Google Games...Getting Serious

I was scanning the news this morning, as I am want to do, and noticed something buried within the web pages that could be a marker of major changes to come in the 'casual' gaming market. Honestly, I'm tired of the whole casual versus hardcore mindsets, but it makes sense in this case, as the developers being approached for a new venture with Google are the minds behind Farmville of Facebook fame, Zynga. 
 
Why does this matter (or I think it matters)? Because Google reaches millions of people everyday, even more than the now ever present Facebook does. The fact that Google dropped an estimated $200 million for Zynga to develop for Google's new "Google Games" service shows me that Google is taking the Farmville fad seriously. While I personally despise Farmville and games like it (not because of it being casual or anything of that nature, I just think it is boring), many others out there in the interwebs do not. 
 
Will Google become a new power-house in the online pick-up-and-play gaming sphere? I would bet my money on it. Hopefully this will breed some better competition from would-be rivals Facebook and MSN Games. I'm interested to see what comes of this personally, what about anybody else? Do people care about this? Would you play "Google Games" if there was free time available? Please respond, I'm interested to hear of people even really care about this or not.

I was scanning the news this morning, as I am want to do, and noticed something buried within the web pages that could be a marker of major changes to come in the 'casual' gaming market. Honestly, I'm tired of the whole casual versus hardcore mindsets, but it makes sense in this case, as the developers being approached for a new venture with Google are the minds behind Farmville of Facebook fame, Zynga. 
 
Why does this matter (or I think it matters)? Because Google reaches millions of people everyday, even more than the now ever present Facebook does. The fact that Google dropped an estimated $200 million for Zynga to develop for Google's new "Google Games" service shows me that Google is taking the Farmville fad seriously. While I personally despise Farmville and games like it (not because of it being casual or anything of that nature, I just think it is boring), many others out there in the interwebs do not. 
 
Will Google become a new power-house in the online pick-up-and-play gaming sphere? I would bet my money on it. Hopefully this will breed some better competition from would-be rivals Facebook and MSN Games. I'm interested to see what comes of this personally, what about anybody else? Do people care about this? Would you play "Google Games" if there was free time available? Please respond, I'm interested to hear of people even really care about this or not.

As someone who occasionally plays browser games while listening to the bombcast I think this could be cool. More competition is generally a good thing, and Google is a group of smart guys with their eye on the ball for doing things right usually.

I'm not a big fan of browser games and if we're just going to see 'Farmville on Google' then I probably won't be interested but I do think with Google pouring that much money into Zynga games this is going to be a big thing for casual gamers.

I find the entire micro transaction social gaming fad annoying but it's huge business. I wouldn't be surprised if Google stepped in and shook the playing field a bit. Many of the employees that leave Google end up working for Facebook at some point so as i said before, it's no shock if they have an interest.  
 
Social network sites in general are dangerous and have already psychologically fractured the lives of many young adults. Some kids and teenagers just do not know how to handle cyber bullying. Throw in social gaming to one of these sites and that's the start of an entirely new-age form of peer pressure that the following generations will have to learn to deal with.  
 
I find them boring as well, but these games aren't targeted for me. They're targeted like you said for a more casual audience. At least these games will help the industry grow. Competition is always good, I just hope "real" games don't get overrun by this stuff. 

i find them pretty boring. i played farmville before it gets boring. the thing i want to see is more games that are more flash like if that makes any sense. a lot of facebook games are click on this item the character moves. i want to see something more like an actual flash game where it is none stop.

i would never!

Doesn't affect me at all, they can make crappy games if they wish. As a side note, what's with all the hate on the flash platform from people like Google? They always go on about "processing heavy" and "security issues" but I've encountered neither.

I don't play them, but I'd bet that they'd do something other than Farmville.

Please don't think of all browser gaming as Farmville. There are some great games out there waiting to be played and all you need is an internet browser.

I think there's scope here for something interesting to emerge from the Google + Zynga deal. I think we're only just seeing the tip of the iceberg in terms of casual social games like Farmville and Poker. With Google's resources and out of the box thinking, potentially we could see some huge leaps ahead in this particular genre of gaming. 
 
In short, only good things can come from this!

Remember recently for Pac Mans anniversary they had  their first ever interactive logo? Im sure a LOT of people took some time out to play a few times. So yes I do think it could be the new thing.