Back with newsgroups the general rule was to go from general to specific. You start with a general discussion group and when discussions about video games get annoying you create a games group. If then there are too many Baldur’s Gate discussions you create BG. If they are dominated by Baldur’s Gate 3 you create a Baldur’s Gate 3 group. If everyone is fawning over Withers you create a Withers group which of course will be flooded with discussion about the Withers’ tits mod, which shall get its own group.

Meaning you should create a group when demand is there and not the other way around.

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[–] missingno@fedia.io 10 points 1 week ago (1 children)

The problem is that trying to talk about very specific things in a general community will just result in silence if no one in the general community knows/cares about the very specific thing.

On Reddit, you can type /r/nameofanygame and find a sub populated by people who also found it that way. This obviously cannot work on Lemmy, not outside of a few very very very popular games. But for games that are too niche to have fandom spaces here, directing the niche fandom elements to !games@sh.itjust.works isn't likely to fit there either. Some of my favorite games are titles that I might just literally be the only person on Lemmy who plays them, so I just don't think there's any kind of space for them, general or specific.

I play a lot of Riichi Mahjong, and I saw that !mahjong@lemmy.nerdcore.social already exists, so when I see some interesting content I try tossing it over there in the hopes that if I keep doing so, maybe at some point more people will eventually join me. Would I be better off posting to !boardgames@sopuli.xyz because generalist good, specific bad? Probably not, I doubt anyone there is interested in deep technical What Would You Discard? analysis. Maybe the most surface level casual/beginner content might fit in, I could crosspost a basic How to Play tutorial there, but content that is too specific doesn't make sense in that kind of community.

[–] Blaze@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

Some of my favorite games are titles that I might just literally be the only person on Lemmy who plays them, so I just don’t think there’s any kind of space for them, general or specific.

What genre are those games? There is

So maybe there is a genre category that your game could belong to?

[–] Elevator7009sAlt@ani.social 5 points 1 week ago

lol I have been trying to compile a list of all active video game genre communities to release here at some point, thanks for helping me with some I did not know of, here's what I had so far

!adventuregames@lemm.ee (also has puzzle and interactive fiction)
!automationgames@lemmy.zip (replaces dead feddit.de community)
!citybuilders@sh.itjust.works
!cozygames@lemmy.world (replaces dead feddit.de community)
!crpg@lemmy.world
!dailygames@lemmy.zip (for quick once-a-day web games like Wordle)
!incremental_games@incremental.social
!jrpg@lemmy.zip and !jrpg@lemmy.world
!lifesimulation@lemmy.world
!otomegames@ani.socialo
!rhythmgames@lemm.ee
!shmups@lemmus.org
!soulslike@lemmy.zip
!tycoon@lemmy.world
!visualnovels@ani.social

[–] missingno@fedia.io 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I play a fair amount of stuff, some mainstream enough to post here, some not. But genre-wise I'd say my biggest favorites are fighting games and versus puzzle games.

!fgc@lemmy.world exists, and I do post there occasionally. But the games I play (Skullgirls, Them's Fightin' Herds, Under Night In-Birth) are the niche-within-a-niche, I've drifted off from the wider mainstream FGC.

Versus puzzle games... I'm the guy who been very disgruntled over the fact that the genre as a whole is dead and buried. There's just not much of a community for these games anywhere anymore.

Last year I published a video essay about how Sega's mismanagement slowly killed Puyo Puyo. I did post that one to a few communities here, because "In-depth video essay about a game you've never played but will still find interesting by the end of this video" is a genre that can fit into a general space.

But that kind of video essay is the only type of content that I think I could post here. I don't expect anyone to take an interest in competitive highlights, coaching, analysis, etc. Last week we got some more news about Sega screwing up again, but that's still not something I'd expect to generate discussion here.

It's not just how niche the games themselves are, but the distinction between the type of content that fits a general space versus content only hardcore fans will even understand, let alone take an interest in.

[–] Elevator7009sAlt@ani.social 3 points 1 week ago

Somehow !adventuregames@lemm.ee has also absorbed puzzle games there. Not where I'd think to look but okay.

If you made a puzzle game community I'd totally follow and post whenever I see one.

Sadly I do not really engage with video essays because… ugh, video, I'd rather read an article. Shame, because I wish I could say "I'll engage with this high quality content!" but truth is I have some I reject on personal tastes too. But I promise there are people who will, even if it is only a few. Speaking as someone trucking on with some communities of like… one other person, and I am lucky to have even gotten them because I was screaming at the void for awhile now.