Site News: Love What We Do? Become a Push Square Supporter

Personally, I find Push Square (and the sister sites) to have the least intrusive ads than any other sites I visit. So I won’t be needing a subscription.

But it’s really good to give people the choice if they want it. As long as the current ad structure doesn’t change for non-subscribers, this can only be a positive, and hopefully earns your site some extra profits that can help improve the site — or at least maintain its current quality, which I find to be really good.

And I will certainly consider subscribing in the future, if or when my current financial situation improves. 👍

I wouldn’t mind paying since it’s for all 4 websites combined. That’s €10 yearly per website 🙂

IDK guys, I'm quite fond of the Queen's Blade ads.

Sure... PS is how I prevent Doom Scrolling 😅😁

@Impossibilium I said that about NintendoLife and then realised I'm an idiot and had an adblocker turned on! Anyway they still aren't bad here, certainly not worth paying to remove. I actually wouldn't mind if they paywalled some stuff (as long as it was all new content) to convince me to subscribe.

Well it's better than paying a subscription for your car maker to heat your car seat or remote start is their new one now 😂 love the site guys

I regularly visit a local gaming site in my country + Pushsquare.
However, I find Pushsquare to have far less content than some other portals - guys, you do not have to have a perfect post all the time, but it could be nice to have more information than now...

@antdickens Is this going to become a thing on this site? As other sites have done the same would be a shame if here did it too.

@antdickens That's unnecessarily threatening. Definitely put me off subscribing now.

@antdickens threatening? ok do it

I love the site and have been using both PushSquare and NintendoLife for my gaming news for the last 8 years.

I'll gladly support the site in the near future!

Sheesh peeps. He didn’t say he was going to do it, he just said that it would be easy to do…and if you’ve been to a site that blocks adblockers, you know this. The fact that they haven’t should be your takeaway.

I don’t use adblockers, but have never found the ads to be intrusive. I may sign up to help out, as I understand there are costs and salaries.

Price of just about everything going up in Canada. Happy to support one day, but right now the most I spend is $1 for Last Stand Media on patreon. I keep ads on and check on Push Square and VGC periodically throughout each day. When things stabilize and I have more disposable income I will be happy to support. You all are truly doing a bang up job.

@lacerz There are reasons to use adblockers other than just to avoid seeing adverts as they also protect your data. It's pretty low to ask for a subscription to help out with running costs, which I have no issue with, but then threaten people into either forcing them to pay up or having to change the way they view websites.

@antdickens

"the thing is, it would be pretty easy for us to start blocking people adblocking."

Ah, the fist inside the velvet glove.

yeah I use adblock and really don't have time to go through and set exceptions but even then who wouldn't at least consider supporting something they use frequently, or get value from?

So they are going to block ad blockers think it would be more wise to be truthful in the matter so people can make an informed decision.

@antdickens

And I totally think that asking readers to view ads or pay a subscription to remove them is fair enough, definitely. I don't use an ad blocker on my browser anyway as I know that otherwise the sites I choose to visit wouldn't be supported.

But I think that to hint that those who do choose to use an ad blocker could be easily blocked in the comments of the same article launching the new subscription changes the tone of said article a lot.

@kyleforrester87 Then point out why sites like PushSquare, made up of real, genuine people who are passionate about what they do wouldn't exist without their support in some form or another. Appeal to their better nature. I won't subscribe to a site for this sort of news, but will happily scroll through, comment, bring traffic and ad revenue in.

I've participated in sites with a pay tier that gives paid customers special icons before, and it's always been destructive IMO, segregating the community into the "true fans" paying, and the unpaid people don't matter. It starts creating an environment where people's opinions count "more" and become forum authorities because they have a paid icon, and people without one become marginalized as less important contributors, not dedicated enough, not part of the club, etc.

I'm not against the paid tier itself, but it's almost a guarantee the "I paid real money to post this" icons will have a negative effect on the conversations over time. Perks for subscribers might be nice, but indicators in each post showing they're payers I think is a nightmare change. I get that it's meant to encourage subscription, but with or without a physical paywall, it either way starts to build an invisible paywall that shapes the community into a smaller echobox. Well, more than it already can be....

As for myself paying, one look at the "enter your CC#" bar and I'm out. Paypal, Google Pay, Amazon pay, I might be in, but I simply don't enter CC#'s for anything unless it's absolutely necessary and just don't do business with vendors that require it. Ironically the one time I broke that rule was to order Edge and PSVR2 because Sony Direct requires it even though Sony is the entity who made me create a policy of never entering CC's to begin with with the great leak of 2012 causing years of misery for me.

Plus, when you write enough content for a site's comments that you're practically a contributor, paying instead of getting paid seems a little much...

Does this mean I can log in and post as myself in any of the affiliated sites? I have the other consoles but I was too lazy to set up a profile for each site.

@kyleforrester87

You're absolutely right about the comments not being deleted; I genuinely wondered if they would be or not. The reason I'm commenting and actually discussing/justifying my original comment is because I thought it to be an ill-judged hint about blocking users that could have been phrased differently in a way for the site to garner more support and keep running the way it does, supporting the journalists and the readers. I like to think that the community here, which I enjoy being a part of, would be open to reason and supporting the site either through the subscriptions or ads. Thanks for the chat 👌.

@get2sammyb any potential ideas for further perks? I would like to support you guys as I am on here daily, but for a person who has a free ad-block, I'd be open to supporting you all with features that would make my PushSquare experience better.

@antdickens Yeah, there's definitely no Google pay support on the links above. Credit card or nothing, no digital wallet options. At least in the US, maybe it shows differently for UK store?

I don't think opting out of the badges help the 2 tier comments really. Paying but not showing it just places the user at the bottom social tier of their own volition. It doesn't stop the inevitable split of superior and inferior posters and the club clique forming. I get it, I even get why it's necessary to work because let's face it, the real reason most subscribers subscribe to things like this is that icon and fear of being left out of the group. That's the entire impetus of the payment for most.

... But... I've not seen one site implement it that doesn't either become insufferable, abandoned, or both. So it's worrying. I get it. I really do. And I know you may not have a viable alternative. But I'd personally much see a dangled carrot of benefits encouraging subscription than the effect the implied social shaming of lacking the icon tends to do. That's probably more profitable though.

Very Meta-esque logo guys...

@antdickens I tried on mobile and it's the same as @YeoSprings for me in the US. CC only, no wallets.

One other comment from me (because I'm sure you're not sick of it yet) is I do thing the price seems a little bit high at $40/yr. I pay $15/yr for Gamestop Pro and get a printed physical glossy magazine mailed monthly and they give me $5 coupons monthly. I pay $40/yr with Black Friday deals for PS Plus and they give me 2 whole games a month. You're not giving me two games a month. You're giving more than Games with Gold though, so there's that.... NSO is $35/yr for 8 people to access the retro library. New York Times is $4/mo. I love you guys, but you're no NYT. Yes I know NYT subscriptions come with ads so it's not quite an even comparison. I'm sure the pricing is justifiable to some degree, but it does seem a bit on the high side for a gaming news mag and forum, it might have a hard time getting subscribers (other than the social pariah status of not having the little icon inducing anxiety based purchases.)

@NEStalgia

Just consider it as a rental fee for the comment sections on these sites😀

Course you may also want to reimburse Eurogamer ha ha, but watching their subscription model from a distance I understand the concerns you've got regarding this model

No $ until the editors openly state they will drop the occasional political commentary.

Will my comments still be susceptible to being banned if I sign up?

• those moving swirly things by the names of members is really bad for my OCD. Can you please remove the motion aspect to them?

Perhaps have a vote about them?

@NEStalgia "I've participated in sites with a pay tier that gives paid customers special icons before, and it's always been destructive IMO, segregating the community into the "true fans" paying, and the unpaid people don't matter."

This was actually my thought as well when I saw all of those Mario Kart 8 8s over on NL, seems really weird doing that, unless as you said they're counting on peer pressure to get more of us to pay? Not a bad idea if a bit capitalistic.🤑 But yes, you write enough on the Hookshot sites, I agree you shouldn't have to pay. 😂

Speaking of paying, do you think locking "tipping" behind a paywall is the opposite of getting people to tip and not really a perk for paying customers at all? I just don't get it, as paywalled or perk. 🤷‍♂️

"Tip what you like (optionally pay above minimum)"

@antdickens The hookshot logo that's just the 8 from Mario Kart 8? Are you seriously telling me nobody at NL noticed the similarity? I know the Switch DX box looks different but somebody at NL must have owned a Wii U.🤷‍♂️

@doctommaso Must admit, that's the first thought I had. I'll stick with the ads.

@antdickens "you do know the infinity symbol was around before Mario Kart 8, right?"

And out of all the colors of the rainbow you picked the blue from THAT infinity sign? Sorry, not buying it. 😉 And if nobody at NL noticed the similarity I'd fire everyone and start over. 😂

"it's simply giving people the option to pay"

Then why is "tipping" behind a pay wall taking away that option? 🤷‍♂️

@rjejr It's 100% about the peer pressure. That's the entire purpose of the existence of such icons to motivate purchase. You either pay, or you're not part of the club, and you don't really have as much room to speak against all those dedicated paying members, with an identity badge. You're intruding on their territory they paid money for, as a guest they're polite enough to allow you to engage with them in their space. Not criticizing Hookshot specifically for that design, it applies to all such systems on the internet. And it's obvious it wouldn't work so well without it. But it's also obvious how that affects the discussion and community as a whole.

You feel it already in this thread, don't you? Posting without your icon in a room filled with other commenters that paid real money almost immediately. This thread is their space. You're just visiting. And your conflicting outside opinion doesn't carry water in their space. Not that it wasn't that way before, but now there's a badge that shows who's paid up to have valid opinions as part of the group and who's an outside troll not dedicated enough to pay. It's already a 2-tiered community with those icons present. I know why it has to be with this model but......it's less than 12 hours in and the mood feels different already. We'll see where this goes but....sigh

And yeah, it does feel weird to pay and not get paid to add content to the site. Although maybe they don't pay Liam either. They probably don't. It could be a good article "We stopped paying Liam and you won't believe what happened next..."

Only the paid people get to post "slow news day?" and not get their comment moderated though.

RE the MK8 logo, I mean the company is named after a Zelda tool, why shouldn't their logo be a Mario logo? They might be able to sue meta though. I'd pay to fund a suit against Zuck!

I'll skip this, as I'm not too active here these days. If that changes, then I might reconsider. And besides, there's some aspects of this site and Nintendo Life that I'm less fond of, so I'm reluctant to throw money at it.

I see “Standard User - Adverts, Free”, then “Push Square Supporter - Article Continues Below”.

Was on purpose? Anyway, amusing nonetheless.

@antdickens Aren't you glad you brought it up lol?

The subscription seems reasonable, but I'll need to think about it.

Also wondering if the idea of combining your platform specific sites into one site has been considered. That seems to be a more common model.

@NEStalgia i totally get what you're saying but on the other hand it probably already felt that way to a lot of folks. I can't be the only one who thought there's this subtle separation between the usual suspects and the rest of us. But I suspect that changes if you're here long enough. And really if you're here long enough, will the badge really carry the weight you're suggesting?

@zupertramp It does, any community does, but there's a difference between the clique that naturally forms among regulars that you pick up on after you're new and spend time around the site. It's another when day 1 there's an animated brightly colored icon assigning authority to the "real" members. I mean, me? Everyone knows me, it won't affect me much if I don't have an icon, but even then there's the subtle messaging that says "less important member". If I were new and day 1 was commenting amidst the badge clad? It's know my place. Humans tend to adhere to those kinds of hierarchy symbols by default. It's why chieftains wear larger headdresses, chefs wear larger toques, politicians wear power ties.

Just scroll down this page and look who has the most authoritative appearing posts. It's amusing because Liam doesn't have his (yet?). He automatically looks like a lesser poster than the payers. Sure he has the mod star which is higher level, but the pay icon is much more prominent making them look even more significant than mods. Which isn't by accident. Again not necessarily by ant personally but by the pay package in general. That badge is a poison.

I'd even be ok with it if it was just on profile pages and not on posts. Or the default was to not show it and you could enable it if you wanted to make it obvious you're a jerk puffing out your chest to show power by purchase. But as is, the more I see it the nastier I think it is. It's not about buying out of ads. And it's not about supporting the site for most. It's about the status separator if the icon.

I'm not angry at ant,I understand why and where he is, but, I just don't see anything but negative effects from how it currently is.

@get2sammyb you are welcome & good job guys!

If the pushsquare staff stuck to their remit as a gaming site and kept socio-political censoring (at whatever end of the spectrum) out of here, they would have had my money.

But they didn't, so they haven't.

Never an easier decision. I spend a lot of time here and on Pure and I'm happy to sub and help provide the funds needed to keep these sites doing what they do.
The adverts here have never been too intrusive and so I don't feel I'm being forced into anything, but I can easily afford this and care about these sites, so it was a simple choice for me.

Those arguing about a two tier system are miles from the mark. You have clearly explained how watching and accepting the adds is also contributing to your revenue, so I don't feel any moral superiority to any other user here.
Except NEStalgia of course, whom I shall address as 'freeloader' in every response I ever bother writing to him, as he's acting even older than I am and now I know it bothers him I'll go for that injury with every punch . You can translate the walls of txt as 'I don't like change'

@Kidfried I don't disagree with you there, but it doesn't actually change the issue I'm seeing, either.

Though I do feel $40/yr is a bit high. $20 is an impulse buy, $25 maybe...30 is iffy...I think $40 to subscribe to a gaming news website that's usually late with the news, plus a forum where I'm basically writing content and paying instead of getting paid feels a bit like a $70 video game...it makes me stop and think it's probably not something I need more than something I pay without thinking.

@kyleforrester87 See...with the icon there and that sort of counter point, that kind of reinforces what I'm saying though....

Also, I forgot to reply earlier about the CC's, it's not the direct money loss specifically, but the rest of the fallout from it, the period of figuring out strange charges exist, the period of switching other payments and auto payments, then the ones that managed to not make them jump, then the ones held in limbo for months while the bank identifies what's real or not before purging charge, the ones the bank screws up and declares charge offs, the missed payments on things that didn't take the update even though you updated it that spawns into other problems, the hundreds of dollars of WoW characters built that you bought in Malaysia because the bank "can't clear international charges" from fraud, etc, etc etc. It took years of time to set everything straight. Stopped charging anything that didn't take a digital wallet except for essentials. I debated for months if I'd actually give them a card again for PSVR2. I did...but that was months of decision making! Sometimes you just make a policy and stick with it. Makes life more manageable.

@Tintin uh uh, so again, here we are day one and people are weaponizing the 2-tier community You can get rid of that tag, as ant explained, if you're not feeling any moral superiority though.... Or.....not quite ready to get rid of the social-elevation that comes from payment?

I know it's in jest, but, seriously Ant, get rid of the freaking tags before this place becomes Eurogamer....

@NEStalgia ..and so the freeloader does exactly as predicted I was going to opt out of tag display, but because it annoys you I want an even bigger one now.

Once this post is buried deep, clicking on people badges will be the only way people will know the option is there. It's good advertising for the subs service, and on that basis I will leave it on in the hope it encourages others to sub if they can.

I get faster and ad-free browsing through UBlock Origin, but for free!

@NEStalgia what you're describing though, it just seems a tad self-fulfilling. Like it's definitely a way to look at it but I'm not sure you have to have that perspective.

I'm probably gonna see the tag and look at it one of two ways... someone has money to burn for a status symbol or they care about the well being of a website they use. And I'll think it'll be obvious who's in what camp most of the time so, idk, I guess that doesn't worry me terribly. Not just yet anyway.

I use an ad blocker, but allow ads for sites I wish to support like Push Square. Their ads are not obtrusive at all and their site is top quality.

Future Publishing sites like PC Gamer are littered with ads, most of the time adversely affecting the sites themselves, but I still choose to support them since I appreciate their content.

It really isn't a hard thing to deal with the bad eggs while supporting the creators of content you like.

@Titntin
Of course, you are assuming the article about subscribing won't be permanently pinned to the top of the webpage or periodically resurfaced.

@TheCollector316 Your right mate that was my assumption!
If its still there next month I'll eat my words

@themightyant I've seen numerous sites become self-segregating, I no longer participate in them, but the community culture just degrades. It's not immediate. It takes place over time with the churn of population. You'll see it here. Well, IDK if you'll see it but it will happen whether you notice or not. It doesn't happen right away, of course, it's not like the regulars that are here now and have been here, and we're all familiar with each other will start breaking into warring camps. Or at least not different warring camps than we were already in. Like @kyleforrester87, most of the regulars aren't going to treat each other differently. Except His Excellency, the Exhaulted @TinTin but he's "special". But we were always going to fight like a married couple anyway because that's our special bond. But as members churn, new people arrive, outside the old regulars, there is a different hierarchy of elite and passers by. Churn tends to become faster as the non-dedicated are perpetually gaijin and just move on. It's by design, and it's an unfortunate direction.

But again, I'm not against the paid tier itself, my concern is purely about the existence of those tags with the comments existing like moderator or "privileged commenter" tags that naturally segregates "premium" members from "lower tier" members. And it's naive to say that isn't the result, because that's how humans work, the company that produces this product knows that psychology well, that's why they do it, it's the same psychology GaaS games use to sell MTX. The symbol separates the users with it from the ones without it. That's the reason it exists. We're on a PS board where people argue about the superiority of AAA games, and the "premium" brand that is PS vs those inferior non-premium brands. It's human psyche to find something to segregate superior from inferior. It automatically happens in such communities, and it's intended to happen by the mfrs of the platforms.

Put another way, if that effect were not the expected effect, why would special status "I paid money" tags exist with such platforms at all? The tag would not exist if not to segregate users with tags as incentive to pay to attain that status. That's not the reason ALL users will pay, some will do it to support their favorite site...but...they can do that anonymously, without a tag announcing their favored status.

If it were not the default, would you go out of your way to add a tag to show that you went out of your way to enable the tag to announce it? You see the psychology of the tag in all directions now?

RE CC's no, that's not a common thing here. There was one bank that generated disposable codes but they got rid of that. There are a few others that have a weird thing, there's one larger issuing bank that does have that but you have to do everything through their own browser plugin, there's a few smaller banks that have something like that.....but it's defintely the exception, not the rule among issuing banks.

Now, Ant said that he's contacting the vendor about Google Pay which is supposed to be supported but isn't there, so that may be a non-issue. I may end up paying, the ad scripts keep bogging down my machine, but I'm still on the fence, as I still feel the pricing is north of what it should be, and honesty, I'm not sure I want to reward the existence of those tags, as it downgrades the site IMO.

@Kidfried I think you underestimate the value of the comments and what we bring to the site. Our comments aren't worthless. In many regards our comments are the main value drivers and the staff spend much of their time doing nothing but inciting us to add said content. The famous "click bait" articles and the like exist to extract more content from us. In fact, our comments are significant contributions and drive a lot of traffic to a site like this. How many people come just to read the comments and the tribal wars and arguments? How many skim the article just to get to the arguments and comments and feed back at the bottom? Put another way this is a big, little site. It has circulation in the thousands, tens of thousands. (or more?) Are there 10,000 commenters regularly contributing? No, dozens...maybe hundreds at absolute most. The commenters are a small subset community of the actual viewership on the site, and the comments and community are a unique part of the content people read when clicking through. If the comments were to be disabled, would site circulation drop dramatically? Very likely. We're free (or, now paying) content producers that also contribute to the value and thus success of the site. And I triple-dog dare them to drop the comments feature entirely and prove me wrong

That said, choosing the side of chaos, it got me thinking....I probably should even tag ant on this...I won't just yet but....a proposal. What if, instead of displaying user status elevation badges for payers, and in the theme of offering features, what if the site allowed private messages, but only for paying members? It's a feature addition we've been requesting since, what, 2017 at least? And I know why they don't do it. It would cause less comments to appear in the comments sections, and much less arguments/wars, as people could have their offline, controversial conversations amongst each other without it producing more SEO for the site. By denying PMs, they're extracting more value from our communication.

So....a trade. No more silly badges to divide the community. Get rid of it. And dangle the carrot of PMs between paying members? Is collecting our payment worth giving us enhanced communications and community features on the site, at the cost of reducing our posted contribution? I'll pay $50 for that.

I like to watch the world burn.

I like Ant, I respect him, and I appreciate how he's trying to walk the line on all this. I know he's not a big publishing corp and that's part of why this has remained a community environment for so long. But at the same time I'm not ignorant to the business side of it, a spade is a spade .

@kyleforrester87 The difference between me and Michal Patcher is that my certain outcomes actually happen sometimes, nobody writes clickbait articles about me to get me to comment about them, and I don't make six figures for any of it.

Well, I guess that's about the end of it for the rest of us scrubs. Remember when you didn't have to pay for every single thing......

@NEStalgia I just got back from a week away and am catching up on emails. And also, well everything else. Give me 24 hours to recover. Make that 48.

@teh_jokr thank you for the support, we appreciate it!