Q:

Is this a game recommendation question?

Joe Golton's recent question asks for examples of gateway games. In a comment, he says:

I expect (and encourage) debate as to whether this question is suited to the stack exchange system, and even if it is, whether we want it for Board and Card Games.

So, before debate begins in comments there, let's ask ourselves on meta. The faq mention as off-topic questions:

Game Recommendation/Shopping questions, this includes all questions that could be phrased like:

Best game for ... ?
Which game is like ... ?

So is Joe's question an example of an off-topic game recommendation as defined in the faq? Even if it's not, should it be within the scope of the site? (Note: this said" on-topic before, but I edited to avoid unnecessary discussion, since what really matters is site scope.)

A:

In my opinion, this is a canonical game recommendation question, and therefore off-topic. It's a fairly well-defined one, but nonetheless, it is asking for examples of games satisfying certain constraints, which is pretty much the definition of a recommendation question. (The fact that the sole tag is "recommendations is a pretty bad sign too.) And of course, the reasons game recommendation questions were banned apply to it: there are far too many possible answers, and it will encourage similar questions. That is, even if it weren't off-topic simply for being a recommendation question, it'd also be off-topic because it's too broad (which is one of the standard close reasons).

A:

We need to be clear about what Board & Card Games isn't: it's not a site for soliciting people's opinions on game quality, nor is it a database of board games.
As soon as I read the "defined-list" argument I thought of all the closed questions we have of the form "What's a good game for n players?" When I first started participating on this site, I was tempted to ask such questions; I was excited to find a group of experienced gamers and I wanted to find out what their favorite 5-player games were. Now I agree that they're not good questions, so I'll try to use them as a context for my answer.

Bad question 1: What's a good game for 5 players? (Frequently seen with: Community wiki! One question per answer, please!) This is extremely subjective.
Bad question 2: What games can you play with 5 players? This is just
boring. It's objective, but it's a database query, not a good Q&A question.

For both of these you can do a Board Game Geek (BGG) search and sort by ranking. In the event that you're looking for a field that's not recorded in BGG's database then you could head to their forums (BGG: Gateway Board Games). BGG is a site for discussion and opinions.

Good question 1: What is a "5-player" game? Okay, so this particular question isn't great because it's so obvious, but the type of question is good: terminology. The original "What is a Gateway Game" question is an example of this type. It's a good question.
Good question 2: Five can
be a difficult number of players to find a good game for. You can't
have even teams, and turn-based games can feel slow unless turns are short. What characteristics can a turn-based game have so that it doesn't feel too slow with 5 people?

A good answer for this last question should cite some games (after all, answer from experience!), but specific games should not be the answer. For example, games like Dixit or Apples to Apples have have everyone involved on every turn, 7 Wonders uses simultaneous drafting so that people are taking their turns at the same time, and Citadels has very short turns, many of which have some interaction and suspense for everyone. But the examples are just that, they provide back-up for the main points of the answer.

A:

It's not so much that this is a terribly bad question in and of itself, as that I can already think of a million other questions which become askable if this is allowed.  "What games contain meeples?"  Any game with meeples is an objectively correct answer to such a question, but it's still not am interesting question except for the purposes of garnering a million upvotes and downvotes.  Disguising a recommendation question with a hint of respectable "objectivity" doesn't change its nature.  Recommendation questions are NOT bad because we hate recommending things to people!  They're bad because they turn the site into a wearisome free-for-all.
Why not just ask "what is a gateway game" and be done with it, if you want a definition of them?  This question is just designed for the purpose of having a million answers, when it doesn't need to be; that was my initial reaction anyway...

