As we are sure most of you are already aware, Reddit is a pretty big deal. It is the largest messageboard in the world, split into more subcategories (or subreddits) than you can feasibly imagine. One particular corner of Reddit has caught our attention however – a Metal Gear Solid subreddit.

The subreddit has grown hugely popular, with it receiving way over 2 million page views in the last 3 months, and over 200,000 unique visitors in the same time period. We wanted to learn more about the people behind this thriving and passionate community, so we got in touch with some interview questions. First though, let us introduce the subreddit’s four principle admins:

Introduction

Killerzeit:

Hello! I’m Kellee, 23, from California, and I have been playing Metal Gear games since 1998, poking around Reddit since 2009, and combining the two since 2010. I’m the creator of this subreddit and its initial nurturer, with no idea if its creation would result in a successful take-off. How happy I am that I was so wrong!

FreshPaprikazzz:

Howdy! My name is Joonas (yes, with double o’s), 23 years old and I’m from Finland. I’m our subreddit’s designer. Been playing MGS since 99’ and my favorite is MGS2! I’m not much of a gamer anymore – I do play games every now and then – but Metal Gear is the franchise that just keeps me buying each new console per generation. I’m a huge MGS fan and I hope that the effort I put in the Metal Gear Solid subreddit’s design shows off. It’s made with love and nanomachines… mostly with the latter.

flashmedallion:

Hey! I’m Chris, 28, from New Zealand and have also been playing Metal Gear since 1998, with the arrival of the MGS1 demo disc. I’ve been gaming since I was about 2, firstly on an Amiga 500, and then moved on to DOS/Windows games and jammed a lot of Duke3D and RTS modem games up until we got a PS1 and MGS and Abes Odysee slowly won me over. I’ve been on Playstation and Nintendo ever since. During the day I manage a lab and run data management and analysis, and in my off time I do community theatre, play a few instruments, programming, and gaming. “I like MGS2!”.

kevbomb:

My name is Kevin and I’m 27 years old. I first got into MGS from the Winter ’98 PlayStation Underground demo disc. I’ve been visiting the subreddit regularly for nearly three years now and I hope in the future to help make it one of the most popular video game-related subreddits. When I’m not controlling the flow of information via artificial intelligence, I’m playing video games and photo editing.

Questions

How did the decision to make a MGS subreddit first come about?

Killerzeit:

Well, it didn’t take very much thought around the time, and I think back to the first time I ever played one of these games. I was 8 years old and already very enamored with my PlayStation, spending nights playing Crash Bandicoot and the like – and my sister’s girlfriend at the time had brought back a copy of the 1998 MGS title she rented from the neighborhood video store. She told me it was “fun” and the rest is absolute history, as they say. You never just expect something to stick with you for so long or be such a deeply rooted part of your life. That being said, after browsing Reddit and seeing so many specific subreddits for games and getting tired of the diluted content in /r/gaming subreddit, I searched for one first. Metal Gear Solid as a subreddit just did not exist, and I jumped on the chance to create one, but what then? I used it as a chance to work on my beginner CSS skills, and got excited at every time the number of subscribers jumped up by one, even though I wasn’t doing anything to promote it. Users were just showing up! It happened so fast, though, that one day I signed in and I had nearly 10,000 subscribers, and knew I was going to need help (which happens to be everyone you’re reading about here)!

When was it first launched?

Killerzeit:

Launched in late 2010, it amazes me how much it’s grown as a community and resource for Metal Gear fans. I was pretty unconventional in that I held a simple vote-for-people-you-like thread when I realized it was getting to be too much for me to handle with my schedule and needed moderators. I could not have picked better people to guide this community, even if I had interviewed every single one and found out their favorite food… or knew their childhood secrets. The community chose, they chose wisely, they chose right. You’ll always yield great results when you have a group of like-minded people working in the same direction to similar goals. I’m so thankful for them – they’re creative, proactive, cooperative, and let’s face it, FreshPaprikazzz’s CSS/decor makes it the best looking and functional subreddit on the site (but perhaps I’m biased)! It would not be what it is without them, and they pretty much run the show. They just started having all these fantastic ideas that I wasn’t, and it was pretty exciting. It’s like one night I just started to make dinner, all of them got thrown in, and now I’ve got a priceless recipe I didn’t write down. I truly believe it couldn’t be done again and that’s what makes it awesome. For this reason, I hope the community continues to grow and will love being a part of it every step of the way.

flashmedallion:

I just really want to add that it’s the moderation style that Killerzeit has encouraged that has allowed this place to become what it is. The mod team is actually really hands-off – we hardly have to do anything! – and by encouraging the userbase to take responsibility for what kind of the place the subreddit should be that makes for a great community and a sustainable community; when we have an influx of new subscribers (Ground Zeroes announcement, Phantom Pain announcement, and Steam announcement are all recent examples), the regulars lead by example and everyone acclimatizes to the culture. If MGS has taught me anything, it’s that you can’t censor or force people into behaving the way you want… at least not without one of your various superweapons or supersoldiers eventually being turned against you (waylander893, I’m looking in your direction…). Leading by example gives people a motivation to want to join in, and the community does that very well.

What are the most popular MGS topics of discussion?

kevbomb:

The most common posts lately usually involve speculation about the upcoming release. The community gathers pieces of the story from previous games to speculate on clips, trailers and snippets of new info for MGSV: TPP.

flashmedallion:

Topics tend to revolve around little bits of lore that are or may be relevant to MGSV, and wishlists or guesses for gameplay, features, and narrative elements. That’s outside of the usual scattering of artwork, gameplay videos, things like that. Not counting MGSV I’d say the most popular posts are short essay-style posts or questions from people trying to nail down some of the more obscure elements of the narrative or thematic development.

kevbomb:

All the mystery surrounding Phantom Pain creates a huge discussion within the subreddit, and people love to share theories, rumors, and their ideas on what we will be playing in the upcoming game. So in effect, Metal Gear Solid subreddit becomes a compilation of lore of the franchise’s past and future.

What resources does the subreddit offer?

flashmedallion:

kevbomb is right in that the community itself really is the biggest resource. There’s just a whole bunch of awesome people who love to talk about and think about Metal Gear. I think my favourite part is that there’s always a few people who are willing to answer a rookie question no matter how many times it’s come up in the last few years, and there’s always a friendly, informative answer. Then as those newer people gain more confidence, you start to see them showing up and answering questions for the next batch of rookies with the same friendliness and patience. Brings a tear to my eye. We also get great discussion from authors of other great Metal Gear content on the web; Threedogg and TheSnakeSoup have both popped in from time to time and it’s awesome to have a cross-pollination of ideas. PerfectStealth is a bit of an MGS speedrunning legend, and has been featured on the English KojiStation, and is also regular contributor.

I’d love to shout out to all the great regulars by name but I’m terrified I’d miss someone out, though I will mention a few who have gone above and beyond; bangersss who runs our weekly gameplay challanges, terminalfilth, a_true_patriot, and countchocula535 who have run the weekly book/movie club and hecheff who is our resident Nihongo translator. But really everyone on the subreddit is super awesome.

As for more tangible resources, we started a subreddit Wiki to handle Frequently Asked Questions and from there it’s grown into a compendium of all the great stuff that’s featured on the subreddit or will be useful to anyone looking for Metal Gear info. Our Resources Page has full transcripts, like the ‘Previous Operations’ from MGS1 and the “meta-media” texts from MGS2 along with transcripts of the introductory TV shows from MGS4, as well as notable reporting from journalists/magazines, notable posts from the subreddit (an analysis of the “surgery” scene in Ground Zeroes from a medical professional is a highlight for me), and notable analysis including the legendary Deltahead Translation pieces by James Howell. We’ve got gameplay guides from subreddit members, and an archive of our Combat Unit and Intel Unit. It’s still growing and I think it’s a great resource for anyone.

The design is awesome – what was the inspiration behind the look of the subreddit, and how long did it take to design?

FreshPaprikazzz:

The design has kinda grown progressively more detailed ever since I initially started working on it (which is about 2 years ago). I took some heavy inspiration from Shinkawa’s art style from both the brilliant concept arts and in-game cutscenes. I really like the sort of muted color scheme in MGS4’s stylized cutscenes where – for instance – Meryl talked about the effects of SOP at the start of the game so I adopted it into the layout. I remember being very strict about the colors at the beginning, using only few set of yellow’ish dark gray tones but now the subreddit has dozens of little colorful elements to brighten things up a bit. I think the dark and gritty shinkawa-esque base compliments the silly and offbeat elements of the subreddit, like the little Otacon pixel sprite that pops up whenever you’ve got a new message or the iconic exclamation point when upvoting a post. It kinda reflects the humorous side of the franchise which is just as important as the dead-serious side.

All in all, I wanted to portray everything MGS has to offer in the design, so anybody could just give it a quick glance and go “hey, this totally looks like something from a Metal Gear universe!”.

Do you have any more features you’re planning to implement?

flashmedallion:

Features don’t really get “planned” as such, do they? 😛 I’ve been tinkering away on a few visual things just for the sake of testing code, like a wintry treat for Christmas and design/UI things that may or may not go anywhere. Anything functional that I think of I try to run past Fresh first so that he can bring it in line with the subreddit design scheme.

FreshPaprikazzz:

Yeah, I don’t think we really plan ahead for anything. We just sort of go with the flow and keep notes on what might be useful for the community. It’s all about being adaptive, even though it might sometimes be rather difficult since we’re all following the intergalactic rules of user-generated site that is Reddit and not everything is customisable unfortunately.

flashmedallion:

There are definitely constraints with the platform – but part of the fun is working with those constraints or around them to make the subreddit a fun and engaging place to hang out, with a point of difference too.

I guess the next “feature” will be our spoiler management system for when V comes to. The overriding goal is to make the subreddit a place that anyone can visit no matter how far through the game they are – and if TPP is as big as it looks then that’s a lot of variation in userbase.

There’s also the added complication that no-one knows how MGSV will be structured… if you use MGS4 as an example, and you knew ahead of time there were five acts, you could make some ground rules that all posts have to have a [Spoilers for Act 4] tag or something, as opposed to [Spoilers for Shadow Moses] which would give the whole thing away. So whatever we do has to be dynamic, flexible, and give people the opportunity to visit the subreddit without fear of reading something they don’t want to, and also give a way for people to signal what they want to talk about without having to make a post with the title of “Anyone else up to that part when you have to deal with you-know-who outside of the… important building?”. So yeah, lots to think about, but that is what’s in the back my mind right now.

Join the Metal Gear Solid Subreddit Community!

If you like what you’re hearing about this superb Metal Gear Solid community, it’s time to get involved! You can find it by clicking here and, providing you have a Reddit account, you can jump straight into the vast array of different conversations – or maybe even start your own!

Already a member of the MGS subreddit community? Be sure to tell us how you’ve been enjoying it in the comments below!

Platforms	PlayStation®3, Xbox 360, PC
Release Date	22.02.2013
Player	Single Player

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