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[joe_eyemobi]

I thought this would be interesting to other indies who are as puzzled as me on how to use reddit properly. I've been avoiding it because I didn't get it, but I heard so many good things about it I decided to knuckle down and really work on it The main principle is that you use it like any other community forum and avoid spamming marketing stuff - instead look towards sharing cool things.

http://www.reddit.com/r/IndieGaming/comments/2iltid/so_how_do_you_get_good_at_reddit_as_an_indie_dev/

[Columbo]

I find reddit pretty frustrating. You have subreddits like /r/indiegaming which actively want your self-promoting content, but they have to abide by the site-wide 10% rule (only 10% of your links are allowed to point to yourself). Their solution is the 'self promotion megapost' which is just a graveyard as far as I can tell.

Fair enough, I thought, so only 10% of my stuff can be self promotion. That's OK, I like answering tech stuff on forums, I do it here a bit and on gamedev.net, quite happy to do it over on /r/gamedev too. Except that when you help someone out by answering a question on /r/gamedev, that's just a comment. It doesn't count towards the 90% of posts that have to be non-self promoting. In fact, /r/gamedev won't even let you post any links at all, even if you come across a good article that you want to post, you have to post it as a self post with the link as content.

It's a bit of weird paradigm where you get no 'credit' at all for helping people and answering their questions, you're not allowed to self promote on subreddits that actively want self-promotion, and the only way to avoid falling foul of the 10% rule is post lots of links. To me, coming from regular forums, posting lots of links feels like spamming behaviour and answering stuff/helping people is being part of the community and reddit seems to have it backwards.

Hmm, re-read that and it sounds very negative about reddit, I don't intend to bash it, but it is a bit alien to me the idea that 'being part of the reddit community' is measured by 'numbers of links submitted'. I guess the trap I fell into was seeing reddit in terms of a forum like this one, when in actual fact, the behaviour they seem to want from you on reddit is posting links and posting lots of them.

[gamepopper]

Yeah the self-promotion issues on self-reddit are a pain to go around, and even then some of the bigger game related subreddits have extra rules. If you wanted to post an article you wrote on a gamedev topic in /r/gamedev, they can remove it if it feels like you haven't been descriptive enough, last time I checked I think they expected either three paragraphs or a long summary for it to be accepted by the mods.

Smaller subreddits are much more lenient, especially if you don't act like it's self promoting (e.g. having "check out my game!" or "Look at what I made" in the title), but because they are much smaller they don't get much traction unless they get cross-posted later.

[joe_eyemobi]

@gamepopper @Columbo - absolutely right - reddit's somewhat arcane rules were what really put me off in the first place.  Even now in the last few days I've been commenting all over the place giving feedback as much as possible, and then I post up a link and it gets removed immediately for apparently breaking the 10% rule.  

I did find out a bit more about tracking this though:

If you send a PM to AnalyzeReddit with:

• The body text as: Your username
• The subject as: Analyze

It returns your current activity and you can track your self-promo as the bots do:

User report

from spinnelein sent 5 hours ago

Overview for eyehawk

Redditor for 711 days

13 posts analyzed.
Domain    Count    Percent
self.gamedev    4    30.8
youtube.com    2    15.4
forums.tigsource.com    2    15.4
self.kickstarter    1    7.7
self.IndieGaming    1    7.7
ludumdare.com    1    7.7
incgamers.com    1    7.7
hardcoregamer.com    1    7.7

History for the last month:

5 posts analyzed.
Domain    Count    Percent
youtube.com    1    20.0
self.kickstarter    1    20.0
self.IndieGaming    1    20.0
incgamers.com    1    20.0
hardcoregamer.com    1    20.0

History for the last two weeks:

3 posts analyzed.
Domain    Count    Percent
self.kickstarter    1    33.3
self.IndieGaming    1    33.3
incgamers.com    1    33.3

History for the last week:

3 posts analyzed.
Domain    Count    Percent
self.kickstarter    1    33.3
self.IndieGaming    1    33.3
incgamers.com    1    33.3

[cbox]

I've been on Reddit for a long time now, and the community likes it when you share progress, not so much marketing speak. It's hard though because you see other posts talking about an indie game, and you think - damn I wish someone would write that about me.

[Müsta Klaki]

tips fedora

[joe_eyemobi]

I've been on Reddit for a long time now, and the community likes it when you share progress, not so much marketing speak. It's hard though because you see other posts talking about an indie game, and you think - damn I wish someone would write that about me.

Yeah I guess it all the exposure adds up, but if you post progress perhaps then some other redditors may turn into fans and help posting stuff about your game.  It all just requires investment in time (btw I'd rather just make a game! )

[hagbardgroup]

Bigger subs tend to be overly general to get much of a useful response for a smaller game. There are a lot of smaller genre-specific subreddits that have good activity. Communities like /r/roguelikes have reasonable traffic and subscriber numbers. The small subs also make it a lot easier for you to build name recognition and authority than the huge ones that have big numbers and a more general audience.

If you do want to go after the larger subs, building awareness from the smaller, most-relevant ones and 'rolling up' to the bigger ones is more likely to be successful. That's also a strategy that ports well to public relations (easier to get your game into a major publication or YT channel if you can show that other people are writing about it also).

Tips for what you can do to avoid breaking subreddit rules and general reddit anti-shill rules:

• Participate in community discussions that aren't about your game to build name recognition
• Don't overtly shill unless you have permission from the moderator and identify yourself. Even then, limit your obvious shilling.
• Do organize AMAs with moderators of target subreddits if you have something genuinely interesting to talk about
• Consider advertising. You can target specific subs. CPMs (cost per 1,000 views) are often less than $1. It's not hard to buy out the entire ad inventory of a small sub for months for the cost of a pizza.
• Give away stuff like targeted discounts, codes for LP'ers, and beta invitations

The general thing to keep in mind is that people hate it if you just walk into their subreddit and start talking about how great you are and how awesome that your game is (even if it's true). When you're participating in a community, you can't be in sales-mode unless you have explicit permission to be. You'll be more successful if you properly join the community first, maintain membership over time, and give more value to it than you ask.

This kind of participation is also easier to keep up if you have limited budget and no real marketing plan. It costs you a little time to post actively somewhere, but it's easy/cheap to do it over a long period.

People there and on any online community will be more willing to become customers if you can convince them that you're a member of the tribe. They will tend to have a negative or indifferent reaction if you come to them as some dude hitting them up for money for your game in a drive-by fashion. That goes triple if you're trying to solicit for crowdfunding.

[joe_eyemobi]

Bigger subs tend to be overly general to get much of a useful response for a smaller game. There are a lot of smaller genre-specific subreddits that have good activity. Communities like /r/roguelikes have reasonable traffic and subscriber numbers. The small subs also make it a lot easier for you to build name recognition and authority than the huge ones that have big numbers and a more general audience.

If you do want to go after the larger subs, building awareness from the smaller, most-relevant ones and 'rolling up' to the bigger ones is more likely to be successful. That's also a strategy that ports well to public relations (easier to get your game into a major publication or YT channel if you can show that other people are writing about it also).

Tips for what you can do to avoid breaking subreddit rules and general reddit anti-shill rules:

• Participate in community discussions that aren't about your game to build name recognition
• Don't overtly shill unless you have permission from the moderator and identify yourself. Even then, limit your obvious shilling.
• Do organize AMAs with moderators of target subreddits if you have something genuinely interesting to talk about
• Consider advertising. You can target specific subs. CPMs (cost per 1,000 views) are often less than $1. It's not hard to buy out the entire ad inventory of a small sub for months for the cost of a pizza.
• Give away stuff like targeted discounts, codes for LP'ers, and beta invitations

The general thing to keep in mind is that people hate it if you just walk into their subreddit and start talking about how great you are and how awesome that your game is (even if it's true). When you're participating in a community, you can't be in sales-mode unless you have explicit permission to be. You'll be more successful if you properly join the community first, maintain membership over time, and give more value to it than you ask.

This kind of participation is also easier to keep up if you have limited budget and no real marketing plan. It costs you a little time to post actively somewhere, but it's easy/cheap to do it over a long period.

People there and on any online community will be more willing to become customers if you can convince them that you're a member of the tribe. They will tend to have a negative or indifferent reaction if you come to them as some dude hitting them up for money for your game in a drive-by fashion. That goes triple if you're trying to solicit for crowdfunding.

Great tips HG -Thank you for this detailed recommendation! 

Those are excellent points to slowly build up awareness, both in the smaller subreddits and generally with posts.  I guess from everything I've been learning, the way you approach it is the opposite of what you do in twitter!

Awesome, I plan to invest regularly in it from now on much like I have with TIGForums and the other forums.

[hagbardgroup]

Great tips HG -Thank you for this detailed recommendation! 

Those are excellent points to slowly build up awareness, both in the smaller subreddits and generally with posts.  I guess from everything I've been learning, the way you approach it is the opposite of what you do in twitter!

Awesome, I plan to invest regularly in it from now on much like I have with TIGForums and the other forums.

You're welcome.

The developer to shadow on this method would be Josh Sawyer of Obsidian. He had the benefit of working as a community manager some years back, so he does a great job of maintaining the needed balance. An indie dev that I've seen do this well also are the Gaslamp Games guys (Dungeons of Dredmor), although I don't think either of those do much reddit.

I guess what differentiates reddit and forums is that reddit is one big interconnected set of subforums, each of them with (usually) disconnected moderators and community styles. There's also a bit more of an emphasis on media on subs that aren't set to self-post only. So, pictures and videos that tell some self-contained snippet that's funny/cool/strange/gross or otherwise conversation-worthy. A gun render would be an example of something boring unless there's something very odd about it. Someone making an impossible shot from a long distance in an eye-catching environment would be an example of something that might attract votes and generate discussion.

[Dewfreak83]

I'm pretty new to the indiedev reddit - but it seems like you can talk about your stuff pretty freely - just on certain days/threads?

[joe_eyemobi]

@hagbardgroup - Cool I guess the more unusual/cool the better!  Great I'll have a look at the Gaslamp guys and Josh for inspiration.
@Dewfreak83 - I guess it's ok to post stuff, just not spamming marketing stuff as mentioned by HG above.  I'll try to experiment with different kinds of posts and see what comes back 

[Dewfreak83]

I'll try to experiment with different kinds of posts and see what comes back  

Well from what I've noticed stick with posting your marketing material for review on Mondays in the Marketing Monday thread. You can post screenshots on Saturdays - this is the suggested place to show and talk about WIP (from what I gather). And lastly if you have a working game for play - there are Feedback Fridays.

Just remember there are specific threads for all these - don't start new ones.

Again... I'm pretty new to this... but I've been lurking on there for a few months now.

[joe_eyemobi]

Cool thanks Dewfreak, I'll have a look at those 2 ongoing threads

[hagbardgroup]

Figured I'd drop this here. Failbetter games ran this ad and it was featured by the reddit ads team:

All-text ad for an undersea RPG

So far, it's showing 347 votes and 141 comments. No clue about the impact on sales because I'm not involved. Another plus of going with a paid promotion is that people keep talking about it for three months. Otherwise, on active subs, threads rarely persist for more than a few days at a time.

You can see that early on, they get some immediate feedback that the acronym that they're using to describe Early Access is confusing. Fortunately, because these kinds of ads are pretty cheap, they can use that information to refine their work later.

I have no idea whether or not the ad layout works they chose worked well for them, and I know that reddit's system makes it complicated/impossible to test ads properly compared to their major competitors.

You'd could compare that result with the ongoing difficulty of finding relevant discussions in different subreddits and participating in them consistently over time.

I PMed their account and linked them to this thread. Hopefully, they might be willing to share some of their experience with the campaign.

As an aside, I have had mixed experiences with the reddit ad support team. While they're nice, you will sometimes have one of their support reps tell you one thing and another contradict what the previous rep said. That probably changes if you have a lot of spending running with them and they assign you a rep.

[joe_eyemobi]

Awesome thanks HG! 
140+ votes would do wonders for their publicity!

Yeah reddit rules (seeming inconsistencies) in general put me off a little bit as well in the beginning.  However, I will persevere this time!

[hagbardgroup]

Awesome thanks HG! 
140+ votes would do wonders for their publicity!

Yeah reddit rules (seeming inconsistencies) in general put me off a little bit as well in the beginning.  However, I will persevere this time!

Nice.

Some subs that might work for Phantasmal for organic participation besides making your own sub (I would name a fan who is also a non-crazy-person a mod):

http://www.reddit.com/r/HorrorGaming
http://www.reddit.com/r/survivalhorror
http://www.reddit.com/r/horrorgamevideos (teeny-tiny but active)
http://www.reddit.com/r/proceduralgeneration/ (probably more for a tech-y audience - good for dev logs)
http://www.reddit.com/r/roguelikedev (not quite a perfect fit but maybe)

Subreddits with purchase intent that would probably be bad for normal participation but might be good for ads:

http://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/
http://www.reddit.com/r/gamedeals/
http://www.reddit.com/r/steam/
http://www.reddit.com/r/IndieGaming  (the self-promo rules make it less of a headache to buy an ad -- the inventory is vacant right now)
http://www.reddit.com/r/letsplay (advertise actual LPs here or encourage LPers to post here without a financial incentive -- if you've seen trailers that use LPer audio and clips before, I think something like that'd be a good fit)

Potential lookalike audiences (ads almost certainly better option):

http://www.reddit.com/r/globaloffensive (do CS:GO-ers like horror games? I know I do)

I would suggest the Amnesia/Frictional-related subreddits, but none of them have enough traffic to really go after. It'd be very funny to buy out the inventory for pocket change, and possibly effective.

Other zany ideas include looking at the schedule on /r/iama periodically to find potential one-day advertising opportunities on the sub. Usually has nothing to do with gaming, but sometimes it does.

I would stay away from audience targeting on any platform, reddit included, because it's usually terrible without the ability to be super-finicky with it. Maybe I'm just bigoted because I prefer to have as much control over targeting as possible. It could be that it works well. I just haven't used it enough to make an authoritative recommendation. There is a gaming affinity, but for example, if your game is PC only and your impressions get wasted on console related subs, your spend will be close to useless.

Anyway, there's a lot you can do with reddit if you jump over the initial challenge of the prickly rules and the feeling of spitting into an ocean that comes from trying to get results off of the biggest subs.

Keep in mind that ad agencies working for the AAAs have professionals making pseudo-viral media that they're posting to the really high traffic subs, using methods both fair and foul to boost the votes and sway moderators. Indies that are actually indie without publisher backing have to use alternate methods to gain traction.

[FailbetterGames]

Hey!  Failbetter Games here.  We don't actually have conversion data for the campaign -- for various reasons, it's surprisingly difficult to get for games.  But we do have some encouraging indirect evidence (we've segmented site traffic, for instance, and compared it with our daily sales).

There's already a lot of good advice in this thread.  Here are a few other things we've learned.

• Reddit is a pretty critical environment, and people can comment on your ads.  (You can turn that off, but it's not generally a good idea.)  I usually wouldn't recommend advertising there unless you're confident in your game.  Here's a cautionary example.
• That said, there are exceptions.  Redditors like being asked for feedback; you may be able to find a subreddit that's particularly enthusiastic about the kind of stuff you do; and candour about what does and doesn't work in your game (and any plans you have to fix things) tends to go down well.
• If your ad is interesting, redditors will read and engage with it even if it's pretty long.  I can't think of anywhere else on the internet where we'd post several paragraphs of copy.  That said, our ad is probably too long (although it's hard to know for sure, because reddit comments and upvotes and limited inventory make it very tricky to A/B test).
• Is your game in early access?  Someone (several someones) will use your ad to talk about early access and how it is/isn't paying to QA/a scam.  If it has permadeath or procedural generation, people will want to argue about whether it's a roguelike.  Why isn't there a Linux version?  And so on.  It's worth considering how you might respond to predictable questions and objections -- how you field them will effect the cost per conversion on your ad.

Good luck!

[hagbardgroup]

Hey!  Failbetter Games here.  We don't actually have conversion data for the campaign -- for various reasons, it's surprisingly difficult to get for games.  But we do have some encouraging indirect evidence (we've segmented site traffic, for instance, and compared it with our daily sales).

There's already a lot of good advice in this thread.  Here are a few other things we've learned.

• Reddit is a pretty critical environment, and people can comment on your ads.  (You can turn that off, but it's not generally a good idea.)  I usually wouldn't recommend advertising there unless you're confident in your game.  Here's a cautionary example.
• That said, there are exceptions.  Redditors like being asked for feedback; you may be able to find a subreddit that's particularly enthusiastic about the kind of stuff you do; and candour about what does and doesn't work in your game (and any plans you have to fix things) tends to go down well.
• If your ad is interesting, redditors will read and engage with it even if it's pretty long.  I can't think of anywhere else on the internet where we'd post several paragraphs of copy.  That said, our ad is probably too long (although it's hard to know for sure, because reddit comments and upvotes and limited inventory make it very tricky to A/B test).

It's

• Is your game in early access?  Someone (several someones) will use your ad to talk about early access and how it is/isn't paying to QA/a scam.  If it has permadeath or procedural generation, people will want to argue about whether it's a roguelike.  Why isn't there a Linux version?  And so on.  It's worth considering how you might respond to predictable questions and objections -- how you field them will effect the cost per conversion on your ad.

Good luck!

Thanks for stopping by! It's interesting that WoWarplanes got clobbered in the comments. Could be any number of reasons. F2P results in a ton of people trying it out and possibly disliking it. The ad itself was only a headline instead of a self-post.

[joe_eyemobi]

Hey!  Failbetter Games here.  We don't actually have conversion data for the campaign -- for various reasons, it's surprisingly difficult to get for games.  But we do have some encouraging indirect evidence (we've segmented site traffic, for instance, and compared it with our daily sales).

There's already a lot of good advice in this thread.  Here are a few other things we've learned.

• Reddit is a pretty critical environment, and people can comment on your ads.  (You can turn that off, but it's not generally a good idea.)  I usually wouldn't recommend advertising there unless you're confident in your game.  Here's a cautionary example.
• That said, there are exceptions.  Redditors like being asked for feedback; you may be able to find a subreddit that's particularly enthusiastic about the kind of stuff you do; and candour about what does and doesn't work in your game (and any plans you have to fix things) tends to go down well.
• If your ad is interesting, redditors will read and engage with it even if it's pretty long.  I can't think of anywhere else on the internet where we'd post several paragraphs of copy.  That said, our ad is probably too long (although it's hard to know for sure, because reddit comments and upvotes and limited inventory make it very tricky to A/B test).
• Is your game in early access?  Someone (several someones) will use your ad to talk about early access and how it is/isn't paying to QA/a scam.  If it has permadeath or procedural generation, people will want to argue about whether it's a roguelike.  Why isn't there a Linux version?  And so on.  It's worth considering how you might respond to predictable questions and objections -- how you field them will effect the cost per conversion on your ad.

Good luck!

Awesome thanks for the great insight FailbetterGames!  Those are good points, I guess preparation is the key esp. for the SGL Early Access Programme.  That's a great tip to brainstorm some answers to some curly questions that might come our way.  SGL EA in general has copped a lot of flak lately, but some games seemed to have fared quite well under it - sounds like some interesting case studies could be done!