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Comment by ArtWomb | Hacker News Reader

The "zen" of virality is that attempts to over-engineer or design k-factor, often result in stunted organic growth ;)

I don't think one can really consider the explosion of Wordle to be a "pure" game hit, as it was somewhat tied into Twitter's meme distribution engine.

I think a more illuminating case study would be something like that bygone summer everyone was suddenly consumed with conquering Desktop Tower Defense. And the "kernel" of consumption was the shared novelty: "hey has anyone figured out a strategy to defeat the final wave of mega-flyers in level 20?"

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I agree that good k-factor emerges, but you can still fertilize the soil, pick a sunny location, etc to increase the odds. It's hard to do this with a finished game in hand. I really think you need a holistic approach so that your desired playstyle (in this case ppl sharing outcomes with one another) is encouraged intrinsically by the design.

So I would offer that as another solution. Congratulations to OP on shipping your first game and learning a ton. What would a sequel or spiritual successor look like? This thought exercise gives you the freedom to question mechanics you already shipped which may be holding back your other design goals.

I haven't heard of Desktop Tower Defense despite considering myself a hardcore gamer. Everyone I knew was playing Team Fortress 2, Portal, and Halo 3 in 2007.

I'd be interested to hear where these conversation were happening for you.

As an example from my past, a lot of games grew on GameFaqs (pre-social media) for that exact reason. The more a community engaged, the higher that game would rank, so more users would be exposed to games that grew organically driven by difficulty, high customization, or skill.

I was in a college research experiences for undergraduates program in 2007, and Tower Defense games were incredibly popular among my peer group. I'd compare it to Angry Birds or perhaps Flappy Bird in terms of how it was seemingly everywhere for a time.

An interesting contrast was Flappy Bird popularity seemed to come out of nowhere, and was rationalized in retrospect, whereas the Tower Defense genre was the opposite. Its intrinsic interestingness seemed obvious at the time, but in retrospect I can't understand it.

It's always nice when people respond to what you've written, but this comment really brought back a surge of memories for me! Do you also recall, around the same era, there was a precursor to Angry Birds called "Crush the Castle" that similarly spawned obsessive level creation. With DTD it was A* pathfinding. With Castles it was 2D physics. Simple engine mechanics engenders repeat playability ;)

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