Are facebook games eating up your mobile gaming time?

[Fraser]

There's no denying the greatness of facebook applications, mostly because lots of them were already very successful mobile games before they found their way over to the social networking leviathan.

There's Tower Bloxx, Galaxy on Fire and of course the nearly peerless Reset Generation. But it's all time spent idling minutes and hours away with casual gaming, and there's only so much time anyone can spend a day doing that.

So the question is, is facebook a threat to mobile gaming?

[daab.orion]

I see the games on Facebook as more of a convenience than a means to offer competition to an existing market.

The games are meerly a minor marketing tool to get people to log in more often. While I'm sure there are people who are addicted to some of those games, I see those games more like any other web app out there. There are free versions of everything from Snake to Bomberman out there, yet people seem to be willing to buy many of those types of titles for the mobile because of the convenience factor of having it wherever you go.

You also will encounter copyright issues, like with what happened with Scrabble. Things like this I think will hinder how far Facebook games will really go, and honeslty, I doubt it will grow much more than it already has.

I see this as more of a "bored.com" type of thing. It will have a boost in popularity, then people will find other things to occupy their time. Mobile, especially with units like the iPhone and Nokia's NGage capable devices, are becoming more like dedicated handheld consoles, which in my humble opinion will continue to exist and make billions of dollars no matter how many free options come out on the net.

[danskmacabre]

Whilst I DO use facebook, I pretty much delete every invite I get from ppl to games, pokes and all the other pointless stuff on there.
Facebook is good for keeping in touch with friends, making social arrangements with friends a long way away and using it as a photo album (we're putting our wedding pics on there for our friends to see).
but gaming? no way.

I use the DS when slobbing about the house or when waiting somewhere for whatever reason.
The PC for long gaming sessions and the Wii for Wiifit and a couple of other games.

[hunter_alien]

Cant say that they do... I to use facebook but barely. I dont think that Ive spent more then 3-4 hours on facebook, and I agree here danskmacabre, its good to stay in touch with friends, but as a "platform" that supports games is really mediocre. I would allways choose more hardcopre, handheld games over the easy to pick up games that you can find there.

[TazUK]

Nope, I'm afraid they don't, I've somehow managed to avoid using any of these Social websites up to this point. If I want to know what my friends are doing then I ring them, or go for a few beers.

I used to play on Yahoo Games and Pogo quite alot if that helps, but even they have fallen to the way side as I don't seem to have time anymore.

Maybe I need to retire early so I can get back to playing games 24/7... hmmmm, thinking.... !!

[danskmacabre]

Well one thing that's really good about facebook is I've managed to get in touch with friends from wayback who I probably would never have done if I wasn't registered with facebook.

But tbh, I rarely use it, maybe once a week at best.

[luo717ge]

unluck ,our country banned the official facebook site ,so i 've got a lot of time in my mobile game.


hope one day ,my country can welcome facebook .