Face book game room the game stream uprising

Facebook Games is focused on building a global community for people to play, watch and share the games they love with the people they care about. Today, we're providing updates that help developers build and grow their games across mobile, desktop, and video platforms. Below is a snapshot of what we're announcing at F8 focused on Instant Games, Facebook Gameroom and Gaming Video.Gameroom is a platform game designed by Facebook from which the user will have access to several video game mostly brought from the platform mobile for PC for Windows , similar to other platforms already known as Steam from Valve , for example, Gameroom the user accesses a list of titles and selects the one that you want to play. 1Gameroom integrates into the PC the games available on the social network , those imported from the mobile phone and others developed exclusively for the platform, these are mostly so-called "casual games", as those titles with simple rules are called and they require little commitment from the players. 2The platform is open for developers to create games on it. In fact, Facebook has established a revenue system shared with them in the style of mobile app stores such as Apple Store or Google Play .

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Google positioned its Google Play app store as the ideal place to find mobile games at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco this week, but it's facing a threat from another Silicon Valley giant that's also been making overtures to both hardcore and casual gamers: Facebook.

In partnership with Unity, one of the largest game development engines, Facebook on Tuesday talked up its Gameroom platform, which is kind of like Steam—software for your PC that lets you buy, download, and play a wide variety of games. Unity invited Facebook reps on stage during its GDC keynote address Tuesday, which attracts a who's-who of indie and major game studios.

At first glance, the success of Gameroom, which Facebook announced last fall, seems unlikely. It would appear to hinge on Facebook's ability to convince major game studios to use it, and they can already reach tens of millions of hardcore gamers by publishing their titles on Steam.

But Facebook, with Unity's help, is dangling a carrot that should be especially attractive to indie developers catering to the casual gaming market: an easy path to revenue growth without having to master a new game development engine.

John Imah, who works in game marketing at Facebook and is an alum of the popular game streaming service Twitch, offered a peek at new ways Gameroom developers can get gamers to part with their pocket change. They include a "lite" version of the Facebook payment platform, which allows Gameroom developers to charge customers for small in-game purchases much as they would in the Facebook mobile app, or for that matter on Google Play or the Apple App Store.

Gameroom can also now handle premium games for which developers want to charge more than pocket change, including an option for a free trial before purchase. Combine those new payment tools with support for the industry-standard Unity 5 game development engine, and it's clear that Facebook wants to fill Gameroom with casual titles that appeal to people who might be daunted by the high prices and hardcore nature of many flagship titles on Steam.

But then again, Gameroom is currently only available on PCs running Windows 7 or above, and it's unclear if Facebook will risk cannibalizing its other mobile gaming efforts by bringing it to Android and iOS. So it appears that Gameroom is in a bit of a holding pattern right now. Go ahead and download it if you're one of the few people who likes to play casual games on Windows but doesn't like Steam. Otherwise, it's probably best to bookmark Gameroom and come back to it later.