The Future of Weight Gaming

[jeffskeep]

And I hope that yall can see the really crucial error that you made in allowing AIGC onto the site in the first place. You destroyed a lot of goodwill. I can’t imagine how much more money would be on the table here if you hadn’t allowed this problem to fester, and fracture your community.

Your takeaway from a post where he mentions being worried about layoffs, rising cost of living, and wiping out his savings making him unable to sustain paying for this forum out of his own pocket is that he deserves it and ‘surely if he banned ai this would never have happened’?

If you don’t seriously revise your plan of action, when that 6 month migration period ends, I’m going to personally archive the parts of my presence on this site that I care about, and then delete everything else, and log out.

This is like the third time you’ve threatened to leave this week. It’s just absolutely histrionic.

I don’t even like ai. But acting like this in a thread not even about this topic does not in anyway endear me to your viewpoint.

Seriously.

[Hekler]

An idea to help pay the bills for the site is to simply add a bar next to the patreon button at the top of the screen that says something like “$100 donated of $1000” for the month. With this idea, adding a ko-fi link for people who prefer/only have the spare money for one time donations over the subscription style of patreon would also fill in some gaps.

It reminds people that this site takes money to operate without being obtrusive, can be seen on all pages and there’s surely a good amount of folk here that would be willing to sling $10 or so to help get the bar over the line.
I don’t know how much of a hassle this would be to integrate with the donations but I think having a visual reminder would help immensely.

[jeffskeep]

I really don’t think it would be much of a problem to just try standard crowdfunding.

There are no ads, the only reminder that the website needs funding is a yearly post (of which I think I missed the last one just cause it got buried).

Only place to donate is the nice stylized logo in the top right I didn’t really recognize as a patreon P.

Like above said while I was typing this a banner at the top or bottom or anywhere saying ‘this month’s server costs’ would likely go a long way in helping solve the issue.

[BPStuart]

You know, you could try a monthly or yearly Ticker that shows “X funds needed this month/y Funds gathered this month” to remind us you have finacial issues instead of once a year posts that a lot of people never see.

You could also have “Number of backser” ETC so we know how few people are pitching in.

This is the FIRST time in all my years of being a member that i ever heard there was financial issues, and it really isn’t on me to dig around to find out how Solvent the site is, it is up to Leadership to inform.

Please try something before carving up the community into smaller chunks.

[winterlightsaga]

There’s a lot of opinions being thrown around.

But I’d like to mention, that if a monthly donation of say, $10 is needed to help things keep afloat, I’m willing to put my money where my mouth is.

I see a lot of people willing to help finance this.

I always noticed the P for patreon on the top right, but the last post is from 2022, and there’s not a lot of incentives, or even, banners or posts anywhere here, to tell me “hey, we need money to run this reliably…” had I known how dire the financials were, I would have supported way earlier.

I’m debating send money already, but not sure if that patreon is where you would ask for, so I’m waiting to hear about this possibility for us to help.

[Skinny_Guy]

As a regular user who’s been checking in practically daily since 2019, I’d like to add my own thoughts. My first one being that without projects, what is there to discuss on this forum? I feel a majority of users aren’t developers but instead gamers, who are excited about upcoming projects and eager to discuss, discover and support them. And the developers that do come into the forums benefit from this, they have a platform to share their games that revolve around a niche that would get drowned out practically anywhere else.
I’ve seen what happens when weight gain games get posted on general fetish forums such as F95, people just call it disgusting or weird and it gets buried under more popular main-stream kinks. But here we have a community of people who care and are supportive and interested in our shared interest, and allows these projects to actually get noticed by the right audience. Not only that, but it’s a great place to meet like-minded people to collaborate with, befriend or honestly just have a sense of community. But to strip away the projects is to take away the main source of discussion, the thing that brings the majority of users together in the first place. What else would there be to talk about for the gamer audience? And for devs, what would there be here for them to discuss without an audience? There’s already game dev sites and spaces to talk purely about game development, so without the ability to actual post their projects here I can’t see why a developer would have a reason to post here or what they could even post about.
The logistics behind actually running the site is certainly an important matter, and I do understand that it is quite the challenge. I won’t argue it, and I won’t deny that your concerns are 100% right and important. But that aside, I fear what these changes will do. And in my mind, I forsee a worst case scenario of the community fracturing into individual project Discords, with very little ability for new user discovery and only a handful of extremely popular projects being able to maintain even a small community, and a majority of projects dying off in quiet, empty servers. The weight gain kink community is niche enough, and I fear fracturing it will have our voices drowned out in more conventional fetish game spaces.
And on a personal level, I just think seeing the community and website I’ve been apart of for almost 7 years dissolve would severely hurt. I know back then, it felt amazing to feel accepted, and to meet people with the same passions that I held.

[Wulf_Diomhaireachd]

There are some ads, and I keep my adblock disabled for this site for this very reason. However due to the nature of this site very few ever get shown, and they’re only ever shown at the very top and bottom of threads anyways.

I do agree with @Hekler , an additional single-donation source of funding would be great too. I’d love to be able to subscribe to the Patreon, but I’m not in a financial position to be doing that every month.

I also agree with the general consensus that a more visible and permanent call for funding is needed. If any of the admin team are wondering “Why now?” that a bunch of people are suddenly offering money (asides from the imminent threat of the site drastically downsizing), the vast majority of users simply aren’t aware of how exactly this site is (or more accurately, isn’t) funded. The burden of funding this whole project shouldn’t have to fall on one person, we constantly refer to ourselves as a community for a reason.

[pacifistical]

As someone who started using this site about a year ago but had heard about it for years, I think what’s already here is too good to let go. Admittedly I’m here first and foremost to see what other people are making, so I guess I can only have so much input.

One thing I noticed immediately is the standard of discussion here is pretty good - compared to discord servers or itch.io comments, there’s quite a bit of good discussion. It’s nice being able to interact with devs and share opinions in an extended format, and I think that’s one of the reasons people have really stuck around and contributed. I don’t know how this would work for a wiki format but even if the site is reduced to the core functionality of projects and nothing else, it is fundamentally sound.

This is essentially the number one destination on the web for WG/Expansion games - the users are established and people like myself coming by years after the site’s inception shows the word of mouth is there, it just needs monetising a bit more/the upkeep burden needs to be lessened. To be pragmatic:

- If it is a finance issue, can the community help? Flicking through this thread it seems like plenty of people are willing to chip in or contribute. I think most would agree we owe the site a bit at minimum for the convenience it provides.

- If it’s a matter of the site eating up too much time to moderate/run, can this be shared? Would key figures be willing to step in and help? Presumably a wiki would also require effort to maintain so can we tackle the problem at source?

Regarding ambitions to develop the site into more of a hub for dev/asset library and storefront, I think it is a noble goal but don’t let perfect be the enemy of good. As someone who got here recently I don’t know if the site has massively warped from what it was intended to be, but I like reading and occasionally posting stuff, and it would be a real shame to lose it. The worst case scenario would be attempting to switch/change things up then getting bogged down and getting the worst of both worlds, so I’m sure a lot of people are keen to avoid that from happening.

[oceanaga]

Oof that was a rough one to read and I don’t envy your position. You’ve already been slammed with feedback (good and bad) but hopefully you’re taking it all into consideration before planning your next steps.
I do have a few points of feedback to add to the pile and it’s probably going to be terribly formatted so sorry about that.

1. At the end of the day this seems like it’s a monetization issue. It’s totally understandable where you’re coming from with this. I know you mentioned you put out the yearly statements but personally I’ve never read them since I figured all was well and good. A blog post with statements is not a good way to let the community know you’re drowning. If the site is constantly in the red, then I’d suggest (as others have) a Wikipedia style banner that shows how much left till the site is covered that month. I would have gladly chipped in had I of seen that.
2. Splitting the forum into a wiki seems like an odd choice. I understand the cost difference, but that plan seems based on keeping at the current financial status quo and accepting as the norm instead of trying to change things up to raise more money. Financials aside, I think a wiki isn’t a great shift for what this site is. That is a surefire way to nuke discussion around games. In my opinion Weight Gaming is so popular because it’s providing a service that you can’t get anywhere else, community interaction and discussion focused solely on weight related games created by the community. That should be what your future plans are centered around. Building up and cultivating the community and bringing their games to light. A wiki does nothing to accomplish this and completely removes parts of it.
3. The asset store. I’m going to be honest; I think this is a weird and borderline bad thing to focus on. I get the idea behind it, but I just don’t think there’s a need for it. Sites like opengameart already exist for this. Instead, I would focus, again, on the community. Instead of giving people a spot to host their assets (hosting costs go up with that as well), work to create spaces where people can collaborate on projects and build up the community that way. The shift to a “storefront” further removes community interaction. You say it’s also to combat AI art, but I don’t think that’s your problem to solve. The community members should be policing themselves on that one. Itch has a checkbox that you have to tick if your project has AI generated assets and you could easily adopt something like that then let users filter those posts out if they don’t want to see AI content. Steam requires publishers to show if the game has AI generated content so the buyer can use that information in their purchasing decision. I think giving the users more information and the ability to customize their browsing experience would be better than trying to create a storefront to combat AI discourse on here.

In my opinion, the forums greatest strength is showcasing games and putting eyes on creator projects. I would kill to have a site like this where I could showcase my current project, but that doesn’t really exist. I’m sure other creators on here would agree that their projects would not get the traffic they currently have if not for this website. I think preserving and building upon that unique angle should be your focus.
I’ve always felt the site could use a rework and this could be the catalyst for that.
You could have the banner up top showing the costs/funds like I said earlier, that only shows if this months funds are not fully covered. Under that could be a scrolling banner showing a few curated projects that are well into their dev cycle and in good standing. That or this could be a few cards that show the game cover art, their title, and a little description. Under that is broken up into two sections, the left section is the forum directory then the right is a section for new or recently updated projects. To the right of all this could be a scroll bar showing postings for team recruitments that help grow those collaborations mentioned earlier. There’s less fluff, projects and their communities are front and center, and nothing is being fractured. Something like the below.

All I’m getting at is I think there are much better ways to go about all this that build upon the forums strengths than what your current plan is.

[SloppySab]

damn I just got here too

I do hope this big change can help things move smoothly for you

[TheWell-Being]

Okay, so… been giving this some thought. And I think, honestly, the root of the issue is simply this: your vision of what you want this site to be is in conflict with what the site has turned out to be. The purpose of a system is what it does, regardless of what it was originally intended to be, and in this case? Your goal may have been to make a games-development forum, but you’ve made a niche-kink Craigslist. That is what people use this site for, what people value this site for - not to discuss the development of games in progress or game-dev in theory, but to promote what they already have developed in hopes of achieving sales or Patreon backing.

Is that what you wanted? From what I’ve read, clearly no. But that’s what’s arisen nonetheless.

The problem with this set of circumstances is three-fold, from what I can see:

1. You stumbled into running a business storefront instead of a hobbyist site, and that business is both understaffed and losing money. You’ve been paying out of your own pocket to sustain a site which other people are using to MAKE money, and you are damn-near single-handedly providing all the support structure for those sales promotions. It’s a second job you’re having to PAY to work, it’s inherently unsustainable, and it isn’t really what you wanted to have in the first place.

2. As the “face” of this marketplace, regardless of whether or not you want to be, you are held accountable by both consumers and producers for the state of it. Hence why everybody is coming to you with complaints about what they feel is the wrong content, or insufficient content, or whatever else.

3. So much of the weight-gain fetish community is reliant upon this site for its sales and promotions that you feel unable to just pull the plug, even though this place is clearly a drain upon you. You feel personally responsible for cutting the legs out from under other developers in doing such a thing, since they are financially dependent upon this forum.

In your last post about this, I specifically suggested that you use a collaborative approach to reduce the personal load you’re facing. Now, after time and with the responses you’re receiving here, I’m going to go a step further and suggest that you, personally, step back entirely. You took over this site from someone else, you’re feeling burnt out and not enjoying the experience of being in charge of what it’s become, and yet you’re putting huge burdens on your time and finances because… why?

Do you not trust the community to sustain itself? Because, frankly, if the WGaming community can’t manage itself? Let it fall apart. You are not personally bound to give people a platform to sell their creations, and you have neither a moral nor ethical impetus to do so. Other people are making money off this site, people who are profiting from your out-of-pocket investment into its operation, and I’m of the opinion that they need to step up. Some have already stated their financial position on this thread, others are sure to do so. Take their offers, take three months to get contracts written and signed and accounts transferred over, and then put this place in the hands of the people with a profit motive to keep it running.

Let them deal with the moderation issues, the genAI debate, and everything else that is currently causing you to want to close this place down. Wash your hands of it.

What comes of this place won’t be what you think it should be, but that’s fine! This whole PLACE right now isn’t operating to your ideal at this point, due to myriad difficulties and delays and the shift in the community which has come to pass as a result of them. Pass it off to somebody else, as you took it over from somebody else, let them take it in the direction they think it should go, and take some time to yourself. Take some time for your family. Rest. Recuperate. Get over the burn out. When/if you feel up to it, then (and ONLY then) maybe start a new forum meant purely for the development side of things. Put the lessons you’ve learned from this site to work in making something which cultivates the social elements you want from the start, keeping the focus where you want it to be. You’ll be able to do stuff like launch the planned asset store simultaneously with the forum, drop all the baggage from prior WGaming drama via starting fresh with a clear goal and firm rule-sets meant to promote that goal, and not have to worry about whether you’re leaving all the other people making games in this niche in the lurch - since you won’t be responsible for them anymore. They’ll have this site, and if it crashes and burns… well, you weren’t in charge. Wasn’t your doing.

As you said on your last post, this isn’t fun for you anymore. It’s a burden to you. Unshoulder it. Let the people who are making money off this site deal with the hassle of keeping it going, get the costs off your balance sheets and the mental stress off your mind, and focus on the stuff you enjoy from now on. You are not married to this site, you are not chained to it, and it’s not helping you in any way I can tell. Pass the torch and be free.

[grotlover2]

So I was trying to respond to some of the better points I have seen but it turned into such a long post I had to unfortunately scrap it. So I have to really apologize to everyone for not being able to respond more then this, it just got way to long.

Want I want to say though quick is, as a heads up I will be locking this topic down latter tonight. I dont want to quite do it but I worked out a plan with the help of @Keyfarer and I want to make sure that is the last word. So if you have anything you want to say make sure to say your peace before I lock it down. I am doing my best to read every post everyone has made even if I can’t respond to it.

[Wulf_Diomhaireachd]

All I would say to that is: if that plan is to just accept Keyfarer’s backing to fund the site as-is, and continue with the current “there’s a Patreon icon in the top banner, I hope someone checks it out occasionally”, then that does just run the risk of just being a financial stopgap. External factors have eaten away at your savings, the same could happen to Keyfarer and prevent him from continuing to fund the site. Just like 1 person funding everything, having only 2 people fund it is risky. There’s plenty of people you’ve seen here who are willing to chip in to spread the costs.

I know this sounds like a really obvious warning, but with the stakes being what they are I’d rather be captain obvious at the moment than risk another desperate scramble for cash later down the line.

[Nymetsous]

Throwing my lot in here as a lurker, the Projects category, as many have mentioned, is the heart of the site and the main thing I’m here for.
Shifting the entirety of the site’s contents over to the Wiki will just recreate the myriad issues with other categories. The Projects category has largely been useful thanks to it naturally keeping relevant games in active development or with upcoming updates in the cycle of discussion, while dead projects naturally phase out.
Alphabetical sorting is obviously a nightmare given the sheer scope of games, as is sorting by creation date when so many of the major projects people are most actively engaged in have been ongoing for so long.
Default sorting by recent updates would be one way to try and emulate the Projects category, though that has the clearer drawback of pushing the onus entirely onto the dev while also leaving behind any opportunity for feedback or community engagement. Of course, the site isn’t beholden to acting as the hub for discussion free of charge. I’d personally say that in the event where games are being sold, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to say that some part of the profits should go back to the site given the site’s purpose as such a major source of traffic.
The other sections of the site aren’t as active for a reason and it’d be a shame to abandon the section that’s most active and that’s contributing most directly to the livelihood of many devs. Especially seeing as it’s also a gathering place for niche fetish material that’s increasingly losing any other home online due to the meddling of payment processors.
In any case it seems like prominent devs are moving to contribute to keep the site active, so hopefully the many objections raised in this thread will be unnecessary. In any event I appreciate the transparency and I’m glad to see so many in this thread voicing constructive criticism on the subject. Naturally some have been more outspoken with their objections, but I think that also goes to show just how valuable the section has been for so many people.

[whimsie]

The main reason I even come here is to discuss with devs and players about the various community projects, and even occasionally give assistance to projects I value (for example, composing some music for F.E.F)

If this goes through, I don’t think I’ll ever use the site again. Itch and F95Zone are easier easier to use for navigating games, and this place’s core is the discussion that happens.

[Hekler]

The last thing I’ll say here is no matter what happens, I hope you get into a better place with the stress and health issues. Hoping for the best man

[BadIdea4]

@grotlover2 Even though dealing with this site has been draining and painful for you, at the very least it hasn’t been for nothing. The fact that we’re pleading and problem-solving to keep the site up (and have been, you know, using it this whole time) is proof that we find it valuable.

I’m not saying “we find it valuable, so you must yada yada”, I’m reminding you to give yourself credit for the good you’ve done for all of us these years. Thank you.

[4827]

I fell like the idea of davidarblack (in another discussion), is pretty good.
That the discussions don’t necessary have to go, just to get a specific channel in the discord with the forum feature, and for each game/topic one “forum” is added.
Then maybe with the discord moderation bots, it would still be time consuming but more manageable to moderate and it wouldn’t have to generate costs here, as discord doesn’t charge for the amount of forums.

[grotlover2]

Ok, so I am locking this down now just so I can leave this as the last word.

First off, I want to say I have had quite a few chances to walk away in the past. Before covid three companies offered to buy the site with the largest offer being a bit over $300,000, but I turned them all down. It may seem like this is an odd thing to bring up but I want everyone to know that especially early on I had a chance to walk away with something nice to show for it as well, but I didn’t because I do really care about this site and the community in general. While I would love it if I could one day make this into a more full-time thing, I’ve always seen it more as providing a service for the community’s benefit.

Second, I want everyone to really understand that what I said above was not my first choice, or second, or third. What I describe above is really a hail mary that is right above shutdown on the list that I had as a backup plan if the worse ever happened. Being honest I wanted to ask the community for help first as suggested by @Keyfarer and was planning a post for June, but the enshitification post really got to me. Hearing what everyone had to say and the overall support it got made me feel like I failed everyone, and that I had no right to be asking anyone for help and felt I needed to do this on my own.

I am happy to see that I may have misjudged that assumption.

I talked with @Krodmandoon and we both think we can rework our moderation plans, so we are basically going to be giving @Keyfarer’s idea a shot.

I am working on trying to get some hard numbers together right now, but I am going to give the community a chance to stop me. I am going to post a funding goal no later than next Monday and if the community can hit that goal and stay there for 3 consecutive months before the deadline for decommissioning, I will not decommission the projects category as planned. If the goal is hit the within two months of the planned decommissioning (July), I will extend the deadline by 2 months to September.

This will not be easy though. I tend to understate our expenses so if this is going to work out, I must give the community what a realistic worst case is going to be like for me next year if things continue as normal. This includes the money I need to bring the main site online.

Also, I am not going to be allowing anyone to donate more than $250/month through Patreon. This may seem like an odd restriction, but I got a message from a long-time supporter a bit back where they told me they just became homeless, and they were sorry they couldn’t continue supporting the site. They told me about how they tried to hang on as long as they could and felt guilty about the matter, and when someone out of the goodness of their heart donates tens of thousands to this site, they should never feel that way for putting themselves first.

If this is going to work it must be a community effort, I don’t want anyone to ever feel guilty about having to put themselves first just because they worry about how it might affect Weight Gaming. And it cannot be in the shoulders of just 3 people. If anyone tries to donate more than $250 I am going to refund their donation as soon as possible.

I know I have already gotten a few new supporters on Patreon, and I thank you all for doing so. But, I would suggest everyone waits until I get the numbers together and set the goal. I want everyone to have all the information before they make their decision.

There are still some unknowns on moderation and I dont know how much this will help with my burn out, but I do really hope this can work out. I am not ready to give up yet so I would much prefer to try this if option if we can do it.