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Llama Juice
August 21st, 2010, 10:34 AM
So it's no lie that facebook gaming has gotten huge... even if most of the games are stuff like farmville. Do you see this as a phase? Or do you think it will be a relevant platform for a long time for the casual market?

I bring this up because 3DVia recently released their game, Billions Save Them All on facebook. If you watched my GDC vlogs you woulda seen some of the game, and I had a great time playing it at the show, so to see it finally come out and be put into this type of social situation is kinda nuts.

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So you have an engine like 3DVia Studio that you could use to create 3D Facebook games, or... I don't know if Unity has a facebook API (I'd assume they do...) but the fact that you can now create rather good looking 3D games in a browser window is pretty neat.

I think the gameplay will have to get even more simple than Billions in order for it to really be marketable to a casual gaming market, but I'm very interested in the idea of being able to create this type of stuff for facebook and such.

Limited
August 21st, 2010, 11:12 AM
Yeah I saw your GDC video, didnt realise it would be on Facebook though. Very cool stuff. Video games is branching out to social media outlets, trying to harness that user base and capitalize on the casual gaming side of things.

If this technology could/does run on mobile devices, then that is a jackpot, mobile gaming is on the increase.

Con
August 21st, 2010, 01:09 PM
I don't know if Unity has a facebook API (I'd assume they do...).
IIRC, that's not how it works. Facebook apps are just windows to other webpages and those webpages are making calls to the facebook API through scripts. Unity would just sit in the webpage and call webpage functions (http://unity3d.com/support/documentation/Manual/Unity%20Web%20Player%20and%20browser%20communicati on.html).