The One in a Million

'A revolution in mobile gaming' or 'Never has a mobile game exited me this much'

'A revolution in mobile gaming' or 'Never has a mobile game exited me this much'

Those are the kind of quotes that a mobile game needs, in order to get the attention of the masses.

Our recent studies have concluded that positive quotes are by far the best way to get the trust of a customer. Which is strange when you think about it, because quotes are easily falsified.

The same goes for scientific studies, if a statement starts with 'our recent studies', a reader will automatically assume the writer knows what he or she is writing about, the possibility that the writer is just making it all up as he goes, wouldn't occur to him or her.

Viral media is a strange phenomenon. You would think the conditions for becoming popular are pretty straight forward. When asking an average group of mobile gamers "What do you think is the most important thing for a game to go viral?", the answer you would get most is "It should be fun.". Reality however indicates that this isn't necessarily the case, more often viral games are annoying, frustrating and/or just plain stupid.

That realization started our (very real!) scientific team thinking; we decided to develop a game with the sole purpose of becoming the next sensation in mobile-gaming-land. Our fellow scientists at our real university accused us of picking a subject to research only to become filthy rich, but that allegation of course is too ridiculous to be true.

We started by stripping the concept of 'a mobile game' to the bone, once we had the skeleton we could carefully add functionality. So, what is a mobile game when you strip all audiovisual input? It is tapping a screen with your finger. Sometimes you tap fast, sometimes you tap slow. Sometimes it matters where you tap, sometimes it doesn't. With the right visual input you think you are pushing a button or opening a door, but the essence of almost every mobile game is tapping with your finger on a screen.

In order to learn which functions were critical for success we conducted a very thorough (not imaginary at all) investigation. That investigation resulted in a set of criteria that a game should meet to go viral.

The criteria, or 'The Rules' as we started naming them during the process, became somewhat of a religion for our team, so we risk being overly dramatic. Anyway, here they come:

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Rule 1:

A popular app is always beautiful in some way.

Rule 2:

An app stands a better chance to go viral if it has social media integration.

Rule 3:

Believe it or not, a popular game most of the time is very hard, borderline impossible, repetitive and incredibly frustrating.

Rule 4:

People love achieving things, having the feeling they are accomplishing something. Having an achievement-system therefore increases the chances of hitting it off with the masses big time.

Rule 5:

And finally, have a goal, a goal that is hard to reach, but not impossible. A goal that will make all players so curious they'll want to keep playing, but is so hard only a few will reach it.

After finalizing our research, we combined the 'basic game' with these rules, so in theory we created 'The Perfect Game'. This game has it all, it is beautiful, social, very repetitive, has an achievement-system and has a surprising goal.

So start tapping.