A Hackernews for Gamedevs

Something I've been missing since gamedev.city went down: a link aggregator such as hackernews and lobste.rs, but for gamedev-specific content. I know I use those link aggregators quite a lot - I'm currently subscribing to 60+ RSS feeds, including from those aggregators, and I have to filter them to reach the gamedev content I want to talk about every week on the newsletter.

Something something necessity is the mother of invention, so I created the alternative myself here, at enginesdatabase.com/gg/.

Yeah, it's nothing grand, but it's a small hub I hope gamedevs can use to discuss and post news about game engines and game tech.

One problem that I was quite worried is maintaining it, though - this whole website is already quite big codewise, and maintaining a Link Aggregator adds even more complexity. So to help me out, I finally added a way for users to support the website.

It's a pay-what-you-want model for 30 days of support, and this gives access to submitting links to the Link Aggregator (anyone can vote and comment on links, but only supporters can submit new links). This will help me out both keeping the lights on the website and avoiding spam on the Link Aggregator. Self-promotions are very much welcome (as long as they are gamedev related!), because I'll talk about the community links on the next weekly newsletter. And in the future, supporters will have access to exclusive content on the blog.

Is this a good financial model to sustain the website, though?

I honestly don't know! But everything I've done for the website, for the most part, I do it because I'm going to use it quite a lot, Link Aggregator included. But one core thing of this website is:

• I'll never use invasive cookies. That's the reason you don't see an annoying popup every time you enter EnginesDatabase - I do have analytics, but it is 100% anonymous.
• This also means I'll never use ads that force my hand to track my users.

Having said that, I tried some Affiliate Marketing for gamedev courses - it kind-of worked, but API was a nightmare and I had to put the whole feature in the freezer for a while. I'm aware there are also ad services that don't rely on tracking users, but I'm avoiding having to use ads as much as possible. I like the site the way it is, clean, without distracting things around the content.

So I decided on this approach for now. That's one of the biggest features I've made for EnginesDatabase, and now I can finally focus on making some gamedev content, because as much as I like playing web-admin, I'm still (surprisingly!) a gamedev.

If you have any questions, feedbacks or ideas, I'll gladly accept those! You can comment down below or just ping me at henriquelalves@enginesdatabase.com.

See you around :)