Giant Bomb Presents: Facebook Wants to Get Serious About Games

Less irritating requests, please! I try to block em but new ones keep showing up.

I don't go to Facebook for games and I really don't understand people that do. There's better gaming experiences to be found literally anywhere else. I don't like how pervasive it gets - I'd really prefer if it was kept a purer social site to connect with friends and family.

Serious or not, I have no interest in playing games through Facebook, and I never will.

who gives a shit about facebook for anything?

I think it's pretty obnoxious now, I use it as a picture hosting site and that's it. I don't care about anything else on there.

Fuck Facebook games.

The only reason I have a Facebook account was to try out Farmville when it was hot. I found that it wasn't so hot...

Unless their business plan includes going out of business, there is nothing Facebook can do to make me look at their company favorably. Their image is unfixable at this point.

Appropriate.

No thank you.

I wanted to like Cow Clicker more, but I couldn't get anyone to play with me.

I have my PS3 setup to vomit all over everyone's Facebook feed. It's awesome.

PAX DUMPTRUCK INBOUND STEEL YOURSELVES

I cant wait for facebooks version of Don Mattrick.

The interview seems to cut off at 17:38 for me.

Like Patrick said at the intro of this podcast, I'm one of those that don't really "care" about Facebook/casual/mobile videogames, but I wanted to hear this interview nonetheless, because if someone like Patrick cares enough to reach out to the product manager of Facebook games and thought the interview was worth putting on the internet then maybe there's something interesting to hear.

EDIT: Did the audio cut out at 17:38 for anyone else?

Patrick, you've been killin' it lately with the Dumptruck. Great work.

Agreed.

I'm not inherently against the idea of games on Facebook, but I am completely against the idea of games that bother other people, ask me to bother other people, or use some sort of energy mechanic to stop my playing to get me to pay (which I assume (possibly incorrectly?) covers roughly 100% of Facebook games).

If, say, the next Bastion was on Facebook, and it was a flat $10 with no other shitty nonsense, I'd be all for that. However, I suspect most developers of those kinds of games have the same perception of Facebook that I do, and they wouldn't put such a game there. They'd put it on Steam or something similar.

*edit: also, maybe this stuff is covered in the interview. I haven't listened to it yet.

This way Facebook can send all the high scores directly to the NSA!

Facebook games are great for people who work in call centers or any other job where they are forced to sit at a computer and wait.

Patrick, these interviews have been killin it. It's content is in the same league as the long form articles on Polygon. Probably the best 'serious' stuff on the site. Love it.

As for the fb hate in this comment thread, everyone's being crazy harsh but it's mostly deserved, because games in facebook have been crap.

It's easy to fix though. All they have to do is become xbox live/psn/steam for desktop, web and mobile games, give us all those value added cloud services that we want. The cloud saves, leaderboards, achievements, screenshot saving and sharing, blah blah blah.

We will scoff for awhile, but if they actually convince enough skilled indie devs to add that login with fb button, and if the service is good enough, then we will come around and praise the service and this comment thread will look kind of absurd. But that's a big IF.

I don't care either way. If it works, great. If not, ok.

Fixed. Sorry.

Block the people, not the games. ;)

Fallen out of Facebook a long time ago, but it's good to hear they're trying to introduce experiences that aren't just cow clickers. If Bastion can run in a browser, there's an infinite potential for gaming on a social media platform. It's just been abused back to front since the start though.

Must be a slow day for content if this is being posted.

The variety show music is awful man, I liked the twinkly music you used for the first dumptruck... although no one else did.

Yeah, it doesn't really fit everything. I'm considering going back to swapping things around.

Nope. I will never be on board with gaming via facebook. Reason #1 is that I don't want to mix gaming and social interaction (I'm semi-active on fb). I don't want to start my games via facebook, I don't want to know what my friends are playing and I don't want to show my friends what I'm playing. Gaming is "me-time". Fuck that online shit!

And reason #2 is that games on facebook are utter crap.

Facebook is even less relevant to actual games than phone games.

What is this facebook thing? I'll have to go check it out if it's so popular.

Edit*

You guys ruined my life, but I'm super popular on-line!!!

Yeah facebook sucks! Boo facebook! Boo!

Good for them for wanting to make actual games rather than gambling shit/phone garbage but what reason is there to play through facebitch? If the games they make are sweet I'll check them out but I sure as hell won't sign up for shitface just to play them.

Facebook can try to be as serious as a games platform as they want, I will never play any of their games...

Because at the end of the day Facebook's #1 function is selling eyeballs/information of their users, the last thing I want is sleazy game publishers annoying me to play their "tap-your-wallet if you want to enjoy playing" games....

Also it's too little too late for Facebook to start changing its image as a place to play games with EA's recent closing of Playfish and all their Facebook games that EA did nothing but give all their loyal fans the middle-finger in compensating unused paid currencies and progress of their games...

They're never going to sell me on the idea that it's a good place to play games.

I'd like to think this is the future for all the Box 'n Freemium going on now in NA and "desecrating beloved IPs for microbilkments" in Japan, but hope isn't often rewarded by gaming the last decade.

This is a bit too little, too late for me. I do use facebook here and there, but if I want to game through the internets I usually use steam or kongregate. The facebook YDKJ game is pretty great though.

Patrick, these interviews are fantastic. Nothing like the Dumptruck anywhere else out there. Keep it up!

Twitter games? You still using Facebook, grandpa?

Well Bastion runs in Chrome, as do many other great games, so it's not really a far step from being on Facebook, that said, I still have no interest of gaming on Facebook.

ohh man, back when the interns were playing farmville me and a whole bunch of duders made new facebook accounts just to play farmville. it took about a week for us to get as far as it would take normal players YEARS... it was glorious. Game is utter shit, though. I still use that account sometimes if I dont want shit linked to my facebook but want the benefits that sometimes come with liking something.

Oh boy, this isn't going to end well for the "core" "gamer".

I like how the dumptruck with the Bioforge guy was just saying people on Facebook don't want 3D games.

Fuck you Facebook. No

Good interview, Patrick. I really like the stuff you're putting up lately.

Unfortunately tho I don't care for Facebook AT ALL and that makes me automatically not care for FB games...I already have better places to go to play better games...like...my XBOX. :p

Keep up the good work, duder.

If they don't force me to bother other people about the game I'm playing, Facebook could change it's image and become a pretty good website for gaming. If they simply host the games and let people play them, then I wouldn't mind playing games on there. I have a ton of friends on Facebook, and being able to easily connect with the people who WANTED to play those games with me could be kind of cool. Or even just having friends leaderboards for high scores and stuff. You know, just like Steam, Xbox LIVE, or PSN.

Will it get to the same point as those services? Who knows. If it does, though... I would be fine with it.
Hell, maybe Facebook could even merge multiplayer gaming between platforms, which would be cool.

Facebook fad

@jamesjeux007: If it's about Brad, then "apropos" is the better word to use.

If they toss enough cash at it, cram it down their userbase's throats, and convince them that it fits well among their endless posts about their recent marriage/kid/spousal abuse/I gotta work :( /pointless 'inspirational' quote spam / check-in at some shitty restaraunt - With 3 other jackasses / Girls night out / Boys night out / I got drunk and now I'm hungover / or any other Facebook tropes, then I think this has potential to make a lot of money. I don't think it has any potential to actually be of good quality or add any kind of value; but that's why its perfect for Facebook.

I don't think I've ever seen Brad laugh so hard.