Facebook gaming

Facebook might finally be becoming useful for something beyond the normal social network stuff... and that is gaming!

This year a few interesting and quite fun Facebook games have been developed that run in Facebook. These are all designed around the multiplayer nature of the facebook network, with you able to invite friends from your Facebook friends list into the games, and to then join forces against other teams of facebook members.

Among these games are the following:

Battle of the Bands (BotB)
This game centres around you creating a band and then trying to make it successful. You can invite your friends to also join BotB and join your tour. This makes your tour more powerful against other Facebook user's band tours.

You have five statistics: Money, Energy, Skill, Confidence and Stamina.

You use money to buy your band extra equipment. This equipment having statistics that add to your attack and defence when attacking other bands. Energy dictates how much you can do at any time, with you then having to wait for your energy to build back up before you can do more. Confidence and Stamina work together, with your stamina disctating how many other bands you can battle at one time before having to wait for your stamina to build back up. And finally Still. You earn skill points whenever you do anything like battle another band, play a gig or show, learn to play an instrument etc. As you build up skill points you level up, with higher levels unlocking better musical equipment, bigger gigs to earn you more money, and the ability to battle higher level bands.

It is quite addictive to keep progressing to unlock and buy the better equipment, battle and win against other bands, and also to compete against the main game's leaderboard to move your way up towards the top, and also a leaderboard of your friends to try and make your band higher than theirs.

Mafia Wars
This game uses a very similar game system to BotB, but is more complex and you can do much more. It is centred around a gangster/mafia world, with your being a mobster trying to get to the top.

The system of Energy, Stamina, Experience (skill), Cash (money), Health (confidence) all work in a very similar way to BotB. You can fight other players in a similar way to battles in BotB, you can buy better weapons, do jobs, fight bosses, buy up property etc... and friend's you invite to join you form part of your mafia, which you can then bring with you on jobs or fights to better your chances.

Texas Holdem Poker
If you've ever played an online poker game then you will know how this works. You initially are given a set amount of money and play against other facebook players to try and earn more money. You get promoted up through levels as you earn more money, and can unlock some extras as you go. You can also see a running leaderboard of your friends who also play the game to see how well you are doing compared to them.

Other games...
These are other games starting to appear on facebook. I will post more when I've had chance to play them.