Why was this changed under the Classifieds section?

It sounds so judgemental and elitist.

Where "Hobby" indicates a lifestyle meaning, you do it when you can, on the side, in addition to your day job & school, "Amateur" suggests they are of less serious and of lower quality and effort.

Who, and why was this change made?

Sure, Adding a careers section was nice, for the real pros, but renaming the Hobbyist section to what it is now, sounds potentially insulting.

Sure there are people who are new, and have been dabbling in it for a few months, but this system labels them under the same people like me who have been doing this for 5+ years, and that just doesn't feel right.(under the new label)

"Hobbyist was a term that was general enough to be inclusive from indie to modding, this term now sounds like it's just a catch all for those who aren't yet "full time" in the industry.

I can't be the only one who finds the label a bit insulting.

maybe a better way to filter it would be Hobby 2D VS. Hobby 3D?

It makes passion projects sound like passing fancies, and Rev share models as sub par. (suggesting no "pro level" quality people need even bother in the Amateur section at all.

Having such a stratified label somewhat disrespects those who aren't full timer contractors making money, it threatens to loose sight of the fact that most people weren't born into the careers section, they had to start small, and show what they had with their hobby to rise up in the ranks. It sounds like it's undermining passion to begin with.

Sounds like a 40 year old who has no knowledge of the art to tell his wannabe gamedev son, "oh your just an Amateur, you'll never make this as a real career, your not good enough....."

Isn't that the attitude/ perspective we're trying to fight against?

Sure, we got to have some Quality Control, to weed out those who think game design is as simple as gaming, and I support critical analysis, and gate keeping methods, but this doesn't achieve that effect. It biases people, new and old to this site unnecessarily, and it consciously or subconsciously heralds in elitist perspectives and behaviors.

That's like renaming the section in question "made by/ for fools and children who don't know what they're doing"

And Careers to "Made for / by Adults who are serious business, who should be beyond reproach"

I mean, come on yall?

Ya, it's regarding the Classifieds,

I'll make that more clear.

I'm not trying to say it's an intentional act of breeding elitism, I'm saying, it could be a side effect of this seemingly minor change that was not seriously pondered upon.

And isn't the goal of a lot of us in the "Hobbyist" framework to try and do and accomplish pro level work and achievements that make game dev as an actual viable career to us?

Sure, there are those who really do this as a side gig, with no intention of changing their life's direction for gamedev as well.

Well, as for the 2d & 3D separator, I was just suggesting another way to break down / filter the members, since 3D usually takes more time and is more intricate than 2D.

Where 2D projects can be made in less than a week for game jams and the like, 3D usually can not, thus maybe another filter to help sort members and their skills.

Well, tBH,

If that section were to remain as "Amateurishly" labeled I would be a bit indignant/ annoyed.

See what I did there?

IDK, maybe I'm just the type of person who carefully thinks through all possible meanings of a word before using it in any public or internal facing communications.

Double Entendres can make subtle but important differences.

Oh, it might be important to note, I come from a psychology background.

We can rename it Hobbyist, but by definition these are Amateur projects (they are done for the love of it, not for any kind of compensation beyond a passion for creation and learning). I don't agree that these are "hobbyist" projects either though.

Anyone who thinks an amateur is called that because they're bad or a lower quality doesn't know the meaning of the word.

The inconsistency is another issue altogether. Either way, I'll change the menu item to Hobbyist for now until a better term is determined.

Edit: I should also note this is not a step toward elitism. If anything it's a step toward making GameDev.net a quality resource. Is anyone else tired of GameDev.net being considered 'dead' and not a quality resource for anyone but beginners? Our site right now is a disjointed mess of inconsistencies in content and presentation, and while we have nuggets of high quality content and information for all skill levels mixed in, GDNet ultimately needs a proper reorganization and redefinition of expectations for itself and its users. For this reason, the step to redefine menu items and certain areas of the site is more an effort to clarify our definitions and using those definitions to set expectations, which in turn results in raising the bar in GDNet's quality.

I shouldn't have to explain this, but probably 15 years ago we heard the same 'elitism' cries when we started trying to make GameDev.net a better resource for more than a 'garage developer' - basically your 'hobbyist' developer. What we did back then was 100x's worse than this link name change. We heard the cries then but still did what we thought was right, and in the end it made GameDev.net a better platform for everyone because we broke away from the mold that defined us and introduced more diversity into the platform and community. Everyone is better for it.

In the end, we aren't elite. We know the games industry, we know our community, and it isn't like we woke up a few years ago and created GameDev.net. We've been doing this for more years than many of our visitors have been living, and we know how to create the best platform for the game development community.