Inside Social Games

As surprising as it might be, many game portals have actually been somewhat slow in integrating social capabilities. However, Candystand.com is not one of them – the popular portal recently integrated Facebook Connect in an effort to give the website a bit more of a social network feel.

Currently, the games site sees about 10 million visits (5 million uniques) each month with approximately 13.8 minutes per visit. Of course, the problem is that these have traditionally been more or less solo-based games, and while those numbers are not bad at all, parent company Funtank believes there is potential for much more.

Scott Tannen, President of Funtank, says that above everything else, the amount of time players spend on Candystand should see the greatest increase. By making the games more social, visitors will be able to invite friends, set up challenges, add their avatar to their Facebook profile, and compete against others via features such as high scores and leaderboard systems.

Curiously enough, Tannen has said that the company did actually consider building a social network of their own, but scrapped the idea. With 250 million people on Facebook, and roughly 70% of Candystand’s current user base having a Facebook account already, it only seemed logical to integrate with Facebook Connect. Ironically, Candystand games are only available through the portal itself and not Facebook. According to Funtank, this is to avoid any significant dependency on an external site.

Despite this reasoning, however, Funtank is looking to publish its games on other platforms such as the iPhone and PlayStation Portable. Unfortunately, the details of when and how have not yet been revealed.