Viral Marketing Done Wrong

The game, called Server Mechanic, is, according to Affinity, a simulation of some of the challenges faced by IT personnel and a celebration of the work they do.

I was reminded of similar experiments put forth by both WestHost and Hostway, which offered up the "Host Wars" and ""Blast the Hassles of Web Hosting" games, respectively, back in 2004.

Where Server Mechanic seems to apply a more literal connection between Web hosting and the actual game-play, both of those games apply Web hosting as more of a ham-fisted metaphor over the mechanics of existing games.

In Host Wars," a clone of the classic "Asteroid" game, you destroy floating space-rocks with labels like "spam," "downtime," "hidden fees" and the awkwardly-named "no support." Seriously. You shoot at "no support" with a space ray. In Blast the Hassles," which I'll assume is based on a classic game I've never played, you also pilot a spaceship, attempting to shoot down UFO-type spaceships with labels like "crappy tools," "bad support" and "unreliable." Those UFOs attempt to "hassle" what appear to be customers, which then become "pissed off" or "bitter." It's pretty complicated.

Server Mechanic offers a series of four levels, each its own game, that range from the mind-numbingly easy (level one) to the infuriatingly difficult (level two) to the unreachable due to the difficulty of previous levels (levels three and four). None of them are even a little bit fun, which, really, is not even a little bit surprising.

I'll admit, these efforts at "edutainment," or maybe "marketainment," are theoretically interesting marketing experiments. But they all fail for the simple fact that not one of them comes even close to succeeding at the entertainment part. In each case, it is painfully obvious that you are engaging in a marketing exercise first, and a game second.

It is now October 2006. We're all very accustomed to and even accepting of marketing, even when it arrives in sly ways. But I just can't envision a user appreciating these games' insistence on the premise that he is enjoying himself, when that is so very far from the obvious truth.

Things become popular Internet phenomenons because people like them. And people are willing to look at advertising to see the things they really like. But they're quite capable of recognizing crass attempts to approximate "cool." It's the difference between a rapper name-dropping a specific product in a song and a dairy farmers' group putting together an advertisement featuring a crudely written rap.

What surprises me is the apparent omission of basic common sense from this whole development effort. I could be wrong, but if Host Wars or Blast the Hassles ever became beloved Internet memes or landmarks of viral marketing I completely missed it. So it seems strange to me that Affinity followed the template almost exactly.

If the problem with the first two games was that they were no fun, the reason seems fairly obvious to me. Web hosting is a ridiculous context for a video game. That is why, outside of the world of experimental online marketing efforts by Web hosts, there are no video games about Web hosting. Couldn't we shoehorn the Gate.com message into a game about football or ninjas? Or play online poker to win coupons?

The thing is, I support this idea in principle. And in that sense, I applaud Affinity's effort. I would love for a Web host to succeed at drumming up unlimited interest and goodwill by creating a genuinely entertaining and original game that becomes a beloved Internet phenomenon. But I'm 100 percent positive that it'll never happen with some halfhearted "Server-Tetris" or "Antivirus-Arkanoid."

Tags: viral marketing, affinity internet, online games