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For some of the smaller, Indie titles, we've actually had the developers themselves come to post answers to questions on their games.

This answer is only the most recent instance, and I know that there have been other cases in the past (might be useful to compile a list of said answers, but I digress).

What is the feasibility of giving them some recognition? I don't think artificially inflating their reputation or some-such is a good way to recognize them, but what about the possibility of giving them a tag badge of their game? I'm open to other ideas, also.

Basically, does anyone else think it would be neat if we could pin a label on these users that said, "Hey, this guy programmed the game. He's probably forgotten more about it than you will ever learn."?

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    I think it is fantastic that we are getting these people coming in and answering stuff. Gaming.SE is supercool.
    – user11502
    Commented Dec 31, 2011 at 23:10
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    To play devils advocate, we have no way of knowing for sure that these people are who they say they are.
    – John the Green
    Commented Dec 31, 2011 at 23:23
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    I don't think artificially inflating their reputation or some-such is a good way to recognize them This is definitely an important point. Remember, one of our goals is recognizing quality content agnostic of who the person submitted was.
    – FAE
    Commented Dec 31, 2011 at 23:24
  • @John - Yes, there might need to be some sort of verification. But, realistically, I'm not sure there would be that many users in need of such verification.
    – Raven Dreamer Mod
    Commented Dec 31, 2011 at 23:38
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    See also: "Does Stack Exchange have a “Verified Account” feature?".
    – John the Green
    Commented Dec 31, 2011 at 23:42
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    Honestly, the best way we can show them love is for if they either ask questions they get a lot on our site, so we can provide awesome answers for their users or have them answer our questions, so it will help their customers
    – Ivo Flipse
    Commented Jan 1, 2012 at 11:28
  • @John True. I worked on Dead Rising 2 and probably the only proof I have that can't be easily faked is my pay stub, which I'm not about to show to the internet :P
    – Matthew Read
    Commented Jan 3, 2012 at 17:48

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Quora does this through one-line bios shown on top of each answer. Our own equivalent is expanding profile pages, or maybe telling gravatars.

I guess we could rather opt to make some users distinguished through a grey border on their name on question pages for certain tag, but really... Their position as game devs should allow them to regularly post mega-awesome answers that stand out through their quality, rather than their user signatures...

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    you should encourage them to (and/or help them) fill out their user profiles so people can confirm that they are who they say they are, etc.
    – Jeff Atwood StaffMod
    Commented Jan 4, 2012 at 9:54
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One thing we could certainly do to thank them, is make sure that we get plugs for their games in rotation with our Community Ads.

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Another thing that comes to mind is marking the question as "answered by Dev himself" at a noticeable spot (a small logo, maybe, on the left of the title).

Valve forums does this for their developers - a question would get a lot of attention if Chet Faliszek answered it personally, which he really does, now and then.

Example from Valve forums

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    Honestly, I'm not sure if we even want questions that require the dev (of all people) to be able to answer it. I'd hope that devs view our site as so useful, that they'll drive their customers to us, because we're an awesome way to get a quick answer to your Gaming questions
    – Ivo Flipse
    Commented Jan 2, 2012 at 21:03

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