Ari Braginsky: What Makes a Viral Game?

Friday, January 16, 2009

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Nice discussion on what makes a game particularly viral in nature.

Anonymous said...: It needs to be either very topical or just decent quality. For most brands 'topical' doesnt work as:

1. The quality is usually poor as it requires a fast turnaround - and fast turnaround and 'gameplay' rarely go hand in hand.

2. The topic will rarely coincide with any over-arching brand message plus the time delay in getting something past the brand guardians will mean that the subject has been done to death by the time the game launches.

For brands - successful viral games have to be quality and very playable.

Have a look at the real time results on some of the ones we've built. The highest scoring viral game has done over 60 million uniques.

http://kerb.co.uk/Viral-Games-Chart/; January 17, 2009 at 3:24 AM

Ari Braginsky