Jan
19

Facebook games

After reading a post on Brenda Brathwaites blog about facebook games and application spam, I had a few thoughts of my own.

As to the development of games, Facebook has an incredibly enviable position of owning a massive multiplayer userbase. Games like Tetris or Mario or Space Invaders or whatever are pointless in such an environment, but Scrabulous is massive because it is:

  • A Casual game
  • A Multiplayer game
  • A Game everyone already knows how to play.

Unfortunately Scrabulous may not be around for much longer due to Intellectual Property issues.

What I expect to see soon is more turnbased multiplayer games hitting Facebook, and with the online capabilities of the current consoles, more interaction between the big league companies and Facebook. Xbox Live has recently proved with Carcassonne and Settlers of Catan that some board games can translate well to the electronic medium.

As an aside, I’m still surprised that there is not a full Xbox Live Friends management app in existence yet, something that mimics the dashboard.

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This entry was posted on Saturday, January 19th, 2008 at 7:01 pm and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

6 Responses to “Facebook games”

  1. bbrathwaite Says:
    January 19th, 2008 at 7:27 pm

    I completely agree with you, Rick.

    As an platform, I am really excited about the prospects for and potential of Facebook, much more so than Myspace.

  2. Facebook » Facebook games Says:
    January 19th, 2008 at 8:46 pm

    [...] unknown wrote an interesting post today on Facebook gamesHere’s a quick excerptAfter reading a post on Brenda Brathwaites blog about facebook games and application spam, I had a few thoughts of my own. [...]

  3. Facebook » Facebook games Says:
    January 19th, 2008 at 9:17 pm

    [...] Bilgi & iÅŸlem, biliÅŸim ve teknoloji üzerine… wrote an interesting post today on Facebook gamesHere’s a quick excerptAfter reading a post on Brenda Brathwaites blog about facebook games and application spam, I had a few thoughts of my own. [...]

  4. Peter_Saumur Says:
    January 26th, 2008 at 12:50 am

    …and they are being sued. *ahem*

    I, for one, would LOVE competitive Tetris, like the Atari arcade version or even competitive Bust-a-Move (you listening Taito?).

    The problem with games for Facebook, as with any other game delivery medium, is audience. Not everyone would be interested in the above (or Scrabulous) and you would have to find the game with the broadest reach, if you were interested in profit.

    Not sure what the demographics are for Facebook but I imagine the creator(s) do(?).

    So, my question is, how does this differ from Browser based games being delivered on a networked system (ie: the Internet) or are you saying that this is more like XBoxLive, where you have access to a specific community?

  5. Rick Says:
    January 26th, 2008 at 9:31 pm

    “…my question is, how does this differ from Browser based games being delivered on a networked system?”

    Quite easily - the content is in your face, and being pushed at you by friends. You don’t have to deliberately seek out games, no searching, you go to Facebook and one of your contacts says “Try Warbook” or “Try Blocky”. You get recommendations and don’t have to leave the website or track them down, it’s usually just one mouse click to add the game to your profile.

    “The problem with games for Facebook, as with any other game delivery medium, is audience. Not everyone would be interested in the above (or Scrabulous) and you would have to find the game with the broadest reach, if you were interested in profit.”

    The other thing you need to remember is that these games are not purely locked into Facebook, Warbook for example runs on Bebo too, and as you play you can play against people from both networks.

    I’m sure some bright spark can come up with a way of using contextual advertising along with these games and splitting the revenue between the content developers and the content publishers.

  6. Rick Says:
    January 27th, 2008 at 10:45 am

    It’s also worth mentioning that Facebook has just opened up it’s apps as widgets that can be displayed on ANY website.

Thoughts on this?