Flirtatious Labs – Making a game out of Flirting

Note: Serge Versille, founder of Flirtatious Labs, is a regular (and amazing) contributor to our blog, writing about the Games Sector.
When I was first contacted by Serge, I almost sent his email directly to spam. “It’s a flirting game” the email boasted and I thought “oh god, another creepy dating site.” I essentially told Serge to piss off, but he didn’t. He pushed through my initial first reaction, and I told him if he could get 5 users to tweet me to meet him, I would do so. Within minutes, I had about twenty tweets commanding me to meet Serge, and so I did. A shotgun interview.
As Serge sat down and explained his Facebook game, my initial guard began to drop, and he even let me try it out. After a few decisions – like whether I liked Bieber or Soundgarden – I was presented with some Facebook profiles connected to names, and asked which one I’d like to meet. Following through, I was asked how I would react to certain situations; the more I began to read, the more I found it a bit humorous. A certain dry British humor really had me thinking about my answer to each question – would I make a witty comment or go for the passionate response?
As I played the game more & more, I got intrigued, and I realized that it’s not so much flirting as it is proving your wit online. The scenarios are created by professional british humorists, says Versille, and there’s something to the idea of “who knows whether a dating site will introduce you to the love of your life, but on Flirtatious, at least you can meet someone with the same sense of humor as you.”
In order to unlock the ability to meet someone, you have to match over 60% of your answers with them, assuring that you have similar senses of humor. The only way contact information is shared is if both parties agree, so there’s no chance of spam messaging. The game automatically creates a profile of your answers, so you can have play asynchronously against others, with each new answer you give updating your profile weighed against others’ answers.
The game still has a long way to go – not only is the UX not fluid enough, but the engagement lacks. I’ll play for 5-10 minutes (not that I’m looking for anyone *shift eyes*), but after that I get a bit tired of the questions. There are a few additional gamification aspects – quick-draw decisions & things like that – that don’t interest me as much, but I’m sure the other 2,000 users or so get a kick out of it.

For a good laugh, I suggest you try it out – there’s no risk of anything getting posted to your facebook profile, and you’ll never be obliged to connect with anyone. If you’ve got feedback, connect with @sellisrev on twitter – he’s super open to getting feedback!
For those who have tried it, what do you think? Comments below appreciated!