When one thinks of games on Facebook, it’s difficult not to think of Zynga and their domination of the space. While one would wonder if they would ever seek to expand beyond Facebook, Zynga Chief Games Designer Brian Reynolds isn’t worried about that for now.
“We have a deal with Facebook, so as long as they’re around, we’re a partner with them. After the early adjustment period, I think they’ve come to realize that it really is symbiotic, that people want to play games on social networks and that what we offer is really light ways to keep in touch with people,” said Reynolds. “So if I had a friend from high school and we’ve had the little e-mail exchange – ‘Oh, you’re on Facebook. I’m on Facebook. Cool. What do you do I’m a farmer in Nevada and I’m a video game guy in Baltimore.” At some point it’s kind of like well what else do you say We don’t have a lot in our lives in common anymore but it’s still a person I care about so it’s like, ‘Oh, hi, how are you doing Here’s something for your mafia.’ Just like on Facebook you click ‘like’ and it’s very low friction, low effort, but I still care about you and that was a neat thing you just said. And then maybe at a higher level we even kind of help you write your jokes. We give you funny little things you can post and then comment ”What is she doing to the sheep ‘ kind of silliness, so it’s a light way of doing social touches. So it’s our mission and I think Facebook realizes that’s one of the things that people want and need on a social network to be able to keep the thing healthy and going, and so I don’t see any of that going away.”
“There isn’t a project called Zynga Live, but there will probably be things that we do that are like some of the things that people would think that would be like if we did something called Zynga Live,” Reynolds added. “There’s Xbox Live, so everyone’s saying, ‘Oh, they’re going to do one of those.’ We will probably do something at some point that has some of that stuff, but whatever we do we’re going to be partnered with Facebook and we’re going to do it with Facebook. The rumors you hear about ‘There’s going to be some kind of end run and they’re going to try to…’ We’re not doing any of that.”
Source: IndustryGamers {link no longer active}
