Charting the evolution of social instant gaming
Alexey Avdey
Monday 23rd May 2022
Two thirds of the three billion daily gamers worldwide are considered 'casual'. We play games as we watch movies, eat dinner, and chat with friends online, so we increasingly prioritise snackable, viral content that we can easily share.
It's no wonder that social 'instant gaming' -- where games are played directly within social media platforms -- is having a moment.
Prompted by their users' behaviours and demands, social media giants such as Facebook (Meta), Snap and TikTok are creating one-stop social entertainment hubs that ensure users have no need to leave their magnetic ecosystems.
Instant gaming is here to stay, but how is it evolving, and what does it mean for games developers, publishers, and the entertainment market as a whole?
Social instant gaming trends can be traced back to the year 2000 when Flash Player, a web graphics and animation tool, established a programming language which could be used to create games. Flash could be placed essentially anywhere without the help of a publisher.
In 2007, a Facebook gaming platform was opened for third-party developers and one of the first social Flash games, Zynga Poker, was launched on desktop. In 2009, the same company released agriculture sim Farmville, which immediately became a smash hit thanks to an interesting viral component that gave players in-game perks in return for inviting their friends. With this wildly effective mechanic established, a huge number of studios began working on social games.
While the constant invites eventually began to bother users and Facebook gradually limited the functionality, the possibilities of social instant gaming had been opened up.
Zynga's Farmville
Ever the visionary, Steve Jobs wrote in 2010 that
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