I have started a Mastodon instance with help from another member of the GB Studio community. I would like to welcome all members of the handheld gaming community to join the new server!

PocketPixels.club

Who is the instance for?

The Pocket Pixels club is a place where everyone shares a love of retro handheld games. Systems like the Gameboy, Neo Geo Pocket Color, Game Gear, Lynx, even the Game.com! Everyone is welcome but the server is most oriented towards:

• Homebrew Game Developers
• Pixel Artists & Musicians who create art within the parameters of retro handhelds
• Hardware Modders
• Players that are most interested in games for these systems-even if you don't play on original hardware.
• People who play retro games on modern handhelds (Systems like the Miyoo Mini )

If you are already on Mastodon on another instance, you can add me here! https://pocketpixels.club/@Jeltron

Why Mastodon?

Mastodon isn't really the same thing as social media in the way you are used to. While it may seem like social media has a variety of options, at the systemic level all social media is the same. They are all owned by for-profit businesses. What this means for you as the user is that they will all go through the same exact cycle. They will seem great at first. They will all have chronological posts and the ability to reach other people, and no ads! ...but this is just phase 1.....The 'attract users' phase. After this phase is over, they will slowly introduce new features. The timeline will no longer be chronological. It will become harder to reach people, and of course there will be ads, subscriptions, paid features and a whole ton of other ways to extract money from you after you invested so much time on the platform.  

Mastodon is NOT owned by a company. Mastodon is a bottom-up network of local servers. What this means is that it is a community we can create for ourselves instead of being rats in a cage run by advertisers. Unlike other social media where we are consumers first, Mastodon allows us to be creators. We can have genuine freedom on this platform and interact with each other as actual human beings without McDonalds or Coca Cola injecting themselves into the conversation.

At first setting up and using Mastodon is a little more work than traditional social media because there are not millions of dollars being spent to get you to look at things. All that's required is a little intellectual curiosity though! You can find new people to follow by finding some interesting accounts and seeing who they follow.

Why is this good for developers?

Traditional social media doesn't allow small independent developers to reach their community very easily. It can be thought of as a pyramid scheme where advertising can drive engagement. If you don't have a lot of money to market things, it can be very hard to compete with AAA game companies. If you have a small following, traditional social media may just decide to show popular/paid content to your followers instead of your posts. You may also get exhausted trying to post as frequently as possible to try to circumvent this effect. On Mastodon your followers are guaranteed to see your posts and this will not change at some point in the future! We can also see what each other are working on without ads, within a tight-knit and stable community. It will give us the ability to focus our attention on making games instead of trying to market them.

Why is this good for players?

For a lot of the same reasons it's good for developers! If you are like me, you might be interested in niche games/art but social media always will keep pushing you towards more popular topics. It allows us to curate all of our interests and actually have control over what we see online instead of having our eyes sold to the highest bidder.

I really hope you can see the value in joining Mastodon. See you there! :)

-Ben