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What are your thoughts on Facebook as a platform for your flash games?  Anyone try this out yet?  Anyone interested in it?

I'm now switching over from downloadable games to social web games, and I'm interested if anyone has done much with this.

If anyone has any flash games they'd like Facebook-ized (high score lists, etc), feel free to message me.  I'd love to see what kind of user response we'd get.

[isaac]

Interesting -- I wasn't aware that facebook supported flash games in it's apps.. but I've only been on there for less than a month, and only then out of peer pressure, so I haven't really explored the whole app thing yet.

[jango0821]

Anybody gonna comment? :D

I'd really love to learn more about this...

[JLJac]

This is actually a great oppurtunity to reach out to "common people", the non-gamers. With small yet addictive flash games you could reach a totally new crowd... Shame I'm not a flash guy

[Guert]

I've been looking into developing something for facebook for a while. I still don't have a design I feel that's solid enough but I think it's a nice plateform. I need to learn flash though.

[Don Andy]

I'm not that much into the whole flash shebang to really care about Facebook, yet, but I'll definitely keep an eye on the whole thing. It does have some potential, depending on how much they allow advertisments/sponsorings.

If they don't allow such things, it should at least have a value for getting yourself and your games known a bit better.

[Craig Stern]

Does Facebook Apps support Flash? I always thought they used some proprietary scripting language or something.

[Pyrofyr]

I've seen some flash, but it was quite basic.

Mostly I see PHP for stuff like this, would be a good platform if you like to mix it up, and especially if you know PHP...

[Craig Stern]

Ah, okay. It looks like there's a way to make it work if you're using AS3.

[Don Andy]

Well, I guess the main advantage is that the Facebook crowd is a bit easier to win over than the hardcore gamers at portals like Kongregate or Newgrounds.

Especially if you make one of these tools or gadgets that serve no general purpose other than annoying your friends (and forcing them to get it too, so they can annoy you back).

Flashbook probably won't like it if you try to monetize on that stuff, though, but as I said it may help getting you known a bit better.

[TheBlackMask]

With Flash, PHP, and mySQL, anything is possible on Facebook.  The Facebook API they give you allows you to pull things like usernames/numbers.  If I remember correctly, everything that happens, happens on your server, and then is just kinda pushed over to Facebook.  It would be possible to do some really advanced multiplayer stuff using the Facebook API.  Throw in some MochiAds, and maybe some banner ads if you want to really be annoying, and you have a money making machine, provided the game is good.

[jesse_playtiva]

Facebook flash games.

It depends on what you want to do with Facebook, if you intend to use information from Facebook (eg user's friends, newsfeeds, invite...etc various features) then you'll have to use Facebook's APIs. Which aren't very good atm. It's possible, but you'll have a lot of trouble trying to set it up. Certain stuff will require more effort...

If it's just putting your flash game up, then it shouldn't be much of a problem. There is also a 'developer' application that allows you to do that.

One thing to probably note is that Facebook games are generally designed to be played for short bursts of time (which should be kept in mind when making your game) People mostly play Facebook as a short 5-10minute distraction from work. Also, doing the 'spamming invites to all your friends thing' is REALLY SHITTING ANNOYING. =X

But yeah, there are a lot of FB games that have made money and it's worth researching on those. Flufffriends in particular uses paypal directly. However, it is not really a 'flash' game.

I guess that is one of the problems with flash games...in most cases, people expect them to be free.

[fallen2]

This sounds interesting, I have a program that outputs my games as html files, I wonder if they can be embeded in the facebook page, same goes for the other social network service myspace, I dont use social networking myself Im either too busy or perhaps Im too old, Im not sure which. Im not sure how you could monetarize and make some cash, do these social service site allow you to sell stuff, or put adds or links, say put up a demo, then have a link to an outside sales web site?

[TheBlackMask]

do these social service site allow you to sell stuff, or put adds or links, say put up a demo, then have a link to an outside sales web site?

Yes, yes, and yes.  There are really very few limits to what you can do.  I even got Game Maker games to run embedded in Facebook.

[fallen2]

Anyone made much money doing this, or even got lots of page views, these social bookmarking sites seem all the rage at the moment, I wonder what kind of results developers have got.

[imaginationac]

It depends on the kind of game you want to make. Basically, since the game will be on a social network, it should a good social hook, like avatar customization (which can show up in your friends' News Feed).

[Don Andy]

I don't know what exactly you can do with the API, but I think a pretty good system to make your game popular would be betting on the competitive aspect. Like if you get a highscore, you have the ability to send a message to all your friends from within the program that says something like "Your friend Bob just made 500 points in The Game. Click here to get The Game and see if you're better than Bob"

I mean, if there's one thing people love more than socializing, then that's being better than everybody else.

And seeing that Joe Sixpack can rarely ever beat that highscore of the random japanese powerplayer, it's easier to just compare yourself to your immediate friends.

[PenguinHat]

I don't know what exactly you can do with the API, but I think a pretty good system to make your game popular would be betting on the competitive aspect. Like if you get a highscore, you have the ability to send a message to all your friends from within the program that says something like "Your friend Bob just made 500 points in The Game. Click here to get The Game and see if you're better than Bob"

I mean, if there's one thing people love more than socializing, then that's being better than everybody else.

And seeing that Joe Sixpack can rarely ever beat that highscore of the random japanese powerplayer, it's easier to just compare yourself to your immediate friends.

A cool thing to have would be an open source facebook app that sat on someone's profile, and captures hi score data sent to it by games. If you did it right, you could make stardard system for this kind of thing, so that anyone who has made a game can link up to the app or create their own, and distribute it on Facebook.

Also, you could probably do interesting things with tracking who is playing your game using Facebook. See who is playing it, what % of people only play once or twice, that kind of thing.

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Anyone made much money doing this, or even got lots of page views, these social bookmarking sites seem all the rage at the moment, I wonder what kind of results developers have got.

really, really good results

[Pablo]

I had no idea that Face Book supported Flash games.
Good to know.