Just as some new research has come out suggesting that there's no causal link between video games and real world violence, wouldn't you know that some researchers at Brigham Young University would put out a report claiming that video games are bad for you in many, many different ways. Game Politics notes that it's no coincidence this report is coming out just as the state of Utah is looking to introduce new legislation regulating video games (just like regulations that have wasted tax payer money and been thrown out in state after state after state).

This study didn't focus on violence, necessarily, but looked at a variety of different factors between gamers and non-gamers and found out that video gamers came out worse on every single factor. So, according to the study, gamers have worse relationships with friends and family, lower self-esteem, and... they're more likely to smoke pot. At least the study's author preached a bit of moderation in response: Everything we found associated with video games came out negative... [But] I don't want parents to go out and yank all video games. It's like TV.

We have to choose what's good and bad and practice moderation. Could have been worse... but the results still seem pretty questionable.

After launching our updated Facebook application statistics tool, it become apparent who the real leaders of the Facebook platform are: social gaming networks. Both Playfish and Zynga dominate the platform in terms of engagement by a wide margin. While Slide and RockYou have a wider reach, the top two social gaming networks have a much higher level of engagement. Remember when some bloggers were arguing that Facebook would one day dominate the enterprise? At this point it would be fairly difficult to support such an argument.

Social platforms are for entertainment, not for productivity. Take a look at the top iPhone applications and you’ll see a similar trend: social games and entertainment applications dominate the leaderboard. While we may use a few utility applications once in a while on these platforms, much of our time will be spent on entertainment. If this assertion is assumed to be accurate, this could have interesting implications for social platforms.


Beyond media and entertainment, there may not be many other products that can experience success on these platforms. It also makes me wonder how saturated this market already is. If we are all essentially building media companies, the odds of building a successful media company is extremely low. That means Facebook is much better for promoting your business than building a business. Also interesting to note is that just like the blog leaderboards which were once dominated by individual bloggers and are now dominated by teams of bloggers, the vast majority of leading developers are groups, not individuals.

While becoming a leader on the Facebook platform has become increasingly challenging, it appears that your best bet is investing in social gaming. So if we’re all playing games on Facebook, what games are you playing?