Are questions asking whether a category of games exists on-topic?

Question

We recently had a question "Are There Any Board Games That Involve Both Memory And Luck?" (now deleted) The body of the question described a hypothetical game, with a series of luck-based events which can be bypassed later by remembering the earlier outcome, then asked if there were any games like it.

I believe we've had a few similar questions in the past, as well, though I don't remember clearly enough to quickly search for them.

Note that game recommendation questions are off-topic, because they invite open-ended lists of games, as well as opinions.

Game identification questions, however, are on-topic, provided they include sufficient information, because they in principle have one correct answer.

Where do these "does X exist?" questions fit in? On- or off-topic?

Answer 1

These questions must be taken on a case-by-case basis. Generally they'll be off-topic, but some may be on-topic.

First and foremost, we do not want to allow people to skirt the rules on recommendation questions by replacing "please recommend some games in this category" with "do games in this category exist?" The issues will be the same in both cases. Therefore, any question where the category seems likely to match many games are off-topic.

The exception would be when the criteria are so specific as to narrow things down to a small set of games, essentially like an "identify-this-game" question. Unfortunately, these are also often not going to be terribly interesting, useful questions. If it's not actually an identification question, then the criteria are ultimately just the OP's wishful thinking, and such a game may or may not exist.

The example here seems to be more on the open-ended recommendation side of things. It may not be the most common game mechanic, but it's not terribly unique either. A rough description of a game mechanic does not make for a sufficiently specific question, and again, asking "does X exist?" instead of "please recommend games with X" does not avoid the underlying issues associated with recommendation questions.

Answer 2

"Are there any X" is an example of a question where there is no actual problem to be solved. The proper response is, "Why do you want to know?"

You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face.

In general, I wonder what the real question is when faced with these types of questions. Encouraging those askers to share might lead to very interesting questions for the site.