Facebook quietly added Chess and Football games in Messenger a few months back. Now Facebook has added a complete game platform in messenger to let you play games while waiting for your friends to text back. Not just Messenger, you can also play games directly from the news feed.
Today, Facebook announced ‘Instant Games’ to make messenger more interesting. You can now play games, challenge your friends in messenger conversations.
Playing game is very easy. Just open the messenger app and open a conversation. You will see the game controller icon just below where you type your message. Tap on it and choose a game to start playing. Once you finish the round, people in the conversation will see your score and will have the opportunity to beat you and challenge you.
You can also search more games by using the search field in the messenger.
As of now, only limited games (17 games) available from developers like Bandai Namco, Konami, and Taito Zynga and King. You have games like PAC-MAN, Galaga, SPACE INVADERS, EverWing, TRACK & FIELD 100M and Words with Friends to enjoy.
Initially, Instant Games will be available in 30 countries and will only support newer iOS and Android devices.
Facebook sensed this gaming platform when its basketball game was played more than 1.2 billion times on Messenger. So, Facebook knew that people are taking interest in it. Same thing happened with Soccer game that attracted 250 million gameplay. So, Facebook built a platform for people to play games.
This is similar to what Facebook did with Instant Articles for stories. Users will get games instantly to play without leaving the app. There are many games that we like to play but will never go and download it separately on the phone. So, Instant Games makes sense and will surely attract people.
