u/Ok_Paramedic4796

Hi,

I'm a solo game dev. I recently tried my luck with reddit ads trying to gather more wishlists - and received an email from their official domain with the text:

With my (free!) support, your account can reach a new audience. 

Here's a link to my calendar, let's connect to discuss your business goals and how we can optimize your campaigns going forward.

Naturally, I thought it's a good opportunity to optimize my ads, the sender was reddit's official email.

The call itself was with a real client partner - super helpful and insightful. But then they emailed a "follow up":

It was great connecting today and discussing Table 9. The core loop you’ve built—combining a cozy, mechanically satisfying European latte art simulator with looping anomaly psychological horror—is a brilliant viral concept.

I had some follow up questions that I needed clarification on w.r.t. their ads dashboard. But all the responses were just screaming chatgpt. So then I just asked:

> Me: 

P.s. are you using an LLM to respond to my emails? I certainly hope that's not the case.

> Response from a real person's email@reddit.com: 

Good catch! We use AI note-takers on our calls and tools to help organize all the data and information provided. I apologize if it came across a bit robotic.

I hear you loud and clear on wanting to use the actual Test and Preview feature....[Answered a query i had]

Let me know if that does the trick.

Question is - is it just me or is this disingenuous? If I wanted to use an LLM to figure out reddit ads, I would just ask chat GPT myself.

Needless to say i'll not be taking the followup call

When I got the idea for the game, I had this number in mind - couple of hundred wishlists would be good.

Sure enough, opening reddit everyday and seeing the crazy spikes of other indie devs reaching 1000 or 10,000 wishlists made me feel inadequate about my game. But every time, after cooling down, I try to remember what I set out to do in the first place. That is, release a full game and if I get 200 wishlists, I would be happy.

So I think it's important to define what success means to you before you publish your steam page. The posts we see online are majority outliers in an ocean of hardworking people like you and I.

Steam page has been live for the last 2 months almost and the wishlist climb has been slow.
There was no "viral moment" or "visibility spike", just a little bit of sharing and posting while I focus on my 9-5 job and make the game on the side.

I hope you stick to finishing your game and not get distracted by the outliers. Best of luck!

Looking for all types of feedback, especially about whether or not the trailer does its job

I've played around with the whole steam page, reordered everything, tried new combinations, followed Chris Zukowski's recommendations, used visual assets, but wishlists I get are rare (about 1 per week)
I've settled on the conclusion that no one really wants to play my game lol