By Kate Hancock Facebook Game Dashboard to Change Face of Social Gaming
Last month I wrote about an impending Facebook “revolution” – ranting about the proliferation of social game notifications and requests. I talked about the need for change within Facebook’s growing games arena. I gave my recommendations. And…
All the while, Facebook was busy readying a solution of its own – ironically similar to the plan I proposed – the Facebook Games Dashboard.
VentureBeat says it will (re) organize your social gaming life. “Facebook is in the midst of redesigning how users find, interact with, and keep track of games on the social network. Called the ‘Game Dashboard,’ the new feature is Facebook’s attempt to play nice with social game developers, serve the interests of gamers, and at the same time stop games from ruining the experience for everybody else.”
As part of a major site overhaul, Facebook’s new gaming section looks to alleviate issues including spam-like messages (think “Kate just harvested a perfect bunch of Poinsettias”) and other social game communications that general users have begun working to ignore… These “push notifications” will no longer go into the general notifications channel/feed.
Facebook knows it is walking on thin ice with the redesign, so I have high hopes for its execution. No doubt the Games Dashboard will affect third-party usage and revenues, and significantly affect they way the social network king generates revenue of its own. So, social game developers are anxiously awaiting firm info on the Games Dashboard, and are likely to implement in-game redesigns of their own once the details are finalized and revealed.
More info from Facebook’s Developer Wiki about the Games Dashboard:
The goal of the Games Dashboard is to make it easier for users to find games on Facebook, including games played recently and the discovery of new games through friends. There are several new features we will be introducing in both the Games and the Application Dashboards:
- Your recent games: We will prominently display games that a user has recently played, showing the application icon and application name. Clicking on a game will take the user to the game’s canvas page.
- Game News: There will be a text field next to each game on the dashboard where developers can set Game News. This area is free form and targetable by user, e.g. “You are ranked 17th among your friends. Austin’s score is the next highest at 28,400. Can you beat him?” or, “Your pumpkins are wilting – water them soon!”
- Your friends are playing: We will display some of the games that your friends are playing along with information about relevant activities in the game.
