Dancing Bush Game

The "Dancing Bush" Game is the iconic original massive viral hit game that launched the mass web syndication of rich media APPs and today's biggest online games website www.Miniclip.com.

The mother of game and video meme's. The definition of a meme – the free flash interactive video/game meme in 2001 that started the mass free sharing and free syndication of rich media with free "copy and paste code" that all of today's and knowyourmeme's flash viral video has evolved from.

It all originated from a dancing video filmed on a hi8 video camcorder in a small apartment kitchen and emailed to the Miniclip.com newsletter with 4,000 subscribers.

You can play Dancing Bush here

Released shortly after the 2000 USA Presidential election of George Bush was the perfect time for this to be a huge hit. In real life President Bush was not known as a great dancer but the game portrayed him as a smooth dancer. Many people thought is made him look good and was funny while others thought it did not make him look good which stirred a debate about whether it was positive or negative for him. Websites that supported him published the game and websites of his opponents published the game and of course all the sites that just thought it was fun and funny published it.

*The most successful and longest running viral game campaign of all time.

*The first hit viral interactive video (before the flash video codec – before video was available in flash)

*Now in the tenth year of its dancing legs it is still published and running on 1000’s of websites. GO to Google.com – type in “Dancing Bush” to see all the many publishers still running the game.

*The most syndicated game APP of all time to more websites than any other game APP – Estimated to be in the 100’s of thousands of websites over the years. News sites, political sites, game sites, personal sites and it was sent by email attachements (when .exe email attachments were ok to send). Users could play it on their desktop as a program as well as in browsers on websites.

*The originator of the mass free rich media content syndication model that youtube now uses to syndicate videos and which current social APP makers/syndicators think is the hot new thing (yes Dancing Bush did it almost 10 years ago).

*Estimated 500+ million game plays.

*The first to freely syndicate rich media web apps on a mass scale. All websites were free to take the game on its site.

Samples of sites still publishing and running the 2001 Dancing Bush game:
http://www.ugoplayer.com/games/dancingbush.html posted: 2003
http://politicalhumor.about.com/library/multimedia/bldancingbush.htm
http://www.flashgames247.com/game/other-games/dancing-bush.html
http://www.y8.com/games/Dancing_Bush

Then the French leader and others: http://www.koreus.com/jeu/dancing-chirac.html

Next was Bush Aerobics: http://www.miniclip.com/games/bush-aerobics/en/

Jibjabs viral site with dancing videos and pasted heads is all a big spinoff.

From a video filmed in a kitchen to now a company Miniclip.com and user base of 57 million worldwide users and with a value of over $500 million.

Citations:

USA Today
Aug, 3rd, 2001
“Dancing Dubya…he's as smooth as a virtual Fred Astaire on the digital dance floor.”

The Wall Street Journal
Jan, 14th, 2002, William M.Bulkeley
“Another success story is told by London-based Miniclip Ltd…after it created DancingBush – an animation of the president boogeying to music from the movie 'Saturday