Secrets of successful social games from the best of facebook, myspace

Consoles like Wii, XBOX, PS3 have their own share of competition in gamers’ playtime.  These are the free games in the social networking sites Facebook and Myspace.  Mostly programmed and released by Zynga and Playfish, these games are free to the social networking user, and the developers usually earn by a share in real estate ad space.

At GDC Thursday, Kristian Segerstrale, CEO of PlayFish, one of the most successful publishers of games for Facebook and MySpace, talked about five lessons he thinks the mainstream games industry can learn from social games.

SAN FRANCISCO–While Nintendo’s Wii continues to outpace expectations and certain games are making fortunes for their publishers, a strong argument can be made that the hottest segment of the video games industry is one that is still in its infancy: social games.