Nintendude
Smash Hero
Just to clear up any confusion, I also posted a [modified] version of this thread in Melee Discussion. I'm posting it here too because I'm trying to reach out to as many smashers as possible and know that many Brawl players here don't check the Melee forum.
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I'm sure most of you are familiar with reddit, but if you aren't, reddit is an extremely large general interest internet community. The basic premise is that people post topics or interesting links and people vote on them (an upvote or a downvote). Heavily upvoted posts tend to go viral since they appear on the front few pages of reddit, where they are even further upvoted.
Now, within reddit there are thousands of "subreddits." Subreddits are subcommunities of reddit catering to a specific interest, such as gaming, music, art, etc. If you subscribe to a subreddit, then you'll see upvoted posts in that subreddit in addition to all the popular stuff on the main page. There are subreddits for individual gaming communities, and this is where Smash comes in.
A list of gaming subreddits can be seen here. As you can see, games such as Minecraft, Starcraft, TF2, WoW, and Pokemon have over 10000 subscribers. That's likely way more than the number of people that actively browse Smashboards. Even single player games like the Elder Scrolls games have around 1000 subscribers. Now, if all these games can have these kind of reddit communities, why not Smash?
I think one of the biggest problems with the Smash community, in terms of outreach, is that it is very isolated. Your average gamer knows that competitive Starcraft exists, but very few people (relative to the amount of people that play the game) know about competitive Smash. I think that Reddit is one way to address this problem. If we can get a Smash community going there, we can quickly advertise tournaments, livestreams, combo videos, and other things related to competitive Smash to thousands of new people.
The link to the Smash subreddit is www.reddit.com/r/smashbros
It has been pretty defunct for 3 years now and has only 75 subscribers. The main issue here is that people won't subscribe to an inactive subreddit. If we can somehow work to create activity on r/smashbros, we can attract the general population of reddit. Obviously these players may all be casual players, or even people just looking forward to the newly announced games, but that doesn't matter. If we can expose these people to competitive Smash, I bet we can get some new faces into this community.
Also, the community there right now is extremely Melee-centric. I don't personally have a problem with this since I love Melee, but in order to get growth, you need significant Brawl representation. That's another reason why I'm posting this here.
Sorry if this is a long read. If you need clarification on anything, or has any ideas, please post here. And just to make it clear, I'm not advocating migrating to reddit, nor am I just advertising another Smash site. I'm asking you all to try to generate some activity on r/smashbros, so the general reddit gaming community will take notice and subscribe, and then keep it active without any help from Smashboards.
btw it's worth mentioning that I've contacted the founder of r/smashbros and got him to make me a moderator (my account there is Elbedhar), so I have full control over the subreddit.
TLDR: Let's try to form a Smash community on reddit. Go to www.reddit.com/r/smashbros, subscribe, post stuff, and tell your friends. We can hopefully expand the Smash community by doing this.
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I'm sure most of you are familiar with reddit, but if you aren't, reddit is an extremely large general interest internet community. The basic premise is that people post topics or interesting links and people vote on them (an upvote or a downvote). Heavily upvoted posts tend to go viral since they appear on the front few pages of reddit, where they are even further upvoted.
Now, within reddit there are thousands of "subreddits." Subreddits are subcommunities of reddit catering to a specific interest, such as gaming, music, art, etc. If you subscribe to a subreddit, then you'll see upvoted posts in that subreddit in addition to all the popular stuff on the main page. There are subreddits for individual gaming communities, and this is where Smash comes in.
A list of gaming subreddits can be seen here. As you can see, games such as Minecraft, Starcraft, TF2, WoW, and Pokemon have over 10000 subscribers. That's likely way more than the number of people that actively browse Smashboards. Even single player games like the Elder Scrolls games have around 1000 subscribers. Now, if all these games can have these kind of reddit communities, why not Smash?
I think one of the biggest problems with the Smash community, in terms of outreach, is that it is very isolated. Your average gamer knows that competitive Starcraft exists, but very few people (relative to the amount of people that play the game) know about competitive Smash. I think that Reddit is one way to address this problem. If we can get a Smash community going there, we can quickly advertise tournaments, livestreams, combo videos, and other things related to competitive Smash to thousands of new people.
The link to the Smash subreddit is www.reddit.com/r/smashbros
It has been pretty defunct for 3 years now and has only 75 subscribers. The main issue here is that people won't subscribe to an inactive subreddit. If we can somehow work to create activity on r/smashbros, we can attract the general population of reddit. Obviously these players may all be casual players, or even people just looking forward to the newly announced games, but that doesn't matter. If we can expose these people to competitive Smash, I bet we can get some new faces into this community.
Also, the community there right now is extremely Melee-centric. I don't personally have a problem with this since I love Melee, but in order to get growth, you need significant Brawl representation. That's another reason why I'm posting this here.
Sorry if this is a long read. If you need clarification on anything, or has any ideas, please post here. And just to make it clear, I'm not advocating migrating to reddit, nor am I just advertising another Smash site. I'm asking you all to try to generate some activity on r/smashbros, so the general reddit gaming community will take notice and subscribe, and then keep it active without any help from Smashboards.
btw it's worth mentioning that I've contacted the founder of r/smashbros and got him to make me a moderator (my account there is Elbedhar), so I have full control over the subreddit.
TLDR: Let's try to form a Smash community on reddit. Go to www.reddit.com/r/smashbros, subscribe, post stuff, and tell your friends. We can hopefully expand the Smash community by doing this.
