If you haven’t heard the term ‘social casual gaming’ you’ve probably experienced it through social networking site Facebook by playing the addictive Texas Hold ‘Em or Scrabulous applications with your friends.
MySpace is looking to get a piece of this burgeoning gaming market by launching its own games channel early next year.
The News Corp-owned site has partnered up with multi-platform casual games company Oberon in a move that will allow users to play games online with friends as well as virally share these games through their MySpace homepage.
Oberon is a New York-based software company that counts Yahoo! as on of its online distribution partners.
The two companies are also inviting games developers to come forward with their ideas for new forms of social gaming and will be supplying a software developer kit geared towards multi-player and social gaming.
Facebook was the first site to experience this phenomenon of social casual gaming which was down to its decision on 28 May of this year to open up to third party application developers, the first site of its kind to do so.
All games available on the MySpace Games channel will be free to site users, and as well as multi-player and single player options, users will be able to chat in real time with each other while playing.
By Marie Boran
