When EA Games sets up a new division, it’s always worth taking note.

Yesterday, EA announced its new division called EA Blueprint, a division solely on creating games for social networking sites such as Facebook.  EA Blueprint’s games will be a mix of their existing IP and new titles.  The debut original title is reported as being Facebook Smarty Pants.

The bond between gaming and Facebook has been gathering momentum for some time with directly playable games like Scrabulous, fun activities that are almost games like zombie biting your friends, and even an application that allows players to show off their Gamer Achievements and profile on Xbox Live.  So, in many ways gaming is already integrated with Facebook.

Casual gaming has been ever increasing for a few years now.  (Casual Games are light games that can be played in short bursts and tend to be action puzzle games and light management played by (but not exclusively) a primarily older female audience.)  It seems that almost everyone you talk to plays games in one way or another.  One woman I spoke to recently said, “I’m not a gamer… apart from playing some solitaire on my PC … and there’s this game on my phone… oh, and I visit pogo.com occasionally”.  It’s the mass of people who are light/casual gamers but don’t think of themselves as gamers who are the large untapped audience.  It won’t wipe out the mass of console gamers as these worlds can co-exist in harmony, but increasing this casual market will make gaming more mainstream. 

EA Blueprint has only just been announced but I fully expect others to start considering Facebook as a gaming platform more seriously and starting right now.  The key to success will be designing games that have synergy with the social networking power of Facebook.

Tags: casual, EA, facebook, games, gaming