Facebook Games Boss Hoping For More Diversity, Romance

Author: by Frank Cifaldi, Christian Nutt

As Facebook's director of games partnerships Sean Ryan describes it, the state of gaming on Facebook today is akin to broadcast television twenty years ago: limited in scope, and ignoring the needs of the niche. "We have the farming channel, we have the city building channel, and we have the pet nurturing channel," he jokes, saying that the 650-or-so cable networks in the United States alone are "incredibly profitable" while all addressing different audiences. "Clearly there is room in every other media category to have lot of successful players," says Ryan, but the good news is that "we're starting to see a broadening out of the types of games that are available, as people understand that we have every type of audience." In a previous role at News Corporation, Ryan observed that the romance category alone in its books business had seven distinct sub-genres, all of them profitable. "We don't even have one romance game," he says. "If you look at any other more mature category, you have highly targeted, highly successful media offerings for them. We're just early." Ryan sees the current state of Facebook as a gaming platform as the beginning of a boom: "I think the cycle is 10, 12, 15 years," he says. Learn more about the state of Facebook gaming, where it's going, and why Ryan thinks that even the smallest developer can do good business on the platform in our extensive interview.