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Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg has applauded the likes of Zynga and Playfish for remoulding the games industry in an internet age.
Speaking at the eG8 forum in Paris on Wednesday, the now-famous Facebook CEO said the games industry “has been completely transformed” because of social networks.
“Social gaming has taken off from scratch,” he said, “and now the biggest companies in the gaming industry are social games companies.”
His comments come as the global leader in social gaming, Zynga, is rumoured to be preparing to float on the stock market.
The FarmVille group has been independently valued from $7 billion, and some analysts think its value will shoot past the $10 billion milestone after going public.
Yet there are unmistakable concerns from some quarters that the whole sector is in the middle of a bubble, with investors and Wall Street gripped by a fresh bout of tech fever.
Disney last year committed over $700 million to acquire social group Playdom, while EA’s $400 million acquisition of Playfish is now being looked back on as a comparatively economical buyout.
Zuckerberg nevertheless believed gaming has taken to social networking far better than other entertainment mediums. As quoted by Paid Content, he praised Zynga and Playfish for “baking the principles of social design” into games.
He added that Facebook won’t look to offer music, movie or book services to the network.
“Is Facebook going to do those? No way,” he said.
“We don’t have the DNA to be a music company or a movie company. But I hope we can help those companies become more social. We’re going to see a lot of the transformation in these industries over the next three, five years that we have with gaming so far.”
