even more unfortunate is that /r/IndieGaming doesn't really give a shit anymore.
/r/IndieGaming mod here. We do we care quite a bit actually. I don't normally reply to comments like this, but you raised a few really interesting things, so I hope you won't mind. Walcor's post just wasn't the right fit for /r/indiegaming. We're a mix of a community for fans and for devs, and we try to foster communication between fans and devs. And one of the ways we try to manage that is by not allowing memes and low effort stuff. The problem with low effort posts (and btw, that doesn't necessarily refer to the OP not exerting effort) is that if allowed, they take precedence over EVERYTHING else.
Reddit puts a lot of weight on timing. The earlier you vote, the more powerful your vote is. A funny screenshot or meme or similar image takes seconds to look at and vote on. An article about a game, or a dev blog, or a kickstarter or a good quality self post take minutes to read and vote on. And by that time, your vote is worth less. That's why image posts rise so quickly to the top. And subreddits that are only images tend to hit /r/alll more frequently.
Even if we only got a few of these types of posts a day, and they weren't great quality, they'd still end up the top posts of the day almost every day. That means that other types of posts get less visibility. That means less people seeing the awesome stuff devs are doing, and less people participating in discussions and so on.
"Low effort content" doesn't really refer to the amount of work the OP puts in (though it can). After all, submitting an article link doesn't take much effort. What it refers to more broadly is content that is super easily digestible. Something that doesn't take any effort for the user. They click, they laugh, they vote, they move on. You can view a few pages worth of posts from a meme based sub pretty quickly - its low effort, easily digestible content. Which isn't on its own a bad thing. The problem is, it's really hard to combine that sort of content with content that has greater depth in the same sub. The reddit voting system gives so much weight to low effort content that everything else sinks.
IndieGaming is about promoting other people's work, and has really become a place for fans of independent games to post, not authors of independent games.
That's not quite right. Out of fifty posts on our front page, 7 are devs promoting their games. There are 12 discussion posts, of these 4 are discussions started by devs and aimed at other devs. There are another 4 articles that are specifically aimed at devs, including a couple about M.O.O.N. About a quarter of the front page is devs promoting their stuff, or talking to other devs. About half the front page is various games and kickstarters being posted by fans (many of whom are devs and self promote here as well).We're aimed at both devs and fans. There's a lot of dev posts on /r/IndieGaming, some say too much. I mean, its to the point where unless you specifically mention that you aren't involved in making the game, most commenters will just assume that you are. We try and balance the sub between devs and fans, and whenever it tips slightly, half the people are excited and half are annoyed.
Because somehow there's been a line drawn where original content is self promotion, and self promotion is advertising, and advertising is bad. There's probably a reason for this, but it's... I dunno, it's not great for what I come to those subs for.
Part of it is just that there are a lot of spammers, and part of it is that yeah, reddit handles original content poorly. Let's say you're the dev of a game and there are 18 relevant subs that you can post about your game in. And you do. You don't post in any sub more than once a month. From the POV of the individual communities, your stuff is awesome. You're making high quality posts and engaging with the community. You aren't posting too frequently, and don't appear spammy. From reddit's perspective, you're a spammer. You've been a redditor a few months and you have over 100 posts and they're all about your game.
This is the dilemma reddit has. It's especially rough on game oriented subs and creator oriented subs because the idea the community has often runs smack into these site-wide rules. Reddit's said that they're going to come out with a whole new system for original content, but until then, it's a bit rough.
It's likely the ramification of games being seen as creative works by their creators (similar to webcomics), but as products by the consumers of the work (dissimilar to webcomics). The solution is likely to be found in a subreddit that is for developers, by developers, where there's no risk of alienating people who would rather just see the 'best of' and 'new hot' consumer-focused stuff.
Hmm, that's interesting. I've never really thought of it that way, but that's an interesting point. I disagree with your conclusion though. The problem isn't that fans only want to see the 'best of' and 'hot new' consumer focused stuff, especially not in /r/indiegaming. And there already are developer only communities (though they run into the same problems with reddit's site-wide spam rules).