PopCap feels Facebook gaming is losing its appeal

Casual games on Facebook have dramatically increased in popularity over the past couple years. It has gotten to the point where you can’t scroll through your news feed without seeing someone’s progress in a game. If Facebook were a console, it would have tens of millions of players. However PopCap believes the honeymoon between Facebook and casual games is coming to an end.

PopCap Games chief creative officer Jason Kapalka revealed the withering nature of Facebook gaming to Games Industry. He thinks the Facebook gaming market is becoming oversaturated. People saw the success of a few games and wanted a piece of the pie. As more developers release games on Facebook, the integrity of the brand starts to weaken. Instead of relying on word of mouth to get exposure, Kapalka feels those developers have to purchase ad space.

“It happened before in mobile, it happened before in casual – in the past it’s tended to signal the beginning of the end,” said Kapalka. “Not necessarily of the genre, but of the sort of golden era, where everything was a fresh blue ocean.”

Basically, Facebook games aren’t dying, they’re just integrating into the industry. For example, when something is new and exciting, there’s only a few products that can offer the experience. Think back to when a touch screen on a cell phone was just emerging compared to the market today. Now it’s harder to find a phone that doesn’t have a touch screen. It takes clever marketing such as Verizon’s Droid campaign to stand out above the rest.

If you want to stay within the realm of gaming, think about the abundance of music rhythm games available. If Harmonix didn’t constantly raise the bar with the Rock Band series, chances are we wouldn’t care about the genre anymore.

Via [Games Industry]