Two Years of Gamepad

Good Morning Folks! The weird thing about having a fixed schedule for your blog posts, is that you feel really weird changing it. As such I contemplated making this blog post over the weekend on Saturday, because the 25th was the second anniversary of Gamepad.club the Mastodon/Fediverse server that I assist with. That sounds rather clinical, but in truth Gamepad has become my home on the internet and the local feed and various other folks on the “Fedi” my extended family. Thankfully Gaz was better about posting at the appropriate time than I was. This little project continues to be one of the things that I am most proud of… which sounds weird considering that this was mostly Gaz’s doing and I have just helped out a bit behind the scenes along with Scopique and Aywren. In truth the last two years have been pretty damned smooth save for a few cases where we had to mass defederate some spammer sites.

I was actually the second account signed up on this server and joined January 25th, 2023 at 3:36 PM my timezone. This was roughly 20 minutes after Gaz created his own account. Scopique came along on the 29th which is I think the day we went public with the server. We did a few days of burn in before properly promoting it and opening the floodgates. We’ve not grown to be a massive server, but managed to stay comfortably in the 120-150 active accounts range during the entire time. There are a little over 300 total accounts on the server, but as is the case with many new platforms… not everyone finds their home right away. Truth be told the Fediverse is too “DIY” for a lot of folks who just want a direct drop in replacement for Twitter. That said it has also been the only place I have ever truly felt 100% comfortable to let down my guard and be my exceptionally strange self. If this Tales of the Aggronaut blog is my true home on the internet, then Gamepad is my Neighborhood… in that old timey way of having block parties, potluck dinners, and such.

I had great hopes for the Twitter migration, and that we would end up enthralling a bunch of folks converting them to the way of Mastodon. That never quite worked out for various reasons, but for me it was an easy change. I had been screwing around with the Fediverse since 2018, so that in 2022 when I felt like it was time to separate myself from Twitter… I knew precisely where I would end up. That said… I bounced around quite a bit between sites, and it was only really when Gaz asked me about helping him with Gamepad.club that I found a permanent home. Essentially he wanted to create a safe harbor for our friends that were leaving Twitter, and he learned a lot of lessons while hosting the ill fated MMORPG.social knowing we could create something better this time around. I’m happy to say that two years later we have this very stable community, and it is a freaking delight to participate in it.

All of that said… I’ve reached the point where I am no longer attempting to recruit people. I spent the last year I was active on Twitter effectively making nothing but “come to mastodon” posts with primers and information on how to get started. I am sure everyone got more than sick of that. Folks have largely ended up over on Bluesky, which is a perfectly cromulent social platform and was effectively a direct cut and paste for Twitter. It took me a long while to realize it, but no one was really looking for a more open platform other than me and others that were like minded. I wanted a social network that I had more control over, and that was not going to blow away in the wind at the whims of some Oligarch. I feel justified that the continued downfall of Twitter has proven my viewpoint to be correct. That said… most folks just want something painfully simple that has the majority of their friends on it… and do not really care who is running the platform so long as they don’t have to pay for it.

The thing that is super interesting however is for the folks who actually care about having a more open and stable platform… they are also willing to chip in to help support it. In Gaz’s post on the anniversary he indicated that we have 25 folks who are supporting the Gamepad patreon. Which I believe is bringing in enough funds to pay the bills and keep the server up and running. Additionally recently there has been a call for a Merch shop of some sort, and we talked a bit about that over the weekend. I would not be opposed to such nonsense pending we can find a platform that effectively runs itself and drop ships items on our behalf. That would potentially be another avenue for supporting the server when there are overages in the various cloud hosting bills. I support the server by helping to admin it, but also chip in $10 per month because you can’t keep the lights on with good intentions. I’ve been thrilled to see so many folks who are similarly civic minded and want to help make this site available for everyone.

I think the era of Twitter is finally coming to an end… years later that many of us who fled to Mastodon/Fediverse predicted. Unfortunately the platform of choice turned out to be Bluesky, which puts the continued fate of the platform in the hands of more would be tech Oligarchs. If the entire Fediverse went to shit, Gamepad could effectively disconnect itself and remain stable and viable. If Bluesky goes to shit… it is dragging everything down with it. All of that said the platform seems reasonable for the time being and that is definitely where the folks looking for a direct Twitter replacement ended up. I kind of use Bluesky as my “public facing” account and Gamepad as my private account. While I federate my Gamepad account with Bluesky, I prolifically use the “followers” visibility to keep posts I want more “private” from going across that wire. I am hoping that two years is only the beginning for this platform. Thanks to Gaz for kicking off this project, and thanks to everyone who has joined over the years and been active. I love you dearly, and look forward to hanging out with you in local over the coming years. Mastodon/Fediverse sadly feels like insider tech, that only some folks are really going to “grok”… but those who do… seem hooked for life. The post Two Years of Gamepad appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.