Show HN: GameDevs.com, a social news site for game developers | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: GameDevs.com, a social news site for game developers

gamedevs.com

118 pointscoulomb40 comments

Some thoughts: Games sites, (especially game dev sites) suffer from a horrendous signal to noise ratio. We tend to have a very large, well-meaning but uninformed audience who enjoy participating in discussions but do not offer much experience or insight. If you want your site to offer something of value, you'll need some way to manage the signal-to-noise ratio to ensure that good posts are not drowned out.

Another thing to bear in mind is that game development is not the same as Game Programming. There are many skills that must combine in order for a game to be successful; Code, Art, Design, Audio, Biz, etc. Many gamedev sites focus on one or more of these disciplines; very few offer useful discussions on all of them.

The best site for game developers is probably www.thechaosengine.com . They have forums for all of the major disciplines and they manage their S/N by requiring members to vouch for each other before being allowed into the main industry forums.

While thechaosengine.com might be a nice site as I cannot judge it from out here. I can understand not allowing posting privileges without some vetting but it looks like they are closing themselves off entirely. Of course they can do what the like as its their site and I'm sure it works wonders for keeping the riffraff out. I've run in to some great sites previously that spread useful information on game development without being closed off but yes they tend to be specialized or have died due to low number of users.

Seems like the above approach generates some extra overhead for as well moderators. Some of the posts in the public forum are like "After months still waiting" people saying that there is a huge backlog and admins don't have the time to let people in or someone changed jobs and lost access to the private forums.

First thoughts: It's ugly, overloaded with unnecessary stuff (why on earth would you put that gray "about" sidebar there?), I hate infinite scrolling, and you can't tell how many comments something has just by looking at the "Discuss" link.

Good to give your opinion, but you could do it in a constructive manner.

if he wasnt giving it in a constructive manner, he would have said it was shit and clicked the post button

just because he isnt treating his comment like a hugbox invitation doesnt mean it isnt constructive

This is a false dichotomy. Just because a comment isn't just blatantly hating on something doesn't mean it's civil and constructive. Likewise, a comment doesn't have to be a "hugbox" to be civil and constructive either.

If your argument is more about questioning the "civil" component, then that's fair, but communicating in a way that obfuscates your message by eliciting negative emotions/reactions in your intended recipient isn't exactly efficient either. We all function better with a clear head.

I'll have to agree with him, the color is a little harsh on the eyes. Have a wee play around here to find a nice color pallet: http://www.colourlovers.com/

It is a little over loaded with info, I do like the simplicity of HN, try looking at the HN redesign concept that was posted a few days ago.

Apart from those (let's face it: pedantic) things I like the look of it. I'll sign up.

The grey and white seemed OK to me; it's the blue I can't take. Maybe if it was light blue or something. All the other colors are pretty light, and then there's this perfect blue. Doesn't quite work. I'm sure a designer or artist could tell you more.

Is that a jQuery modal in TYOOL 2014?

What is "TYOOL 2014"?

TYOOL = The year of our lord, he's just being overly dramatic about people using jQuery modals.

jQuery modals are so not in right now !

It's funnier if you say Anno Domini.

There isn't actually any game development related content on there. It's just games business news, if that.

GameDev, r/gamedev, tigsource, and polycount are already great resources.

FWIW there's also a great community of gamedevs at http://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev

That said, the more of these, the better!

and http://www.reddit.com/r/TrueGameDev

...the whole reason why HN is what HN is, is that it's not dedicated to a particular subject. I can read HN and come across news about some new research in the biomedical field that my gf who's in this field can come across by reading the news sources in her field, if the news is noteworthy enough.

There magic of HN is that it's general enough but not 100% general, and at the same time keeps a good enough signal/noise ratio for everyone. No other site I know does this as well!

This place does get an unfair level of criticism given the quality of the content and discussion around it.

I'm guessing you didn't actually build the site because it looks like you're using a service (Postaverse.) Which is fine but I guess there's no point in asking what it's implemented in and if there's a repo...

Would have loved to see this using lobste.rs, which looks a little nicer: https://github.com/jcs/lobsters

It is built with Rails. The design is good enough for now, not amazing but not bad either. We'll certainly iterate on it over time.

No to be a bastard, but I disagree. The design is really off-putting. It instantly made me bounce off the site. If design isn't an early concern, just go for something boring/popular/obvious. Lobste.rs isn't going to get too many compliments for its design, but it also won't get many demerits either.

I say change the colors and don't do it in three columns. That's just my opinion. The site might be awesome, but really, the design made me bounce.

I'd keep the three columns at wider browser widths, but make that third column more useful than now. Something like recent comments or hot threads or a list of recent games that members are working on. Give some incentive for contributing maybe.

Why in the <<something>> didn't you just reuse reddit or lobsters or ??? Tons of existing agitator site bases...

Truly awful UX on an iPhone. That infinite scrolling middle section!

I played around with the HSV a little, mainly pulling down saturation. Changing the hue a little to make the blues a little greener, and making it just a tiny bit darker. https://i.imgur.com/VSOe8fo.png

For future reference, this is what it looked like before my edits https://i.imgur.com/BkOJoID.png.

What's wrong with gamedev.net and gamasutra.com?

Luckily the web isn't a zero-sum game and people can create sites even if similar sites already exist.

That makes sense of there is an actual difference, or if the creating is for learning only. Given that the post said nothing about goals, I'd like to know.

Although if the goal is community, the game development community feels fractured enough (in terms of sites to visit) as it is.

Yes. But if you offer nothing different or better than the competition...there's no reason for anybody to care since their needs have already been satisfied.

Note: I'm not commenting on the merit of gamedevs.com itself.

Neither are very good or useful for professional devs?

Upvoted because it's true. However, it is unlikely an HN-style site would fare better. But who knows.

gamasutra.com is more like industry journal with its own content. It is not a news/blog posts agregator. gamedev.net and gamedevs.com seem to be closer to each other.

/r/gamedev

I have http://gamedevelopers.com and it's interesting to see what other people are doing with similar domains. I never had any real luck turning the site into a business.

I've been using http://gdne.ws for this, but it's cool to see another service cropping up. I'll keep an eye on it.

What does this cover that /r/gamedev does not cover?

I really, really hope this flies. There are very few places on the internet with good quality discussions on gamedev. r/gamedev is nice, but not enough.

No rss?

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