It may be a far cry from what I dreamed the games industry would turn into, but Facebook and its new social games craze may just be the start of an entirely new way to play and enjoy video games. While not a traditional video gamers first choice, I believe that Facebook is going to very quickly grow to become the defacto method for game developers and game players to interact, share thoughts and ultimately play together.
What we are looking at is the start of truly world wide gaming platform. With Facebook second only to Google in the amount of traffic it generates it's easy to see why. While it seems like only yesterday that communities were restricted to fan sites and official forums, it is almost a must for companies to put a virtual presence up on the social networking giants site. Gain a large following and interact directly with its player base through the social giant.
Cloud computing is going to do a great deal to help this out I believe. Instead of downloading and installing a multi-gigabyte game, and spending a great deal of time doing so, you will simply login to Facebook and have the game rendered and streamed through Facebook to you. There are a couple examples of this already in the works.
Gaikai.com
And,
OnLive.com
With the explosion of Farmville we can start to see the truly awe inspiring way that Facebook is connecting people. Now a grandmother and grandchild can host virtual farms and interact with each other in near real time. Some of the other games coming out on Facebook lately are even more interconnected. Games like Evony and Backyard Monsters make it possible to attack fellow players and communicate with the enemy in real time.
In the old days we needed to install extra software to communicate with friends. I can clearly recall having AIM, Xfire, mIRC, Ventrillo and Teamspeak all installed just so I could keep in contact with my friends. Now, we can all stay in touch through one site. Play games through one site. And even publish our good scores for all to see.
Even the console makers are starting to notice how useful a Facebook presence is, in fact the Xbox 360 has a built in Facebook application now.
While it may appear like the culmination of the casual boom, I believe it is really the beginning of the next big thing for hard core gamers. If you have held off starting a Facebook account, or just never got around to it I urge you to sign up now and find out what all the fuss is about. Cause when they add "Facebook Achievements" you will be glad you did. :)
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