Facebook games becoming more diverse, says exec

Greater diversity and regionalisation are the biggest trends on Facebook, says the social network’s director of game partnerships, Sean Ryan.

Ryan took his post in January 2011, where he oversees a team dedicated to supporting and advising developers on how best to take advantages of the platform and prepare for changes.

The company has a vested interest in the success of its game developers, as in just a few years they have become on of its single greatest sources of revenue.

With mobile now the fastest growing component of the market, Facebook is trying to keep up- and keep developers on board.

But Ryan says that the rise of mobile is just part of the changing times, and shifts in Facebook gaming are best exemplified by the growing trends of regionalisation and diversification.

"A key theme is diversity: diversity in genres of games, where we used to have only one or two genres," he told Venturebeat.

"Now we have hidden-object games, core games, arcade games, and casual games."

This shift in the social gaming fabric is in part due to new technologies such as Unity and Flash 11 that make 3D gaming in a browser more practical.

Another trend, regionalisation, is a close second to diversity in moulding Facebook gaming.

Ryan points to the example of Happy Farm, a Chinese-made, Turkish-published title, which currently tops the chart in the Middle East.

"We didn’t see that a year or two ago," says Ryan.

Cnce dominated by U.S. studios producing games for a global market, Facebook is now riddled with smaller, local developers building games targeting their home region.

"Even the U.S. developers have, in many cases, localized their games into 12 or 14 languages," continues Ryan.

Ryan says his team is determined to help developers make the most of these trends, especially as Facebook transitions from a desktop to a mobile Platform.