I’m curious what people tend to use to achieve visibility/talk about for their games with fans–and which platforms they’ve gotten the best interaction and feedback from?
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Feel free to debate the pros and cons of these platforms (FOR WRITERS AND CREATORS SPECIFICALLY!) and which you think is most helpful for writers of WIPs, HGs, and COGs!
I’d say discord too but I don’t actually have one. Though it is proably one of the best ways to achieve consistent communications with readers.
Personally, I’ve had a lot of success with Tumblr and find that it’s a great tool to answer questions, share fanart and relevant topics, and have more of a “personality” to interact with readers than any other site (and without ‘spamming’ places like the forums). I do think the visibility of games is certainly heightened on there, with an ability to draw many more followers from outside the community in–and I think you can get a lot of encouragement and support on there in a more personal way!
However, the more formal, linear format of the forums is great for organizing actual conversations and feedback threads, as well as having one single “information hub” for the game to refer back to as a master post!
Each has their pros and cons, but I would personally recommend that WIP authors at least try to have accounts on both platforms, if not more! 
I use plenty of methods, just none of them very well. But admittedly, that isn’t a fault of the networks themselves, but my own for never bothering much with social media and having few followers. Something I still don’t really regret. I have a Facebook page, an old Twitter account from the webcomic days (@nukepoweredtoaster for anyone interested) and have mentioned it on a few Discord channels and website forums.
I still like the forum here better than any of ‘em.
Forums mostly, Twitter, and Discord. I chat about my work on my personal Facebook account, but that’s more for my friends than for the wider world as my FB is very locked down.
I like the forums for being able to have my own little pockets of discussion, and I find it easy to navigate and reply. Twitter is such a mass that it’s easy to miss stuff or get lost in the crowd, but I do like being able to keep up with gamedev people en mass.
Discord is nice for informal chat and dipping in and out of discussion. I haven’t tried having my own server, though - I’d be curious to hear about other authors’ experiences with that.
I’d been considering getting a work Tumblr, but then the rule changes happened so… Not sure if that’s going to happen.
There’s probably a better place to answer this, but regarding Tumblr: I’ve recently hit 1,000 followers between both my WIP blogs, so I think I can share some insight!
Having a Tumblr for your game is extremely time-consuming, particularly once it picks up steam and attracts lots of interest. For every ten questions I answer, there are ten more, so I’ve had a backlog of 300 questions stored up that I can’t quite make a dent in, because once I answer twenty, twenty more come in!
Answering ten questions (depending on their depth and detail) can take me anywhere from fifteen minutes to an hour (and that’s in between a full-time job, commuting, making dinner, cleaning, working out, and trying to find the time to write on a normal weekday). So to keep your Tumblr presence from hampering your productivity in other areas, you have to have a lot of discipline: you have to be okay with letting questions sit there or making fans wait, and you have to be strict about how much time you spend on there to get anything done. It can get a little gross when certain readers become demanding of your time on there, but by and large it’s easy to deal with and very rare: 99.99% of the people I’ve encountered on there have been incredibly patient, supportive, and encouraging, just like the community here!
So, while it is time-consuming, I find it really excellent in both gaining and interacting closely with a potential fanbase. More importantly, not only do the questions on Tumblr cause me to think of my game in new and interesting ways, they help me know my characters and world so much better than if interactions were limited simply to testers betaing a presented project. I hope that makes sense? I’ve gained so much inspiration and clarity from interacting with hundreds of people eager to know more about my story that I think it’s a beautiful trade-off for time spent (so long as you are disciplined). The questions posed and the free-form, off-the-cuff way of talking about my world/story/characters often propels creativity more for me than on here, whereas this is a more formal process to refine an offered game.
Also, people on Tumblr are more apt to share/reblog fan art, fanfiction, memes, inside jokes, relevant gifs, blogs and reviews, and etc., rather than posting them here in the relevant threads, so there’s that!
I totally get this, though. Sometimes I feel the same way and struggle to keep up with both WIP and Tumblr, but the struggle is 100% worth it for me. I’d recommend Tumblr to any writer only if that writer feels they have the time and energy to maintain it!
That is extremely helpful information. I was considering creating one, but I don’t think I should. I already don’t give my current WIP thread all the attention it deserves because of how busy I am with family life, work, and the actual writing of the story. It sounds like Tumblr would be more of a single man/woman’s game.
I hate tmblr because makes half people has more information that the rest. LORE SHOULD BE IN GAME and or a official wiki or game page. I don’t suppose go stalking author media to found if instead talking about their cats is talking about the game i am interesting on. Then I am supposed to scrolls 1000 memes and emote fill messages for people i don’t know and care less. To maybe maybe find something that is valuable and a headache.
I feel old I hate all that social media banality. and lack of anything really. I am old and grumpy. And feel each time buy the damn game is less and less valuable as the info only gets royalty fans than then calling you stupid for not knowing something IS NOT IN THE BOOKS because author put in an arcane place two years ago between a meme of puppies. Your game should talking for yourself not a totally different media
preach
Because some WiPs get updated more frequently than others, most of the WiPs with very low likes are the ones which are updated in very long intervals and/or are not active enough to be noticed. Which again is because it’s not being updated frequently, while there are threads like Seven Heirs of Ophaesia (think I got the name right?) which are active despite (formerly) being on hiatus are so because of lore stuff being shared on tumblr and a pantheon of characters.
Sorry but nope. Heirs had enormously traffic before Tumblr and before patreon like more than a year before. And most of people in the forum thread aren’t in Tumblr. Tumblr is not the golden goose of humanity. Everyone hail Tumblr saviour of gaming. Yes i am being sarcastic. But I have know people that have bwing harassed using it and all my experiences with it are bad. Then I discovered that authors hide there info that should be available to all and that’s used to other fans to directly mocking the others causing division in fans that should not happening on first place
Yeah, I’m not much into it either but it does work (sometimes) to boost popularity for newer games and some wip fandoms and authors do use it so it isn’t all that bad.
Well I hope so … But I swear if someone AND YOU ARE A FAN… THAT IS NOT TRUE AUTHOR SAYS X IN TUMBLR that x is F…
You are a noob… etc etc… inserting all trolling and emotes.
Patreon i understand they have privileged content THEY PAY for it. But tumblr is free why in hell they have to be privileged access why not copy paste the content in Tumblr in forum … Double exposure!!! and is same time copy paste the replying to the question.
As we’re discussing about the impact of tumblr in WIPs, I have to agree that I’m not entirely happy with it. I guess it depends on how the author utilizes it, but in some cases tumblr posts are filled with information that aren’t existed in games and then these were discussed in wip thread. It kinda ruin the reading experience for me because I want to encounter those info and surprises whilst reading, not because tumblr posts being discussed.
For example someone asks ‘can we kill character A?’
Dude, I want to know that when I play the game, not from post in wip! 
If too much information outside the story is being shared, I kinda feel like what is the point in reading the final story later anyway.
I understand what y’all are saying about certain information being only on tumblr, and not in the book. But you can’t always put every little thing into a book. Sometimes things are going to get cut cause they interrupt the flow, sometimes certain scenarios are never gonna come up, but people are still going to be curious. I think the idea of “all the answers should be in the book” kind of takes away the fun of it all. If you can’t theorize and headcanon and discuss a story, of it all wraps up nicely in a little bow at the end and there’s no mystery left… well where’s the fun in that?
Tumblr, is a tool just like any other. If you don’t want to engage with it you don’t have to. As someone stated earlier, keeping up a tumblr can be very hard work. It can be rewarding, yes, but also very difficult. So answering questions on tumblr and then having to repost them on the forum is a little ridiculous. And, while I can’t speak for others, in my experience, people will just provide the link to the ask if someone asks a question on the forum that’s already been answered on the tumblr. I have never seen a tumblr page provide pertinent information that wasn’t/isn’t going to be in the game itself. And, those posts are usually tagged with “spoiler” which, you can always blacklist or choose to scroll past.
I think it’s best to thing of the tumblr as more of an archive of extra information/scenarios. It’s merely something that fans who want more in the interim while they wait for another book/update can turn to. And it’s helpful to authors as well for many reasons. One, it helps gain a fan base which is always encouraging. Two, it allows creators to think critically in a way they might not have before, helping them to develop their characters. And three it provides a less formal setting for the author and the audience to interact. And while yes there are downsides to it as well, there can be harrassment and people demanding things of the author and something problems can arise from that, it’s pretty telling that a lot of authors still have development blog tumblrs.
I fully agree with this not only in regards to Tumblr posts but also in general. I’ve noticed that the less you share about your story, the less interested people get, which is weird to me because I would think the mystery of the story would be more enticing. That was my biggest cultural shift when coming to these forums. It seems like most people want to know what will happen before it’s even written, and then the story ends up getting so spoiled that there’s basically no point in reading it then.
Seems like some of the posts about off-site social media use should be in their own thread.
I kind of agree that some sharing of non-story information can go a little overboard, but that can happen on the forum too. The question of what to tell fans and what to keep to yourself is probably more of a “varies from author to author” thing than a strict “here is where the line is”–some questions get asked that were never going to come up in the capacity of the story, there shouldn’t be a problem with answering those.
And I can see why a big tumblr full of extra information is intimidating–but I’ve never found it more intimidating than a very long WIP thread. I mean, I feel like I’m just expanding on what @rosemary_and_sage said, which I think pretty well sums it up.
I agree with you in some point; which is why I prefer to stay away from discussion in wip and focus only on the demo.
However, as what I believe has been insinuated by Mara, I also don’t want to be expected to know some characters background and to have emotional connection with those characters if those things that could lead to it aren’t not in the story.
I forgot where I read/heard about this but I think an author said this once, if it’s not in the story then it’s not part of the story. I agree author might have extensive background that they don’t put in the story (I remember JK Rowling said she had a very elaborate story about Seamus’s background but none of those were included in the series) but I prefer to enjoy/understand/evaluate the story based on what’s in it. At the end of the day, that what makes me decide to purchase a book/movie/CoG and isn’t that what the author want?
But yes this discussion might have gone out of topic. Perhaps a separate thread is necessary.
Edit: I hope no author feels as if I’m critizing them. I’m just speaking about my preference. There are people who love getting every tidbits from author and there are those who prefer to wait until the final version is out. I’m one of the later.
Since you guys mentioned about “Tumblr being a storehouse of information,” or something like that, I want to do some shameless promotion.
For you writers who are planning out your story, here’s a great site that can help you in building your world. Your idea won’t be just a whim that came out from simple questions, but can be organized and managed neatly like a wiki.
I can’t see tumblrs being anything but a distraction to actually making progress on your stuff.
And it’s kind of weird to have all the others fans be intimately familiar with an entire cast of characters that haven’t even been written into the game yet. 
Just seems like sometimes people get a little ahead of themselves.
Also like @poison_mara I’m a grumpy guss when it comes to tumblr.
Updates build my interest for a game more than tumblr asks. Feels like putting the cart before the horse I guess.