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Facebook turns to other game developers, highlights Avengers Alliance

Shortly after loosening its ties to Zynga, the social network puts a spotlight on Playdom and lets the game developer talk about how easy it was to develop on Facebook.

Donna Tam Staff Writer / News
Donna Tam covers Amazon and other fun stuff for CNET News. She is a San Francisco native who enjoys feasting, merrymaking, checking her Gmail and reading her Kindle.
Donna Tam
2 min read
Facebook

Facebook put up a new blog post today, patting itself on the back for Open Graph's role in the success of Playdom's Avengers Alliance game.

The social network said shared stories that linked to the game on people's news feeds and timelines were clicked on 7 million times -- the third-largest source of clicks to the Marvel game -- and users who installed the game after clicking through Open Graph stories made an in-game purchase twice as often as those who joined the game through an invite.

The post also included comments from the game developer about how easy it was to develop on Facebook. The game's integration with Facebook took less than a day to prototype, a week to internally test, and a week to go live.

"This is one of the easiest, most straightforward things I've done in terms of integration with Facebook. It took me half a day to get [Avengers actions] out there," the blog quoted Playdom engineer Jose Rosado as saying.

The Facebook post included tips for developers based on the experience of the Avengers Alliance team so developers don't end up spamming users' news feeds.

Facebook's spotlight on the game comes shortly after the social-networking site and Zynga loosened their contract, taking away some of Zynga's special treatment as Facebook's No. 1 developer. Zynga has been struggling with slumping stock and pressure from Wall Street, and the amended contract took away the gaming company's ability to promote its site within its Facebook games.

Facebook, which probably doesn't want its gaming platform to be dependent on the faltering Zynga, has taken little time to turn its attention to its other developers, who are working to chip away at Zynga's current dominance on the platform.

Playdom was just one of the game developers present at a recent dinner hosted by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Sean Ryan, director of games partnerships at Facebook, according to a report from All Things D today. Other players at the table included King.com, Kixeye, Electronic Arts, and Kabam -- but no Zynga, which has a weekly meeting with Facebook executives. The developers floated the idea of changing the amount Facebook makes on a game's revenue from a set percentage to a sliding scale to help out developers who are just starting out on the platform.