While the social gaming market is absolutely red-hot right now, I’ve never bought into the idea that people want to play Backgammon or some goofy Flash game as part of the flirting process.
But there are 6 billion people on earth, and it turns out that a whole lot of them like to do stuff like online farming.
People will forget to feed their children and pets while engrossed in Farmville and Cityville. Totally addictive gameplay is incredibly difficult to design and develop. Also remember that these games are improved over time. The Farmville of today is much different than what it was on launch day.
Dating sites have not successfully integrated gaming into the flirting/introduction process. The reason is partially because most social games have nothing to do with introductions and the games themselves don’t facilitate sharing tastes, preferences and personalities.
Integrating game mechanics into dating, where you have to level-up to gain ability to email person = huge amounts of engagement, fun for members and revenue potential for dating sites.
Prove you are a real person, not a jerk, look about the same as your photo and have a decent reputation for communicating and knowing how to treat a lady, and you are loving life on a dating site based on gaming/fun and reputation. Sleazeballs are put in their place at the bottom of the barrel.
Until someone takes my idea and goes and does something like it, singles are stuck with having to play countless hours of Bejeweled. Nothing wrong with that, just not very interesting to me.
CupidsPlay is a new dating site that harnesses the power and popularity of casual online games. A fun new dating service where members can use casual gaming as the common medium to get to know one another. CupidsPlay breaks the mold of traditional “wink and message” dating sites by bringing the “fun and social” to the online dating experience.
The teaser for the site got me all excited. Think: “Angry Birds meets Match.com.” It’s the newest way for men and women to interact and have a little fun getting to know each other before meeting face-to-face.
I love me some Angry Birds, and got all worked up about The Best Game Ever and The Biggest Dating Site In The World getting mashed up with a bunch of sexy fun guys and gals. I mean, what’s not to like?
And then I played the games. They’re ok. Casual gamers will probably flock to this site in droves. There are a few dating-related games but they appear to be group-oriented. I don’t want to share my answers with some dudes, they are the competition.
I’ve been waiting to try the videochat, but there is no-one online to chat with. Such is life with new sites like this, will take a while until there are enough people to keep the chat room full.
Some of the games take five days to complete. I think the company is going to have to tweak some of the games to make them more immediate and interesting.
The leaderboards and point system are not bad, and perhaps and the team-based play will grow on me after a while. These kinds of sites require a few weeks of exploration before making final judgement.
Until then, I’ll play around on Cupids Play and see how long it keeps me occupied.
