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Comment by ignifero | Hacker News Reader

It baffles me why there are no large competing social gaming web platforms. Google, Zynga, EA (playfish) could easily start one. It's a guaranteed success: people love games to be social. Facebook developers are so disgruntled with the FB platform that they 'd flock in hordes to convert their games.

On top of that, facebook enforces FB credits from July, and banned adsense advertising in apps. We are not going to pay 30% of our revenue to facebook for such a crappy platform. We moved our apps to an external website.

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I think it's because you need the rest of the platform to make it work. FB games took off by spamming your friends and getting them hooked, too.

If the platform only has games, there's nothing really to spam... It's not like people are watching their wall for activity at that point.

There ARE gaming networks out there, BTW. They just really haven't taken off. Search for 'social gaming site' to find some.

Steam could be considered a gaming network, I suppose. It has a pretty strong community behind it.

I think the parent is right that it has to be more social- than gaming-oriented

Most FB games aren't real games. They are disguised simulations designed to make you bring as many of your friends as you can. Just start playing one of the Zynga games like Frontierville or such. Within 15mins I think you're asked to contact your friends for various reasons like 10 times, and could post things about the game on your wall 30 times easy. It's ridiculous.

Kongregate? I think it's not that such things don't exist, it's that they don't get to be a runaway success without the basic social application driving it. Games alone aren't enough of an incitement or enticement for many users.

I think the fact that there are no other large competing social gaming web platforms shows that it is actually not at all a guaranteed success.

Actually, Friendster has just relaunched itself as a social gaming platform. I haven't looked too much into it yet.

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