Facebook: New generation browser gaming poses no threat

October 28th, 2011, 01:07 Posted By: wraggster

The proliferation of powerful and easily accessed browser-based streaming game platforms like Gaikai poses no threat to Facebook's gaming audience, the company says.
"I think the role Facebook plays in games is an entirely different one," director of platform marketing Ethan Beard told us at Facebook's f8 conference this week. "It's not just about where you play, and it's not just about the technology. For us it's the social aspect of it – the fact that you're playing games with your friends."
Recent developments in Facebook's technology are ensuring that it can be part of games anywhere on the web, not just those hosted on its site.
"People can play games in lots of different places, and it's great that they're on YouTube now, but in many ways it's a whole different category."
Gaikai recently embedded a demo of FIFA 12 on YouTube, the first time a full 3D game has been available on the video sharing site – though an Easter egg discovered last year allows viewers to playSnake. The move could have profound consequences for developers looking to reach a wide audience quickly, but Facebook engineer Simon Cross echoes Beard's sentiment, stressing the lack of social connectivity.
"There's nothing stopping people sharing URLs that contain embedded games on Facebook, if they think it's cool," he says. "But the Facebook platform has two things: sharing, the social channels that drive more people back to the game; and then the social aspect within the game that makes sure it's super-compelling.
"Unless the game was built into that platform, it won't be designed around people. And those are the games that we, as a platform, think are super-powerful."
A recent report highlighted the significant growth in social gaming outside of Facebook, while Facebook's biggest game company Zynga recently unveiled Zynga Direct, its direct-to-consumer gaming platform. But Beard isn't phased.
"We don't think of the Facebook platform as just 'Facebook dot com', in fact Facebook Connect [which Zynga Direct makes use of] has all the same technology as the web and has been available for almost three years now.
"We want to enable social games to take place wherever they make sense, and sometimes that might be on our website, it might be on partner's websites, on consoles or mobile devices. I think most companies are looking across a wide range of platforms. You need to go where users are and make it easy for them to have a great experience on any device.
"So I think lots of smart companies who have the resources will build games on all these different devices. And I believe they're all going to use Facebook to make those games social."
EA-owned Pet Society developer Playfish has seen huge successon Facebook with The Sims Social, and the company foresees a long and healthy future for the platform, but recognises a shift away from Facebook exclusivity.
"John Riccitello's recent comments on cross-platform play were interesting: you can play a game on Facebook, you can play the same game on console - you may get a richer experience, but it's still the same game," Playfish game server director Campbell Wilson tells us. "So I think in some ways there possibly is a move going outside of Facebook to play on your own devices, but a lot of the time you're still making the call back in to FaceBook at the moment.
"But the whole thing about Pet Society is that your friends are there, the amount of users using Facebook is incredible. So if you want to write any sort of social game, the first thing you want to ask is why not use Facebook."
"While it may be great to play a game like FIFA on YouTube, a game like Pet Society isn't going to work there, and a traditionalFIFA game isn't going to work if you just port it into a window on Facebook," Playfish head of multi-platform technology Dan Borthwick adds.
There may also be a shift in the types of games Facebook's audience are willing to play, as Finnish developer Supercell can attest. The studio's core-focused MMOG Gunshine.net initially launched as a browser game, but was subsequently brought to Facebook as well, and is now performing better on the Social network than in its browser iteration.
"First of all we had good experience running the game on our own side, but we wanted to experience what it would be like to take the MMOG experience to FarmVille players," former Digital Chocolate senior product manager Timur Haussila, who now holds the same role at Supercell, explains. "We started exploring the opportunity of having the same game running in two environments at the same time so that it's connected. We found that there are some technical challenges, but they can be easily tackled, so we decided to go toFacebook Canvas.
"We're talking about social games, and multiplayer games are by nature a social game. And what could be a more natural place to play that kind of game than Facebook?"
Through Open Graph and Facebook Connect, the social platform is ensuring that its connectivity is as relevant to web, PC and console developers as it is to those who create games exclusively for Facebook. Despite being caught off guard by the success of social gaming, by collapsing the notional borders between Facebook.com and the rest of the connected world, the company looks set to increase its already wide-reaching influence.

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