Building Games That Go Viral, Part IV

The fourth and final post from a  speech I gave at Yeti Zen on March 23. To read the first installment, click here.

To review:

1. Increase your carriers
2. Be highly social
3. Be highly contagious
4. Keep the carriers infected
5. Reinfect your “recovered” carriers

When you CREATE the game, take these virality objectives into consideration.

Now, as you prepare your launch, how do you spend your time/energy/money?

We can now look at these decisions from the point of view of our virality map. The map gives you a way to strategize. Do you want to focus on increasing your carriers? Or instead, do you want to build in sociality, such that users rely on other users, and thus encourage reinfection? Of course, in an ideal world, you do all of the 5 pieces to the max. But since your resources are limited, the map allows you to pick and choose the best ways to spend your time and money. How do you best use this map?

The web is filled with spreadsheets that will help you with this math. I have a follow-up post on the way with some links to what I think are the most useful. For now, just now, that taking 15 minutes at the beginning of a project to do a quick analysis will help immensely. It’s essential to think about new projects fresh because…

Just as a map doesn’t show the fallen-tree across the trail….

What are some other variables to consider besides K factor? What if, for example, you create a K factor for spenders only? Because…