5 of Facebook’s top games Israeli-made
Jewish state consolidates programming superpower status as five of social network's 10 largest leading games in critical Europe and Middle East region are developed in Israel’s Silicon Wadi
Video courtesy of jn1.tv
According to news reports, five of Facebook's 10 largest social games in the critical Europe and Middle East region come from Israel. Some of the games are deep and multi-layered, like Stormfall. Others, like Slotomania, are fun time-killers – but also developed in Israel’s high-tech coastal plain - Silicon Wadi.
Speaking at a European gaming conference, Julien Codorniou, who heads Facebook’s gaming developers, said Israeli programmers have proved especially skilled at coming up with multi-platform games that start on PC, then get ported to mobile phones, and eventually to Apple.
Codorniou pointed to the success of Playtika as another facet of Israel’s gaming advantage: Its programmers have turned out to be skilled at simulating gambling.
The trend for Facebook gamers, he said, was away from first-person-shooters, which more and more are being seen as gratuitously violent. The Facebook gamer these days wants either casual entertainment, or an immersive hard core gamer experience with outstanding production values.
Another change, Codorniou said, is that the center of gaming design is shifting away from the US and the Far East. Today, 70% of growing gaming companies on Facebook, are European.
Currently, Facebook has about 250 million players a month, making it a larger playing platform, than all game consoles combined. In future, more and more, they will be playing games made in Israel.
