This week, Facebook named its top games for 2013, including a wide range of puzzles, strategy games and role-playing games. Also on the list are some social casino games, marking an important shift in the online gambling world. On the Best New Games list is Hit It Rich Casino Slots by Zynga. This is Zynga’s latest attempt to venture into the casino gambling market, and it has been a huge success.
While the company has experienced a significant decline in revenue and activity recently, Hit It Rich seems to be the start of a new era. Zynga scrapped its real-money online casino plans, but Hit It Rich marks the company’s entry into the social casino game market. Prior to this, Zynga Poker was a popular app among social poker player, and Hit It Rich diversifies Zynga’s social gambling profile.
Hit it Rich is a high-quality social casino application that offers players plenty of play-money casino games. There is a wide range of online pokies, table games and card games. Players are able to earn achievements, unlock content and interact with their friends. DoubleU Casino, from AFewGoodSoft, was on the list of Staff Favourites.
This game is quite different from Hit It Rich because it actually places players on the Las Vegas Strip. Each in-game casino is based on a venue in Las Vegas. For example, the NCN is the MGM Grand and Cairo is Luxor. Players travel from casino to casino in order to play different games and immerse themselves in new experiences. Last year, social casino games were nowhere to be found on Facebook’s list of Most Popular Games.
We are seeing a shift towards a more accepting attitude towards play-money pokies on Facebook and other social networking sites. We hope that this will open doors for more social gaming operators, as it would be great to see a wider range of play-money gambling titles in the Facebook gaming world.