Interestingly, Chevy Cobalt Labs requires players to carefully consider which features they most desire for their vehicle, as nearly every possible modification costs some amount of virtual currency. Additional currency can be earned through in-game activities such as winning races, or out-of-game activities, such as completely filling out your profile. By requiring players to spend virtual currency on the vehicle features they desire, General Motors has given consumers a great reason to do useful things, like tell the company more about themselves.

More importantly, General Motors is learning something about real-life consumer preferences. After all, if in real life you care more about a car’s spoiler than its wheels, you’re likely to use your first allotment of virtual currency to buy a sweet spoiler for your car, and leave the fancy wheels for later.

Making a Viral Advergame

One good way to understand what defines a good advergame is to examine a bad one, such as H&R Block’s Financial Match Quiz. This game, which was launched on Facebook in 2008, encourages players to test their compatibility with friends by answering stimulating questions like “How do you feel about debt?” and “Do you know what tax deductions you qualify for?” Unfortunately, the ordinary person is unlikely to enjoy revealing financial problems or financial ignorance to friends. A good advergame, at bare minimum, should be fun and viral (that is, likely to be shared with friends and family). Financial Match Quiz attempts to exploit the popularity and viral nature of the stereotypical compatibility game, but is ultimately burdened with such dry content that it is neither fun nor viral.

In general (and unsurprisingly), the more fun a game is, the more likely people are to tell their friends about it, so the most important component of making a game viral is to make it extremely fun. Viral behavior can also be driven by competitive or collaborative activities, by the desire to achieve, and by the desire to share things with friends—especially when the act of sharing bears concrete rewards.