I Created a True Censorship Resistant Game Mods Platform, DEG Mods. \ stacker news ~gaming

I Created a True Censorship Resistant Game Mods Platform, DEG Mods.

1815 sats \ 8 comments \ @freakoverse 20 Aug gaming freebie

Hey peeps,

A while ago I got pissed at game mods sites that were taking down game mods i wanted to download and install (as well as banning their creators) for games I was playing, so I went on a self-imposed mission to create an alternative where that, taking down game mod posts/pages and banning creators, wouldn't be possible.

I ideated on it, designed it, frontend developed it, and secured personal and community finds (via a Geyser funding campaign. Think Kickstarter but using Bitcoin instead of fiat) to have it developed. by a team of Nostr developers Yesterday was its first public release that delivers on its core functions:

Login with nostr
Publish a game mod post
View that post
View a listing of game mod posts
Tip/Zap the site and creator posts.

With this, creators can share their mods without having to worry about their game mod posts getting taken down or being banned.

This is just the first release, as you've read from the points above and how there are a lot of placeholders on the site, and there are still a bunch of features/systems and changes that need to be added/done, as I try to acquire more funds for it, personal or otherwise.

Check the site out and tell me what you guys think: https://degmods.com

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0 sats \ 7 replies \ @nout 20 Aug

Looks Cool! Congrats to the progress!!

Couple questions

Where are the files stored?
Are all post events on nostr or how exactly are you ensuring censorship resistance?
What is your plan to onboard modders? Which communities are you targetting?
Do you have any actual mod hosted there already?

Feedback

the labels are quite faded, so often hard to read, e.g. in the profile page (my recommendation is to make most of the clickable labels #fff, don't do the onhover thing)

Also don't forget to link https://geyser.fund/project/degmods :)

77 sats \ 5 replies \ @freakoverse OP 20 Aug

Thanks!

Answering your questions:

The game mod files? At the moment, they're hosted wherever the mod creator wants to host them at. If you head over to the submit mod page, you'll see the download section where the creator adds one or more download links with their details.

1.1. Later down the line, there'd be an option to upload files to a file-hosting service or two (paid/subscribed by the creator, think satellite.earth and what they're doing)

Yup. Mod posts (and later on, long-form posts, short-form posts, reactions, comments, etc) are all nostr events.

2.1. The goal here is to make so as censorship-resistant as possible, that's why its being built on that protocol (in a case where the site gets taken down, the repository too, so long as someone has a copy of the project, they can run it on their PC locally and use it as if it wasn't taken down at all, and of course, they could upload it to a different domain and other devs can continue developing it if we were forced to stop).

I've been looking up and contacting modders that have had their mods censored/taken down from other mod sites prior to this first launch and getting their thoughts on it as well as soft-promote it. I'll contact them again soon to share the news of this early release of it.

3.1. I'll be continuing to keep an eye on the gaming industry's news to see what other mods get censored and have a quick reaction time to have those mods up on the site, to capture the presented opportunity, and then hiding them once their creator is on the site (this soft answers your 4th question).

3.2. Aside from other mod platforms, I haven't looked into moding communities and presenting the platform there, but that's the next step I'll be doing (there are probably one or two subreddits, and probably a few forums). I have, however, contacted a community of users who hate what's been happening in the moding scene and got a high positive reaction, so I'll be revisiting them soon with an update about the project, and finding similar communities along the way.

3.3. Since normal users are also part of the equation, I'm also messaging users on social media and interacting with them based on censorship news, to build up the increased chances of a chain reaction for word-of-mouth.

There are currently a bunch of mods I've posted on DEG Mods, ones that have been censored on previous mod sites, to fill the site up, test it out to make sure everything is working right, and have another place for these mods to not get censored at.

4.1. I'll continue to add a few more as they come, and/or more old ones, and then edit them to redirect to their proper mod post once it is confirmed that the initial mod creator is on the platform and has posted the mod, then I'd hide that post as well from view/search so that only the proper post gets shown.

Hopefully this answers all of your questions well.

Labels? Like the navigation links (games, mods, etc)? Send a screenshot if you can ( you can upload images here: https://nostr.build/ )

(Thanks for the campaign link and backing! =3)

0 sats \ 4 replies \ @nout 21 Aug

Great, thank you for the replies. Yeah, I think building the best product for any modders is the way to go. The addressable market of only the modders that have been de-platformed is quite small - but super valuable to include and perhaps to start with.

Couple of quite niche communities that I'm a big fan of: Commander Keen modding, Prince of Persia modding and then one quite big one is Doom. Why should these folks use DEG Mods?

One more question - what is your plan for financing the development? Are you thinking about doing a company around this?

And this is what I see

https://m.stacker.news/47192

All the labels like "Games", "Mods", etc are really close to the background (foreground: #565656, background: #1d1d1d)

0 sats \ 3 replies \ @freakoverse OP 21 Aug

Fair point. I've adjusted those label's visibility. Should be readable now (those and the above ones too).

Thanks for sharing those communities. I'll go ahead and look into them and most likely share an introductory post there if possible, to get their thoughts and desires.

Yeah, the addressable market is not big, but it's definitely a very strong foundation where their presence and having this tool/space for them would act as a small snowball that's rolling down a mountain, getting bigger and bigger.

The addressable issue is quite big I'd say, and because this strong solution for it is now present, it will be the default fallback for all mod creators when they even think about facing this issue (of censorship, or even their preferred site dying, or new unlikable management comes in), as well as banking on nostr itself growing and becoming a dominant network in the future (this can be looking at as a long-term investment).

The extra benefits that DEG Mods has in comparison to other sites, currently and leading up to the release of the next 2 milestones (MVP-B and then v1), aside from the censorship-resistant part (even though it carries significant weight in value if you stop and think about it):

Better site design with a visually appealing looking, good UI and UX, for both creators and gamers (at least from my perspective, from what I've seen in the market).
The focus on the creator in the social sense, along with the focus on the connection between mod creator and consumer. Properly see who made the mod, see who they are, and connect with them immediately as you begin to follow them, and see what they're up to. They'd have an "account" that they'd never lose, and never lose their content or followers. A true "you can find and follow me here" that won't go away.
Carrying over your account, along with your content and followers, wherever you go in the nostr network. Let's say somebody makes another mod site similar to DEG Mods, or just a general gaming site that has a mod section, they can go there with the same credentials and have everything they've built up (mods, followers/follows, posts, etc) over there as well.
Financial. They're getting 100% of the tips they receive (aside from bitcoin's/LN network fee of course).

However, aside from those points above, as well as being "censorship resistant", these won't be the only accomplishments and goals here. This also has to be a pretty good general competitor to all game mods sites, with that said, here are the goals in mind for this project:

To achieve feature and system parity with the best ones out there (This would take time and funding of course if a PC native software is to be developed to handle mods)
To constantly improve on the design (UI and UX).

In regards to financing the development, so far it's been half community-funded and half personally funded. If we're going with the personal funds route, then this will definitely take time. That's why one of the reasons for having DEG Mods out in this early state, aside from having the public use/test it and provide feedback to improve it, is to also present another funding source through that tip button by those that find value in it. Releasing it now and having it live also increases the chances of getting more community funds, as well as having more leverage in negotiations of a potential investment opportunity if comes up.

While I'd love for it to be done with just that, and have the platform be as pure and useful as possible, I am aware that money needs to keep coming in to keep proper development, maintenance and marketing ongoing, so there are plans to introduce monetization streams in the future, such as ads (if possible, delivered in the way I see it, where its an opt-in/opt-out hybrid (This is a different topic) but we'll see), affiliate links, subscription packages, zap splits, merch (after building up the branding, there's plans for that / within the marketing plans), and continuing to explore more monetization options to get them implemented.

In terms of making a company around this. I'm not sure about that one. I'd prefer if the structure stays as is currently, but if the need arises, or a beneficial opportunity for the benefit of the project arises where this is needed, then I wouldn't be opposed to it.

0 sats \ 2 replies \ @nout 21 Aug

Got it, makes sense. One thing to be a bit careful with those modding communities I highlighted is that it's a bunch of dads in their 40s 50s and their preferred UI style is Windows 95. I don't mean this as a joke - be prepared that they may find your modern ui/ux off-putting. Another aspect is to get the vibe of the community first before reaching out to them - e.g. by reading their posts, noticing who are the community drivers, etc. Some modders may care about backups, some may care about having more users, some may care about adding monetization... (btw, monetization is a big win on BTC/LN/Nostr here).

Just brainstorming here since it probably doesn't fit under your definition, but there is a big community of indie game devs e.g. on https://itch.io/ that has some forms of monetization, but as usual with fiat based solutions - it excludes a lot of potential users, the UX of paying sucks, there are fees and middlemen... it would be amazing to have something similar to itch.io while being able to zap the devs couple sats with a single button click. I'm a big fan of pico-8 (I even wrote a top games article on SN) and I would love to be able to zap these devs some sats for games I like.

Separately, I asked the questions about your financing/company plans from the perspective of being Angel investor in early stage companies that do something good for the world based on bitcoin/nostr - so if you would need something like that in any reasonable form, then howl my way :)

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @freakoverse OP 21 Aug

Yea, I get what you mean. I have a big brother and he's definitely into a forum-style type of online socializing in regards to communities. I'm aware of the method of first vibing with a community and building up a stronger connection before a "heeey look at my thing. would love your thoughts and support". Even having just a little bit of social interaction and time before posting something helps lessen the blow and increase the "ok, so what's this" tolerance. Also, yea as you mentioned, knowing the top-Gs of a community in regards to what they value helps with the message delivery.

Definitely, BTC/LN with Nostr was a core to develop with the site for the passed first release. It opens up all roles (gamers, modders, gamedevs) to spend and receive without restriction and headaches (this is from experience as I'm in an environment where its extremely difficult to use fiat systems).

Funny you brainstorm-suggested that, because of two points:

I'm a massive indie game lover, and a noob indie gamedev as well, and I've also covered indie game news/previews/reviews and have interviewed multiple indie devs as well (among other things like being a part of running local gamejams and game test night events in the past), under different names.
I actually wrote about what it would be like to have a platform like Steam (/ like itch) on Nostr check it out if you're interested, where if everything went smoothly with DEG Mods and it became relatively successful, I was thinking of soft-starting on doing just that, where DEG Mod's development would help expedite planning, design, and development of such a platform, but of course, the scope would be much larger and there would be more variables and problems to solve, but if it ever comes to it, I'm confident it can be done =3

Ah, gotcha. It would definitely help speed things up if funds came in, as I'm basically trying to get more jobs to spend personal funds on to pass the next development milestones, which would take time. The main reason why there's reluctance on my end about starting a company is because of where I am and my nationality if we're talking about setting up a company to receive traditional investments. We can move this specific discussion via DMs on Nostr if you'd like, to discuss options, what's possible, roadblocks, and so on. (I just followed you).

(btw i think your nostr link in SN in your profile is broken. Seems like they've changed the URL structure and that's why its not leading to your profile correctly)

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @nout 21 Aug

Oh good catch - I just fixed the profile link and send you DM on nostr :)

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @freakoverse OP 20 Aug

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