I love it when people shine…

[youtube 1k08yxu57NA]

The Art of Viral Videos

Back in 2005 Seth godin put together a nifty post that explained what makes an idea viral. For an idea to spread, he said, it needs to be sent and received.

No one “sends” an idea unless:

a. they understand it
b. they want it to spread
c. they believe that spreading it will enhance their power (reputation, income, friendships) or their peace of mind
d. the effort necessary to send the idea is less than the benefits

No one “gets” an idea unless:

a. the first impression demands further investigation
b. they already understand the foundation ideas necessary to get the new idea
c. they trust or respect the sender enough to invest the time

My summary of his points:

1) Ideas never spread because they are important to the originator.
2) A key dynamic in the spread of the idea is the capsule that contains it. If it’s easy to swallow, tempting and complete, it’s a lot more likely to get a good start.
3) A key element in the spread of ideas is their visual element. iPods and visual styles spread faster in the real world than ephemeral concepts. Pictures and short jokes spread faster online because the investment necessary to figure out if they’re worth spreading is so tiny.
4) Panic, for instance, is a superbad idea at all times, but it spreads faster than most. That’s because spreading an idea is rarely a thoughtful, voluntary act. Instead, it is near the core of who we are, and we often do it without thinking much about the implications.

The thing is, producers are realising now that it isn’t just the video or message that needs to be well engineered, the seeding of it across cyberspace is also important. Just as a TV commercial does not have the same ‘reach’ anymore, it is not sufficient to just post a video to one website. And so now enters companies that specialise in ‘seeding’ the web, in ‘seeding’ communities. Feedcompany does just that:

You might be an agency or entertainment company that’s great at making ’em, but getting web videos ranked, forwarded, and featured is an art in itself.

Ah, I love these guys. An “art in itself” eh? I call it the ‘choreography of rollout’. They have a whitepaper on their site that explains ‘Best Practices for Advertisers who want to get TV Commercials and Videos on YouTube, MySpace, and other top video sharing sites’. The president of the company Josh Warner was also interviewed recently about the techniques involved. They say that they ‘feed the monster’…

Check out: http://feedcompany.com/

Game Ideas Training

In October 2006 Pierre-Alexandre Garneau started a blog in which he shows us his attempts to train himself in game design: 

While I already have a few years of experience as a videogame designer, I’m not at a world-class level. I want to reach that level however, so I decided to train myself. A sprinter trains himself by running a lot; a game designer trains himself by designing a lot of games. This blog will hold the resulting designs.

Here’s how it works. At the beginning of each week, I choose a random theme (eg. “Space Race”) and a random platform (eg. “Nintendo DS”). I must then come up with an interesting game concept that fits the theme and is appropriate for the platform before the end of the week (eg. a game about a space race for the Nintendo DS). As the week progresses, I plan on posting some bits of informations about how things are shaping up. The end result should be a description of the main characteristics of the game, that give a good idea of the overall vision of the game — what’s called a “pitch” in the business.

It isn’t a weekly exercise anymore, more monthly, but he’s still going. I like the idea.

Check it out: http://www.gameideas.org/