Casual Connect 2012: Facebook talks about market prospects

Facebook believes that the future of the social and mobile market lies in turn-based games, and the Middle East is a promising area for the industry. 

When it comes to forecasts, everyone is interested in what Facebook thinks about the future of the industry. Given the baggage of 130 projects and 1 million active players, Facebook is the company to which it is a sin not to listen. Especially if Sarah Brooks, who has advised companies such as King.com , Peak Games, CookApps, FreshPlanet and OMGPOP. 

Brooks began her report on Casual Connect with a story about what is now a success on Facebook. According to her, until recently it was possible to talk about the great popularity of games in the genre of “I’m looking for”, casinos, bingo games (a la one-armed pirate) and all sorts of “bubble shooters” (all like Bubblez and others like him).

“Every month, more than 75 million users play bubble shooters,” Brooks revealed. 

As for new opportunities, new promising areas, then, according to Brooks, attention should be paid to sports and casual turn-based games, as well as hardcore projects. In this context, she advised to pay special attention to the products of the studio Kixeye, responsible for the appearance of War Commander, and to the projects of the company Eruptive Games, which released Citizen Grim.  

Speaking about where to move, where there is still room for growth, Brooks mentioned the development of Facebook in such territories as Japan, South Korea and Brazil.  

Given the great local success (9 million MAU) of the Happy Farm game from the Chinese 5 Minutes, which was translated into Arabic by the Turkish publisher Peak Games (yes, everything is so difficult in the modern globalized world), we can say that now we need to look closely at the Middle East.