With Reddit in turmoil and Twitter an absolute mess, I’m intrigued if people feel our platform has potential for something greater? I get the vibes many people are unhappy with most major platforms right now and don’t feel they connect with them. Twitter is full of drama and politics and seems to reward mostly low effort/stolen content nowadays. Reddit feels extremely boring, outdated, and bland. Discord is nice but it’s always been an IRC replacement, not a full blown platform for consuming serious content. Facebook? 👴🏻 There’s been people requesting subcommunities for non Valve games recently, as well as off-topic content, which has really had us thinking about the future, especially since we’ve hit a ceiling with most Valve topics now added (Source, Source 2 and subs for more major mods will be added). Our platform is built from the ground up as something we wanted to use ourselves. As it’s totally bespoke, the world is our oyster in terms of what we can do with it.
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The boundaries can only be pushed so far before LambdaGeneration becomes something else entirely. And while I do advocate for things outside of Valve's IPs and other related works, like a off-topic general subcommunity, I think this website should stay as a Valve themed website where fans gather together to talk about their favorite valve games. I still do have high hopes that LambdaGeneration would be something better than most platforms right now, it has a lot of potential. It has a good mod team for starters, rarely any horrid drama, a generally nice and welcoming community with passionate and talented people.
Thank you for the support. I think for us to truly unlock the potential you mentioned we would have to expand it, but we know how the theming and character is a huge part of what makes LG different. I think that would be the innovation here - expanding without becoming boring and bland like the others.
LambdaGeneration is one of the healthiest and most wholesome sites I've ever visited or been part of. I see that people may want to expand this vibe to other games and fandoms they love and that's perfectly understandable BUT I think it will start slipping off if that happens. I believe it's wholesome because it was created for a specific thing/category and it maintains that feeling. If it gets mixed up with other things... I don't know, it won't really be LAMBDA Generation anymore, unless there's a way to keep it like that? But it will get tricky and I understand there are few subcommunities to add and updates and such but expanding it like this doesn't feel like a wise idea.
Thanks for the kind words. You kinda hit the nail on the head why we are considering expanding - it seems to be different and healthier. I’d love for what we have to help improve the state of other game communities, but the challenge is preventing it becoming a shithole. I feared Gmod could have gone badly given the game has it’s toxic sides nowadays but it didn’t, so I have some faith we could pull that off.
Whatever you guys decide. Just know that you have created an absolute masterpiece
Thanks that means a lot! It’s been a lot of work
Maybe just an off-topic section; I would hate for this site to lose it's identity as a Valve fansite. Also if it gets as a big as twitter then it won't feel like a community anymore. This site is the best place for us Valve fans to post stuff, if it gets flooded with everything else then that's it. It won't be LambdaGeneration anymore. Sorry if this seemed very doom-and-gloom. But I'm generally worried. :(
Though the ability to also post stuff directly to our profile would be useful. Also I meant genuinely in the last reply, not generally. Haha.
I have the same concerns, the last thing I want to do is loose what we’ve built (that being the awesome community). Where I’m coming from, is that I’m a fan of other games and communities with the same issues - nowhere for the real fans, outdated forums etc. and wonder if we can fix that too. Lots of games also have fan artists, modders etc. so feels like it could be very useful.
Yeah I can understand that; for example I feel I don't really have a good place to discuss the Fallout franchise of which I am a huge fan, haha. I just don't want this site to lose focus is all. :) Can't believe I didn't join here sooner tbh.
would love to see off topic subcommunities for like console dedicated stuff or off topic for people who dont have anything source related to post would be awesome to see off topic sub communities
Most they can do might be a subcommunity for Rust since Rust was made by the same ppl who made GMOD and S&Box
by facepunch
Ik .-. but just simply call it "Rust" -w-
thats alright havent bought rust just not interested feels like ark survival without any npcs or animals just players and mic spammers
Wait, true While you were responding, i was also thinking about "Borderlands" and "Defense Grid", but i think this is waaaay more off-topic than Rust
i was thinking about doom 3
I’m personally a fan of Rust so I’d be open to that if we expanded. Tbh, we were hoping Facepunch would have liked/had involvement in our Gmod section (we invited them) as we are gonna add S&Box.
rust is cool but just dont want to get into it i like the weapons they look cool just dont want to experience the toxicity
This platform has the potential to be better than any other social media in the world Problem is that.. what if the platform becomes so popular and then new ppl joins and starts talking about misc (politics, music, porn, etc.) things on the subcommunities ??
That’s part of the challenge , even just sticking to Valve , there’s the problematic types that come. I’m quite happy the way our Gmod page is going - could have easily turned into the shitshow that I’ve seen on other sites.
i dont worry too much about it. I know this site is in good hands and hopefully you guys can expand it more.
I'm still beyond impressed by this platform. As a full stack dev myself, consider my (non existent) fedora tipped!
Thanks! Good to know. What stacks do you work with out of interest 🙂
Huh. For frontend I use VueJS+Vite with Typescript CSS I do 100% by myself For backend I use ASP.NET Core C#
Ah, fellow Vue! (LG is on Nuxt) 😎
Nuxt looks cool but I've never used it. I try to avoid switching to the next new shiny JS library. Better to just get my site done with what i already have
I feel like Lambdagen's valve identity is one of its strongest traits. It provides a source of any new valve fans to join the platform, and in general is a great place for fans to enjoy. As tempting it is to step up to the level of bigger platforms like twitter, I'm afraid of the pitfall of reaching out of the bounds of realistic goals. Kinda similar to a very ambitious small videogame dev team adding a few too many things to their game to properly manage. It might be a lil bit of an irrational worry, as I don't know all the gears that keep the site turning. But I trust yall know what you are doing. We care alot for this platform, and wish for the best ٩( ´ᴖ ᎑ ᴖ)۶
As an analogy, it's similar to a restaurant. If you run a small business, don't have a huge menu. Focus on a few, and make it hella good ✨️
I totally agree to this. Whatever we do, will ensure it stays focused. Thank you also for the support!
I personally think that if advertised properly, Lambdagen could be a good community for SFM artists. TF2 and Portal could also be advertised because those games also have large thriving communities.
I also think the ability to post things directly to your profile could be a good section for off-topic posting or just generally things that you might not want to show up on everyone's feed like WIPs or random thoughts about characters.
This is planned. Maybe coming soon 🤫
Yeah, interesting times indeed. ... Let me offer some personal perspective, maybe it can help a little bit. I distanced myself from twitter because it was making me miserable, I think the reason for that is twofold, first of all it is a more generalized space for discussion, until recently when it became an absolute joke with the Musk takeover it was pretty much *The* conversation, it's where everyone talked about whatever was relevant at the time, and what was (and I suppose still is) relevant is that everything was awful lol, even though I mostly followed dogs, dog related content, artists and artists who drew dogs, they were all acounts run by people who are still human, they felt things, and they tended to feel... awful, which brings me to point number two: sharing one's feelings, I used to be part of a community where we used to do that a lot, and I think that's okay, I'm down to try to listen to people and offer some support to those who are having a bad time, but the thing is... when everyone is doing it all the time, and even interrupting each other with their own horrible misery, it creates this unhappy environment that fosters a bunch of miserable shit, nobody can help anyone when everyone needs help, that was also happening on twitter for me. So I think I've grown to appreciate a certain degree of detachment and formality in communities. I occasionally use reddit, I mostly visit a few game communities, it's pretty hit or miss. Because of the size of those subs you get all sorts of toxic people randomly getting angsty on you, because people tend to make their likes for certain things part of their identity, so if you say the wrong thing about something in a video game, they take it as a personal insult, and I guess they feel emboldened by the fact that there are too many people in those communities for moderation to enforce the rules efficiently.
I suppose I like LambdaGen because I like Half-life and adjacent stuff, because it's small scale so it feels like I can keep track of everything that's going on, also the fact there's no likelihood of having some crazy internet person jumping on my head like a L4D jockey, since it's not like it's this huge crowd of people with 5 mods, and finally because it's somewhat impersonal, I kind of want to get away from personal issues. I encourage you to do whatever you feel is best for the site, I just wanted to offer some insight into what brought me here, since I'm relatively new.
Thanks for the insight. I feel the same way about Twitter. I don’t actually use it at all (except as LambdaGen Ofc) because it seems so negative, hence why I made this.
you perfectly summed up why i dont like other major platforms. times are interesting where it seems like most major social medias are collapsing so i'd say its the perfect time to start experimenting to see if something works no matter what happpens. keep the lambdageneration name, never forget about that because thats what we are
I think that LambdaGeneration shouldn't get non Valve sub communities. Lambda Generation should be a place for Valve games and Valve fans. Not for example Id software fans. I would suggest adding accessibility features, like option to change site language or site scheme. (I can help with Polish translation). Additionally Lambda Generation should get it's own Android and iOS app. Lambda Generation should integrate Valve Community. So hosting mods and their sites would be pretty cool (sth like modDB, but only with mods for Valve games). Users should have a possibility to make articles and stuff like that. Lambda Gen chanel should be more active and have some kind of Valve news. Something like All Things Lambda. With multiple hosts. Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against Robo and his videos. Just if LamGen YT had to be more active, then more people would have to be involved to not make robo overworked. I think that Lambda Generation should make more community events like LambdaBuilds and Breaking The Bar or Remember Freeman. It is very important to keep Half-Life community alive and keep game journals eyes on Valve Community which can lead to more people joining the site and overall community. This site also needs an option to make surveys as a posts. Overall I think that Lambda Gen has potential to be something better, bigger. Thankfully site is in good hands and I see bright future awaiting for Valve community :)
I love all these ideas, but sadly on so much we can do. Robo works on the videos in his only spare time, as for LB, sadly don’t see this returning, it was a blast to do but only possible as ModDB effectively paid Kralich to work on them and sadly he’s no longer working there. We want to focus more on the site itself going forward.
This looks very interesting. I understand the concern about the evolving landscape of the Valve universe and the potential shift in fan engagement over time. However, it's important to acknowledge the vibrant and supportive community that currently exists around LambdaGeneration. It's evident that the community is thriving, even if my personal involvement has been less frequent. While there may be changes in the future, it doesn't necessarily mean that LambdaGeneration will become obsolete or unmanageable like other websites. Adaptation is crucial for survival in any field, and it can be approached with both discipline and careful consideration. Reflecting on my past experience with the PHX Models and the initial resistance within the Gmod community, it turned out to be a success despite initial concerns. Similarly, introducing non-Valve related content can be handled with a thoughtful approach. One suggestion is to consider a subdomain or a different name, presenting it as "by LambdaGeneration." For instance, a name like "The Echoverse by LambdaGeneration" would allow you to explore new content while maintaining the existing layout and familiarity of LambdaGeneration. Remember, change can be embraced and managed in a way that respects the community's preferences and maintains the integrity of the platform. By approaching it with a clear vision and open communication, it's possible to create a space where different interests can coexist harmoniously. As a solo indie game developer, I'm personally creating my own game. I hope to find a supportive and motivating community here, given the wonderful sense of unity that has emerged. Your support means the world to me, and I believe we can cultivate an environment where both established Valve-related content and new endeavors, like my game, can coexist harmoniously. Together, let's keep building an amazing community. Sorry for the long post :D Miljan (AKA PhoeniX-Storms)
Thanks for the very detailed reply!
I'd say it'd be a bad idea to expand too much, mostly because while the Volvo community isn't exactly the nicest (just like most communities), at the moment LambdaGen is quite chill and most people here are great, opening the floodgates to stuff unrelated to Valve/Source is just asking for trouble imo, although it depends of the kind of communities you're open to welcoming. I believe that LambdaGen should just focus on getting better and better at what you guys are doing right now, focus is important, especially for a site that's very Valve-centric.