
Thoughts?

Anyone who has seen my comments/votes probably knows I support #3.
There are plenty of game development forums out there already for such questions. Questions like these greatly decrease the S:N ratio on Stack Exchange sites, and their absence is exactly why I, and many others, prefer SE sites to forums.
CW is fine for questions with multiple answers, or questions that can be backed by subjective but evidence-based opinions. It's also OK for list questions, but I think some of the ones we've had so far are silly.
These questions, by contrast, are not just subjective but speculative. They're entirely guesswork. Not only is there no right answer, there's no clear way to judge the quality of the answers - especially when not a single answer cites any reference nor is a personal story from an expert, as is the case with all the questions you've linked.


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Answers changed scope of question: Rephrase or reask?
If I have a question to which the answers lead to realizations that dramatically change the scope or context of the question; should I edit the question to rephrase or expand it; or should I ask a new question in reference to the old one, incorporating references to the answers and original question?
Edit: Or, as an alternative, answer my own question.

You should always post a new question if you have a new question - otherwise the existing answers are tangential at best and nonsense at worst.
If you're giving up on the question because you realized it was a bad question, just delete it.
If you're giving up on the question because you found the answer and it led to a new question, answer it if you think the answer might be useful to someone else. I would err on the side of deleting rather than answering your own question - if the answers would be useful to someone else, someone else will probably ask it again, and you'll know more to answer it when they do.


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Badges on user pages are a bit off
Would it be possible to nudge the class specifier for badges one pixel down?
In the current setting; the class of the badge (at least for bronze; the only kind of badges I have) is one pixel too far up, giving a rather unsightly badge look. (This concernsSafari/FireFox on Mac OS X, at least).
Current:

Better:

This off-by-one problem is, as far as I can tell, endemic.

Are they off by one pixel on everyone's user profile? And it's in the meta site right? Is it in the main site? I don't see in Chrome (8 beta). Have you made sure your font size is set to normal? (Ctrl+0) edit: I also don't see it in Firefox.

They are off by one pixel in Firefox for me, but not in Chrome or Opera. Using Ubuntu.

At least they're readable :) Invisible Badges on Webmasters

Unbadgely, I'd say.

The badge icon is indeed off by 1px on the full badge. I have put in a fix, should be in the next deployment.

Have you tried nudging your monitor one pixel up?

On a more serious note, I don't see this issue:

(excuse my slightly outdated Firefox)

I will not excuse an outdated firefox!

Hehe, it's only outdated because it's obsoleted -- by Chrome.


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Proper solution for legal questions?
We get a question every few weeks that isn't really a question about game development, but a question about copyright or contract law.
I really do not think such questions have a place here; by their nature they are specific to the person only. The only acceptable answer is "talk to a licensed professional", and the answers posted by well-meaning users rarely disclaim being legal advice (and most are), which means they are possibly practicing law without a license, itself a crime.
The only allowable exception I can think of is "Where can I get a license for this common piece of development middleware?" which, in some cases, is obfuscated enough by the corporate site that I can understand asking it, and has a definitive answer of a website or mailing address.
Is there anyone that thinks the questions add something to the site? If so, is there a way we can accurately and legally answer them? Will such an answer ever be useful to someone else? Otherwise, I feel these questions need to be closed quickly and decisively.

I don't disagree with you but without a bit more community/moderator consensus I don't want to take a heavy-handed approach to it.

I was hoping this topic would generate some consensus or at least some discussion, but it seems no one visits meta.

@Joe, it's only been 20 hours - not everyone checks the site hourly. :) Give it time.

Also, it helps to "advertise" meta topics on the parent site - I just linked this discussion in one of the relevant questions. The next time a legal Q comes up, you might comment-link it also, so people who only read the parent site, know that there is an issue with legal questions being on/off-topic.

@Cyclops: Given the rate the parent site updates, and that generally moderators should be checking the site at least once a day, I think no responses and only 7 views in 20 hours is a problem. (But I recall the current lack of moderator availability was discussed elsewhere already.)

@Joe, I think there are two issues regarding the low response rate - First, as @Tetrad said, he wants to hear from non-moderators before acting, and it's possible the other moderators are following his cue, and not responding yet.

Second (dang short comments), this site is small, new, and doesn't yet have the full StackOverflow culture. SO has a long history of meta-arguments, whereas I suspect most people here are more concerned with actually developing, and only read the parent site for help. There just isn't (yet) a huge interest in the meta-issues. I suspect most people haven't even looked at the meta site - I know one of the people I nominated for moderator (Munificent) had major rep on the parent site - but didn't know he was even nominated, since he had never read the meta site.

The TL;DR summary:

it is not a crime to answer SE questions (unless you deliberately pose as a lawyer, which is fraud).
good basic questions will point out potential legal landmines to other developers.
knowing where the potential landmines are, will allow other devs to design their games so as to avoid them.

The long version - First, regarding risk: I read your practicing law without a license, and it specifically says:

some of the commonly occurring
  activities that generally are not
  considered the practice of law in
  Oregon include:

internet discussions groups without further personalized assistance in
  preparation of documents or court
  papers.

So we're fairly safe from prosecution by the Oregon DA. :)
Second, at least for those of us in the US, we have the First Amendent, which says we can speak freely - including answering legal questions. Granted if you claim to be a lawyer you'll get in trouble, but that's why people include the IANAL.
Now, as to whether we (gamedev) should be either answering, or asking legal questions - I think it's question-specific. Some questions will be too technical, and require a lawyer - but some questions, don't require any major legal knowledge.
You don't need a medical degree to tell someone that aspirin can cause Reye's syndrome in children, and you don't need a law degree to tell someone that copyright violation (of music) is illegal.
If someone asks such a basic legal question, that can be answered by quoting any of dozens of current copyright websites, I don't see a problem with the question. Assuming it's game-related, of course. :)
As the legal question gets more complex, it obviously falls more out of our domain (and gets too person-specific anyway), so it would be an off-topic question.
Where do you draw the line? That's something we're still trying to answer for a lot of topics :) But I don't think the answer is zero - I think some legal (game-related) question can be valid and on-topic for this site.
As to whether any given legal question would be useful to others, I think they could be - even if only to inform other devs that there is a legal issue that they need address, before releasing their game (and maybe before writing the game they can fix the issue beforehand).

You don't need a medical degree to say that aspirin can cause Reye's syndrome in children, but you do need one to say a child has Reye's syndrome. Likewise, you don't need a law degree to state legal facts - such as "this song is copyrighted" or to quote Title 17, but you do need to be a licensed lawyer to "[advise] someone of his or her legal rights in a particular situation". Unless we're going to restrict our answers to quoting legal judgements and definitions without interpretation, we're entering questionable territory.

Aside from that, no one here is a legal expert. I feel confident saying that no one here is a licensed lawyer or a paralegal; that no one here has a law degree; and I would be willing to bet that none of the people posting answers have even been involved in copyright litigation or disputes. In short, we're just plain not qualified to answer these questions with any expertise. Asking legal experts questions about scene graphs is ridiculous - why isn't the opposite?

Also, what's with all this tl;dr crap lately? Either write clearly or don't write; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_repeat_yourself. (And conversely, either read what people wrote, or shut up.)

@Joe, if you want to quote my Answer elsewhere, you are free to do so, because this is a CC-Wiki, provided you give proper attribution, as per the Attribution-Required. There - I have just advised you of your legal rights in a particular situation. :) I do not need to be a lawyer, I have not committed a crime, and I'm fairly sure my answer is accurate (despite my having zero legal training).

I'm really not interested in joining the Internet Hairsplitting Olympics here.

@Joe, while nobody here may be qualified to actually answer legal questions, there might be people who have been in a similar situations and could help guide the asker in what questions to ask or issues to bring up to an actual lawyer to help them get their legal problems resolved quicker.

@Tetrad: If that's the case, they haven't shared in any of the questions so far; nor are any of the questions phrased "What should I ask my lawyer?". I think it's likely the community would make a positive contribution to many legal questions, and even give correct answers most of the time. But I don't think that's what SE is for. When I use an SE site, I want as close to 100% accuracy as possible, and if disallowing a group of questions raises the accuracy at the expense of a couple good ones, so be it. There are already sites I can use if I want to re-research answers.

Instead of responding in other comments with bits and pieces of what I want to say I'll just collate my ideas a bit more on my personal reason for not wanting to take a heavy handed approach at this point in time.
Of course this is subjective, but right now I don't see the current crop of legal-related questions to be so egregious as to require the "human exception handlers" to wield the banhammer on them.
At the very least, it seems that most of the the highest voted answers to those questions all eventually boil down to "get a lawyer", which makes it seem that the community-moderated aspect of the system is working.
If you want to convince people to downvote those questions, or eventually cast close votes (I realize that with the rep requirements raised it's impossible to get "community close" votes right now), then of course you're free to do so.  Like I said, I don't disagree with you in theory, but the binding close vote is something that I don't want to use unless I'm sure that it's something that should be done.  And I'm not 100% sold on the idea right now.
Now in terms of the comment you used: "When I use an SE site, I want as close to 100% accuracy as possible".  If you look at it from a higher level standpoint, that isn't a really achievable goal.  How do you apply an accuracy judgement to subjective discussions or professional experience?  Try applying those standards to Moms 4 mom. The goal of SE, the company, is to "make the Internet a better place to get expert answers to your questions."
Now the people here may not be attorneys, but I would hope there are enough people here who are professional developers or have had to deal with common legal issues in the past that they can offer their "expert" advice and say things like "Here are the issues we had, get a lawyer."

It's my ultimate hope that we will get a few practicing attorneys to chime in here, like some of the ones that are active over at GD.net

I would hope that the highest-voted answers would not simply be "get a lawyer", but provide a useful summary or overview of information.

The only acceptable answer is "talk to a licensed professional"

Definitively disagree here. It's one of the acceptable answers. Personally I wouldn't neither consider it a good one in most cases. I would assume that the user making the question would know there are "licensed professionals", but he wanted to collect the opinion of the users instead (or first, or beside...).

answers posted by well-meaning users rarely disclaim being legal advice (and most are), which means they are possibly practicing law without a license, itself a crime.

You seem to ignore that well-meaning users could also be very knowledgeable and experienced. Personally I met more than one barrister who knew less than me on free software and copyleft, for example. Now: I don't want to say that people here is better than "licensed professionals", but it's a known fact that being "licensed" doesn't mean you are good at what you do, just that you are entitled at doing it professionally and therefore you are also bound to certain laws and regulations.
Both things do not apply to GameDev.

Is there anyone that thinks the questions add something to the site?

Me! (Maybe not all questions, but in principle I don't see this kind of question as less or more useful than others per se).

If so, is there a way we can accurately and legally answer them?

You should define "legally answer" first. But in general, the usefulness of the answers will be validated as for any other answer here: with upvotes. As for the accuracy: GameDev is not a lawyer and while it would be nice if all upvoted answers would also be accurate, having an occasional inaccurate one is part of the... game! :o

Will such an answer ever be useful to someone else? Otherwise, I feel these questions need to be closed quickly and decisively.

If an answer is too localised it should be closed as any other too localised one. Yet, much of the legal systems concerning copyrights abide to the principles of the Berne convention, so I think the vast majority of the answers will be somehow useful to a large audience.

Constantly shunning (or plastering disparaging disclaimers on) any questions tagged legal seems absurd.  While definitive legal advice can not be given here, some Q&A's can provide a good basis for initial research on what to look out for or talk with your lawyer about.  Is providing and/or keeping that information bad or hazardous?
In the case of medicine, I could see it being that way; e.g. WebMD could cause patients to diagnose themselves and try to play their doctor to validate their own "expertise".  Not sure if that translates to law though.
Could there just be some sort of automatic neutral statement that's attached to questions tagged legal?

As I mentioned in a comment to Tetrad, I would be much more interested in questions along the lines of "What should I ask my lawyer?", "How can I file a game mechanics patent?", or "I am being sued for trademark infringement, what can I do?", which invite game developers who have experience in the area to share those experiences. None of the legal questions so far follow that pattern. They're all "Can I do X?", which are questions for lawyers.

And development-focused legal questions someone with experience could provide useful advice on, like http://gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/13304/exclusive-ownership-of-game-artwork, are being answered by 16 year olds who have probably never negotiated an employment contract in their life. (No offense, Duck.)

Certainly as a game developer that collaborates with other professional indie developers, I've found that we have all end up asking similar questions over the first few years. For example figuring out the legalese jargon regarding whether or not a UK developer invoicing a US client must charge VAT on the invoices. The answer is the same for all of us, but consulting a lawyer to have that confirmed is costly. Often when I have a question I think that others will have come across, I'll ask around for advice.
A response along the lines of "when we asked our lawyers about this similar issue, they told us X" is not only useful, but often exactly what is being looked for. Obviously answers like that come with no guarantees, and would benefit from being disclaimed in some fashion so that anyone stupid enough to think advice from someone on the internet is legally binding is not caught out. But I would say that sort of advice is exactly the kind of useful information sharing that the game-dev community needs, and that this site is perfectly set up to provide.


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How can I unregister my user?
I'm programming a game engine + editor. Not a game. I feel that this site is not for me.
Sorry if this is another off-topic, but I can't find no option nor help to unregister my account.
Thanks in advance for your help.

I think I jumped the gun on closing your question.  I'll reopen it.  Engine development is very much a part of game development, although you'll find that a lot of people here are a bit more pragmatic about things and would say that it's going to be hard to compete with the solutions that are already out there for actually making games.

glad my answer helped, but you might want to reconsider - I noticed Tetrad just re-opened your question. The site could be helpful to you in the long run, and it's not like it costs anything to have an account here. :)

why do you want to delete your account? considering it's not exactly easy to do, and one user won't make much of a difference to any stats...and here's just as good for game engine questions anyway (since they're game development).

SE doesn't make it terribly easy - see can I delete my account?. Be careful to ask them only to delete the gamedev account, presuming you want to keep your SO account.

Yep, it's hard :) Thanks for your answer!


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Is it alright to favor the winners on a list?
Some one asked for a list of 3D XNA engines so I researched and made a list. Then I went thru each one, and found the most practical and therefore the best ones and put them on top, with pictures. This is favoring the better engines, simply because they are a better choice to make. I'm not affiliated to any one so I'm a neutral third party.
Is it alright to "promote" the winners and list everyone else at the bottom of lists?
View the list here

The site isn't exactly a promotion site - people want what's best for them, not a random one to first catch their eye.

Absolutely.  Just putting together a list of things by itself is useful (although whether it's better than a simple google search or pointing to some premade wiki page with the same data is arguable), but not nearly as useful as providing some guidance along with it.
Then again I seem to be in the weird camp who thinks that "lists of whatever" are better served as individual answers so that people can vote and discuss individual points better than just having a singular data dump.

I think its okay as long as you've made a fair judgment based on a comparison of the entries.
I saw your update and its quite nice to see someone do my homework :)..  Typically you have to get your head into 100 products when they're listed down. If you think you have the expertise to rate and judge entries neutrally then I think its great to let you do the comparison once and for all.
BTW, I'm the OP of the question so I'm biased towards thinking your work is good, because it really helped me :) ... I was going to go with the Torque X 3D engine and I'd even finalized with my financial team. Luckily I noticed your comment (and other comments) that it wasn't the way to go so now I have another alternative (based on your "top list")


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Should editing a closed question bump it onto the front page?
This question was closed a bit ago and fell off the front page.
https://gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/5238/how-to-create-a-big-kahuna-reef-game-closed
There was an incorrect tag, so Ari Patrick corrected the tag. In doing so it brought the post back from the dead and placed the closed question on the front page where all it does is take up space for questions with actual activity on them.
I think it updating closed questions should not bump them onto the front page.
What do you all think?
Should editing a closed question bump it onto the front page?
Edit: Should there be a checkbox to uncheck to make it not bump?
The person who edited it would have liked a choice to not bump it.
http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/143556#143556

This really should be on meta stackoverflow, closing as off topic.

Yes, I think it should. Closing a question doesn't mean it's done for, usually it means this question needs to be repaired to be viable for the site. And if it falls off of the front page after being corrected it needs to be put in a position where people will notice it so it could be reopened.
If we want a question gone, we would lock and / or delete it.

I edited the question.


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Genre specific tags
Now I have tag privileges again, I've been trying to do my bit to help organise some questions. However, I did see a couple with very vague tags such as 'game-design'. Obviously this is fine, but it seems a little vague with just that and nothing else.
I thought about tagging it 'rpg' as well (since it was about RPG attack systems), then decided to ask here.
TL;DR Should questions be tagged with the genre they are about, if they are specific enough?

Makes sense to me.  Tagging is supposed to be a community collaborative process, and if it makes sense then feel free to do it.  There are a few 'meta tags' that we've decided don't really belong (like "subjective"), but as long as the tag describes what is in the question instead of what kind of question it is, it should be fine.
http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/08/tag-folksonomy-and-tag-synonyms/


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Scrollbars on tag synonym page
https://gamedev.stackexchange.com/tags/synonyms?filter=all&tab=newest
See the issue show up in Chrome.
Probably related to https://gamedev.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/278/scrollbars-on-user-profile-page

I'm looking to into this, thanks.

Is this still happening? I can't repro it in chrome and FF

@Jin, still happening for me.  Windows 7, latest stable chrome, no extensions.  I tried playing around with different zoom levels and sometimes they go away, but at 100% they're there.

can you confirm is this is fixed?

@Jin looks fixed to me.

I have put in a fix for this. Will be in the next deployment.


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Autobiographer Badge
To get this badge we have to complete all user profile fields. I have completed all profile. Why I'm not getting it? What all fields are their to to filled? Am I missing something?

Autobiographer Badge - they say you need the website field also filled in (which I don't see on your bio). Try "n/a" if you don't have one (or if that doesn't work, microsoft.com. :)


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Is flagging for attention good enough as an alternative to close?
I think the voting to close questions has again moved up in rep, since I cannot vote to. And I'm in the top 20/22 users based on reputation alone, AFAIK.
Is the best us lower-reps can do just to flag for attention with reason if we want to close it? I understand that we can't just change from every other SE site.

The reputation requirements only changed once: when the site design was updated.  Since then it's always been 3k points to vote to close.
As to what you should be doing, the best course of action is probably voting down questions with a comment as to why (or voting up another comment that explains the same thing you want to say).  That follows the "community policing itself" idea that is what the SE network is striving for.  I realize with the rep requirements as they are there aren't enough people with rep to actually do community closes anymore and it falls on the moderators to do more cleaning up then they should, ideally, but it's a start.
A flag isn't a bad idea, but they're just things that show up in the moderator panel.  At worse we'll delete the flag without doing anything.  At best it'll call attention to things that probably should be dealt with.

Thanks for clearing it up.


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Are we limited to video game development here?
or would design questions regarding non-digital game design be acceptable as well?

I am curious what would the question be? What .is context the only thing that really separates a board game from the video game version of the board game is it being digital

Same question on the Board/Card Game SE (in public beta now) - http://meta.boardgames.stackexchange.com/questions/236/are-game-design-questions-on-topic.

It's not like you can create a great game without some solid knowledge of the universe of non-video games out there anyway, though.  We're not in a vacuum.

From the original proposal:
http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/2825/game-development

Q&A site for professional and independent game developers who would like to discuss the various aspects of video game development and design.

Generally speaking the answer is no.  But, if it's a design related question that would make sense in the context of a video game, sure.  There are lots of video games that are essentially board games.
My concern is that it's about the audience, not the question.  Most people on here are interested in video games, not necessarily board games.

I think yes, we should keep this site video game specific. Some SE should be appropriate for such questions; either this one or the board game one. (Or a new board game development one, but both this site and B&CGSE are pretty slow already.)

This site is dominated, and probably always will be, by technical questions rather than design ones. The design questions that do come up are often video game specific, on subjects like good controls or schemas for particular things. Some of the technical content is incomprehensible to me, even as a programmer - I can't imagine a non-technical designer would be able to pick out topics they are interested in easily.
For anyone designing table games, nearly every question on B&CGSE is going to be somehow relevant, or at least comprehensible.
Table games have an accepted history of variants and homebrew; every serious tabletop player has done some design consideration. It's not nearly as sanity-breaking as asking the average video gamer their opinion on design and development.
B&CGSE seem happy to accept the questions!

From the FAQ:

Game Development - Stack Exchange is for professional and amateur video/computer game developers.

Going by that, no.

The FAQ is somewhat malleable.  I actually added your bold part not too long ago after somebody asked a board game question on here and got flamed for it.


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Can anything be done to make the "unread items" icon more clear?
I've been comin' to gamedev since around when it started, and have been having a repeat experience:

I log onto the site after perhaps half a week to a week away.
I see a weird icon of a rectangle with a V inside it in orange and red.
I have no idea whether that means I have new stuff or not, so I click on it.
Hey, I have new replies!  That weird icon and color did mean that I had unread replies!  I have no idea why!

Finally, after having repeated that experience a few times, when I logged on today, I analyzed it and decided to compare it to other stackexchange sites to figure out what that icon was supposed to be, and as per stackoverflow, it's supposed to represent an envelope.
Obviously, my end of the problem is solved. I understand that that icon is supposed to represent an envelope, and from here on out I'm not going to have any confusion.  Nevertheless, I think that my experience might be indicative of a lack of clarity for the icon that would carry over to new users especially.
To break down the problem a little more:

The icon is stylizedly pixelated to a low resolution, so much so that it's basic envelope shape is essentially lost.  No recognition that it is an envelope, little meaning conveyed.
The unread color for the icon is red, which is at odds with 99.9% of envelopes anyone is likely to encounter (which are generally white or light colors).  Again, no envelope-like color, little meaning conveyed.

I recognize that the style of the site is designed towards pixelation to represent the games of our golden age... ...but the style seems to sacrifice recognition just a little bit in this case.

Sacrifice some of the stylization in favor of a bit more pixel resolution.  It could still be blocky, just less so.  More pixelz -> more clear diagonal lines -> more envelopey shape.
Edit: Edited the envelope part of the sprite to see what might work, including the original first:

I like the non pixely one. The default one looks like a pixely heart in a box.

@Tchalvak thanks for the icon suggestion! I have used your 4th one in the sprites. The change should be in production(parent and meta site) soon.

Cool.  Good to know.

Make it white with red accents instead of red with orange accents.  White -> more envelopey.  And higher contrast.