Well there you have it, Angry Birds is set to take over the worlds largest social network. Its hardly surprising that a game as huge among casual games as angry birds is moving onto the social network site, what is more interesting is what this might mean for the future of facebook.
For a while now facebook has been the playground for low end, cheap gaming experiences. Companies such as zynga have seemingly perfected the "Freemium" game genre. However it is becoming clearer and clearer that larger games companies are begining to see Facebook and other social websites as more of a platform for their games. Companies like EA who have been releasing games to mirror its flagship sports titles and releases of games relating to Civilisation and Assassins Creed from several other large developers have shown a gradual move to embrace the platform.
The big difference between those games and the arrival of Angry Birds will not be apparently visible to a casual gamer. The big difference to a real gamer comes from what they determine to be a "Video Game". Many (myself included) do not see Mafia Wars as a "game" in the same way that Angry Birds is one. To put it simply, Angry Birds requires some level of skill to succeed. Mafia Wars merely requires time and the ability to read. The arrival of Angry Birds therefore will signal to my knowledge the first "Real" Video game to appear on the social networking website. I certainly hope that many more follow.
I expect that the take up will be similar to that which took place on smartphones where once companies realised that developing for the platforms could be highly profitable the money began to be put aside for development of games specifically for that platform. We are now seeing some truly amazing games coming onto a platform which years ago was mired in a flood of terrible gimicky games. I can only imagine that the same will happen with Facebook, and if the site continues to grow as it seems it will then this inevitability will only happen sooner.
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