MyBrute is a cancer?
Wednesday, May 6, 2009 23:24Seth Godin wrote about friction. I think his message fits perfectly to describe the success of a recent online mini RPG game called MyBrute.
MYBRUTE IN ACTION
It is easy to get in to MyBrute, which is a neat little online face off game. You just choose a name and fine tune your appearance to your liking that’s basically it. No need for emails, passwords or other validation procedures. In the game you simply choose the opponent you want to bash to pieces and that’s it. Fighting will get you experience as well as referring new people to the game.
GROWS LIKE A CANCER - HURTS LIKE A CANCER
Because of the low barrier for entry and viral nature of the game, hundreds of thousands of accounts have been created. Expansion has been staggering. However there is a cost with the expansion - in-game spam in the form of artificially created game characters or game accounts. It is because the lack of email validation that people try to game the system and create dummy characters to boost their main profile. This devalues the sense of achievement that lawful players experience while playing the game.
SOLUTION
As Mr. Godin suggests - friction.
Aman@BullsBattleBears says:
May 6th, 2009 at 11:30 pm
Mybrute got huge in such a short time…your right, it got too big for its own good and that will probably be its demise..
Aman@BullsBattleBears’s last blog post..Win a 40″ Samsung LCD HDTV!!
Jake Stone says:
May 7th, 2009 at 12:14 am
It is really interesting to see how they keep the barriers for entry very low and at the same time create a motive for continuous growth. What I would do it is that at some point of time I would introduce a sudden email validation. That should shake things up a bit and create an upheaval in the power balance of the game.
But are there products or services that could benefit from the lessons of the MyBrute?
Many internet services start out as free services to gain users they do have some kind of systems at place for users to recommend the service, but rarely there is direct benefit. Network and affiliate marketing might be the two closest examples.
Most of all - it must be fun to catch fire.