Pop5 Live: An innovative casual game

We just launched a game on MSN Games as a result of a deal I've been working on for a little while now. The fact that it was my deal isn't why I'm blogging it though. I actually think it's got some really innovative aspects to it and wanted to point those out here.

The game is called Pop5 Live. [Update: Here's a link to the game with my 'user submitted video' in it] It's an online game from the folks at Cranium based on their new board game of the same name. The new board game is similar to their flagship product, Cranium, with a pop culture theme and an interesting new mechanic.

The online game is a pop culture trivia game, where you guess clues based on streamed video snippets of people 'performing' them (where performing is done via the different methods used in the game: drawing, sculpting, 'charades'-type acting, humming and picking clues based on letter blocks).

There are a couple things about the game that are innovative.

The first is that it's user-content driven. There's a link off to a mechanism to submit your own video clues. Videos go through an approval process, and once approved they go into the pool of videos from which five are pulled at random for any game session.

The second thing that's interesting is that it's viral (or at least we hope it will be). It's viral because people that submit videos are sent a link to instantiate the game with their video as one of the five and can send that to friends and families. It's also viral because players RATE the videos, and the top ranked videos win prize money - an additional reason for 'performers' to invite their friends and family to play (and vote for them).

Anyhow, it's pretty neat. Not bad for a web-only casual game!