Right now, the phenomenon called “gamification” is sweeping across multiple industries at the moment. To Ethan Beard, Facebook’s director of platform partnerships, he sees this trend coming to social media and content as well.
“You know, in many ways, gaming, we think, is leading the way,” said Beard. “It’s going to transform lots and lots of industries and experiences by making them social at the core.”
“I think it’s still early days. I think there’s a lot more that we’re going to see. The space is moving quickly. We’re definitely not at an end game,” he added. “What’s going with mobile is completely different. In two years, the type of games we’re playing on a mobile phone is going to look really different from what we’re playing today. We find that users that use us on mobile are more engaged than users who only use us on the PC.”
Of course, this also includes games that are not just games that are platform exclusive to Facebook. “You can play games on PlayStation and Xbox that are social and have the social graph at the core of them. We’re still at a very early stage. Titles that tie together all those experiences. Distribution that you can get on all these different experiences. And truly rich social gaming that isn’t just setting a title on a Facebook Canvas space.”
“That’s what we’re constantly thinking about, Facebook as a platform that is the graph, and having users tap into that and have experiences with their friends. We feel like we’re just scratching the surface, and it’s really going to transform,” he added. “A lot of the true innovation and genius is happening within our gaming partners. We certainly encourage it and listen to them to make sure that what we build works for that, but I definitely think the like kind of cross-platform coordination and cross-platform platform is a really exciting area. We think we’re going to see a lot of interesting innovation take place.”
Source: Gamasutra
