List more in the comments! I’ll add them if they are a community for a video game genre, and have had at least one post in the last month. Crossposted to [email protected]here.
I also found some genres with dead communities. Maybe someone would like to revive one, or make a new one (preferably on a smaller instance than lemmy.world)?
[email protected] (yes, !adventuregames has some, whether puzzles actually belong with adventure games is another conversation. I don’t think so but I’m not an expert on either genre)
Communities for Talos Principle and Resident Evil, but again, they aren’t active.
Yeah, there are a bunch of communities for individual video games, but they’re all pretty dead. I think that [email protected], where the dev actually shows up, posts, and moderates is probably one of the most alive.
This came up when I originally got on the Threadiverse — I remember suggesting that people post in generic gaming communities, then when the load became too high, move to genre-specific, and then when the load became too high, move to game-specific. Otherwise, the userbase in any one community just isn’t large enough to get much community activity.
I agree. In the days immediately following the APIcalypse, people attempted to move all their favourite niche communities to Lemmy, but the site’s active userbase isn’t there yet for that kind of content - much to my displeasure: I was only active in two/three niche communities back when I was a Reddit user, but they are pretty much nonexistent here, so I’m forced to include more generic communities in my Lemmy feed to keep it from drying up.
I think a lot of these are going to be placeholder for a while until more generalized communities like this one see more growth. It’ll be a while before we even hit 100k subscribers here, and you need to have a subset of those people who are looking to talk about an even more specific interest in more depth.
You’re probably right, but most of these do exist already, so I figure not why not continue trying to use them (and to direct attention from this big community there)?
Also probably doesn’t help a lot of instances have general games communities. We’re pretty splintered. Now that I think about it I should probably crosspost to some of the bigger ones.
In principle I agree with you, but it’s also a “chicken and egg” type problem. Many people aren’t going to switch to Lemmy if there isn’t a modicum of coverage for more specialized topics.
I think getting to somewhere beyond 100K MAU will have a transformative effective on activity in some more specialized communities.
On one hand I understand this, but on the other hand I’d like to post games I find that fit these subgenres or talk about that subgenre without making myself the biggest spammer in [email protected], and I think (time will tell!) I do have the stubbornness necessary to scream into the void until people come along. Maybe I should crosspost the ones I think are most likely to have mass appeal…
I feel if I spontaneously quit all my niche gaming communities and posted everything I’d post there on a general community instead, I’d annoy everyone with a bunch of Steam links for games they probably do not care about. People in the niche communities are more likely to care about a link to a game in a genre they already like. Also, for most of the small communities I’ve got at least one other poster sometimes, and that’s better than nobody! Despite all the trouble with incremental.social and federation, when I can get on there we do have a few regulars chatting there and that’s nice.
contains gender politics
There’s also just fans of a certain genre being used to backlash from the wider gaming community. I did get mostly upvotes when I posted [email protected], which is mostly romance visual novels for women who like men, to [email protected]. I appreciate it. But I am not sure how posting these games to [email protected] would go over, especially when I suspect Lemmy to be male-dominated. Visual novels already suffer from the “it’s all just hentai” stereotype. Now add the “media for women, especially romance media, is stupid and vapid and silly” prejudice. And even for those who just live and let live, I suspect most of the general [email protected] community would be disinterested in otome game posts, which is fair because I’m disinterested in romance and/or sex visual novels aimed at men who want to date women (although they should definitely be allowed to exist and people should be allowed to like them in peace). So both to avoid any backlash, and to avoid annoying the wider community, I don’t want to post those games to this general community. I still want a space for it on Lemmy though, so I made that community. I have one other regular poster and sometimes people drop in and comment.
You could make the argument that I’m simply posting low-quality content, and I’d just have to raise the bar for [email protected] to accept my posts, and that I just want my niches back, to which I say: fair. But unfortunately I’m no video game expert or connoisseur. I play and enjoy. The lovely guide and wiki makers usually get there before I can. I’m not too good at coming up with fun discussion questions that are better than what I’d consider low-tier engagement bait back on Reddit like “name one good thing about [noncontroversial character]”. So link posts it is, better some on-topic content than none at all. And even if I did write a wonderful in-depth review or guide, if it’s not for some big mainstream appeal game but something that only genre enthusiasts really like, not sure how well [email protected] would take to it. So that’s my rationale for having these niche communities. You’re still very free to think I’m wrong ;) Thanks for contributing in earnest to [email protected]!
I was thinking it is weird that the generically named “RPGs” community (and RPGMemes) seems focused entirely on tabletop stuff, but I just noticed it’s literally on an instance dedicated to tabletop games so that explains that…
You are not logged in. However you can subscribe from another Fediverse account, for example Lemmy or Mastodon. To do this, paste the following into the search field of your instance: [email protected]
Welcome to the largest gaming community on Lemmy! Discussion for all kinds of games. Video games, tabletop games, card games etc.
Rules
1. Submissions have to be related to games
Video games, tabletop, or otherwise. Posts not related to games will be deleted.
This community is focused on games, of all kinds. Any news item or discussion should be related to gaming in some way.
2. No bigotry or harassment, be civil
No bigotry, hardline stance. Try not to get too heated when entering into a discussion or debate.
We are here to talk and discuss about one of our passions, not fight or be exposed to hate. Posts or responses that are hateful will be deleted to keep the atmosphere good. If repeatedly violated, not only will the comment be deleted but a ban will be handed out as well. We judge each case individually.
3. No excessive self-promotion
Try to keep it to 10% self-promotion / 90% other stuff in your post history.
This is to prevent people from posting for the sole purpose of promoting their own website or social media account.
4. Stay on-topic; no memes, funny videos, giveaways, reposts, or low-effort posts
This community is mostly for discussion and news. Remember to search for the thing you’re submitting before posting to see if it’s already been posted.
We want to keep the quality of posts high. Therefore, memes, funny videos, low-effort posts and reposts are not allowed. We prohibit giveaways because we cannot be sure that the person holding the giveaway will actually do what they promise.
5. Mark Spoilers and NSFW
Make sure to mark your stuff or it may be removed.
No one wants to be spoiled. Therefore, always mark spoilers. Similarly mark NSFW, in case anyone is browsing in a public space or at work.
6. No linking to piracy
Don’t share it here, there are other places to find it. Discussion of piracy is fine.
We don’t want us moderators or the admins of lemmy.world to get in trouble for linking to piracy. Therefore, any link to piracy will be removed. Discussion of it is of course allowed.
TIL, the threadiverse has a lot of .zip communities.
I wonder if they’ll be larger after I unpack them?
https://sffa.community/c/sffgaming?dataType=Post&page=0
Sffagaming is for sci-fi games, but I haven’t seen a post in there in a while.
https://lemm.ee/c/the_talos_principle?dataType=Post&page=0
https://lemmy.world/c/residentevil?dataType=Post&page=0
Communities for Talos Principle and Resident Evil, but again, they aren’t active.
https://lemm.ee/c/gamemusic?dataType=Post&page=0
Community for sharing game music. Not very active, but I see posts in my feed every now and then.
https://retrolemmy.com/c/TipOfMyJoystick?dataType=Post&page=0
Fairly new community to help people looking for a specific name they forgot the name of.
Sorry for not sharing the generic link, I’m on mobile and that’s the link my app generates when I click on “share”.
Another adjacent community that is seeing no real activity: [email protected]
On that note, [email protected] for video game artwork.
Yeah, there are a bunch of communities for individual video games, but they’re all pretty dead. I think that [email protected], where the dev actually shows up, posts, and moderates is probably one of the most alive.
This came up when I originally got on the Threadiverse — I remember suggesting that people post in generic gaming communities, then when the load became too high, move to genre-specific, and then when the load became too high, move to game-specific. Otherwise, the userbase in any one community just isn’t large enough to get much community activity.
I agree. In the days immediately following the APIcalypse, people attempted to move all their favourite niche communities to Lemmy, but the site’s active userbase isn’t there yet for that kind of content - much to my displeasure: I was only active in two/three niche communities back when I was a Reddit user, but they are pretty much nonexistent here, so I’m forced to include more generic communities in my Lemmy feed to keep it from drying up.
Oh, and @[email protected] has kept a flow of material to [email protected], for one other game-specific community that has some activity.
PugJesus and The_Picard_Maneuver are single-handedly keeping half of Lemmy afloat.
I can’t DNS-resolve sffa.community, either on IPv4 or IPv6. Google’s DNS root can’t see it either:
It clearly existed at one point, because lemmy.world has local copies of some stuff from a year back:
https://lemmy.world/c/[email protected]?dataType=Post&sort=New
But I think that the instance is gone now.
EDIT: The last time archive.org’s Wayback Machine was able to successfully index it was September 16, 2024:
https://web.archive.org/web/20240916061246/https://sffa.community/
Oh, that’s sad. No point in staying subscribed, then.
I think a lot of these are going to be placeholder for a while until more generalized communities like this one see more growth. It’ll be a while before we even hit 100k subscribers here, and you need to have a subset of those people who are looking to talk about an even more specific interest in more depth.
You’re probably right, but most of these do exist already, so I figure not why not continue trying to use them (and to direct attention from this big community there)? Also probably doesn’t help a lot of instances have general games communities. We’re pretty splintered. Now that I think about it I should probably crosspost to some of the bigger ones.
I think the bigger deal is Lemmy/Threadiverse getting 100K MAU and seeing steady growth beyond that. We are currently at around ~50-55K MAU.
Subs are a deceptive metric, MAUs are far more important.
Oh, things are trending in the right direction, but we’re still a long ways away from needing smaller sub communities.
In principle I agree with you, but it’s also a “chicken and egg” type problem. Many people aren’t going to switch to Lemmy if there isn’t a modicum of coverage for more specialized topics.
I think getting to somewhere beyond 100K MAU will have a transformative effective on activity in some more specialized communities.
On one hand I understand this, but on the other hand I’d like to post games I find that fit these subgenres or talk about that subgenre without making myself the biggest spammer in [email protected], and I think (time will tell!) I do have the stubbornness necessary to scream into the void until people come along. Maybe I should crosspost the ones I think are most likely to have mass appeal…
I wish you the best of luck. I don’t know what that threshold is where the smaller communities make sense, but for me, we haven’t met it yet.
I feel if I spontaneously quit all my niche gaming communities and posted everything I’d post there on a general community instead, I’d annoy everyone with a bunch of Steam links for games they probably do not care about. People in the niche communities are more likely to care about a link to a game in a genre they already like. Also, for most of the small communities I’ve got at least one other poster sometimes, and that’s better than nobody! Despite all the trouble with incremental.social and federation, when I can get on there we do have a few regulars chatting there and that’s nice.
contains gender politics
There’s also just fans of a certain genre being used to backlash from the wider gaming community. I did get mostly upvotes when I posted [email protected], which is mostly romance visual novels for women who like men, to [email protected]. I appreciate it. But I am not sure how posting these games to [email protected] would go over, especially when I suspect Lemmy to be male-dominated. Visual novels already suffer from the “it’s all just hentai” stereotype. Now add the “media for women, especially romance media, is stupid and vapid and silly” prejudice. And even for those who just live and let live, I suspect most of the general [email protected] community would be disinterested in otome game posts, which is fair because I’m disinterested in romance and/or sex visual novels aimed at men who want to date women (although they should definitely be allowed to exist and people should be allowed to like them in peace). So both to avoid any backlash, and to avoid annoying the wider community, I don’t want to post those games to this general community. I still want a space for it on Lemmy though, so I made that community. I have one other regular poster and sometimes people drop in and comment.
You could make the argument that I’m simply posting low-quality content, and I’d just have to raise the bar for [email protected] to accept my posts, and that I just want my niches back, to which I say: fair. But unfortunately I’m no video game expert or connoisseur. I play and enjoy. The lovely guide and wiki makers usually get there before I can. I’m not too good at coming up with fun discussion questions that are better than what I’d consider low-tier engagement bait back on Reddit like “name one good thing about [noncontroversial character]”. So link posts it is, better some on-topic content than none at all. And even if I did write a wonderful in-depth review or guide, if it’s not for some big mainstream appeal game but something that only genre enthusiasts really like, not sure how well [email protected] would take to it. So that’s my rationale for having these niche communities. You’re still very free to think I’m wrong ;) Thanks for contributing in earnest to [email protected]!
I was thinking it is weird that the generically named “RPGs” community (and RPGMemes) seems focused entirely on tabletop stuff, but I just noticed it’s literally on an instance dedicated to tabletop games so that explains that…
Yeah they’re all tabletop. If there was one for general RPG games, I would’ve been joined. Missed opportunity for sure