Facebook has introduced Cross Posting that allows gamers to maximize the reach of a game that they want to share. By cross-posting a video that has been shared to you from someone else’s page, the video will appear on your page as though it’s a native video, not one that’s come from a third party.
Instead of both pages needing to be under the same business manager account, as was the case before this new feature was introduced, you can simply tick the names of the pages on which you want to cross post a video and then those pages can display the video as though it was native to their own page. Our Grande Vegas online casino invites you to explore this new gaming innovation which has the potential to change online gaming forever!
Cross posts can be enabled by flicking the “Allow” switch on your video which enables other pages to display the video. The page that originated the content needs to be branded and tagged by the cross poster in order for you to receive full credit. Even without the branding and tagging (which you should do anyway), you’ll enjoy a much larger reach than you would if the post had merely been shared. In addition, you can see all the stats about the video including the accumulative total number of views
Breakdown
The cross-play feature is Facebook’s strategy for breaking down barriers between user bases. Regardless of whether a viewer came in through the Gaming tab or through an ad or some other portal, everyone links together. The developers of cross-play believe that cross play is a technique that gives everyone a more collaborative experience in which more material becomes available to more people.
Lotem is a developer that has been building mobile games on Facebook platforms since 2012. CEO and co-founder of Lotem Jens Abke applauds Facebook for providing a way for friend graphs to link together. Facebook created cross-play to connect social play and friend graphs including:
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players who have started playing on Facebook and now have the option to pick up their friend graphs and progress and move to mobile.
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players who found the game on mobile and can now connect with friends who are playing on Facebook.
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players who haven’t yet chosen their preferred platform but want to play and choose their preferred platform at a different time – which means that the player must be able to take their friends list, their level history, purchases and achievements with them, regardless of where they play.
Instant Games
Cross-Play demonstrates that Instant Games are much more than extended playable ads. Abke is excited about the possibilities that creators will have to use Instant Games to create new experiences. “It’s very interesting for many developers to really dig into the capabilities of the platform to see what the APIs allow you to do, what kind of experiences you can create,” he told VentureBeat.
These new capabilities include the ability to control what the audience sees. The creator can set the video to allow or disallow a view of a native version of an instant game and monetize Instant Games even if they aren’t in native view. “Of course, when you heavily rely on in-app purchases, specifically on iOS, then it might make sense to see which players might want to do in-app purchases and try to prompt them to the native version,” said Abke. But the decision is up to the creator. He notes that most players that monetize through ads continue to play on the Instant Games’ social-first platform.
“Even some very engaged players who’ve played our games for years, when we show them there’s now a native app, they still like to stay and use these very direct one-tap experiences where the fun is just one tap away,” Abke noted. “It’s fantastic, that as a developer, you have that flexibility. You can experiment and test what types of players you might want to show that you have a native version in the stores, and which ones you might want to keep on the Instant Games platform.”
Retention and Reattraction
Cross-posts have seen a strong retention level for creators who started on native and moved on to the cross-play experience. Players with a bigger friend graph generally have higher retention numbers. Abke notes that when a player posts in his/her news feed that s/he is starting a game or a tournament, it’s more likely that friends will begin to interact more quickly. “It’s a fantastic enhancement to the feature set of the native versions.
It’s also easier to reattract users who have multiple entry points from which to re-enter a game, including the ability to re-engage through their Facebook feed where it’s easy to see what’s new and exciting.
Better Advertising
In the long run, Facebook wants to set the stage on which Instant Games will play a pivotal role in helping developers attract new players. While the price of advertising increases and conversions from ads to the app store drops, new strategies are needed to draw in new gamers.
Andrew Mo, play product lead at Facebook Gaming says, “Our vision is that for developers who are running the same ads on Facebook today, they’ll take you directly to an instant version of the game where you can play immediately, interact with your friends, and start having fun. Not just the Instant Games platform, but the cloud gaming platform we launched roughly a year ago to expand mobile free-to-play games that we already offer.”
Mo notes that for developers, it’s easy to build a game natively with Unity or Unreal and then launch it on Facebook without rebuilding or porting the game to HTML5.
But when all is said and done, it’s all about the players. “Players care more about what kind of experiences you enable, they don’t care about the technology, whether it’s cloud-based or built in HTML5,” Abke told VentureBeat. “They don’t care. They want to have a fun experience. They don’t even think about it. It just works.”
