# Game Development Topics: A Tag-Based Investigation on Game Development Stack Exchange
## 6 Results of RQ.2: Community Support per Topic
### Community Support for Tech Tags  
Figure 2 presents the community support metrics for tech tags. We can clearly see on the figure that the tag with the highest failure rate is, with around 85%, _Blueprints_, which is described in GDSE as \"_a visual, node-based scripting model used by Unreal Engine-4.\" Three.js_, a _JavaScript_ 3D library, is by far the tag for which the wait time (5129 min) is the longest. (This is why it is not displayed in the figure.) In contrast, _Unity_, the most popular tag, bears a relatively low wait time of 152 min and a failure rate of 53%. _Vuforia_ ([[https://developer.vuforia.com/](https://developer.vuforia.com/)]([https://developer.vuforia.com/](https://developer.vuforia.com/)) (accessed on 1 October 2021)), an \"_augmented reality system developed by Qualcomm_\", not only has the second highest failure rate (above 80%) but also bears, at about 40 h, one of the longest median wait times for accepted answers. The few questions about _Vuforia_ are mostly not receiving answers, and in the few instances when they do, it takes about 2 days. This may signal, with some caveats (i.e., a quick check of _Vuforia_ tagged questions in Stack Overflow does show a less severe failure rate (at 55%), and the developer forums hosted by _Vuforia_ seem quite active), to _Vuforia_ project managers the need to allocate some resources to community support for game developers on GDSE. More generally, the **Harder-Faster** quadrant includes _Unity_, some desktop OSs (such as _MacOS_, _Linux_), some 3D software (_Blender_, _3 DS Max_), and various programming languages (such as _Python_, _HTML5_, _PHP_, _NET_). The **Easier-Faster** quadrant, especially in the lower tier, includes various languages and notation formats (_C_, _C#_, _XML_, _JSON_) as well as graphics libraries such as _GLSL_ and _XNA-4.0_. On the **Easier-Slower** side, there are fewer elements, and they are relatively diverse (from _Windows_ to _Eclipse_, _Oculus_, and _jMonkeyEngine_). Finally, the **Harder-Slower** quadrant, which stands for tags with higher failure rate and higher wait time, includes tags such as _iOS_, _Facebook_, _Google-PlayService_, etc. In the following, we contextualize our analysis of the data with respect to various categories and the top tech tags identified in RQ1. Figure 2: Community support for tech tags. Reference point is based on median values (51% for the Failure Rate, 351 min for the Wait Time). Circle sizes indicate the number of questions of the tag. **Game Engine and Development Frameworks:** Figure 3 presents data on game engines, game development frameworks, and libraries. Questions about _Cocos2d_, including _Cocos2d-X_ (a cross-platform port) and _Cocos2d-iPhone_ (_iOS_ only), seem significantly more challenging to answer on all fronts, with a failure rate around 70% and median wait-times of 1567 min (_Cocos2d-x_) and 2634 min (_Cocos2d-iPhone_). Also outstanding are questions about _Unreal-4_, with a very high failure rate (around 68%) but a relatively low median time (around 400 min), and _jMonkeyEngine_, with a high median wait time (around 30 h) but a relatively low failure rate (around 46%). On the definitely easier side are questions about Simple DirectMedia Layer (_SDL_) ([[https://www.libsdl.org/](https://www.libsdl.org/)]([https://www.libsdl.org/](https://www.libsdl.org/)) (accessed on 1 October 2021)), which appears to be the least challenging both in failure rate and median wait-times. The most popular engine, _Unity_, is unsurprisingly among the ones with the best community support, with an average failure rate and a lower wait time. **Three-dimensional software for asset creation:** When it comes to 3D software used to create assets, established software such as _Blender_, _3 DS Max_, and _Maya_ all have a failure rate upwards 60%. In particular, nearly 75% of questions tagged with _Maya_ do not have accepted answers.