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David Barnes
Using Sneezers to Spread your Viral Game
(If STDs had any sense they'd find a way to make you randier. I've not heard of any that do, but maybe I'm just naive. Have you?)
Anyway... if you want your game to go viral, you need a way to get anybody you've infected to sneeze hard and often. With Facebook notifications gone, you can't rely on Facebook to sneeze out your game for you. You need to get your players sneezing.
In Unleashing the Ideavirus, Seth Godin says there are 2 basic kinds of sneezer:
- Powerful Sneezers -- popular people interested in the "social reward" of spreading your game. That is, by spreading your game they will somehow gain followers or have their followers value them more.
- Promiscuous Sneezers -- people who will pass on your message for a price.
Both kinds of sneezer are useful if you want to spread your game virally. Each requires a very different approach.
Examples of powerful sneezers:
- Trusted review sites
- Twitter users with 1000s of genuine followers
- Popular and respected blogs and bloggers
- Respectable newspapers and magazines
Powerful sneezers are respected by their followers (or they want to be), and will usually only pass on your message if they think it will make them more respected.
And now, some examples of promiscuous sneezers:
- Anybody enrolled in a pay-per-tweet or pay-per-post program
- Anybody who accepts advertising -- advertising is the ultimate promiscuous sneeze. "For the right price, we'll annoy our readers with your message as much as you want"
- People who use Amazon affiliates and other similar programs to make money
- Twitter users who follow 1000s of people in the hope that they'll automatically follow back, and prove themselves spammable
- Most of us, if the price is right.
Promiscuous sneezers might have a smaller field of influence. They might not be respected by their followers. But if you can hook them with the right rewards, they'll tirelessly promote your game or whatever else you want them to. If you make the rewards powerful enough, they will invest significant amounts of time just in spreading your game.
Seth Godin gives his own methods for appealing to promiscuous sneezers. Here, I've adapted them to viral games and assumed that you're using "in game rewards" to get players to sneeze:
- Make big promises. Show them just how much in-game value it's possible to unlock if you sneeze enough. Don't promise incremental improvements here and there. Promise a complete change in their fortunes in the game -- show how sneezing can propel them into another league.
- Show them how to make it up in volume. Hint to the player that they don't need to only invite their Facebook friends or whatever. Show them how they can invite anyone by web links, email, Twitter, and whatever other options they might have. Make it clear exactly what they are getting rewarded for, and leave it to their imagination to figure out how to win. Try to make effective sneezing a better way to increase your score / rank in the game than just playing is.
- Describe an attainable path. On the other hand, make it easy to get started and give your first few sneezes. Sneezing out the message should require just one or two clicks, at least to begin with.
- When someone succeeds, tell the rest of them. Keep reminding people how much reward it's possible to win. Share success stories -- show how high ranking players are really particularly good sneezers.
- Give the successful ones a way to show the non sneezers it worked. If somebody's success in the game is due to their sneezing, make it obvious so that people who want to do well in the game realize that virally spreading the game is a key to success.
- Have a sales convention. Provide ways for your top sneezers to communicate with each other -- this will provoke competition, and also (paradoxically) encourage co-operative sharing of tactics and ideas.
What about powerful sneezers? Seth doesn't provide a pithy list for that bunch, so I'll hack one together myself:
- Divide opinion. In the last week, Tweet Defense was the most talked about iPhone game in existence -- and it was controversial too. Some people thought hooking up with Twitter was clever. Others thought it was the dumbest thing ever, and the end of the road for serious gaming. Violent games also benefit from dividing option. People with a following want to tell their followers what they think -- and they mention your game along the way.
- Offer entertaining, interesting, quick, and shareable content. Powerful sneezers might not have time to actually play your game. They want interesting things that they can share with followers even without playing the game. Make sure there are lots of quick pieces of content that powerful sneezers will see and want to share immediately -- funny trailers, insightful blog posts, beautiful art work, original ideas. (When I mention a specific game on this blog, it's because they're doing something that looks interesting -- not because I necessarily played and liked the game.)
- Make the game really stand out. Powerful sneezers will directly plug your game if it offers a unique experience that's worth sharing. That doesn't mean it has to be the best, cleverest, most advanced game ever. Just that it isn't like the others. Don't aim for "reviews" from Powerful Sneezers -- writing a review takes a lot of work. Just make the game obviously interesting enough that they'll sneeze it on the basis of that.
- Enable expression through the game. Powerful sneezers who play the game will want to share something more interesting than a high score or achievement. Let players build something that is "expressive" and that they'll want to share even with non players.
- Place your marketing alongside stuff people want to spread anyway. So you've got a game that you know will appeal to Rolling Stones fans? Write a blog post called "the 20 best Rolling Stones photos ever", and mention your game around the edges. Stones fans will circulate the link regardless of the game. Think of YouTube -- you pass on links to YouTube all the time because you want to share cool videos. But marketing for YouTube is all over the place when you do.
- Target specific communities. Yes, a tweet from Stephen Fry or Guy Kawasaki will do wonders for your game -- but powerful sneezers are careful what they sneeze. If you've got a game that's aimed at fans of Sherlock Holmes novels, look for powerful sneezers in the Sherlock Holmes fan community and target them first.
What are you doing to make your game go viral?
If you liked this post, please sneeze it by linking to it from your blog, retweeting, or posting a comment. Cheers!
Posted
by David Barnes
