[IndustryGamers would like to thank EA Sports for sponsoring our trip to GDC this year]
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Facebook is akin to a sleeping giant slowly arousing in the gaming sphere. It's appropriate then that Gareth Davis, platform manager for Facebook's game division, delivered a keynote at the GDC Social Gaming Summit.
Davis trotted out Facebook's various impressive statistics, with 200 million daily users and 400 million monthly users. What's more, 200 million of Facebook users play a game on the service every month and over a half million apps have been made over the past few years.
“We’ve moved beyond the core gamer,” said Davis [thanks Gamasutra], “and we now have people playing games across every demographic.”
The Facebook platform is changing how games are designed, monetized, developed, and marketed, according to Davis. He noted that there's a history of games being social, be they backgammon, chess or Rock Band.
“Pretty soon all games will be social,” said Davis, “and we won’t call them social games, we’ll just start calling them games again.”
With Facebook now available on PC, consoles, iPhone and other platforms, Davis theorizes that game universes could be constructed around it. Depending on whether a person is playing on a console or a mobile phone, they could play different aspects of the same game and use Facebook to communicate with each other.
To Davis, one of the forward-looking aspects of Facebook is the ability to use profile pictures for users and their friends in games. Using information like age, name, what college you went to could all be part of the experience. “Every [traditional] video game I’ve played, it was absolutely nothing about me,” said Davis. “I was totally anonymous. A Facebook game is different.”
“Imagine a game where the story includes my real-world relationships,” he continued. “Imagine I’m rescuing a loved one, and the characters look like people I know [and items are based on things you know and like]. Suddenly you have an incredibly new, immersive experience, something we haven’t really seen before.”
“As far as we’ve come with social gaming, we’re really only beginning,” he admitted. “Every new platform brings with it a defining, iconic game. I think the iconic Facebook game still lies ahead of us. The killer social game, the Mario of Facebook, is out there, and will likely come from somewhere in this room.”
2 Comments
March 9, 2010
Hi,
it gives users a public platform to discuss topics in an simple manner with the rest of the world and gives groups a one page platform to meet. I think it will also be the first large scale site to launch with Facebook Connect. I welcome your feedback on the site and if you like it, I would be thrilled for you to run an article about it.
micro sd
June 3, 2010
I wonder how long the facebook bubble will last before it pops, i recently went over to myspace and its like a ghost town, its like dial up internet hardly anyone uses it any more because theres so many broadband deals about. I can see that the standard 8MB broadband connection will soon speed up dramaticly.