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IMO for a site like this to succeed it needs to offer something HN doesn't. Chat, subforums, personal promotion section, something.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
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…
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.
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 .
Depending on where you're reading, it's Hacker News that's a subset of just about anything else.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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
It’s not about self hosting, it’s about how community building is hard.
Building a large community not focused on anything is much harder.
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!
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
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s not about self hosting, it’s about how community building is hard.
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.
I've set up, moderated forums, irc servers and organized a regular meetup for many years and I've seen that all the time.
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?)
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!
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", " 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.
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 .
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.
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
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...