[HN Gopher] Hacker News for Gamedev
___________________________________________________________________
Hacker News for Gamedev
Author : ahub
Score : 481 points
Date : 2025-01-31 07:56 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (gamedev.city)
(TXT) w3m dump (gamedev.city)
| drekipus wrote:
| Nice! Great idea, I'll be sure to check it out
|
| I'd love if there's more "hacker News like" sites. You could
| probably use the format for many things, a hacker news for
| writing?
| 0xEF wrote:
| Seconded on a HN-style site for writers. I would love that.
| Aside from tech, I am also an aspiring author and seeing what
| others are up to helps me develop my own voice.
| corund wrote:
| great idea to add tags. Colourful account icons clutters page,
| i'd rather prefer the hacker news style without these icons
| 7bit wrote:
| Color theme sucks. Not enough contrast.
| _tariky wrote:
| +1 those colors sucks
| volkk wrote:
| just straight up hard to read. great site though
| cersei wrote:
| Is there a RSS feed? Why not make this a community in Lemmy?
| vayan wrote:
| not everything needs to be federated
| rglullis wrote:
| It doesn't need to, but a social site _should_.
|
| And even if you want to give an elitist vibe to your
| community by making it invite-only, you can set up Lemmy to
| be without federation and with restricted applications.
| appleorchard46 wrote:
| Running a Lemmy instance is a nightmare. Putting aside the
| questionable Lemmy community, the software takes an
| enormous amount of resources and is incredibly finicky,
| always some new bug. The end-user UX is rough, and god
| forbid you ever want to try to improve it by adding a new
| feature or improving any existing ones. Not to mention
| federation woes - it doesn't work reliably in the first
| place, and you either have to only federate with a select
| few strictly moderated instances (and abide by their rules
| yourself), or risk spam and illegal content getting stored
| on your server.
|
| I'm bitter because I really want to love the fediverse. I
| fully support the principles behind it, but making an
| ActivityPub-based server is less like adding RSS to a site
| and more like running a WordPress site with a bunch of iffy
| plugins. The relative popularity of the fediverse shows
| that there's a market for non-corporate social media, but
| the protocol has fundamental issues that really limit it.
| Hopefully someday the community can rally around something
| better.
| rglullis wrote:
| > Hopefully someday the community can rally around
| something better.
|
| I don't disagree, but at the same time I always feel like
| users keep this infinite laundry list of requirements
| just to conveniently excuse themselves of any commitment.
|
| Case in point: I can host a Lemmy instance for customers
| (up to 100 users) for less than $20/month. I manage all
| the software, security and deal with the inconveniences
| of alpha software. People need "just" to bring friends
| and make sure that everyone there behave like decent
| human beings. I also pledge to give 20% of my profits to
| the developers.
|
| In theory it's a win-win-win. In practice, people just
| prefer to stick with Instagram or going to Bluesky
| because that doesn't require anything from them.
| saint11 wrote:
| Yes! https://gamedev.city/rss
|
| Because Lemmy is a bit too much like social media and kinda
| bloated for me. I wanted something simpler so I hosted it.
| miohtama wrote:
| Nice.
|
| But is it enough Web 0.9? :)
| cosysinx wrote:
| I love the HN / old reddit style
| nottorp wrote:
| Does it have user submissions? I don't see a 'submit' while
| logged out and not making an account on the first date...
| swiftcoder wrote:
| You actually _can 't_ make an account, since it's invite-
| only...
| nottorp wrote:
| Oh, I suppose it makes sense if you're just starting to work
| with a group of manually vetted people.
|
| In the long run, that's not HN though.
| swiftcoder wrote:
| Yeah, I don't know. I applied for an invite, we'll see if
| it goes through.
| timknauf wrote:
| Is there a mechanism for applying, or were you able to
| ask via a friend? This is right up my alley -- I like the
| Lobsters format, and have long wished for a game dev-
| specific take on it!
| swiftcoder wrote:
| If you go through the sign-up, it says it will post your
| application in public for anyone to approve _shrugs_
| Crowberry wrote:
| Nice! I'll bookmark this for sure
| iib wrote:
| The theme reminds me more of Lobsters [1]. Is this site invite-
| based as well?
|
| [1] https://lobste.rs
| ropejumper wrote:
| Yes it's invite-based, and yes it actually _is_ lobsters, a
| fork of it.
| stock_toaster wrote:
| I was curious too, so I looked at the about page, and it says
| it is using a modified version of the lobsters code, so that
| makes sense!
| cupofjoakim wrote:
| Going to lurk here as well. Not a game dev, but a fun industry to
| follow on the side.
| meheleventyone wrote:
| The only thing that gets me is that there is a loooooooot of
| border.
| innerHTML wrote:
| I love the idea, unfortunate the way this site is presented is
| such a incredibly busy and noisy way, it makes it so
| uncomfortable to look at I couldn't use this.
|
| I think hacker news aced it with the clean look, although
| sometimes I wish for a dark theme.
| cloogshicer wrote:
| Yup, I think the background texture needs to go away and the
| font color of the posts needs to change.
| saurik wrote:
| I just use browser extensions to get a dark theme.
| amorphousmd wrote:
| Example: https://darkreader.org/
| frogulis wrote:
| A few colour changes and it would look fine. I don't know if
| it's the same software as lobste.rs, but it looks almost
| identical apart from the colours.
| iib wrote:
| As a sibling commenter said, I think the background texture is
| the most distracting.
|
| Other than that, I also think the tag density is higher than on
| Lobsters, where they seem to be using mostly one, or at most
| two, tags, whereas this website's front-page is using around
| three for each post.
|
| Maybe the color scheme as well. And perhaps more negative space
| can be removed by making the column wider, like it is on HN.
| esalman wrote:
| As a gamer though I immediately noticed how easy it was to
| visually filter the content by tags and drill down into the
| details at will. It's an uncommon texture but it works for
| me.
| post-it wrote:
| For me, it's the fact that the tags overflow to the next line
| on mobile. Some posts only have tags on the right, some only
| have tags on the next line, some have both.
|
| The inconsistency makes it impossible for my eyes to settle
| into a reading pattern.
| ryandrake wrote:
| They've also gone with the sadly-ubiquitous "tiny fixed width
| column of content with heaps of whitespace on either side"
| pattern. Real HN does have whitespace borders after a certain
| width, but it mostly allows the content to scale to fit your
| browser window. Nothing worse than having a nice gigantic
| monitor and then having web content constrained to a 5"
| vertical strip down the middle of it.
| abcd_f wrote:
| It would certainly help being able hide tags easily, as a
| guest. They add way too much visual noise without adding much
| in terms of the ux.
|
| The choice of colors is also rather unconventional and not
| exactly appealing.
| Anon4Now wrote:
| > hacker news aced it with the clean look
|
| It's the old school magic of nested <table>'s.
| duxup wrote:
| Tables are great provided you're never going to do much
| styling with them ... and maybe that's what makes them great.
| timeon wrote:
| You can do this with divs/lists and bit of css as well.
| shortrounddev2 wrote:
| Personally I love it. I'm tired of websites with no character
| to them
| imzadi wrote:
| I immediately backed out, because it literally gave me a
| headache within about 5 seconds.
| elpocko wrote:
| lobste.rs clone, invite-only. I'm not gonna beg for the privilege
| of providing value to an elitist community.
| i_am_a_peasant wrote:
| idk who you are but this comment made me wanna buy you a beer
| lol
| mariusor wrote:
| Is it a clone when the code is open-source and the maintainers
| publicly invite others to use it?
|
| > You are free to use this code to start your own sister site
| because the code is available under a permissive license
|
| From here:
| https://github.com/lobsters/lobsters#:~:text=You%20are%20fre...
| elpocko wrote:
| I called it a clone because it's the same software with the
| same look and feel, the same features, and the same invite
| rules. It's an obvious clone of lobste.rs the website, only
| even more exclusively tailored to a niche audience.
| zipy124 wrote:
| They actually even have the same text on their stat page
| about their pledge drive, which clearly they did not do,
| but was in fact on lobste.rs.
|
| https://lobste.rs/stats https://gamedev.city/stats
| dutchbookmaker wrote:
| I don't even mind an exclusive community but the idea of
| begging for an invite is against my very nature.
| burgerrito wrote:
| Anyone knows any other similar sites? Personally I'm looking for
| "HN but for music".
|
| The only other website I know is https://lobste.rs, and this
| website looks like it uses Lobsters' software
| OgsyedIE wrote:
| https://twostopbits.com is a "Hn for retro computer games".
| p2detar wrote:
| I also think it's lobste.rs. The about section also mentions an
| invite-only user tree.
| bramhaag wrote:
| I don't think there is something like that for music
| specifically, but there are still many traditional forums with
| interesting discussions. See for example these:
|
| https://forums.stevehoffman.tv/
|
| https://www.progarchives.com/forum/default.asp
|
| https://forum.metal-archives.com/
| burgerrito wrote:
| Ahhh, speaking of traditional forums, I personally like
| https://www.skyscrapercity.com/, it's still surprisingly
| active. It's also the only where I can get the most updated
| news about public transport/infrastructure in my country
| (Indonesia).
|
| Also I just remembered that rateyourmusic apparently have
| their own forum too: https://rym.fm I've never taken a deep
| look at it, but it's surprisingly... active?
| bdno86 wrote:
| I'd love there to be a HN for high-impact medical articles. Or
| alternatively for someone to build a tagged layer on top of HN
| with clear 'biotech' and 'medical' tags.
| damir wrote:
| Would love to know more about the tech stack and the idea behind
| the site. How it started, and why...
| CornishPasty wrote:
| Looking at the source/mod log/etc. it very much looks like it's
| using lobsters - https://github.com/lobsters/lobsters
| geenat wrote:
| Waiting on approval under gnat.
| hubraumhugo wrote:
| I've seen many "HN for X" projects for various niches now, and
| they all suffer from the chicken/egg problem of getting a
| critical mass of participants.
|
| Isn't game development already discussed here?
|
| I actually built a side project that categorizes front page
| articles so I can filter for topics. Here's an example for recent
| gamedev content:
| https://www.kadoa.com/hacksnack/d57360e8-1eb1-4800-a711-f0d5...
| ramon156 wrote:
| I had an idea last week for a dutch version of HN, only to
| realize that dutch people already use HN
| penetrarthur wrote:
| Pretty much the only country in the world where every single
| person speaks perfect English.
| burrish wrote:
| >Isn't game development already discussed here?
|
| ofc sometimes game dev is discussed here, but imo I don't see
| it enough here that I wouldn't want a hackernews just for
| gamedev.
|
| also very useful side project
| OnionBlender wrote:
| For example, SDL 3 was officially released last week, which I
| think is significant. It was posted on HN, but it didn't get
| enough votes to be visible to me.
| koolba wrote:
| > I've seen many "HN for X" projects for various niches now,
| and they all suffer from the chicken/egg problem of getting a
| critical mass of participants.
|
| With the rise of LLMs, the fake-it-till-you make it would much
| easier. Even just having an automated program to scan for
| relevant URLs on other aggregator sites and cross posting them
| as new content would give things a bump.
| sbarre wrote:
| You're kind of describing an RSS reader, or del.icio.us...
| stared wrote:
| For me, "HN for X" sounds like a "Reddit channel with a sense
| of grandeur".
|
| Starting one is easy, but maintaining both quality and
| popularity is hard - here, HN is a rare exception.
| stkdump wrote:
| Also I thank that moderating a popular forum is dang hard.
| mstade wrote:
| I see what you did there, well played! :o)
| mgfist wrote:
| So the secret to "hn for X" is "dang for X"
| skizm wrote:
| Idk if dang was in charge back in the day, but I remember
| HN used to shut off sign-ups whenever Reddit went down
| (very frequently like 10 years ago) so they didn't get a
| flood of users looking for a low-effort Reddit like
| experience. Those are the kinds of things I'd never think
| about but are also what has kept HN so great. Genuinely
| glad this bit of internet has been so well maintained over
| the years.
| t_mann wrote:
| > For me, "HN for X" sounds like a "Reddit channel with a
| sense of grandeur".
|
| it's a bit sad seeing such a derisive comment about self-
| hosting on HN
| dewey wrote:
| It's not about self hosting, it's about how community
| building is hard.
| t_mann wrote:
| the post clearly implies that opting for independent
| hosting instead of creating a subreddit (the admittedly
| easier route, for community building as well as
| technologically) for a niche forum indicates a "sense of
| grandeur"
| Avicebron wrote:
| You might be kind of young, so there was this time when
| "Facebook for health" and "amazon for X" were used as
| legitimate pitch items as a way to frame the potential of
| whatever CRUD app someone was selling as a billion dollar
| visionary idea. It was very tiring. The modern equivalent
| is something like a "DALL-E 0llamma MLA is all you need"
| post about a random arvix article about ML
| Levitz wrote:
| What if such feeling is justified? Everything else equal,
| I'd rather have a community not belong to Reddit, and I'd
| be horrified if HN somehow "migrated" to being a sub, the
| difference between communities is enormous.
| sbarre wrote:
| That's not how I read it at all.. It's the "HN for..."
| part that is the sense of grandeur.. Not the idea of
| self-hosting vs. using Reddit or Discord.
|
| HN has been around for 15 years, it has earned its place
| as a quality community through time and much effort (i.e.
| moderation).
|
| So to call yourself "HN for..." as a brand new thing is
| like opening up a brand new coffee shop in your town and
| saying "we're the next Starbucks"...
| andrewmcwatters wrote:
| Building a community focused on something isn't hard, you
| grab a few people you know with shared interest, and they
| grab and invite their friends. Small game development
| communities everywhere thrive, I've never been a part of
| one that wasn't doing well.
|
| Building a _large community_ not focused on anything is
| much harder.
| dewey wrote:
| Dead subreddits, dead forums and abandoned meetups might
| disagree with that assessment. Building a community is
| far from easy and there's a lot of effort involved to
| keep it going as an organizer or moderator. Setting it up
| initially is easy, keeping it going for many years is
| hard.
|
| I've set up, moderated forums, irc servers and organized
| a regular meetup for many years and I've seen that all
| the time.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| Well you said it yourself. the beginning and short term
| is easy.
|
| maintaing is very, very, hard. As a website, you fight
| for attention against decades of algorithms, SEOS,
| trillions of dollars of ad revenue, and you still gotta
| be picky to not pick up trolls. IRL, you're fighting for
| time in a person's schedule to travel and incentivizing
| them to keep coming in person while people are more
| overworked and less compensated than ever. Even the most
| benevolent, well mattered communities that attract high
| quality participants will decay naturally. So maintaning
| is a never ending, thankless job.
| chefandy wrote:
| Do you think your considering HN a clear _exception_ to being
| "Reddit with a sense of grandeur" might have more to do with
| your vantage point than your ability to gauge the value of
| online communities?
| stared wrote:
| I mean that referring to "HN for X" is like (more than a
| decade ago) "Facebook for X".
|
| I consider HN a clean exception to most (all?) online
| communities in which I have been participaing; in all other
| cases, the quality tanked, they became ghost towns, or they
| just changed from their original goal.
|
| Sure, there are many wonderful forums and special interest
| groups, and it is good that new ones have been created.
| Just HN is not something you start at, it is something you
| become.
| raincole wrote:
| > might have more to do with your vantage point
|
| It has everything to do with the simple fact that HN was
| launched in '07, when Reddit wasn't that mainstream.
| reddalo wrote:
| And it hasn't really changed since '07 (and I say this in
| a very positive way).
| wholinator2 wrote:
| Yes, honestly i think this is the largest contribution to
| HNs successful place in its niche. Every other website
| turned from articles to images to infinite scroll
| politics and gifs. They all did that because it sells
| more ads. HN has never made a design change that
| prioritizes anything over articles. And even when it does
| conform to the greater trends of most people reading
| comments over articles (increasing bubblifiation of
| popular beliefs) the comments are much huge quality here
| because we're all the kind of people who like a site with
| articles, and thus more people actually read the
| articles, and the feedback does not include the internet
| ubiquitous "social credit score" seen on numerical stats
| around every comment on nearly every other website.
| newsclues wrote:
| and yet, because social networks degrade in quality over time
| (popularity brings about the riff raff), it's essential to
| start net social networks to maintain quality discourse.
| rsolva wrote:
| Using federated forum solutions would at least partly solve the
| chiken/egg problem. Forum software like NodeBB and reddit/HN-
| type variants like Lemmy, opens the possibility of having a
| topic based communiy, while still being open for interactions
| from the entirety of the Fediverse.
|
| This already works well for Mastodon and Pixelfed; I follow
| accounts on mastodon.art from my Pixelfed account.
|
| The reach of folks at the art focused Mastodon instance is not
| limited to their community. The same is possible for reddit and
| forum like communities!
|
| Look at it like this; every forum becomes a potential sub-forum
| in the global network.
| Grumbledour wrote:
| It also gives you something hacker news mostly lacks (besides
| the occasional Ask HN) and that is discussing topics
| organically vs. just discussing what people elsewhere have
| said. I think this is also an important distinction older
| type of forum software have before the newer "link share"
| type.
| raytopia wrote:
| Gamedev is discussed here but honestly not very often if you
| enjoy it more then the more popular HN topics.
| raincole wrote:
| The thing is HN doesn't even have a tag system so you can't
| "see gamedev posts only".
|
| So far the most active community seems to be gamedev.net, but
| I feel it's in a long decline.
| ryandrake wrote:
| +1 for tags. As HN has grown, the topics here have become
| so broad that it might be months before a particular topic
| you are interested in like gamedev makes it to the front
| page. It would be awesome to click a tag and only see
| submissions about that topic. Or better yet, unclick a tag
| and filter out submissions about that topic. I'm so sick of
| AI this and LLM that and DeepFoo and ChatBar, it would be
| so nice to just delete that noise in my own view of HN's
| front page.
| ANewFormation wrote:
| Theres some sort of something quite special about HN and
| I suspect it's the lack of anything special.
| genewitch wrote:
| I think we don't see the special, as I never see anything
| untoward on HN, and since I know the general population
| has some... Colorful people; the key here has to be the
| moderation team, and the front page mechanism (algo,
| manual, whatever it is)
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| I think it's just the "Ways to make a living in
| business"[0]:
|
| > Be First, Be Smarter or Cheat
|
| A lot of the most popular communities were simply first.
| Most others cheated. There's very, very few communities I
| can think of that were truly smarter and successful as a
| result.
| ANewFormation wrote:
| The 'Unreal community' has enough relevant content that
| it'd take a lifetime to go through it all. I'm sure the
| same is true of Unity.
|
| Maybe not the more general stuff you might be after, but
| those forums+ deserve a mention.
| mnky9800n wrote:
| Are you telling me you don't want to read constant updates on
| the state of AI and how it will obviously find AGI tomorrow
| so please give us a trillion dollars today?
| genewitch wrote:
| For better or worse at least it's not "uber for X" posts of
| a half decade ago
| mnky9800n wrote:
| New startup idea. Just get some big names to sign on like
| sama or whoever and then only ever state "we are the uber
| of AI". Then wait for the spice to flow.
| genewitch wrote:
| n-gate would have said "OpenAI, business model - Uber for
| laundering pirated content"
| baxtr wrote:
| My first check on any "HN for X" is: does it look and feel
| almost the same. If not I get frustrated because apparently
| I've been promised something else.
|
| I'm not sure why they not just copy an UI that's working well
| already and that people know.
| nottorp wrote:
| > Isn't game development already discussed here?
|
| I'd say not really. Not in the detail that this site aims for.
| At least on the front page.
| sbarre wrote:
| That site aims for it, but the front page goes back a month
| or more. That's not a level of detail or activity that will
| compel people to go there regularly?
|
| I get the desire to have quality users and posts, but the
| whole invite system feels like an unnecessary gate.
|
| I am not a gamedev professional but I dabble as a hobbyist
| and am interested and would love to participate on that site
| but I don't know anyone on the site to get invited, and I'm
| certainly not going to beg publicly for an invite (which
| seems to be how their system works).
| nottorp wrote:
| Neither am I. Doesn't mean HN works as a go to for game
| development information. Or for web development. Or for
| embedded development.
|
| HN is more of a collection of high level interesting facts
| about everything techy.
| sbarre wrote:
| I guess we've had different experiences on here then.
|
| I've had really in-depth and fascinating conversations
| (or simply lurked the comments when I have nothing to
| contribute) on all kinds of game dev topics, or web dev,
| or others..
|
| While the feed itself might be generalist, the people who
| choose to dig into specific topics on here are often
| experts (sometimes very notable ones) in their field, and
| it can lead to very enlightening and educational
| discussions.
| nottorp wrote:
| > on all kinds of game dev topics, or web dev, or others
|
| Exactly. Every day another topic. Great for keeping
| yourself informed and running into the occasional insider
| insight that will help you 2 years down the road.
|
| Not enough for a domain you're really interested in,
| whichever that is.
| bdhcuidbebe wrote:
| Invite system tends to do wonder for the quality of
| discussion, tho.
| sbarre wrote:
| Only if you actually get enough people in the door..
|
| Plus sometimes invite systems mean you just get the
| "usual suspects", friends-of-friends, etc...
|
| It definitely has value in keeping out the spammers and
| trolls though, I agree there.
|
| I suppose it depends on how you want to handle moderation
| in the long run.
| genewitch wrote:
| Any dev based forum needs full markdown support where you can
| type ```javascript.
|
| //js code here.
|
| ```
|
| And it formats as js, say. Formatting stuff on here, reddit,
| and other sites that support only partial markdown is painful
| for me.
| genewitch wrote:
| Q.E.D.
| qingcharles wrote:
| Some of these HN for X do manage to break free. I like jgc's
| Two Stop Bits retro "HN", which is a very small community, but
| active:
|
| https://twostopbits.com/news
| hbn wrote:
| It looks like 70% of the posts there are from bmonkey325 and
| most threads have no replies. I wouldn't call it active.
| basch wrote:
| The other half of the chicken and egg is that hn is "hn for
| devs but actually just for techy people to cover all sorts of
| stuff" whether that's the intent or not.
|
| By limiting the surface area, it's bound to never become larger
| than the restriction.
| rglullis wrote:
| I think that after "this meeting could've been an email", we
| should start thinking "this website could've been a Lemmy
| instance".
|
| _Even if you don 't want to federate_, all the functionality is
| already there, you can have a selection of web/mobile clients and
| you can apply whatever moderation policies you find suitable for
| the community you want to grow.
|
| And _if you want to extend the reach and make it easier for other
| people to participate_ , you can open federation and get instance
| access to the millions of people in the Fediverse.
| cersei wrote:
| Precisely! Why not support the technologies that exist
| especially when it comes to helping drive critical mass of
| users to both? Making this a Lemmy instance would be mutually
| beneficial to both.
| bloqs wrote:
| I had to get rid of lemmy. I know some instances are better
| than others, but the volume of unstable, immature zoomers
| (particularly the US variety) pushing openly communist rhetoric
| (and brigading and just abusing anything that doesnt conform to
| that) made it completely unusable. I really gave it several
| tries as well as I liked the tech. It was useless for
| discussing anything unless you aligned immediately with the
| mob. Yes, I blocked some instances, but the app delivery means
| the culture bleeds between them. It felt like worse twitter.
| rglullis wrote:
| I mostly agree with you (I'm staying on Lemmy _despite_ the
| average user, not _because_ of them), but this is not really
| relevant to the point here.
|
| My point is that it would be really nice to have a gamedev
| instance that is _able_ (but not required) to federate.
| Instead of creating yet-another discussion forum that is
| completely isolated from the wider network, they could simply
| set up a Lemmy server with federation disabled.
|
| After the community is somewhat established, they could then
| start whitelist federation. Perhaps, they could open only
| with programming.dev. Then they could perhaps open federation
| to the _Mastodon_ instances that are focused on indie
| developers /gamers.
|
| The only way to get rid of this (current) scenario where
| Lemmy is only for frustrated tweenagers and keyboard warriors
| is by cultivating the alternatives _in the Fediverse_.
| burgerrito wrote:
| Feel free to remove my comment if it's not allowed.
|
| I am _very_ disappointed with Lemmy. The community is full of
| echo chambers, and that's already bad.
|
| But what broke the camel's back for me is the fact that one
| of the Lemmy creators one day literally posted what I will
| describe as a propaganda website. I had to double check, but
| nope, it definitely is a propaganda website. The fact that
| you made a software just to spread your dangerous ideology is
| _so_ disgusting. Malicious.
|
| I used less and less Lemmy since then.
|
| This also prompted me to contribute to PieFed[1], but at this
| point Fediverse for me does not feel the same anymore. That
| event left a bad taste in my mouth.
|
| I also have had bad experience with Mastodon, but this reply
| is already long.
|
| The word Fediverse has "diverse" in it, yet it feels like
| anything but diverse. It's full of people with same beliefs
| screaming the same argument every day. It's full of that open
| source purists forcing you to change to Linux or something
| like that[2][3].
|
| [1]: https://join.piefed.social
|
| [2]: https://mas.to/@TechConnectify/112995177480955078
|
| [3]: https://kevquirk.com/blog/linux-elitism-again
| rglullis wrote:
| > The fact that you made a software just to spread your
| dangerous ideology is _so_ disgusting.
|
| Why do we keep making this mistake of looking at the
| character of a person to judge the merit of the creations?
|
| Sure every creation is a form of self-expression, software
| is not an exception. However, it doesn't mean that using
| the software makes you aligned in every way with the
| expressed views.
|
| Yes, the Lemmy devs are morons who still defend the most
| abhorrent regimes. Gargron (the Mastodon dev) is a self-
| righteous prick who thinks he can control civil discourse
| by putting up barriers that can be _easily_ overcome by any
| malicious actor. The Pleroma devs are sociopaths who can 't
| even stand each other. The developer from PixelFed has the
| attention span of a toddler on a sugar high, keeps talking
| about "the power of community" but then goes on tirades
| against anyone that attempts to build upon any of his
| projects.
|
| But at the of the day, _absolutely none of this matters_ to
| the users. The software is free. The power is given to the
| _user_ , not the developer. No one is asked to use the
| software only in a certain way, or to subscribe to any
| ideology before getting access to the source code.
| wccrawford wrote:
| I feel like it's not just instances, but also the groups.
| I've carefully selected a bunch of well-moderated groups that
| bring me content I care about, and I interact regularly.
|
| But I know what you're talking about, because every time I go
| there, I'm logged out and I have to see the front page. If I
| make the mistake of reading it, I'm _horrified_ every time.
|
| Then, I refresh the page and I'm logged in, and it's
| basically just a well-tended forum again.
|
| Also, yes, there's a bug that shows me as logged out, but if
| I ctrl-shift-R, it refreshes with me logged in again. A
| regular refresh doesn't do it. I cannot imagine what that bug
| is, and nothing I've done has cleared this in my Firefox. So
| weird.
| rglullis wrote:
| Yeah, the default view is absolute horrendous (to me) after
| I got a couple of customers who seem to love 196 stuff.
|
| There has been some discussion to allow admins to make a
| selection of communities that should be visible/hidden for
| non-logged users, let's hope this lands soon.
|
| Regarding the login bug: what version of Lemmy is your
| instance on? After I upgraded my instance to 0.19.8 this
| issue has mostly gone away.
| wccrawford wrote:
| At the bottom it says: UI: 0.19.3 BE: 0.19.3-7-g527ab90b7
|
| So I guess I just have to wait for them to update. Thanks
| for that!
| cosysinx wrote:
| Not very clear to me how to get an invite. Do I ask for one here?
| suby wrote:
| The invite only is very offputting.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| So it is more lobste.rs than Hacker News
| mariusor wrote:
| It's running on lobste.rs code as far as I've seen.
| CJefferson wrote:
| When you've only got 3 comments on your whole front page, not
| sure invite-only is the best idea.
| Grumbledour wrote:
| This is the main problem of the "Hacker News for [x]" type
| sites. Lobsters got lots of people interested, but it is itself
| mostly not interesting to read, because there is very little
| discussion. Sure, you keep out some noise, but you also keep
| out what makes hacker news great, and that is the comments from
| all sorts of people.
|
| All these kind of sites serve is a curated link list, which can
| be nice, but they don't fell like a community if you see the
| same dozen people leave ~3 comments per article and can only
| participate yourself after groveling before the chosen.
|
| While I do think a good community needs some type of
| gatekeeping, being invite only is not it.
| righthand wrote:
| Perhaps "interesting to read" does not correlate directly to
| "healthy discussion". It's a feature that Lobste.rs has low
| volume commentary, it leads to more authentic response less
| ad-hominem or passive-aggressive commentary like HN is
| constantly flooded with.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| >While I do think a good community needs some type of
| gatekeeping, being invite only is not it.
|
| Their verification method already seems to be enough of a
| gatekeep.
|
| >if you don't know (or can't find) an existing_user from whom
| to request an invitation, you can make a public request for
| one. _This will display your name and memo to all other
| logged-in users who can then send you an invitation if they
| recognize you._
|
| And they ask for some personal website to verify as well that
| is visible. Given the volume at this scale, this could have
| been a manual verification by the creator for a while until
| there's enough scale to rely on invites (similar to Tildes).
| vunderba wrote:
| Especially considering how long this site has been around at
| least according to the stat page (over a decade at this point).
|
| https://gamedev.city/stats
| zipy124 wrote:
| The stats page is just a clone from the site it's code is
| forked from, you can tell because they even have the same
| text on their stat page about their pledge drive, which
| clearly they did not do, but was in fact on lobste.rs.
|
| https://lobste.rs/stats https://gamedev.city/stats
| saint11 wrote:
| Website maintainer here, that's kinda what we are going for. I
| really don't want to have to moderate a big community, this is
| supposed to be something you check once or twice a week.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| once a week may not really be enough to engage a community
| unless you are sure who you are recruiting will be very
| active.
|
| But I respect the choice, nonetheless. It just simply does
| fit my ideal style where I could find at least 1-2
| interesting posts when I check twice a week. Having niche
| interests can be a curse.
| willio58 wrote:
| As someone who wanted to comment and was immediately prevented
| by the invite wall, I agree.
|
| I even submitted for an invite but clicking submit triggered no
| notification or anything. I don't have the energy to look at
| the network request to confirm
| 1ste wrote:
| Assuming this is your site OP, well done for getting it built and
| launched. I noticed other comments saying "why not lemmy", "why
| not filter on game dev topics on HN". I think the opposite. Forge
| your own path and who knows where it will take you.
| ahub wrote:
| It's not, it's made by saint11 [0] who worked on Celeste.
|
| [0] : https://saint11.art/
| shahzaibmushtaq wrote:
| So who is this Hacker News for?
| stevage wrote:
| The "moderation log" is pretty cool. Nice seeing the
| transparency. And also, the workload.
| Sverigevader wrote:
| This is a bit off topic but I noticed that you've included a
| moderation log at the bottom. I don't think I've seen that
| before. I really like it!
| gareth_untether wrote:
| Game dev communities are great places in the internet. Thanks for
| creating this!
| wrfrmers wrote:
| In terms of "x for gamedev", what I would love to see is a fork
| of Brilliant that covers common topics from the basics up, using
| pseudocode only. I've always liked Cat-Like Coding's approach to
| tutorials, but I've never been able to "acquire" that knowledge
| (and an intuitive feel for it) in a permanent way like I have
| with Brilliant's method. I know that they have a CS module, but
| one specific to gamedev topics would be amazing.
| jschoe wrote:
| HN for economics or geopolitics could be interesting.
| otteromkram wrote:
| 1. Why aren't websites like this posted under Show HN? This is a
| promotional post, right?
|
| 2. How is this different/better than something like
| https://gamedev.stackexchange.com? More discussion-based vs Q&A?
| ahub wrote:
| It's not Show HN / Tell HN because I didn't make the site. But
| I like it and wanted to share.
| natural219 wrote:
| "A glorified subreddit for HN readers..."
|
| At some point, I wonder if `dang` would support this? It seems
| like a good idea. For more topic-specific higher volume news
| items.
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| Let me summarize some of the points brought up here so far (and
| add a few of my own):
|
| 1. Background texture is distracting (background textures need to
| be _very_ subtle to not be distracting!)
|
| 2. You gotta hack the lobste.rs source to allow signup without an
| invite (Note: if you start getting spambots, try reCAPTCHA in the
| signup flow and maybe cloudflare DNS for the whole site, that
| seems to reduce spammers by quite a lot)
|
| 3. Widen the page to match HN on desktop, 900px looks incredibly
| small on desktop monitors.
|
| 4. Page header scrolls (left/right) on mobile, scrolling elements
| on mobile are bad because usually the user doesn't realize they
| can be scrolled. Maybe beg/borrow/steal a magnifying glass icon
| to replace the "search" link.
| dartos wrote:
| I was just looking for exactly this!
|
| HN is too VC focused for a lot of gamedev stuff to break through
| mclau156 wrote:
| Godot game engine has blown me away lately, such a small
| footprint at about 100MB, loads very quickly, and can render high
| quality 3D
| aarongeisler wrote:
| I hope this catches on. For whatever reason, I haven't come
| across many gamedev-focused sites with good content. The gamedev
| subreddit is particularly disappointing.
|
| Feebdack: agree with the other comments that the background image
| is a bit hard on the eyes.
|
| Nice work!
| eru wrote:
| You might like https://www.redblobgames.com/
| aarongeisler wrote:
| Yep, familiar with this one - one of the best out there!
| novaleaf wrote:
| If I may: https://www.reddit.com/r/GodotCSharp/
|
| It's a no memes, no marketing subreddit for C# Godot.
|
| (I am the Mod)
| jprete wrote:
| A little off-topic, but have you found spam or fake content
| to be a problem in the last year or two?
| novaleaf wrote:
| no, but it's a very small (2k members). it's pretty much a
| "serious, no fun" sub so probably that's a good filter :D
| arduinomancer wrote:
| The problem I find with the gamedev subreddit is it seems like
| it's 90% beginners
|
| And the focus is like all on 1-person indie projects with very
| little content from professional/AAA devs
| 65 wrote:
| This is the problem you will find with pretty much any
| subreddit, they are always filled with beginners. Drives me a
| little crazy.
| LordDragonfang wrote:
| Every programming-related subreddit is stuffed to the gills
| with content that's mostly relatable to freshman CS
| students, and it all gets upvoted to the top. I agree, it's
| infuriating.
|
| If I have see one more meme about missing semicolons...
| superconduct123 wrote:
| I can't read ProgrammerHumor anymore for that reason
|
| Its like every joke is aimed at someone who just took
| their first CS class
| ArlenBales wrote:
| This is less a problem with the subreddit and forums, and
| more that AAA game devs seems to be very reserved about
| discussing their industry or keep discussion internal to
| private channels (possibly for IP reasons). Whenever I see a
| AAA developer pop up on Reddit they're always vague and
| mysterious; "I work for an unnamed AAA developer.." You don't
| see people doing that on HN very often, they usually announce
| unabashedly they work at a well known company, like Google.
| KittenInABox wrote:
| I have seen game devs that are public with what company
| they work for also get death threats/hatred/etc whenever a
| game comes out that flops even if they didn't work on it
| specifically. Gamers can come off as a really political
| audience with a lot of grift money to be made on culture
| war stuff so it makes sense if you're an apolitical gamedev
| to stfu.
| Agentlien wrote:
| I've also received surprising levels of vitriol here on
| HN when I mentioned working for EA (which I did
| 2015-2019).
| natebc wrote:
| There's gamers here too. I'm always surprised at the
| tonal change in a comment thread on a game related post
| here.
|
| Sorry we're such a nasty audience. It's not all of us for
| what little that's worth.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| Ahh yes, AKA The Devil. From the Bible. Big fan of his
| work. /s
|
| Yeah, it sucks. Some people can't separate the grunts
| just working on features from the suits up top who manage
| a lot of the things they actual hate. Don't shoot the
| messenger.
| harrison_clarke wrote:
| i think a big part of it is that their audience isn't just
| other gamedevs, it includes gamers
|
| those gamers often have strong emotional attachments to
| games/characters that very few people have for google
| sheets
|
| studios get crazy backlash for nerfs and other changes, so
| i can see not wanting to attach your name and face to that.
| in the other direction, i wouldn't want a horde of gamers
| using my words as evidence that my employer is dogshit,
| unless that was the goal of my message
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| Yeah it's a bit of both. Last thing gamedevs in industry
| wants is a bunch of players hounding them over things
| they 99.9% cant control anyway. That's why any devs that
| reveal themselves are long gone from an older game,
| perhaps not even in games anymore.
|
| And yes, the NDAs on a game are bizarrely strict. For B2B
| stuff like engines and tools, they usually don't care too
| much what you discuss as long as you don't make a show
| out of it. For Game studios, you basically cannot say
| much more other than "I work here" in public unless
| you're PR.
| superconduct123 wrote:
| Its because of crazy gamers online
|
| If you even mention the game/studio you work for they might
| come at you
| recursivecaveat wrote:
| The IP and that the industry is very big-release centric.
| Even the engine you are working with is often news, people
| monitor and report on job listings for this kind of thing.
| It's obvious and uninteresting that a slightly updated new
| version of google sheets will release probably like every
| day, and they will be virtually indistinguishable from the
| previous ones. If literally anything you say about your
| work on GTA6 is news for the next N years, you don't post
| anything. The few non-indie devs I see publically online
| are usually for live-service companies like riot.
| theshrike79 wrote:
| I work for an unnamed AAA developer..
|
| ...and people I work with have gotten mail on their
| PERSONAL phones, addresses and social media accounts
| because a, let's say "enthusiastic", fan found out they
| work on a product they have strong feelings on.
| bloomingkales wrote:
| I have a suspicion it's worse than beginners (absolutely
| nothing wrong with beginners).
|
| There's a cohort of marketers on Reddit that profit off of
| beginner-aimed content. Lots of "oh I just built a successful
| game doing this", link off to a blog. So the shepherds in
| those subreddits are not really elders, but sadly, grifters.
| In turn the beginners sort of stay perpetual beginners. It's
| horrific if you go to the /r/startup type subreddits, the
| grift is super strong there.
|
| Makes you really appreciate HN, good shepherds (not perfect,
| but good).
| Animats wrote:
| The more professional discussions seem to be on the forums
| for Unreal Engine or Unity, where people are struggling with
| obscure issues inside those monster packages.
|
| (I'm trying to do 3D stuff in Rust. The number of people who
| do hard 3D stuff in Rust seems to be very small, which is
| frustrating. There are many obscure bugs in the graphics
| stack and not enough people to exercise the stack, find the
| bugs, and get them fixed. 3D game dev in Rust is below
| critical mass. Retro-looking 2D is doing fine. But most 2D
| Rust work could be done in HTML/CSS/Javascript, or could have
| been done in Flash.
|
| About half of my time goes into graphics stack problems. This
| is not fun.)
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| Even Unreal Q&A's get thin once you start looking into
| features deeper in the engine. Epic's campaign to make the
| common dev afraid of C++ seems to have worked with ablomb.
| Maybe there's some closed off sections to look into, but I
| sadly don't have access to that anymore.
|
| I can't imagine much knowledge out there on Rust gamedev
| atm. Truly a trailblazer. At that point your resources are
| more about community discords and arguing in github issues
| than anything casual.
| Agentlien wrote:
| I found this very frustrating back when I was active on
| Reddit. There were times when I put a lot of thought and
| effort into writing posts drawing from my moderate knowledge
| and (at the time ~10 years of) experience. And then I get
| some reply from a complete novice or two saying this is
| clearly wrong and the post gets tons of down votes. Meanwhile
| the top comment is another beginner saying something
| obviously wrong and hundreds more agreeing.
| brudgers wrote:
| That's probably the problem for any HN-for-X because a
| talking at/with/to beginners and hobbyists is not a rare
| internet opportunity for experts.
|
| I think one of the things that makes HN HN is that experts
| can choose to have only incidental open internet engagement
| with their areas of expertise. Most or all of their time on
| HN can be engaging with other topics that they are less
| familiar with.
|
| The attractions of an HN-for-X include engaging with an
| unfamiliar-X that experts are already familiar with.
| caseyy wrote:
| There aren't many social media communities with quality gamedev
| content, because professional (especially AAA) developers with
| decades of experience rarely participate, and you can only have
| so many beginner communities. The lack of participation exists
| for many reasons:
|
| 1. Befriending fans or participating in their communities leads
| to constant requests for insider info, which is tiresome.
|
| 2. Social media is for extreme content. Reddit, for example,
| rewards the most shocking content and most Redditors are aware
| of this, so measured voices get drowned out, or worse:
| blindsided and cancelled for minor quirks of expression.
|
| 3. Armchair developers with very little real experience, who
| are the main participant of game dev conversations on social
| media, often lecture long-term professionals. Particularly, new
| software engineers tend to really over-complicate code until
| it's "perfect" in some philosophical ways but not performant
| nor maintainable. It is difficult to participate in discussions
| where they outnumber you 50:1. Sooner or later someone will
| "epically own" you with Uncle Bob quotes.
|
| 4. The current zeitgeist in the gaming community is that
| studios are evil for a number of reasons, some of which are not
| pandering to contradictory player demands (next-gen graphics
| are a waste of money/game with previous gen graphics looks like
| PS3; visually appealing women characters are sexist/visually
| average women characters are woke; games should not cost more
| than $69/games that use monetization engines to keep the price
| at $69 are greedy), and some of which are abstract and
| universal ("this game had so much potential", "<game feature>
| is trash", games not meeting delusional expectations, etc).
| Influencers often flip-flop between these criticisms reviewing
| any game they come across, so these ideas have now taken hold
| in social media, and are often barriers to respectful
| communication.
|
| 5. Many devs align with the games industry a lot more than the
| idealistic "games is my calling" new developer. About 50% of
| the industry is people who do games as a paycheck (they have
| families, kids, parents, they are battling the cost of living
| crisis, they don't have the energy for ideological fights at
| work nor do they want to upset their source of income), or
| people who do games as a career (they want to become VP of
| technology, studio head, etc. as a life goal). These people are
| completely under-represented in beginner circles who sometimes
| consider their goals vile. Many people who have worked in the
| games industry for decades will know a few studio
| heads/executives personally and align a lot more to the
| business decision-making in the industry than the average
| social media user. Because SM often promotes quite inflammatory
| language, it becomes difficult to find common ground.
|
| As a result, most game dev professionals avoid social media,
| particularly Reddit, YouTube, Facebook, and rumor forums,
| because it's really grating to socialize there, and we get our
| social needs met by more accepting groups of people. Even
| Twitter/X/Bluesky, with a slightly larger dev community, loves
| the extremes of opinion that become equally exhausting.
|
| HackerNews so far is a platform that doesn't tease you for
| insider information, it promotes measured voices, and likes the
| practicalities of tech + business, as opposed to idealistic
| extremes. Therefore, I believe there are more professionals
| here, and the community isn't running out of steam.
|
| There are other niches for game developers online, such as
| GameDev.net, GameDeveloper, and industry-insider publications
| like GameIndustry.biz. It is much easier to write down an
| article for GameDeveloper or speak to editorial staff about
| what concerns you to get an article out there on industry
| publications than to try and discuss any sort of meaningful
| matter on broader social media.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| > Influencers often flip-flop between these criticisms
| reviewing any game they come across, so these ideas have now
| taken hold in social media, and are often barriers to
| respectful communication.
|
| From my observations, I see that most influencers are
| consistent. A few will flip flop to chase the trend of the
| week, but most simply have hard, clashing stances. And of
| course, those clashes creature flames
|
| Sadly, talking about games is rarely civil. You need to find
| a quaint community and/or do a ton of moderation to keep the
| conversation from tilting off.
|
| > Many devs align with the games industry a lot more than the
| idealistic "games is my calling" new developer.
|
| Yeah, that was definitely a contributing factor to me leaving
| Reddit. Only so many times you can try and reason "well yes,
| costs have grown for these larger games. Maybe a 16% increase
| after 15 years is justificed" and are counted by "but the
| market is bigger! You sell less games with higher costs"...
| _sigh_. I know they can 't see the pocket books, but
| companies are still breaking records with $70 priced games.
| Come on.
|
| Also just a real shame how much those gamers ignore the
| japanese market. They focus on COD and claim to just want to
| buy games. meanwhile Nintendo has never put MTX nor battle
| passes in their games, and they are chastised as bad for
| completely different moving goal posts (ahh yes, because
| lawyers remove mods... because Nintendo games
| disproportionately have a huge modding community. Population
| maps anyone?). Maybe a bunch of cosmetic DLC at worst, but
| all those western tactics are relagated to Mobile in Japan
| (which this audience couldn't care less about).
|
| They have options to branch out to, but never do. Can't make
| the horse drink.
| klaussilveira wrote:
| I miss the TIGSource forums on its prime.
| nemomarx wrote:
| maybe a petty nitpick
|
| but why do I see "41 hours ago" on one of the posts? it feels
| unintuitive to measure a time longer than a day in hours
| calgoo wrote:
| Interesting take! I detest when a system says something like: 3
| days ago instead of an exact date/time or the total hours
| since. If its months ago, then the date makes the best sense to
| me. Maybe I'm just data driven in some way and don't like it
| when people "hide" details?
| picafrost wrote:
| The communities centered around links and comments that I get the
| most value out of are those that are gently strict about the
| discourse that occurs on them. They are well curated by
| moderators. But importantly, still open to all to participate in.
|
| That takes a lot of effort, and the right curators, to do well.
| Invite only websites seem like a poor replacement for this. Are
| there examples of invite-only websites that reach the quality of
| HN at its best?
|
| Maybe by definition they are harder to point to.
| shortrounddev2 wrote:
| I'm willing to bet invite-only is not a substitution for
| moderation (since some of the worst members of a site are often
| its most frequent posters), but a sort of reputation system to
| prevent bots from joining. I remember demonoid did the same
| thing back in the day
| vdddv wrote:
| https://lobste.rs/ is invite only and HN level quality IMO
| xandrius wrote:
| Got mass banned for stating that a misunderstood comment was
| not to be seen in its negative light.
|
| No thanks.
| samiv wrote:
| Looks like another dead forum for gamedev.
|
| The ultimate problem is that there's just an abundance of people
| doing game development or game tool (engines, tools etc)
| development. The market is utterly saturated and honestly it's a
| bit depressing. People putting their heart and soul just to have
| "0 views, 0 comments". What's the point?
|
| Of course this is more like an aggregator of game dev content so
| now you can observe the "0 views, 0 comments" phenomenom on
| content that itself has "0 views, 0 comments". ;-)
| anonzzzies wrote:
| I have a list of games i have been wanting to make for ages. I
| was a game dev in the 80s, but got into b2b DOS, Windows and
| then Web dev to make for more consistent money. I guess if I
| ever do, I would do it for myself and if others like it, fine,
| if not, fine.
| samiv wrote:
| This is absolutely fine. But people who post on Reddit or
| gamedev.net or any other forum ultimately are also looking
| for external validation. If they weren't they would not be
| posting. But hey let's be honest, who wouldn't want to get at
| least some pats on the pack or some positive feedback, right?
| But sadly it's a dead end for 99% of people posting on any
| channel.
|
| Tangentially related to this, in the -80s there was the video
| game crash and a bunch of games were even buried in the
| ground.
|
| It's incredible to think about that today we're already way
| past that and essentially the cost of any game is about 0. Of
| course that's not quite true, the market is bimodal where you
| have the games that cost nothing (because user's would not
| pay for them) and then the triple A level games.
|
| Unfortunately in the former group creation of the games still
| costs something so now any studio with paid workers has to
| rely on secondary avenues for revenue since the user's aren't
| willing to pay up front to pay the game.
|
| I'm really not sure if this is a healthy market anymore.
| panorama wrote:
| This is neat, but I was wondering if anyone has a forum for
| discussing game product development (i.e. less the code that goes
| into game dev, moreso the decision making that goes into making
| quality games, is there a better name for what I'm referring to?)
| jayd16 wrote:
| Are you asking about design, running a studio, development
| practices besides code (art, writing, animation etc), market
| research?
| lawlessone wrote:
| Cool, i like the colour scheme. It's kinder to my eyes.
| ahub wrote:
| To clarify : I'm not the author/host of the site. Saint11 [0],
| who worked on the recent "Celeste" platformer, is.
|
| [0]: https://saint11.art/
| teach wrote:
| Oh man Celeste was FANTASTIC. I've been active in /r/gamedev
| for forever (because I used to teach high school kids how to
| make video games), so I was already interested but this seals
| the deal.
|
| The storytelling, the accessibility options, _chef 's kiss_
|
| Requested.
| postalrat wrote:
| Resurrect https://flipcode.com.
| heyitssim wrote:
| Currently building my own game engine for my games[1], but I'm
| facing the classic indie game marketing challenge. While
| platforms like CrazyGames, Poki, grab most of web players.
|
| I'm exploring zero-budget marketing approaches. Currently
| experimenting with daily news posts for SEO[2] and converting
| them to podcasts too.
|
| Would appreciate any suggestions on effective no-budget marketing
| strategies, or feedbacks!
|
| [1] https://pixelbrawlgames.com/game/blast/
|
| [2] https://pixelbrawlgames.com/dailynews
| appleorchard46 wrote:
| The problem with 'HN but for [x]' sites is that what they offer
| is just a subset of HN. Game dev posts might not be the most
| popular here, but they're still allowed and do get some traction
| from time to time - so there's little incentive to post somewhere
| that has even fewer eyes.
|
| IMO for a site like this to succeed it needs to offer something
| HN doesn't. Chat, subforums, personal promotion section,
| _something_.
| andrewmcwatters wrote:
| I used to think this, but after reading about engagement
| numbers elsewhere, Hacker News is actually very small when
| compared to other venues.
|
| Depending on where you're reading, it's Hacker News that's a
| subset of just about anything else.
| Larrikin wrote:
| Who cares about engagement numbers?
|
| The things this site used to offer was there might be an
| article about a security breach, a brand new highly
| anticipated feature in a major product, a historical article
| about a long forgotten but major technological achievement.
|
| Then a key person from that story would chime in with their
| take about what the article got right or wrong, offer to
| answer questions. And that is assuming they didn't directly
| make the post.
|
| Nobody actually wants to read self promotion blog spam,
| besides other people pretending to be engaged so they can do
| the same
| appleorchard46 wrote:
| Exactly - you can only add so many inner matryoshka dolls
| before they're not big enough to sustain critical mass.
|
| If HN is a subset of other sites (though arguably its
| approach to UX and moderation offer something different), a
| site targeting a subset of HN's users seems unlikely to get
| much traction.
| MrLeap wrote:
| I requested an invite. Would love to join this, I've been a
| professional gamedev for about half of my career.
|
| My confirmation link was a link to Tentacle Typer's steam page.
|
| edit: thanks for the invite.
| tonymet wrote:
| kudos for keeping the site small at about 55kb . Though not quite
| as slender as hackernews 14kb, i was expecting to see 2mb of
| react cruft so high fives to the devs for keeping it lite.
| unchar1 wrote:
| Cool site!
|
| Is there any way to see the top posts? It's really helpful when
| I'm trying to catch up on things. I know HN doesn't, but I can
| usually use hn.algolia.com to find the top posts.
| saint11 wrote:
| Clicking on logo on the top left should go it! In retrospect I
| should add a little text there to make it clear. (I'm the
| website maintainer)
| lemonberry wrote:
| I can't speak to the content, but I found the a little difficult
| to read. I ran your homepage through the free Axe Dev Tools for
| accessibility. It may be worth testing yourself and changing some
| of the contrast between text and background.
|
| Congrats on launching! That's an achievement.
| saint11 wrote:
| Maintainer of the website here! I'm happy (and a bit terrified)
| that we made it to the front page of Hacker News.
|
| This isn't a commercial project, and it never will be. We're
| curating the site for a very specific vibe and high-quality
| content, which is why we're invitation-only and why we aim to
| grow the community slowly and intentionally. I also want to
| ensure our server can handle the traffic without issues.
|
| I'm slowly working through the invitation queue, so please bear
| with me!
| metadat wrote:
| Cool idea, I hope this ignites.
|
| P.s. Why does it have the Lobste.rs favicon?
|
| https://gamedev.city/apple-touch-icon.png
| saint11 wrote:
| Because I cloned it from Lobste.rs and probably forgot to
| change that one.
| metadat wrote:
| Hehe, cool. I just enjoy a good favicon, surely you'll make
| one for this project eventually!
| bdelmas wrote:
| We need a "Ask GameDev" like on HN
| elendee wrote:
| fwiw I read hacker news through RSS only, top 10 items every day
| using https://www.daemonology.net/hn-daily/
|
| Something similar would be great
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