The Kendall and Kylie Jenner mobile game made its way to the app store this month and immediately broke download records. Their big sister, Kim Kardashian, showed them the way two years ago with her own Hollywood game that made millions.
The idea is quite simple: you make a cartoon version of yourself (preferably with a lot of makeup) and enter your new virtual world in Malibu, California, where you try to become famous.
In the game, your main aim is to earn ‘energy’, which allows you to perform chores, enter talks with celebrities, and attend the coolest parties. All the while, K & K try to help you on your journey to eternal glory by sending “personal” video messages and tips.
Everything revolves around your online presence. If someone asks your cartoon version how you will make money in this world that revolves around, well, money, you just say, “by going viral.”
The game itself is free to download – but once your energy runs out you have to buy more in order to play. And by that point the developers, Glu Games Inc., have already got you hooked!
Celebrities and the addicted online gaming community
Glu Games Inc, the developers behind the game, are also the creators of a number of other celebrity game apps, including Katy Perry Pop and the soon-to-be Taylor Swift game – it seems converting celebrities into cartoon versions and having them play the lead role in simple games is the new hit of the gaming and app industry.
Consumers feel more than ever attracted to products promoted by celebrities. Until today, even Elvis is promoting the silliest games – just because we know Elvis so well, we tend to be drawn towards this one, rather than other games that offer the same play.
But what makes celebrity games so much more fun than other applications, and so especially addictive? It certainly can’t be the graphics, which by today’s standards look outdated –a bad version of the good old Sims perhaps! Is it simply the name of these celebrities that make the games sell in such unprecedented numbers?
A social media community
Name recognition is definitely not the only reason why modern celebrity game applications are downloaded en masse – in-game social media features had a large part to play.
Glu Games Inc. incorporated an Instagram-like app in the Kendall & Kylie game. Users earn ‘energy’ by posting selfies, liking photos, and basically doing what people are already doing in the real world: being part of an online community. The essential appeal of these celebrity apps is that the more famous you become online, the more famous you feel you are in real life.
The only difference between users’ personal profiles and game profile, is that in the game you’re suddenly friends with Kylie and Kendall themselves and can get hundreds of likes.
In Katy Perry Pop, online community also has an important part to play, as one of the goals of the game is to grow a large number of Twitter followers. The more followers you gain, the shorter the road to fame.
Celebrity games understand millennials
This is how modern celebrity games are different from much of the competition: they perfectly link two phenomena a lot of teenagers and twenty-somethings of today see as important: celebrity culture and social media.
As well as being a fun, virtual world, the game also gives users tips on how to build followers, likes and create the perfect selfie. And isn’t this precisely what all Kylie and Kendall’s real-world followers really want to know…?
