Is Candy Crush Saga the last of its kind?

posted April 23, 2013 at 06:01 pm by Ed Biado April 23, 2013 at 06:01 pm

I was never a fan of Mafia Wars, but I did play Vampire Wars fervently. At the peak of my addiction, I had over 1,500 Facebook friends�1,000 or so of which were my gaming buddies. Back then, social games were all the rage on the social networking site, begging the question, �Was Facebook turning into a gaming platform?� Well, that question can finally be answered. And the answer is no. I have since deleted those 1,000 friends, leaving me with people I actually know in real life. I have also blocked most game requests, as, I would later find out, is something that a lot of people have done. Today, my only guilty pleasure in the realm of social network gaming is Candy Crush Saga. And I�m not the only one who�s hooked. Candy Crush Saga is the most popular Facebook game, beating longtime favorite FarmVille 2 on both monthly and daily active user counts. For me, the game is so entertaining because it�s built upon the simplicity of the tile-matching puzzle premise while challenging players to take on increasingly difficult levels�with a variety of goals�as you move further along in the game. And you need your friends for extra �lives� (attempts), moves and tickets to unlock new chapters. Seeing your friends� progress and scores is an added bonus, if you�re the competitive kind. Before Candy Crush Saga, the last game I played with Facebook integration was Draw Something. This was in early 2012. Social network gaming, once the hottest activity to hit the online social scene, seems to be on a decline. Chris Morris, writing for the Plugged In blog on Yahoo!, observed, �As apps continue to expand, most people don�t have the time to play games on their phone and on Facebook�and they�ve opted to go with the mobile option�eliminating the need to go through a middleman.� Just last week, Electronic Arts announced �the difficult decision to retire some of our Facebook games: The Sims Social, SimCity Social and Pet Society� effective June 14, citing a decrease in players as the reason. Also last week, digital research firm Superdata reported that �for the first time in over a year, the total number of monthly active social gamers in the US dropped below 200 million,� with the departure of roughly 10 million players. It added that �EA�s retirement of SimCity Social and [Pet Society developer] Playfish�emphasizes the loss of interest in the space by major publishers.�

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