Facebook has a sizable share of the games market, but it wants more. Most of the people who pay for games on Facebook are casual gamers, with titles such as King.com’s Candy Crush Saga at the forefront. But as Sean Ryan (pictured), Facebook’s director of games partnerships, discussed at the Game Developers Conference Tuesday in San Francisco, the company wants to become a bigger player in the games market through more action and console-like games.
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Namco, maker of Pac-Man S and other games, announced that it is retiring its Facebook titles, sister site Inside Social Games reported Tuesday. The games will still be playable until March 19, at which point they’ll go offline. Inside Social Games noted that Namco’s Facebook games have not been popular, likely leading to their demise.
Currently, most popular Facebook games differ greatly from console video games. There are bubble shooters and several iterations of “with Friends,” and these games are, for the most part, fairly simple. But Reuters writes that more complex, visual games could make their way to the social network this year. A few developers are looking to bring more console-quality gaming to Facebook.
2012 was a big year for games on Facebook, as hits such as Angry Birds, SongPop, and Dragon City were played by millions of users all over the world. Rebel Entertainment (makers of Dungeon Rampage) put together an infographic showing how social games left their mark last year.
Even a casual Facebook user can see that the site has changed dramatically over the past year. On Thursday, Facebook’s developers team took some time to reflect on some of the highlights that made the social network what it is today.
After capturing the attention of Facebook Co-Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, SongPop from FreshPlanet also captured the top spot on Facebook’s list of the 25 top-rated social games of 2012.
Game developer King.com announced its newest Facebook game, Pet Rescue Saga, last night at a launch party. King.com also previewed a mobile version of one of their most popular games, Candy Crush Saga. The company had a very important fan in attendance — Sean Ryan, Facebook’s director of games partnerships, who said King.com is making all the right moves.
Facebook wants to push more notifications, alerting users that there are games to be played and applications with which to be interacted, but it wants to make sure that it doesn’t spam people. The site announced Friday that is putting more controls in place to ensure that users aren’t bombarded with notifications that will only be ignored or hidden.
Facebook integration has helped sweeten the playing field for King.com’s Candy Crush Saga, a puzzle game in which players swap different types of candy to clear the game board and advance to higher levels.
