Great news for fans (and detractors) of Facebook gaming. Facebook has reorganized it game applications to make them more fun, and less annoying, for users.
Gaming is a contentious issue on Facebook. Roughly 200 million users love playing games, Facebook announced at a recent ‘Gaming Event’ at their Palo Alto headquarters, with the rest of their user base not as interested. This poses unique challenges for the service and for users who find themselves getting endless requests to play games they’re simply not interested in.
According to Facebook’s statistics, the top 10 games on the site have more than 12 million active users each. Facebook has conceded that the company hasn’t had, “the right tools to enable developers to grow their games while at the same time providing a great user experience for non-gamers.”
And with that, changes are being made to improve the experience for everyone. Here’s what those changes entail:
If you don’t play games on Facebook, you can expect to stop seeing your News Feed populated with application stories about those games. If you don’t play Farmville, you won’t have to read about it. There will only be game updates when something big happens, like several different friends signing up for one game all at once.
If you do play games on Facebook, you will see full game stories (instead of collapsed ones) in the News Feed. You will also see more calls to action within those stories, highlighting tasks that need to be completed inside the game.
