Something I miss from Reddit was that just about all my favorite games had their own subreddits. Like I happen to be a huge fan of Snowrunner but I don’t see any communities specifically about Snowrunner on Lemmy. But Elden Ring has a community on 2 instances with less than 100 subs total. I think the one hosted on Lemmy.world has 8 subs and 1 post. Elden Ring was game of the year in 2022!
I guess I just don’t see enough engagement on these dedicated communities to see the value in making my own Snowrunner community or any other game in general really.
Thoughts?
Love you guys!
As Lemmy continues to grow, individual game subs will begin to grow. Right now there are not enough users to sustain these individual communities.
Can’t engage with a place that doesn’t exist.
Absolutely, but it’s tricky with a such a small user base. Most of the indie game subreddits didn’t have a lot of activity even there. The bigger ones like valheim didn’t even participate in the protest so nobody showed up here to make it, unlike gw2 and warframe that are somewhat active since they promoted this site on their subreddits.
So while I wish we had them, it might be too early, even the consolidated gaming magazines / communities don’t have that much activity going on.
You make a good point. The other thing is that the games’ publishers make those subs on Reddit. They’re for marketing more than anything else. Like the OP I miss the SnowRunner sub and I’ve only deleted my Reddit account today. That sub, although run by the publisher, is pretty chill. They let people criticize the game openly and it’s fun to see people’s screenshots and videos. They say they don’t like “low effort content” blah blah blah but they allow memes. I posted a reply to this same post on Lemmy. My response there is like yours: not enough users.
True
I think it depends on the game and community migration from reddit.
Deep Rock Galactic and Hunt: Showdown both seem to be picking up steam on their own communities in the fediverse.
Yes, absolutely. I think smaller niche communities should be encouraged whenever possible.
Absolutely. Some exist now, but if you feel passionate about a game you can create a community for it. Someone had to start one on Reddit back in the day, so you can create one here too.
Eventually we’ll get there, the only Mass Effect community is here and it’s basically just the moderator and I making content lol
Keep in mind that we are only seeing rexxitors that left during the protest at the moment. Once the changeover happens and third party apps go down we will see a bunch of additional traffic and users. Might as well get the community started for when that happens! Post memes and whatnot to the gaming communities and put your community in the body text so people can find it too. Gaming is huge on Lemmy just like reddit, and we will continue growing as the problems on reddit become acute in the following days.
IMO only if you plan to be active there and post content to it.
I’m conflicted. While I wish I could go to a targeted community for games I am playing, my experience with Reddit is that these end up being filled with shitposts and memes.
It really depends how they’re moderated. The Monster Hunter subreddit was mostly some fairly good discussion with the odd high-quality meme slipping through.
I stopped using the Terraria subreddit after they added a “memes on weekends” rule though, as it just bled into the other days and made the subreddit kinda unusable.
Yes. Bring on the shitposts. It’s what I’m here for.
bleh shitposts belong in meme subs
Yes, all of them. Like, every last one. Just need the userbase to populate them though. Start up a Starsector sub and you’ll probably get like 40 people at this point. A Suzerain sub would have like 2.
I created https://lemmy.world/c/phasmophobia but doesn’t look like many people are interested
Yes, please. The Animal Crossing sub was delightful and wholesome and the WoW sub had great guides. There are different genres that have different vibes and variety is the spice of life.
I know I’ve been enjoying [email protected] even if it’s not crowded with content yet.
https://kbin.social/m/anothereden is the only game I want to talk about really, the vast majority of the time, but on the other hand, there are an extremely small number of posts there (and most are from me, testing it out and trying to promote it more heavily, so also cross-posting back to the corresponding Reddit sub).
So yeah, go for it if you want, but make sure to “manage expectations”, b/c the more niche it is, the fewer posts per day/week/month/year are going to appear in it.
Reddit never got this fact, but it truly is up to the users what they want to do.
Yes agreed, but I like to think the engagement is more tailored to the content, more inside jokes, more interesting discussion, less crap and shitposting and overall just quality over quantity
Exactly. I suppose within a larger sub each post could be about a single game, or something shared across multiple games, so you could re-create that feeling within a larger community. But unless you play or at least want to know about a ton of games then, the larger the magazine the more irrelevant posts there would be (maybe set up a filter?).
Or, just enjoy discussions at a slower pace - we don’t need to fill the void every moment of every day. Okay uh…we don’t need to try to fill the void every moment of every day with that particular magazine:-).
I think it’s a bit of an if you build it they will come situation. The userbase is growing exponentially and seeding communities is the best way to continue that organic growth. I don’t think the early adopter user is going to bounce when they see it’s a sub with limited users and posts, they’ll see a fresh start.
