from viral loops to game driven marketing
I’m only a casual gamer, but I always enjoy reading Dan Cook’s blog Lost Garden. Today he posted a few notes on where he sees the web-based Flash game market going in 2010; this item sticks out:
As developers figure out that the game lives in the cloud not on a portal, they’ll start treating social networks as one of many marketing channels and stop equating ‘social game’ with Facebook alone. Viral loops will evolve into game driven marketing, a set of highly scalable, automated, experimentally verified techniques that drive an exponential acquisition of players. You need a server, you need players, you need a method of communication and notification. You do not however need a social network per se. Expect modular marketing systems built into some high end games that target multiple social networks, consoles, email address books, flash portals and any other concentrated source of potential customers.