Playdom says, 'Facebook's not the only game in town'

Facebook isn't the only place to play social games. It's crazy, we know, but it's true. Playdom's senior vice president of operations Paul LaFontaine said, "Facebook's not the only game in town," today at the Social Gaming Summit in London. While anyone who follows the industry would know that, it's tough to even consider playing these games somewhere else, isn't it?

Developers like Playdom, OMGpop and even Zynga offer some of their games right on their respective websites, but how many gamers actually go there to play these games when they're readily available from their Facebook home page? It's strange to think about Facebook actually losing players to some other platform, but some developers are doing everything they can to escape. With the 30 percent the network takes from the currency that it imposes with 5-year deals to how it's essentially shut down the main avenue for players to find new games, Facebook better be careful before it scares everyone away.

"It plays an important part in our lives but it's premature to declare a victory for Facebook in social-mobile at this time," LaFontaine said in London. And he's got a point. People were premature in declaring a victory for MySpace five years ago, so who's to say that Facebook is impervious to at least losing its player base? Social gaming has only been around for about three years at best, which is far too early to name an ultimate platform. Console gaming has been around for over thirty years and that's still an impossibility--it literally shifts with every generation and sometimes in the middle of them.

While Facebook dominates in the social gaming space today, who knows what might happen in 2011. As gamers, it's surely something worth thinking about. Where will you be playing FarmVille in two years?

[Source: GamesIndustry.biz]

What do you think about another platform taking over Facebook? How might affect where and how you play social games? Sound off in the comments. Add Comment.