Social network's Gareth Davis claims emergence of core games on the platform

Facebook offers ‘100 million niche audiences’

Facebook can offer game studios 100 million user niches to target their titles with, the head of the social network’s Gareth Davis has said.

Davis, head of the Facebook games platform, said that there has been an emergence of more core games on the network, and developers now understand that the site does not offer a one-size-fits-all platform, but multiple different audiences.

“We have so many users now on Facebook that we can have really big niches. 100 million user niches,” Davis told gamesindustry.biz.

“We see the emergence now of companies on Facebook who are building what they’d call a core game. Games targeted at people who played PC games back in the day, strategy games etcetera.”

He added “I think we’ve really seen the game developers understand that it’s not one-size-fits-all, it’s about different kinds of game for different audiences.”

Davis said that games on Facebook now had really high production values, harkening back to the days of SimCity, whilst casual games were also providing increasingly high quality.

“We’re seeing this broadening now of the kinds of games and audiences and you can be very successful, creating different types of games and you can make a lot of money doing it,” he said.

“We’re seeing a real maturing of the eco-system as people figure out the right opportunities and go after them.”

He added that the social network giants were pleased with how studios were using the platform to release games and that Facebook continues to be able to gain tens of millions of users.

“They’ve worked out how to engage their users – the engagements levels have been way up over the last couple of years. And monetisation,” said Davis.

“They’ve really figured out how to provide the right things to the right people so that they’re willing to pay for it."

About MCV Staff

Check Also

The shortlist for the 2024 MCV/DEVELOP Awards!

After carefully considering the many hundreds of nominations, we have a shortlist! Voting on the winners will begin soon, ahead of the awards ceremony on June 20th