It has never been easier to frag your friends during self-isolation
April 08, 2020
Facebook has added a new feature that lets gamers organize their own tournaments from home, all within Facebook’s gaming platform.
The move is to both boost Facebook’s gaming ambitions, and help those self-isolating due to COVID-19 with some entertainment.
The new feature lets gamers connect on Facebook, schedule tournament dates and times, and allocate co-hosts. You can create tournaments either privately or publicly.
Facebook has been quietly building its gaming platform for some time, however, according to Facebook gaming head engineer Mina Abouseif, it was brought the feature online early due to coronvairus:
“We noticed that there were many tournament organizers that were using Facebook events and Facebook pages and Facebook groups to try to get the word out - they were running tournaments, but the landscape was very fragmented. [...] What we set out to do was just make it easier for those tournament organizers to streamline their creation, their moderation and celebration of tournaments as part of their gaming communities."
While both Twitch and YouTube offer the option to organize tournaments, those features are mainly aimed at profesional gamers. However, these new Facebook features are aimed at casual gamers and friends.
This is just one of many recent additions to the Facebook platform geared towards gamers. Recently, the social media platform has rolled out live-stream tipping for gamers, and the ability to stream games via desktop. And those effots appear to be working.
According to Facebook, in December the platform saw a 210 per cent increase in hours watched.
Gaming has become a big deal during the coronavirus pandemic. It’s predicted that the gaming industry will rake in US$196 billion by 2022.
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