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A dedicated marketing channel for gamedev related stuff in the gamedev feed would be helpful to discover new stuff. Any chance a portion of those funds get reserved for something like producing a jam or charity? Keeping game dev money in the game dev community?

I'd be all for committing to the jam/charity thing! I need to make a baseline income, but I'm not looking to cash in on the feed so this would be great for the excess. What exactly do you mean by "a dedicated marketing channel," tho? Are you just referring to the ads channel?

Im just suggesting the ad space would mostly be bought by indie devs because who is is more interested in indie games than other devs? Its a good place to get traction on a marketing campaign. And if thats true then why not return some of that back to the community through some sponsored event.

You deserve it for all the work you do. Will not unfollow.

I like this feed so far just joined, so thank you. Adds if moderate won't upset me. A patron or something similar could pay towards would suit me better mind you. I would rather purchase a product than be one. I will at least buy you a coffee in the mean time.

Okay I never used the ko-fi system. I had not idea you can set up monthly payments. Hopefully enough people do and you might avoid adds.

I think its a really good idea on paper. In practice it'll take a team with lots of self control to not give into the money businesses might give you to push unrelated products. I believe its definitely possible and will inevitably bee good for the community even after Bsky Creates a ads system👏.

As long as the ads aren't ads tied to a fake mobile game or full of false ads. Google's ad space is already terrible enough and they never hold up their own policy on that crap, I don't want that else where. Also, if it's AI content, it's gotta be marked as AI content.

How labour intensive is maintaining the feed and can you do it on donations? Happy to support that work, because I use this feed often but I’m keen to avoid the small end of the monetising other people’s content wedge

It would be cool if the ads were not only curated, but that there was a way to submit our own as a way to contribute to funding for the feed with a little extra value. Submissions also being curated for relevancy, safety, etc.

Oh yeah, the platform will be open to anybody! I'd really prefer the community to be running most of them so the content is more relevant. 😁 If you wanna see what process looks like, check out the landing page for submitting an ad.

Oh wow, I appreciate they make the metrics transparent as well!

the lack of disclosure is a little bit disturbing to me; but i'd strongly prefer the feed existing and being self-sufficient to the alternative.

Yeah, we actually solved the disclosure issue! 😉

Please no ads. Every social media app is littered with them to the point I have to make new accounts

I am ok with ads if they are obviously marked, and not more than one in 20 main posts.

Hi! I think if there is a reasonable amount of them and targeted to the devs specifically there will be no problems. I hope you get to support your work! 💫🫧

No

No ads

Very helpful, thanks. I really appreciate you taking time out of your day to thoughtfully explain your position to me. 🤣

No problem. I have that time because a friend told me to install Rocket Money on my phone. I installed it through NordVPN. That's how I order my Factor meals.

I would rather support directly. Do you accept donations? Maybe a Patreon would work.

Maybe, but I’ve had a long conversation with Ben about it it’s the quoted thread. I’m all ears if you have other ideas or think I’m wrong, tho!

Adds can be a great way to sport revenue for the #GameDev community. I support the idea of only relivent adds being made available within the community as well. It would definitely push more indie developers and community postings for events and create reliable revenue for the community. I support 💙

Why not just charge money for the game?

the description of this feed implies that its automated? Is that wrong? If so, how much work goes into it and what does it entail? I'm new to bluesky so I'm still not clear on how these things work, like whats the difference between the "gamedev" feed, compared to the gamedev hashtag?

I am okay with it. Not thrilled or anything, but it’s just part of the landscape these days.

Yeah, I _totally_ get that. Honestly, I'm hopeful that this could improve the feed rather than make it worse. Surfacing things that would otherwise get buried like game jams and new engines. We'll see, tho. It could also end up a hot mess that I shut off as fast as I kicked it on. 😅

Well I appreciate you asking about this. That is something novel :)

I'm not a game developer, but advertisements can be pretty dangerous if you're not careful enough.

I am not a fan of advertising in general. I know that it can do good things, it's just a personal preference.

I totally get that, and I'm 100% with you. I'm hopeful I can manage it so that the ads are useful and relevant, but of course, they're still ads and they always will be.

I’d be okay with occasional ads as long as they are marked in some way. Another idea is, Depending on the amount of costs/work involved, I wonder if you could find 1 company to sponsor the feed(s) for some period of time which would be mentioned in description and maybe the occasional post.

Allowing any ads is an inevitable gateway to allowing more ads. I'm a big proponent of letting game studios post their work and let the merits of their post be its own advertising (game screenshots, WIP blogs, cool trailers) Anything outside that starts the ball rolling toward enshittification.

I love your work for this community and you seem thoughtful, intentional and consultative about how you are doing this, so if it helps you put food on the table I think you should go ahead. You seem to have a good sense of the boundaries that will save it from becoming horrible.

I support the grind! Thanks for the honesty.

1. I do'nt mind but 2. I use ghostery because 3. SOMETIMES ads cause more hell with my system - because i'm on a potato mac 4. I will never complain about a dev or artist askin to get support for their efforts :D

Is there an example feed with ads? I think game dev related ads are fine, maybe even welcome. I learned about Game Devs of Color and Gamescom LatAm through ads on LinkedIn. But they were clearly labeled as ads.

I'll give you $2.50 for a spot

see like, who even is that person. I know you're going to vet the ads, but the eagerness to pay for people's attention is just so off-putting for me personally, I don't want that person to be able to force their way onto my feed nothing against them but man. the vibes are not great

This is such a valuable feed for me (and I think many others) I don't mind ads, everyone needs to pay the bills. With the work you've put into this I have confidence you'll finetune the adds to make some money and keep the quality of the feed without too much bloat.

Ads are evil. Please don't be evil! (Image from: stevecutts.wordpress.com/tag/brain/)

I get the sentiment, but the discussion is never that simple.

The picture only touches the tip of the iceberg - that's only the "companies shoving ther shit to the consumer" part. Especially on social media, its more often than not billionaires buing themselves power the should not have in a democracy. Anyways. I purge anything with ads from my life.

Anyway we could prioritize games related ads?

Go for it! I think ads CAN be valuable, if vetted and actually relevant, not blindly personalised and shoved in the users face at every possible pixel 😅

Honestly no, unless you fix the "can't tell it's an ad" part. If every ad requires the text "Ad 🗞️" or something then sure. Twitter testing ads that did not identify as ads was a huge red flag.

I think we have! I covered it in the quoted skeet. 🥰

FWIW I think that's pretty reasonable

I'm heavily biased, because I'd probably be using the offer to get ads on the feed in the future. And while I appreciate the general hate for more ads in this thread, I'd like, from my biased perspective, to present a more nuanced approach.

First of: relevance to the gamedev feed is key! Ads for oversized water bottles of questionable plastic is not relevant. But if you were to get small businesses who'd want to advertise assets, plugins or other things that's relevant to gamedevs I think everybody wins.

game dev feed is like 70% ads for peoples projects anyway if you think about it like that

As long as it’s relevant I don’t mind. Even then, gotta do what you gotta do!

I don't have issues with ads as long as they are being moderated and screened for potential harmful content. My issue with ads on platforms is that there is no moderation for the most part. So you get ads that are essentially scams, phishing sites, viruses, malware and all kinds of shady things.

Oh yeah, there should be zero of that. I'll test links, review accounts, etc. All the same stuff I already do for @ozone.birb.house. 😁

The manual ad reviewing is cool and I trust you to do it but I also feel like that could get overwhelming. So I hope that if you go down this route and it starts to feel like too much pressure you'll let us know and don't push yourself too far

A lot of people's gut reactions to 'advertising' is gonna be to throw up in their mouths. I don't think this idea has been well communicated. There are good kinds of advertising they're just not what people think of when the word is said and that doesn't seem to be accounted for.

These are all good points. I don't claim to be the world's best communicator, so I appreciate the feedback. I'll try to write a new version of the notice today that's clearer. Mind if I reach out for direct feedback?

yes that's what we need online, more ads

Not sure here. I fear it won't be "neutral" than anymore and maybe annoying. But I understand that all the work takes a lot of time and you need somehow to balance it. But a general game dev feed shouldnt have ads imo.

I'm pretty fine with it personally as long as it's stated it's an ad, which you've discussed, and also as long as there's no malware or scam ads Ads don't generally bother me too much if they feel cleanly like others just promoting their work, but any sketchy links always puts me off of anything.

Reading through the comments, I feel like I'm in the minority. Do what you need to do to be sustainable. Keep being transparent. One in a hundred skeets doesn't seem like that much. God knows we've all seen the accounts that throw 25 skeets across at a time for their finished game.

As long as I can plainly see what's an ad, I don't really have a problem with it. There's the other side, that people that do things /for/ developers can then use that to get some extra traction on /their/ work. I don't know about anyone else, but I wouldn't mind seeing some tooling being shilled

I dislike it. But there are other things I dislike more. Like people that do cool stuff not eating or doing less cool stuff.

i think this is a bad idea. one of the best things about this app is the lack of advertising, and the genuineness of it all. running ads on the best game dev feed on here might honestly ruin this feed for me, please don't do it if you can afford it. I'd much rather support a patreon or something.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts! Honestly, if ads end up making the feed feel less genuine I'll end up removing them. I also use the feeds, so they have to be up to snuff for me. 😁 As for the Patreon thing, I actually mentioned that in the quoted skeet. 😉

forcing ads into the feed and then selling the ad-free feed... does not feel good at all. there's gotta be a better solution

I feel like with the Internet, we discovered a possibility where we don't have to navigate content we like with ads. However, as we still live in a "money pays the bills" world, as long as I know that it helps good projects/helps me discover stuff I can relate to, I'm ok with it :)

Did we really discover a way to exist without ads, or did it just take a while for us to realize the financial burden was being placed on creators? I feel like that’s an important part of the conversation that’s often missing from the generic “ads are bad” argument.

I might be able to handle a few static ads to maintain your excellent gamedev algorithm moving forward. Autoplay video ads I tend to avoid at the expense of whatever media it is attached to.

I think as long as the ad posts are properly moderated to prevent any issues that could arise with repeat posts n whatnot, I would not mind if ppl could pay to have a little boost on the feed if need be. Also having ads clearly marked as such would be nice if possible.

Yeah, I’ll be vetting every offer that comes through for quality and relevance. I think we also solved the issue of ads not being flagged as such. ☺️