Social Gaming : Changing face of Computer Games

Social gaming has brought in a huge change in the pattern of computer gaming in the last 5 years or so. There used to be a time during our college days when people were crazy about Car racing games (like NFS) or War games (like Call of Duty). Unfortunately these games were popular only among a age group and section of the society.
Social gaming has brought in a huge inclusion of people including senior people, college goers, kids, housewives etc.
The console based video games market has lost the market considerably to the mobile game market.

One of the key reasons for its popularity is that this is a much relaxed form of a game and does not need you to do lot of things in rush. It does not require much concentration and so can be a quick way of relaxation.
Facebook games make the user experience much better and easy to understand for everyone. There is no disadvantage of starting late in such games and one can catch up very fast with one's peers.
People can form a group of friends who can help each other and get benefited  Instead of being possessive to not provide any help to others, people tend to share things to advance in the game.
The interactive dashboard makes everyone competitive with their peers. The games are very very easily accessible and does not need any high configuration/resolution hardware.

Researches say that more than 80 million people play social games atleast once a day and around 50 million play multiple times a day.

Farmville & Mafia Wars are still the most popular games in US & UK.
Casino related games like Casino, Soloto mania are the most popular so far followed by Hidden object games like Gardens of Time, Criminal Cases etc.
Role playing games like Zombie Lane also are very popular among people.

The primary developers are Zynga, EA, Woonga etc with various products for various choices & options.