GDC 12: Facebook Game Developer Conference

Today’s web traffic is that of a different beast. We blog online, we play our games online, and most commonly, we participate in the act of social networking. Facebook has climbed to the top of social networks, with a member base of over 845 million users, becoming one of the more prominent platforms for social gaming and applications. In 2011, Facebook poured over $1.4 billion of it’s finances for game developers to take advantage of. Whether you’re a gamer or a developer, it’s a trend that’s hard to ignore. The rabbit hole will only get deeper as Facebook aims to ingrain itself into your ever day gaming routine, regardless of whether or not you’re "casual" or "hardcore."

Mobile gaming has slowly made its way into the spotlight since the humble beginnings of the iOS market. Several different developers and IPs have found success through emerging markets found on your everyday smartphones. The social gaming landscape has slowly emerged onto the scene and now plans to integrate the multiplayer aspect through the cross-platform support of Facebook.

What does this means exactly? Imagine accessing your current round of Words with Friends and playing against a friend who engaged you from their PC, simply from being logged into their Facebook with the seamless efforts of challenging who was online via their friends list.

Games like Diamond Dash developed by wooga are only the beginning, with several developers taking notice towards the success of several different social games, but what about the lack of "hardcore" games being available? Noah Falstein of Suddenly Social pointed out that even hit games from developers like Zygna are rapidly stagnating by the week, and follow the same perpetual social formula to a nauseam, making even casual players grow tired of social gaming. Conventions like incentives for social recruitment or repurposed methods of farming (regardless of game premise) have saturated the experience for seasoned players (and even curious start-up players).  Will Harbin of Kixeye, however, aims to be the first to end the drought of the “hardcore” games available on Facebook.

Kixeye is proposing to bring the “hardcore” depth with casual accessibility, “hyper accessibility” as was quoted by Harbin. Showing very brief screens and models of what they have in development, the shooters and hack’n slash looters shown were a change of pace from usual Facebook fare. Harbin also elaborated that they wish to bring a “freemium” model that sells game play items and boosts for campaign modes or single player as opposed to shallow aesthetic items or themes. Other than that, details were scant, but the proposition and investment showed potential with Facebook’s attitude towards it’s gaming platform.

In short, Facebook plans to provide developers cross-platform support between its game space and Mobile OS versions in order to cross-pollinate new players, while finding new mechanics that can alter game play. In what it plans to deliver, Facebook is also adapting from the Mobile space by providing support for developers to expand games to much wider variety of selection, in efforts to compete with other social networks or even flash game giants like Kongregate.

You have one and I have one -- most of us are on Facebook in one way or another, and while the divide between who and who doesn’t play games on Facebook was always clearly defined, the social network is taking efforts to change all that. Overall, it’s looking rather promising.