If the blitzkrieg-esque popularity of Zynga gaming titles like Farmville and Mafia Wars are any indication, gaming on a social networking platform seems like a win-win formula for users, developers and the platform itself. Joining the scene this week is long-time social networking site MySpace as they introduce a revitalized MySpace Games in the midst of the festivities surrounding this year’s Game Developers Conference (GDC 2010) in San Francisco, Ca.
MySpace was once the dominant social networking site, easily beating out competition Friendster when it was launched in 2003. Since then, MySpace has catered to a barrage of younger users ranging from the common social-seeker and consumer in search of entertaining contents online, to content creators like musicians and stand up comics looking for a venue to showcase their wares. Currently, it has been designated as a second stringer to the likes of Facebook though still heavily credited as a music discovery platform.
The new MySpace Games platform aims to create a more social gaming environment with new tools and functionalities for both users and developers. This in its aim to keep a leg up on the competition after the News Corp property lost its CEO Owen Van Natta exactly a month ago.
“Gaming is core to the overall entertainment value of MySpace. Nearly a third of our users engage daily in games and there are more than 28 million active app users on our site.” said MySpace Co-President Mike Jones via a blog post. “Over the last few months, we’ve had a laser focus on improving our gaming experience. Just as music was our springboard for revitalizing our platform, we’re taking a similar approach to gaming which you’ll see in new features throughout the site.”
The revamp includes what MySpace is describing as a more robust gaming platform which practically means an easier way to discover and share games for the user and an improved application engagement and analytics tool for the developers. The latter also gives the developers more intelligence on their target demographics enabling them to produce compelling contents for immersive gaming.
From a game developer’s perspective, the new gaming platform also offers a string of features like the ability to review app-specific analytics via a new API, build games in rich, 3D-like quality and leverage on the cloud-based technologies of GroovyCortex for low latency push data for multiplayer gaming.
“We’ve been working with our developer partners to understand where they’d like to see MySpace go; based on that feedback we started rebuilding MySpace Games. These are the first steps in offering robust tools for developers to help their businesses thrive.”
The new MySpace Games Gallery takes on the social aspect of the Web site as it allows the users to discover new games, share and recommend them to their contacts and stay up-to-date with notifications and game charts. Rating and search aspects are also introduced into the mix, which lets the users rate games accordingly; while the rating system enhances the games’ recommendations and ranking in the search results.
MySpace also launched a new iPhone app called MySpace Neon at GDC 2010. This app will give users access to their MySpace games on-the-go and share notifications with friends among others. With the ability to remotely install games, this iPhone app will be available within the next few weeks.
Tags: content, Gaming, iPhone Apps, Social Media, social media tools
