Viral Video Game Marketing

[Image: sidecar]Video Games have always been hitched oddly to the internet and tech advances, sort of like the guy in a motorcycle sidecar.

The first reason I ever used a modem was to play Warcraft II with my friend (and current roommate) Loren. Now Steam lets you buy and play videogames without leaving your computer chair. Blogging and web 2.0 are happening all over the place, and the PCGamer web site still looks like the inside of the Hindenburg after it “landed.”

So now somebody in the mobile gaming space decided that this “viral marketing” might be for them too.

Yesterday’s GamesPress had a press release about it:

Viral marketing continues to grow in popularity as new services such as MoConDi’s MeYou platform continues to expand its worldwide reach in Europe and the U.S. MeYou allows and encourages content purchases to be shared with friends and social networks for incentives via mobile devices and is one to watch in 2008.

With MeYou, users are rewarded for purchases and recommendations, which result in a purchase with redeemable credits. Friends receive mobile message recommendations that contain a message from users, a download link for the content and a link to install the MeYouTM application.

To be honest, that sounds like a really good idea to me. If I played mobile games, I’d be all over a system like this, where I can recommend games to my friends and if games are recommended to me, I can choose to download it right there on my phone, no worries. I even get rewards for doing what I’d do normally.

I think more gaming companies and services should embrace the gamer recommendation system. I’m betting that nothing will drive your sales like making it really easy for gamers to pick up the games that their friends are playing.