Should or shouldn't we introduce a format to ask about game-engine suitability?

Question

This question is a follow-up to the question: Would questions about game-engine recommendations be on-topic, given they have clearly stated needs?

The help-centre states:

What topics can I ask about here?

...

and it is not about...

• how to get started making a game
• what language/engine/SDK you should learn
• where free assets can be found
• which technology is better
• which technology to use for your game idea
• what technology some particular game used
• how to make (or start making) a particular type of game

The question is: Should or shouldn't we introduce a format to ask about game-engine suitability?

I'm not asking if we should start answering every should I or shouldn't I question regarding choice of libraries, frameworks, engines, and so forth. I am aiming to provide a possibility to share knowledge and experience, to be able to point out flaws or obvious shortcomings that seem clear to an experienced user of certain engines but are not clear to a newcomer.

• Questions would have to be limited to answers based on experience and/or clearly stated facts/properties of such engines.
• Questions would have to mention at least one engine the user thought about using and state what experience the user has with said engine as well as why they think about choosing it for their project.
• Opinion-based answers would not be allowed.

An example from another SE site which does allow for suitability/recommendation questions (rpg.stackexchange.com): Game Recommendation Info

Game recommendation questions, also known as "shopping questions" must be tightly scoped to be allowed on RPG.SE; see our Game Recommendation Q&A Guidance for more. Closely define what you need in the question, and then answers must follow "Good Subjective, Bad Subjective" criteria and only recommend products the poster has experience in for those exact criteria, and not just toss out Googled lists or "their favorite product".

You can modify game-recommendation with published-adventures, campaign-settings, or similar to say what kind of product you're looking for (the default is a RPG system).

Answer 1

"Which engine do I use?" questions are just too broad. There are too many confounding factors in determining which to use.

1. Cost
2. Asker's skill with relevant languages
3. Suitability to team size
4. Which version control is supported (and how well)
5. What kinds of assets will be needed, and how well does it manage those

The chat room is a GREAT place to ask these questions, since they will invariably involve a ton of back-and-forth on the way to getting an answer.

So my answer to this is "no", we should not open up the site to these kinds of questions.

Answer 2

I am not necessarily opposed to changing the policy in this area, but I am opposed to your specific change.

Questions would have to be limited to answers based on experience and/or clearly stated facts/properties of such engines.

It's a bit self-defeating to restrict questions based on the potential answers. We only very rarely do it. Further, saying that answers must be "based on experience" means one can argue that any answer is applicable if it starts with some variation of "in my experience with engine Foo... totally baseless statement here." This creates a scenario where we have to police those answers and curtail the inevitable back-and-forth discussion in the comments that will happen as a result of said baseless statements.

Questions would have to mention at least one engine the user thought about using and state what experience the user has with said engine as well as why they think about choosing it for their project.

I don't really see how this requirement sufficiently narrows the scope of the question, other than to potentially rule out one of the many hundreds of possibilities. It also allows for weasel-word lawyering of the rules: somebody who asks which engine to use without an example has their question put on hold for not satisfying this guideline and so then search for the first engine they can find and claim they "tried" that one. Now we're back in the realm of having to police the veracity of a user's statements, as with the first rule.

Essentially, I feel the way you are proposing to limit these questions primarily saddles the user base with additional tedious self-moderation duties, and I don't think that many people will commit to them.

Any proposal to allow engine recommendations is going to need to provide a way to address the extremely broad nature of the question. The issues pointed out in Almo's answer are among the many that need to be dealt with.