Lunchtime Discussion: Viral Gaming
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Article written by nofi in Blog, on Thursday, November 26, 2009 at 12:15.
According to a patent refered to on SiliconEra, Microsoft are heavily pushing Viral Gaming - a way to tell friends about a game and also act as a gameplay mechanic in itself. One gameplay example is a system where you can leave a journal for others to pick up in a massively multiplayer online game, adding your own notes to the ever growing tome, but Microsoft appear to be concentrating even more on the social sides of things, which may or may not be a good thing.
Some of the examples put forward in the article include a “global icebreaker game” in which all players start the game by submitting facts about themselves, and then the facts for a single player get published and other players need to search for the player who fits those facts, or for players who know who fits those facts, picking players from their own friends list, creating chains for other players to review.
In another game idea from the Redmond company, one user from a group of users is randomly selected and then their biography is posted on a message board accessible by all users. The race is then on to find a buddy chain that links a user to the selected user, like six degrees of separation, with the selected user identified by players communicating with others that are linked to the eventual end user.
Both of these clearly drive new social meetings and relationships, encouraging, say SiliconEra (who for some reason don’t link to the recent patent all this information is coming from) expanding friend lists and increased time online. Personally I quite like some of the ideas put forward, but for me, someone who’s gradually getting away from online gaming completely where possible, some of them sound rather intrusive.
Read the article, and then let us know what you think, and if you have any better ideas for Viral Gaming.
Comments
Please note that all comments are the opinion of the individual author and not TheSixthAxis.
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RadioactiveMouse | 26/11/2009 12:19
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474 TSA Points | Member since: Aug 2009
Sounds interesting but I bet it would be an absolute mare to police and develop
They would need double the team of the current Sony’s PS Home.
davidjmclare | 26/11/2009 12:24
always on easy
894 TSA Points | Member since: May 2009
sounds like it could work, and could not. but should just let it happen before we judge it i guess. im sure some people will love it.
Lorcan | 26/11/2009 12:33
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I reckon it sounds like a pretty fun idea!
Not worth buying an Xbox for though.
Still fun nontheless.
Raen | 26/11/2009 12:35
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Buy an Xbox. They’re cool.
RadioactiveMouse | 26/11/2009 12:39
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Now that’s a compelling argument if I’ve ever seen one
I would only get a 360 for L4D2 and Alan Wake. Otherwise currently Sony are just pumping out better exclusives (ModNation,Heavy Rain etc)
bajere | 26/11/2009 12:48
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927 TSA Points | Member since: Aug 2008
@ RadioactiveMouse:
Id get a 360 for GTA LibCity DLC…and…um… go back to my PS3.
its odd how the exclusives seem to be drying up for the 360. i always presumed M$ would throw money at dev’s to bring whole games to the 360, not just timed DLC, for years and years, effectively buying the market. id get a 360 if all the good games were only on that system.
…o and those 2 exclusives are looking great!
roll on next year!
Raen | 26/11/2009 13:03
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3449 TSA Points | Member since: Mar 2009
This weeks 360 chart had 4 exclusives (Forza 3, L4D2, Halo 3: ODST and Liberty City Stories) whereas the PS3 only had Uncharted 2. I wouldn’t say they’re drying up, at least not yet. I was faintly really nervous myself about Microsoft’s exclusive support drying up, although there are still great mutli-plats out there. However it seems that the nervousness was misplaced, there’s a good amount of 360 exclusives right now. Next year isn’t looking amazing, but then again maybe I’ll end up at this point again, looking at what there is and realising it isn’t as bad as I thought.
RadioactiveMouse | 26/11/2009 13:14
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474 TSA Points | Member since: Aug 2009
Halo ODST wasn’t really much different from the last one though
I’m enjoying L4D2 at the moment on my flatmates 360 but the Forza demo didn’t enthuse us and GTA stuff is just large DLC not an actual game. I wonder if the whole Agent exclusivity deal was because of the Liberty City Stories :O
bajere | 26/11/2009 13:20
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Forza 3, L4D2, Halo 3: ODST and Liberty City Stories…out of those 4 its only GTA i would play. Each to ther own of course, but halo hasnt really done anything for me since the 1st one, i dont like L4D type games, and forza didnt really screem “buy me!” when i played it. so for me it still dosent seem like the 360 has anything to offer. dont get me wrong, not all PS3 games are great IMO. ie LBP.
exclusives are down to preference
Raen | 26/11/2009 13:43
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Oh no it wasn’t a slam on anything people like (for example I probably won’t play L4D2, the series doesn’t interest me). It was more I was surprised at the volume of exclusives in what everyone (including me) thought was going to be a dry 360 season. I think a lot of PS3 stuff got pushed to March, making Christmas a bit bare. I mean there was U2 and then… what else for PS3? Demon’s Souls springs out. Not much else.
However I could be completely wrong, there might be a punch of PS3 exclusives that I’ve missed.
Watchful | 26/11/2009 13:48
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Ratchet and Clank for one.
oMega-W | 26/11/2009 12:34
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There’s no way I’d ever take part in something like that. I like playing games on my own, minding my own business. Is that ok? Facebook’s bad enough.
bajere | 26/11/2009 12:41
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927 TSA Points | Member since: Aug 2008
here here.lol
also it just sounds like it will end up being used to gather information for advertising. they can dress it up as much as they like to be a game, but after a few years people will end up putting in information that will get passed onto other company’s…we will be creating links and grouping people into categories without knowing it. but that’s the critic in me speaking… i guess sum people will enjoy this sort of thing, and it will push/add to the gaming industry so its ok i guess?!?!
bunimomike | 26/11/2009 12:36
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3366 TSA Points | Member since: Jul 2009
Can’t say I’d be interested but if it sells well/makes money then go for it. Personally, if I wanted to find out shitloads of useless information about my friends I’ll ask them… or turn female and use Facebook daily.
kevhardy | 26/11/2009 12:46
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153 TSA Points | Member since: Feb 2009
I may be cynical but if this did make it to the marketplace I’m sure there would be an end-user agreement that would involve signing over the rights to any information in user’s profiles to MicroSoft to do with as they see fit (marketing, selling-on, etc) in much the same way as FaceSpace etc.
bajere | 26/11/2009 12:51
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same here. the good old “carefully selected 3rd parties” line will creep in.
3shirts | 26/11/2009 12:48
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Sounds like an absoluetely brilliant idea that will be very difficult to make work properly. There are just too many dickheads online1
DJ Judas | 26/11/2009 13:09
Epic
368 TSA Points | Member since: Aug 2008
I don’t care to play a game in which the premise is to gain knowledge about strangers.
Tuffcub | 26/11/2009 13:21
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3444 TSA Points | Member since: Dec 2008
Searching through peoples biographies for clues! That’s going convert the millions away from Halo, MW2 and Uncharted. Good plan Microtesticles!
LycanGav | 26/11/2009 16:45
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537 TSA Points | Member since: Apr 2009
Erm…. Sony already have something a bit like this, the note system in Demon’s Souls. Users leave clues and notes to other players in the form of blood stains with a character limit to stop you spoiling the game for other players. This just seems like an expansion of that idea.