
Gameroom - Doolwind
https://www.facebook.com/gameroom/
======
socialist_coder
You guys are not understanding this at all. Flash and Unity webplayer plugins
are being blocked by browsers now. Flash still works for the most part, but
Unity doesn't. Facebook is losing game players because of this, and new games
are being built in Unity and not Flash, so it's harder for them to launch on
Facebook.

This solves that problem by letting you compile your game for Facebook
Gameroom straight from the Unity editor, and supports the Unity in app
purchase plugin. So now that mobile game that you just built can easily launch
on Facebook too with very little effort.

[https://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/2016/11/01/unity-e...](https://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/2016/11/01/unity-
editor-beta/)

Html5 / WebGL is not an option. It's super super slow and doesn't even work
for half your players. Until web assembly is live and has good adoption, this
Facebook Gameroom thing is going to be the best bet for launching your Unity
game on Facebook.

Big studios can afford to develop Flash versions of their Unity mobile games
just for Facebook, but small studios can't. So this is also great for that, to
level the playing field a bit.

Edit: I'm actually fairly excited about this. We have a bunch of Unity mobile
games out there but have launched none of them on Facebook because of the
bullshit with the webplayer plugin and how terrible the WebGL stuff is right
now. Now we can finally launch on Facebook! This is awesome for small Unity
studios. Very very awesome.

I can also say with good confidence that not many people commenting are the
target market here. You already have steam installed and you play games
through that? Probably not the target market. If you play a ton of freemium
games on your phone and/or you used to play freemium Flash games on Facebook -
_you_ are the demographic for Gameroom.

~~~
rubber_duck
>Html5 / WebGL is not an option. It's super super slow and doesn't even work
for half your players.

Any sources for this ? I know that WebGL adds overhead but for the simplistic
kind of games (your run of the mill Unity games) you should have no trouble
staying above 30 FPS, especially if you're smart about it and optimize to
reduce draw calls. I would assume that most PCs out there have WebGL support
by now (at least over 70%) considering how low the requirements are

>Until web assembly is live and has good adoption

I don't see how WebAssembly helps much - it primarily reduces the load time
and download size with the binary encoding - but you can get similar levels of
perf with ASM.JS and you still need to go trough same WebGL API as the DOM.

~~~
vertex-four
I've never been able to play a Unity/Unreal game compiled to HTML5, on a
fairly beefy laptop which generally runs desktop games alright. Pure HTML5
games tend to work for me, but there's no real "game engine" for them along
the same lines as Unity/Unreal, which many current mobile game developers use.

~~~
daredevildave
>"but there's no real "game engine" for them along the same lines as
Unity/Unreal"

[https://playcanvas.com/](https://playcanvas.com/)

------
sturadnidge
I don't think Facebook ever grokked the concept of multiple personas -
LinkedIn is for my work persona, Steam (and Origin, Twitch etc) is for my
gaming persona, and on Twitter I can have different accounts for each.

As long as Facebook requires a single account with real identity, it will
never be anything more than for my family & acquaintances persona. Most gamers
I know feel the same... maybe we're in the minority, but maybe not. Be
interesting to know how many Steam accounts are linked with Facebook as an
indication of how this might play out (aside from the potential for exclusive
titles etc).

~~~
DannyBee
I don't think you are a minority. the average gamer on a given popular game is
usually going on about how fat your mom is in between rounds or on chat or
whatever (it's worse than this, of course, i'm being nice).

Somehow, i don't think they are going to be up for tying that to their real
identity.

There are two possibilities. This either massively improves the discourse on
games like COD and the equivalent of every xbox live game ever. Or, people
don't use it, because they don't want that. I"m going to go with the second.

Put another way: can you imagine the average gamer in COD wanting to tie their
character "XXXAyeCarambeHarambeXXX420 to their real identity?

~~~
kevhsu
These rude 'average gamers' you speak of are the vocal minority in my
experience... Most of us are normal people.

~~~
DannyBee
In what game, precisely? Seriously, these platforms are all known for it. I've
pretty most major triple-a multiplayer titles in the past 15 years, and they
are _all_ like this.

Do normal people exist? Sure. Are they the majority? Uh, no. :) It's not even
a close contest.

This is even pretty easy to see. Pick 100 random top youtube videos of these
games. Count the amount of racism, what have you going on in voice chat, team
chat, whatever.

I say 100 just so one doesn't say "well, it's just these guys". It's everyone.

~~~
mhermher
Do you actually play games or are you making things up from ill conceived
stereotypes?

~~~
DannyBee
Yes. I play games enough that i have youtube videos of me and friends playing
games that have millions of views, in fact.

Is this good enough for whatever bar you are trying to set?

(i'll note you didn't provide a retort to what i suggested, you instead just
went to ad-hominem. So i'm going to assume you in fact, have no data that i'm
wrong)

~~~
mhermher
I've been almost exclusively playing Overwatch and Rocket League now for a
good several months. The amount of offensive content isn't really any more
than any other online community. It's rare. You get people who brag maybe, but
no one has claimed to have sex with my mother in my entire time I have played
that game. I've seen maybe a handful of racist terms dropped here and there,
but those people are either chastised or ignored.

Idk, I just don't see what you see. What do you play?

------
deanCommie
How infuriatingly presumptious. The page has a single screenshot, a
meaningless blurb, and an an "install now" button - as if I'm going to
automatically download and install every single thing Facebook announces.

How about even a bare-minimum attempt at explaining what this is all about? (I
mean, yes, I know how to google and figure it out, but should I have to?)

~~~
barbs
Is it just me or is the "Install Now" button broken? I'm on a Mac but I
would've assumed I could download the .exe file.

~~~
kerbs
It literally says "Available for Windows 7 and above" with an unmistakable
Windows logo :).

~~~
jakebasile
Maybe they meant that it would still just download the EXE even if it was on a
non-compatible system.

~~~
barbs
That's exactly what I meant.

------
niftich
They rebranded!

This was previously 'Facebook Games Arcade Beta' [1], then officially unnamed,
but occasionally referred to as 'Facebook Arcade' [2].

At the time TechCruch wrote about this in August [3], it was less clear what
their gaming portal ambitions were, and I lamented why they'd push this
product with the Facebook brand so strongly instead of de-emphasizing it in
favor of a different brand [4]. Since then, they had a partial change of heart
-- the URL for this site is still through Facebook, but on the splash page,
the only mention of Facebook is the [f] in the 'Gameroom' logo.

[1] [http://www.adweek.com/socialtimes/facebook-games-arcade-
beta...](http://www.adweek.com/socialtimes/facebook-games-arcade-beta/639432)
[2] [https://www.facebook.com/arcade](https://www.facebook.com/arcade) [3]
[https://techcrunch.com/2016/08/18/facebook-desktop-game-
plat...](https://techcrunch.com/2016/08/18/facebook-desktop-game-platform/)
[4]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12313908#12314672](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12313908#12314672)

~~~
meesles
I disagree, I still very much feel the Facebook brand through this product.

The URL, plus the title of the tab, plus the recognizable FB logo next to the
primary title of the product, and then it's still called the 'Facebook
Gameroom' in the tab of the application.
[http://imgur.com/a/XIZVX](http://imgur.com/a/XIZVX)

------
Daniel_Marcos
This looks like a glorified browser for games that are already playable on
browser. It doesn't seem to be optimized for gaming at all (it even feels
laggier). Is the purpose of it just to increase discoverability of Facebook
games?

This is disappointing. When I read Facebook bought Gameroom.com a couple weeks
ago, I expected something related to their VR platform. Not this.

~~~
Impossible
It's even weirder that they've launched this platform completely separate from
the Oculus platform. I understand the marketing reasons for this. Oculus has
to not require a Facebook login, while Gameroom does, Oculus is VR only, etc.
But you'd think maybe Gameroom could have Oculus support without too much blow
back from Reddit?

Facebook seems to be following the time honored big tech company tradition of
having different business units completely reinvent the wheel working on the
same set of features in parallel for no good reason.

~~~
koder2016
Who would want to tarnish the Oculus brand with Facebook's "social" slot
games?

~~~
NTripleOne
And besides, Oclulus have done enough to tarnish the brand themselves anyway.

------
jakebasile
> From shooters to strategy, builders to bingo, find your game in Gameroom,
> designed for PC gaming.

I just can't see this competing with Steam and Origin. It took years for
Origin to get as much acceptance as it has in the PC market, and it started
with AAA games people wanted - not "Oz: Broken Kingdom" and "Willy Wonka and
the Chocolate Factory Slots". Origin _still_ gets crap because it isn't Steam.

------
excalibur
Is this the PC equivalent of Messenger, designed to give Facebook total access
to your system?

~~~
ihuman
Facebook messanger gives Facebook total access to your computer?

~~~
vthallam
I guess the parent comment means that messenger takes a lot of permissions on
mobile.

~~~
ihuman
The android version? I've only used the Windows 10 and iOS versions, so I am
not aware of what permissions it asks for.

~~~
JoelBennett
For Android (and for Windows Phone) it requires permissions to pretty much
everything. It's pretty evil in that regard.

~~~
cholantesh
Every last permission it requests is associated with a reasonable functional
requirement. It may never make use of the components it requests permission to
(eg: sending and receiving SMS, which many users don't want to do with
Messenger) and in newer Android versions, you can grant (or not) permissions
on an ad hoc basis. Nothing 'evil' about it.

------
serge2k
I'm really getting tired of Facebook et. al trying to insert themselves into
every facet of my existence.

I'll keep using Steam and Gog. Steam is pretty bleh, but it does the job and I
don't have to put up with Facebook.

~~~
WildGreenLeave
Personally I think Steam is one of the best game platform (for a lack of a
better word). It is fast, easy to use, nice sales/cheap in general, downloads
are quick. While on the other side Playstation store is the exact oposite of
what I just wrote.

~~~
serge2k
> It is fast

my main complaint is that I find it pretty clunky and slow.

edit: The UI, not downloads. Browsing the store is usually not that pleasant,
switching tabs, etc... Downloads usually cap out around 40MB/sec on my
connection. Which is fine.

~~~
pixelcloud
Some of it is highly dependant on your internet connection. But the games
library seems to be snappy with 300 games. I find that updates can run
extremely slow though, 1-2MB patch taking 5 minutes to download!

I remember when Steam WAS really horrible. The green client ran so poorly and
was extremely slow at updating anything,

~~~
duaneb
I'd argue steam has never stopped sucking, but it's always been reliable. I'll
take reliability over usability any day when money's involved.

------
xorl
This feels and loads games like my moms Pogo games. Not a good start.

~~~
jay_kyburz
It's made for your mom. Sounds like a good start to me.

------
arcanus
Origin, steam, battle net, uplay...

And now gameroom.

Is steam so profitable this makes sense? What possible motive does FB, one of
the largest companies in the world, have to compete? The revenues should be
paltry.

~~~
enraged_camel
>>Is steam so profitable this makes sense?

We don't have the numbers obviously, but Steam must be so profitable that
Valve is primarily a software distributor these days. Over the past six years,
they've released only two titles (Portal 2 in 2011 and Dota 2 in 2013), and
Half-Life 3, a game that is guaranteed to sell millions upon millions of
copies, isn't even on the horizon.

~~~
DumpOfGenius
I don't think they really care about earning money from their original games.
They give out team fortress 2 for free, and has been actively maintaining it
all these 9 years. They sell all value game as a bundle for like $20 last
year.

On the other hand. Others like battle.net, origin, uplay are just other game
companys trying not to give away 30% cut of their new hot game by selling at
valve's platform. They will probably lose more from the 30% cut, than the
potential customer they would lose selling only on their platform. I totally
understand them, I just couldn't be bother to buy them (except blizzard)

Nevertheless, it's just PC games, not a big market. Nowhere compare to apple's
iphone games or facebook's web games.

~~~
grogenaut
This is just called Free to Play. Look up how much money TF2 made on hats.

~~~
icebraining
Yeap. I know many kids who rather spend their allowances and gifts on TF2
items than on new games. Hats, weapons, taunts, all in different combinations
for maximum profit.

------
gambiting
My problem is that I opened the website, read the description, and I still
don't know what this does. Is it a launcher for my PC games? Why the hell
would I want another one?

------
throwaway38472
Haha, finally I can have a desktop version of FarmVille.

Really tho, this is emblematic of the endemic problem with tech monoliths
misunderstanding their audience. It somehow reminds me of a planning deck I
once saw for supporting "party planning" mode where the actual use case was
"porn mode" but the bizdev had to make it pc.

------
eterpstra
Didn't Yahoo do this more than 10 years ago? I remember playing a lot of
checkers as a lab monitor in college.

------
j2bax
Facebook could do something so powerful and fun by seamlessly combining their
social platform and games... But this is what they've come up with?

~~~
firasd
This kinda happened in 2007... hence Words With Friends, FarmVille, etc. In
retrospect it seems bizarre that random developers were able to publish
updates with our own icons to the main Newsfeed.

~~~
j2bax
I suppose I am speaking of a far more integrated portal for friends to play
casual games together. More realtime than the newsfeed volley of 2007. If
Facebook could create a really nice lobby platform and then have a handful of
casual games, board games, card games etc. It would be very locked down and
focused on friendly gaming, not the spamcity that was/is "Facebook games".

------
ipsin
In case anyone else is curious, you can't actually play any games unless you
have the Facebook Apps Platform enabled, and you can't play any games unless
you share public profile info.

What I can't figure out is who these game developers are and what they do with
that info (beyond displaying my name in multiplayer games). Can it be used to
build remarketing lists, etc?

~~~
jay_kyburz
My game is there, and we don't have the Facebook stuff enabled so it doesn't
ask for permission when it launches.

But of course, instead we ask you to make a custom account for our game so you
can log in and out on different platforms.

------
mucker
* No feature list * No game list * Confusing as to what this has to do with "rooms" * Demands I download a web app!?!??!!?

Go home FB. You're drunk.

------
dfar1
PC only. is this 2004?

~~~
city41
more specifically, Windows only.

~~~
vpol
So... 2001

~~~
rubidium
or 2020, when mac is left abandoned in the trash heap in favor of iJackets

~~~
jay_kyburz
"Its says windows 7 or better", so I assumed all macOS versions are supported.
:)

------
jonbarker
Windows only? Also no way to see what games exist without downloading?

~~~
brilliantzen
Taking a client on windows approach.

------
socialist_coder
I wonder if this has Unity webplayer & Flash runtimes built into it so it will
work even though browsers block those plugins now.

Edit: yes!
[https://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/2016/11/01/unity-e...](https://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/2016/11/01/unity-
editor-beta/)

------
exodust
> _It can tie users deeper into the Facebook identity layer, making it harder
> for them to ditch the social network_

It's all about ecosystem lock-in for these tech giants. Their agenda-driven
ways are not compatible with what gamers expect from a good platform.

It's why so much hate is directed towards services such as Origin and even
worse, Uplay - which needs to run in addition to the Steam client. Or any
service requiring its own "launcher". To its credit, Planet Coaster recently
ditched its own launcher (Frontier Launchpad) and took the game to Steam.
Frontier Launcher can now be uninstalled. Awesome. Planet Coaster is awesome
btw.

Unless this "Gameroom" service allows sign-up via email address and
avatar/handle/nickname identity, I'll be giving it a miss. And even if does
offer third party authentication, I'll still likely give it a miss.

------
adamredwoods
A board game room is a better place to play.

------
jfoster
Seems like the comments here are slamming Facebook for this, but I think
sometimes you have to take a step back and realize you might not be the target
audience, and that products/services typically launch before getting the
proposition spot on.

The landing page is certainly light on text, looks like it's got nothing to do
with Oculus, and it's Windows-only, but perhaps Facebook are approaching this
as a start-up would? I am certain Facebook will test variants of that landing
page, get installs from other parts of their platform, and if going beyond an
MVP, add Oculus stuff and other platforms.

I'm not about to install it either, but I bet they get tens (maybe hundreds)
of millions of installs before the end of 2016. From a start-up perspective, I
find this type of launch more fascinating because I can watch them iterate.

------
wwalser
Hacker news, where having a brand name means all products you released have to
be fully featured, documented, well marketed, omni-platform and take full
advantage of the "obvious" synergy with your existing products. Otherwise,
it's clearly total rubbish.

Maybe ah… this was built and released by a small team who may or may not go on
to iterate on the implementation pending collection and evaluation of usage
data. Perhaps you would like to comment on this as if it's an early iteration?
Maybe you could take the painful step of recognizing that the people who built
it are people; individual human lives with limited time and resources and
therefore attempted to strike a balance with respect to resources spent in an
effort to release something, limited for sure but compelling.

~~~
rootlocus

      > Maybe you could take the painful step of recognizing that the people who built it are people; individual human lives with limited time and resources [...]
    

Except it's made by Facebook (not a small team of indie developers pouring
their heart and soul), and it's not new or even in demand, since we have
steam, origin and gog.

------
phmagic
Is Facebook GameRoom the new Yahoo Games?

~~~
fspacef
Exactly what I felt. As always - history repeats itself.

------
jay_kyburz
Hey, what do you know. My new game Blight of the Immortals is already up and
running in Gameroom. I didn't have to do anything!

(Previously had the game inside one of those Facebook canvases. )

------
lai
Why is this Windows-compatible only?

~~~
jakebasile
If it's targeting PC gamers, there's almost no reason to release for anything
but Windows.

~~~
ben_jones
That's unfair I think. It's a perfectly fine idea that has been executed
poorly multiple times.

~~~
jakebasile
It's not failed for a lack of stores on Linux. Both Steam and GOG sell Linux
games, The gaming ecosystem on Linux just doesn't compare to that on Windows.
Driver support isn't there, AAA/AA game support isn't there, backwards
compatibility isn't there. It is much better in recent years than ever but I
think this is a knock on effect from the general resurgence of PC gaming as a
whole.

Trust me, I'd love it if this weren't the case but Linux gaming has been
pushed as least as long as the Linux desktop, and I don't see either getting
much more traction. It's a chicken and egg problem.

------
bitmapbrother
This is not going to end nicely. Forget about the fact that Steam is pretty
much insurmountable for a second, but this a space Facebook doesn't belong in.

~~~
jay_kyburz
They havn't put a lot of work into it I dont think. Its just a re-skin of
Facebook itself in something like Electron.

------
Axsuul
This is obviously a strong play by Facebook taken from the WeChat playbook.
Furthermore, it helps connect the dots with their Oculus purchase. Believe it
or not, any company... even Facebook, can brand themselves as a
gaming/entertainment company over time. It was not too long ago that Facebook
was the de-facto platform for games such as Farmville.

------
erk__
Looks like they changed the name from facebook arcade. The help in my language
refers to it as arcade.

------
rjbwork
Great. A furthering of the attempted fragmentation of my gaming license
management software.

For the same reason that I don't buy things on UPlay and Origin, I won't be
buying things on Gameroom.

------
eva1984
I think PC gamer hate Facebook, or barely find it relevant? True?

~~~
jakebasile
I don't think the ratio of Facebook hater to Facebook user is significantly
different among PC gamers than it is among any other technical crowd (HN, for
example).

I am a PC gamer, and I use Facebook for some things and don't think they're
inherently evil. I also don't think this product is meant for me.

------
andrewclunn
Your aunt and mother will soon be chatting over messanger while they compete
in a candy crush tournament, all with a browser on chromebooks. They're not
here for you hardcore gamers. They will come for you later,once they have
dominated... oh wait, Windows only? Haha haha, never mind.

------
colept
No thanks.

~~~
MildlySerious
Agreed. I hope it won't end up with another platform I don't want to own/be
part of thet gets exclusives. It probably will.

~~~
WalterSear
Considering the demographic, I bet they are trying to be steam for casual
gamers, rather hoping to enter an entrenched market with a 400 lb gorilla of a
leader.

Though maybe this is an oculus play.

~~~
MildlySerious
Oh I didn't think of Oculus. That makes quite a bit of sense, actually. That
would give them a chance to roll their own policy for ads in games, among
other things. In combination with VR it will be interesting to see what will
come out of that, despite not being part of the target audience myself.

~~~
exodust
The problem is that Oculus is not hugely popular and faces stiff competition
from other VR hardware. It would be silly to "need Oculus" for a Facebook
game. Wouldn't that be a turning point in gaming.. requiring Facebook hardware
before you can enter a building in a VR world. I guess that's where it's
headed, and would be very sad to have that fragmentation in VR.

~~~
MildlySerious
It wouldn't surprise me if that is how it starts, before consolidating and
becoming a more homogenous industry down the road. I agree, it would be sad. I
can imagine the majority of people on HN would probably prefer open and less
locked in alternatives.

