Can't Stop the Spike (Part 3)
What does it take to invent a new game? What makes a new game stick?
One of the stereotypes of explanatory nonfiction like this is that after the author lures you in with a personal anecdote, they cooly pivot to a Gladwellian dissection of the juiciest bits of pop sociology undergirding it all, usually starting with some pithy historical context like: “Spikeball was invented by John Spikeball in a small Missouri town on a hot afternoon in 1917.”
However, cliches aside, I need to give some history here because it really helps explain my own experience with the game as well as where it may be going.
The game we now call Spikeball was born the same year as Taylor Swift: 1989. Its father was cartoonist, toymaker, and Michigander Jeff Knurek. He got his trampoline game in some toy stores but it never really took off. The story could have ended there except someone else liked Jeff’s game enough to give it a second life.
Chris Ruder, a Chicago-based marketing executive discovered a Spikeball set at a local Toys R Us and decided to bring it on a vacation to Hawaii in 2003. While playing joyful games on the beach with his friends, he kept getting stopped to ask what the game was called and where people could buy it. After looking into it, he learned that the patent for Knurek’s game had expired and saw an opportunity. He bought it for $800 and founded Spikeball in 2007, starting to sell sets the year I graduated high school: 2008. While for years it was his side hustle, he finally made $1 million in revenue in 2013 and quit his job to work on Spikeball full time.
Popularizing a new game is tough, as Jeff Knurek had found out the hard way. To make headway, Chris Ruder used his marketing background to do some 80/20 analysis and figure out who his power users were. Through customer surveys, he discovered that the main groups buying Spikeball sets were Ultimate Frisbee players, PE teachers, and Christian youth groups. This breakthrough enabled him to double down on marketing to groups that were likely to be receptive and willingly refer friends. According to this profile of Ruder by Truested, around 2010:
“He started messaging ultimate frisbee players and youth group directors on Facebook and Twitter, offering free sets to anyone with a large following in exchange for photos of them playing SpikeBall.”
When first I learned this, it slid something into stark relief. The abundance of Spikeball sets on the sidelines of frisbee tournaments like Sunbreak and Lei Out wasn’t an accident; it was an intentional strategy. In a way it was remarkable that it took me so long to start playing given how many years I’d been living directly in the path of Spikeball’s marketing blitz.
The big break came when Spikeball appeared on Shark Tank in 2015. However the benefit was for brand awareness, not financing. While they were offered funding, Ruder ended it up turning it down, a decision he defends to this day. Two of the players from Chico State who helped demo the set that day: Schuyler Boles and Shaun Boyer, were also some of Spikeballs first employees.
Ironically, Spikeball quickly became so popular that it had to rename the sport for which they were selling all these sets. This was to avoid the dreaded fate for brands that’s known as “Genericide.” Basically, if your trademarked term becomes so popular that it becomes the generic term for something (think Kleenex being used to refer to a tissue), it can result in losing the defensible validity of your trademark. Indeed Zipper, Thermos, and Aspirin have all suffered this tragic cost of viral success.
So today, the sport is technically referred to as “roundnet,” something you dear reader likely don’t know because you aren’t a roundnet podcast fan like me (there are dozens of us!). Yes, this sounds weird. Imagine a parallel universe where Spalding popularized basketball to the point that most people called the game “Spalding,” making “basketball” the odd term, and you can sort of wrap your head around why this is the case.
While today Spikeball is by far the most popular manufacturer of equipment, it’s not the only one. There’s also Slammo (frisbee players this is maligned in Spikeball circles the way Whammo is compared to Discraft), Slam ball, and Strikeball, all of which all give off the same sleazy knock off vibes as “The Asylum’s” film copycats. For the curious tangent lovers, after giving us the bad-sober-great-with-a-buzz classic “Sharknado,” The Asylum most recently aped Godzilla vs Kong quite literally with the lazy-even-for-them “Ape vs Monster” in 2021. Back to roundnet, there’s even postmodern version: Revol, that ditches the net and its frustratingly inconsistent pockets in favor of a flat plastic set that looks like playing on top of your moms coffee table even after she’s asked you politely to stop.
While there are at least four other companies making sets for roundnet, so far none of them have been able to dethrone Spikeball as the king of the sport.
One of the most noticeable qualities of Spikeball for me is that it’s very addictive. After all, not all lawn games provoke me to voluntarily write a 8,000 word essay in multiple parts about them. Nearly everyone I’ve introduced it to has fallen in love at first spike and wanted to play more. Most people I play with occasionally tell me they’d like to play more often, and the people I now play with regularly on Thursdays and weekends are rapidly becoming a sort of spike cult.
Why is this? Here is what makes up the DNA of this cleverly designed game in my analysis:
Easy to learn, hard to master. The basic mechanics of Spikeball are easy to learn in a few minutes. It’s 2 on 2 volleyball but instead of hitting the ball over a net, you hit it off of the net in a motion reminiscent to racket sports like tennis or squash. If you’ve played ball sports before you’ll pick it up very quickly. The barrier to entry is low and even non-athletic people can still enjoy themselves as long as they’re somewhat coordinated. It’s the type of game you can play in a backyard with a beer in hand if that’s your speed. Yet unlike other such games like corn hole, the athletic and strategic ceiling of Spikeball is basically limitless. Your gameplay can become as intense, competitive, and fine-tuned as you want it to be.
You’re directly involved in nearly every play. Since it’s played 2 on 2 in a fairly compact space, you're always either hitting the ball, passing the ball, getting ready to defend a hit, or getting in position for your partner to pass to you. This creates a hyper-stimulating cadence of play where at most you are never more than 3 touches away from having a chance to hit the ball again. For me, this has been a stark contrast to other sports like soccer or Ultimate Frisbee, where I can go whole points and even games without feeling like I’m contributing anything. For an anxious, people-pleasing Cancer like me, Spikeball offers ample opportunities to help my teammate out and feel like an integral part of the flow of the game.
Unpredictable rallies are fairly common and very fun. Once a point starts, the field of play is 360 degrees around the net, giving you a tantalizing amount of options on offense and many possible responsibilities on defense. While good teams predictably use all touches per to maximize precision shots, there’s also a compelling unpredictability to every point. You just never know what someone is going to do every time the ball bounces up off the net and this suspense hooks you early and keeps you engaged.
The equipment is forgiving and gives you a chance to react. Something someone pointed out about ultimate frisbee once is that the game has more ridiculous diving catches than other sports simply because of the physics of the equipment involved. Discs hang in the air in a way that balls cannot. Similarly, the fact that every Spikeball hit requires you to hit the ball off of a bouncy net means that even huge hits still give the other team just enough time to react. This blessed bounce builds in a level of inherent parity between teams. This is particularly pronounced on the beach, where the forgiving sand surface encourages you and your teammate to dive for every ball within a reasonable radius, and many that would be unreasonable even for Odell Beckham Jr to get to in time.
It’s inherently collaborative & social. I think there’s something to be said for just how much social connection Spikeball requires and encourages. Since you have just one teammate per game, you have to work closely with them, learning to trust them, and discovering how they move, think, pass, and hit. Chemistry with your partner really matters and having a partner you play well with makes the game more fun and more competitive. You’re also physically close to the other team but not physically hindering them or jostling for space the way you would in soccer, basketball, or ultimate frisbee. This means that even really heated games rarely get as physical or antagonistic as they can in other sports. In the groups I play with, we also regularly cycle through partners, so you don’t play against a duo long enough to develop anything more than a light rivalry, since this games opponent may be next games trusted teammate.
Games are short, encouraging more games. I’ve found the average game to 21 takes between 10 and 15 minutes. This means you can pretty quickly finish a game, cycle through a new partner, demand a rematch against an old rival, or insist on a best-of-three series. Since each game is fairly bite-sized, and delivers a hit of adrenaline and dopamine from the attributes described above, it’s also easy to make a case for “just one more game…”