I wrote an article for Gamasutra on the subject of viral games. You can read the full story here over at Gamasutra.
For those who want the Reader’s Digest version, here were my main ideas:
- Design games that sell themselves; make them watchable and easy to engage with. Magic the Gathering (the card game, not the online version) is a great example.
- Design games with fansites in mind. World of Warcraft has done a great job creating an ecosystem around the company, supported by data from the Armory.
- Support guilds and clans; in other words, support the social groups who pick up games.
- Support player-created content. This is like an adaptation of the “supporting fansites” idea, but it expands on the idea. Games need to be larger-than-life–and larger than themselves. They need to allow members to participate in the whole lifestyle of the game, through machinima, player-created maps and mods, customization, etc.
- Avoid level segregation: I think this is the biggest mistake of many MMORPGs. Yes, this has worked fine for World of Warcraft…but they now have amazing scale, and they were relatively early to market. Unless friends have easy ways to play with each other, you aren’t going to engage them.
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