Anyone who is interested in marketing should read Malcolm Gladwell’s “The Tipping Point.”  The author makes note of how viruses and epidemics are spread throughout the world, and he takes that knowledge and applies it to how social and cultural movements also act in virus-like patterns.  He identifies three main patterns for viral transmission.

1) Connectors, Mavens and Salesmen (Network for Transmission)
2) Stickyness (Viral Duration and Contagiousness)
3) Contextual Shifts (Social Behavior)

Social Networking games such as “Mafia Wars” and “Farmville” by Zynga use these three patterns to great effect which results in millions of unique hits and thousands of dollars for otherwise simple games.

Careful! I'm catching!

Connectors, Mavens and Salesman

A virus’s ability to spread is highly dependent on infecting key persons within a social network and increasing the amount of exposures through that network.

Within certain social circles, there are some special people who seem to know everyone and whom everyone is friends with.  These people are “Connectors.”  And within the same social circles are the experts, the people whose expert opinion makes a difference in certain social fields.  These people are called “Mavens.”   And finally, there are those in social circles who actively endorse and push others into playing the game.  These are “Salesman.”

The relationship between the Maven and the Connector is very important in Social gaming because the Maven would be the ones who would be early adopters or those who discover your game while the Connector is the one who can spread the message of the Maven to the greatest number of people.

Games such as Mafia Wars, make heavy use of this networking relationship and in some ways short-circuit it through social networking applications such as Facebook.  Mafia Wars give incentives to players by constantly reminding the user to post some picture or announcements on Facebook.  This is basically advertising space on someone’s status message to let his or her friends know that you are playing a game.

But... Everyone is doing it!

Sometimes the game gives accomplishments to display like badges of honor.   And some social games bribe you with in-game credits for posting your announcements.  There are also some games that do not let you proceed unless you have a certain number of friends playing giving even more incentive to sell the game to others.  Not to mention that in-game bonuses are given to people who actively recruit others.

I need more friends...

So not only is your game automatically selling itself using the Facebook notifications and status updates, but people must also actively talk about how cool your game is and persuade others to join – especially if that means more in-game bonuses and content.

Stickyness

The lifespan and contagiousness of a virus is also key in how far a virus will spread within a network.

A good majority of the Facebook games are incredibly simple games.  Most Social Network games are a combination of stat-building, empire-building, and set collection.  To some extent, there are some  aspects of competition between players, but the majority of these games work on collaboration rather than competition.

The games that are on the top end of popularity always play to the “obsessive compulsive” side of people.  There is a compulsion for people to grow things, build things, to see objective growth and “leveling up” as well as to finish incomplete collections.  And this is highly addictive.  This is the reason the old Rogue-likes and Dungeon-grinds are still popular, even to this day.

Can't quit until I level up everything...

Also, to reinforce the addictiveness of these games, people are encouraged to collaborate and make announcements of what they are missing in their collections.  This gets other people to help work on getting complete sets.  So not only is the activity addictive, it also encourages collaboration.

I got a whole bunch of Blackmail photos from college that you could use...

Contextual Shifts

One of the big draws for Social Network Games is the collaborative and competitive aspects.  There is also the built in “trophy” and announcement system.  And given a sufficient saturation into the market, you have people constantly posting about your game.  The idea that “everyone is doing it” is a lot of peer pressure to push into playing.

There is also the novelty that Social Games are the “new thing.”  And the idea is very catching.  It is a completely new paradigm for getting people to know your game exists than putting it in portals and waiting for people to come to your game.  Your game is actually actively advertising itself on Facebook status messages and letting other people know that people are playing your game and showing off their trophies.

Why settle for millions...?

Money Making

Zynga games use a particular strategy for monetary purposes.  You can directly pay the company to get credits to spend on power-ups, items or other in-game features.  One of the greatest frustrations with the game is constantly running out of action points/energy you can use to complete a set of tasks or to make it to the next level or to complete a set.

The other feature they use is that they have advertisers on their site that if you click on their link and fill out their forms, you get a large number of credits to the game.  So on top of direct payment, there are also advertisement revenue that these games make.

The Future

So far, not very many Flash Games are prevalent and using the Facebook API.  But done correctly, this could blow open a whole new avenue of revenue streams, including micro-transactions and a new era of gaming for Indie Flash Game Programmers.

Maybe the next generation of Flash Portals should be a Facebook Apps?