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Hey #GameDev, what are everybody's thoughts on ads in the game dev feed? I'm looking for ways to support my work, so lemme explain about what this would look like. 🧵

The platform we use now — @graze.social — offers monetization via ads. Ads in this case are just regular skeets that folks pay to have injected into the feed. I can decline ads, I can control how often they show up, I can revoke an ad if things get weird... basically, I have a lot of control.

One of my concerns is that there's no indicator that something is an ad. You may be able to recognize it because it shows up more regularly than other skeets or seems out of place, but you're technically seeing ads that don't look like ads, and that feels weird.

The plus side is that even a small number of ads (think 10 or fewer being shown once every ~100 skeets) would help support all of my feeds immensely.

I don't know what editorial controls are in place for ads and their sources but I guess a concern will be troll ads masquerading as gamedev with poor click-thru destinations? Could you end up spending all your time doing editorial/censorship admin?

This sounds good. Plus games that are coming out or being dev'd. Anything game is fine by me.

I actually don’t think game releases make sense for this audience. 😅

I always lose track of what's going on with the rest of the games industry. Hearing about new games via social media gives me notice to at least take in the trailer. It's a way to break out of my info bubble. That's my 2 cents. Cheers!

I think it's probably a good idea. Like you I am kind of put off by the fact that they won't look like ads, but whatever. Go for it.

I think we’ve even solved that! 🥳

I love how everyone is positive but has the exact same worry, which you solved. ☺️

I'm afraid it would give me "Twitter trauma" 😅 but if it's really under control, if the sponsored skeets are tied to game dev and if it's not an ad every two or three posts like Twitter, I guess it'd be fine?

I'm interested which Twitter trauma you're referring to? There's so much... 😅 One thing is that I've busted my butt to make sure my feeds are well-maintained and non-toxic. I won't allow an ad that I think sacrifices the quality of a feed. Period.

Haha yes Twitter and trauma are two synonymous words I guess ^^' But yeah for me the ads on Twitter were one of them like you scroll and every two or three tweets you have an ad. OMG.

P.S. - If you want to directly support my work for the #GameDev community here on Bluesky, you can always buy me a coffee. 🥰 ko-fi.com/TrezyCodes

I am not sure, but I think that legally you have to disclose that something is an ad.

Honestly the only problem I see is it not declaring itself as an ad. That's not OK.

I kinda feel like ads that are relevant to game dev will be *harder* to tell from regular posts