Three weeks into his job, Facebook Director of Gaming Partnerships Sean Ryan made bold advances to developers during the M&A panel at Inside Social Apps. When discussing what games should be built on what platforms, Ryan said, referring to Facebook, “Well if you’re building social I can’t image you not building on the world’s best social network” a statement which made some noise in the crowd.
Ryan went on to say that single player games like the immensely popular Angry Birds “wouldn’t make a lot of sense” on the social network, as building on the almost 600M strong Facebook platform isn’t just about an endless supply of users but about games that highlight interactions.
When asked to explain further about ‘Angry Birds’ versus a game like ‘CityVille,’ Ryan said,
“We don’t bring anything to the table but it’s still a great game. If you have a social game, we believe you should build it for us, that’s what we do. If you have a single player game, it’s not clear why you should build it for us, you should probably build it for other people. Folks like PopCap have been able to brilliantly take a downloadable game, which was Bejeweled and after a lot of work turned it into a social game. So you can do it, but there’s not much point.”
When asked if there was a game that wasn’t on Facebook that he thinks should be Ryan said “‘Civilization’ … it’s one of the best multiplayer games ever, and it’s not yet on Facebook. Whenever there’s a true multiplayer game that involves a lot of social interaction it arguably should be on our platform, because that’s what we do.”
When asked if Facebook would ever acquire a gaming company or go into the content business themselves Ryan said no, “That’s not our gig.”
Image: Just Push Start
Sean Ryan is the Director of Gaming Partnerships at Facebook. Prior to Facebook, he was the EVP and GM of Games at News Corp. Ryan assumed an executive role at News Corp. shortly after it acquired Irata Labs, a social gaming developer. Ryan is well known in the gaming and monetization space. He was acting CEO of Live Journal and also CEO of Meez, a virtual world and also Listen.com.
Angry Birds is a puzzle video game developed by Rovio, a developer based in Finland. Since its release for Apple’s iPhone and iPod Touch devices, over 6.5 million copies of the game have been purchased, and versions have appeared for other touchscreen-based smartphones. In Angry Birds, players take control of a flock of birds that are attempting to retrieve eggs that have been stolen by a group of evil pigs. The pigs have taken refuge on or within structures made...
Facebook is the world’s largest social network, with over 1 billion monthly active users. Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg in February 2004, initially as an exclusive network for Harvard students. It was a huge hit: in 2 weeks, half of the schools in the Boston area began demanding a Facebook network. Zuckerberg immediately recruited his friends Dustin Moskovitz, Chris Hughes, and Eduardo Saverin to help build Facebook, and within four months, Facebook added 30 more college networks. The original...
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