My friend and I were talking this week about trying to find some good online gaming communities to be a part of. I thought this process would be a lot easier than it actually was now that I had a gaming platform to connect with the rest of the world (it wasn’t for us at least). It took a lot of digging through forums on numerous sites to find ones that were worth checking out.
One thing that made it so difficult was that there are so many different communities for every genre and playstyle of gaming! It’s awesome, but it also leads to a lot of time-consuming research to find communities of people with similar personalities and gaming preferences so I tested each one myself and shared my experience with each resource!
1. GamerPals on Reddit: best for RPG and open world friends
Google the game you want to play with the r/gamerpals tag or join the community directly. I found posts for games like Ghost Recon Breakpoint within the last couple weeks at the time of posting this article. There’s players of all ages looking for friends every week!
“Looking for a friend to play co-op Far Cry 6 Online With, PS4 and a mic if able!”.
— Peruvian-Florist, reddit user
You can also scroll through the feeds and do a ctrl F to search for specific games you have to see if any pop up.
I would say this one is hands down the best site for finding communities of players just like you. I was But when you see comments like “looking for rad friends to play Far Cry 6 with,” you know you’re in the right place.
Most of the threads are super chill individuals looking for specific games to play with people. You can usually tell how serious or relaxed the person is based on what they say they’re interested in.
2. GameTree: best for fireteam and online competitive gaming friends
This app is a more curated version of the GamerPals thread on Reddit. You input your interests, what games you have, skill level, and a couple of other details. After that, it connects you to a bunch of people that have similar interests and matches with you.
This would be especially helpful for games like Overwatch where it pays to know the capabilities of teammates and what roles they’re good at playing. I recommend downloading the desktop version if you have a gaming PC so you can connect and link up with players once they match with you.
“Was on this app for 20 minutes inputting my personality traits and gaming preferences and this app works absolutely perfect for finding the exact type of gamer groups you want to find. It’s so good to finally have an app like this I feel comfortable using!”
– Rūku Ōkuri, interviewed GameTree User
One of the best functions about this app is that it has built-in tags for people’s skill levels and what classes they tend to play as. You could use this to put together a super cohesive team for games like Battlefield and many more.
3. GamerLink: best for matching gaming personalities (roleplaying, speedrun etc)
I really like this one after looking through their site and app features. They do the same thing as Gamr2Gamr and include every platform from Steam, Origin, WiiU, and even BattleSpace. I searched for some reviews on it since I haven’t used this specific one yet.
“If I am looking for a group to play competitive overwatch with I can browse people who are also looking to play, they create “beacons” that detail what heroes they play and if they use mic.”
— Voidzspawn, GamerLink user
Most people were saying it’s incredibly helpful for them to find people to join their party. It takes a little bit of getting used to the interface and using all of its features but well worth it once you really figure it out.
4. Discord LFG Page: best for finding new release AAA gaming friends
LFG stands for ‘Looking For Gamers” and you’ll see this term come up on Discord pages specifically for gamers looking for friends. You can also use this app as a way to talk to your friends using a mic. This is how my brother and I will communicate online when we’re playing together.
Its another app similar to GameTree but this one lets you communicate with people in the same game as you. Since Minecraft doesn’t have an audio chat system like a lot of other games, it comes in really handy if you can’t have friends physically present to play at your house/dorm.
It uses a sub-app called TeamSpeak, and your friends can add you to their lobby using something similar to a group code.
The Forest and Rust gaming communities greatly appreciate apps like this to talk with teammates since these games naturally pit players against each other. I just downloaded this one so I can connect with some of my Minecraft friends.
5. Noobly: best for casual gamers looking to socialize
Noobly allows you to add tags to your profile based on interests other than gaming. The intent is to match people who either like to talk about the same things while they game or to even have a friendship outside of the gamer community.
This one is best for gamers older than 18 since it’s more of a social platform than just a way to find people to play the same video game with and it’s aimed at conversation topics unlike GamerLink.
6. Playsum: best alternative option
I play a lot of older AAA titles that don’t have a lot of gamer communities left. After trying to find Ghost Recon Breakpoint role player gamers on Gamerlink with no luck, I downloaded Playsum and found a few gamertag leads on this one.
If all else fails, this app does everything else that Gametree and Gamerlink do so I figured it’s worth mentioning.
7. Using Steam to Find Friends: best for finding indie genre gamer friends
Some communities are more active on the forum pages than others. The Arma III one is perhaps the most helpful. If you can’t find friends on any of the other sites, I recommend actually leaving a comment and see if anyone responds.
A lot of threads on the topic of meetups get lost in all the other conversation for that specific game. Steam gets the most traffic to their forum threads than all these other sites, so it’s more likely that you’ll get someone to respond to your post on here.
Important Note: None of these links are sponsored and I don’t receive a commission for you clicking on these links or using them.
Final Thoughts
There are tons and tons of different gaming communities out there. With these resources, hopefully I’ve provided you everything you need to find the one that best suits you. Whether it’s the role-playing Ghost Recon Wildlands enthusiasts or the mega trolls that run around in Rust destroying people’s bases, now you have access to the best sites to find some friends.
It’s a lot easier to connect with friends and people all around the world nowadays, but I still feel most gaming companies are falling just short of meeting the desires of their co-op and split-screen fans. In my personal opinion, even a game that sucks can be made lightyears more enjoyable if you have a friend to make fun of it with. As always, feel free to leave a comment if I missed anything and thank you all for reading! I’m also looking for article suggestions if you have any.
As always, if you have any comments on anything feel free the leave one below or reach out at entertainmentden.ns@gmail.com and I’ll do my best to respond!
