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 !otomegames@ani.social, which is mostly romance visual novels for women who like men, to !newcommunities@lemmy.world. I appreciate it. But I am not sure how posting these games to !games@lemmy.world 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 !games@lemmy.world 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 !games@lemmy.world 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 !games@lemmy.world would take to it. So that’s my rationale for having these niche communities. You’re still very free to think I’m wrong ;)