File this under 'duh:' Facebook App Center inspires more game playing

Over the past few years, we've been dedicated to covering social games , and one of the major topic of conversations was this:

Those are screenshots of Facebook's former pitiful excuse for a game hub. And while game makers complained -- loudly, I might add -- about the lack of virality on Facebook, we'd just look at this page and wonder, what is Facebook thinking? Is the social network toohigh on its horse to care about its games?

Then, in May, Facebook launched the App Center, a pretty decent games hub with links galore to both Facebook games as well as games on mobile. And this week at the Gamescom conference in Germany, it comes as no surprise that Facebook announces that the new and improved App Center is driving engagement to Facebook games.

Some of the more noteworthy stats are that people playing Facebook games have grown 8.4 percent in roughly the past six months. In the past month, 150 million people used the App Center, which has more than doubled the number of games played than the old games dashboard. Also, people who find a game through the App Center are 35 percent more likely on average to return the next day and 17 percent more likely to return in a week.

Lesson learned? Give people a decent way to find games on your platform, and --ta-da! -- they're more likely to find and play games.

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