Bejeweled Blitz Reaches 5 Million Facebook Friends

PopCap Games, one of the biggest names in the 'casual games' market, has announced that the final Facebook version of its hit franchise Bejeweled has been released and has managed to attract more than five million users after six months in public beta.

"One-minute Bejeweled was initially an in-house joke," Jason Kapalka, PopCap's chief creative officer, said, "because who'd think anyone would play a 'casual' game with such a frenzied time limit? But it turned out the one-minute timer actually made the game more accessible, as a bite-size entertainment for people busy doing other things on Facebook." John Vechey, PopCap's head of online and social projects, added, "The social nature of the game felt like the missing link. Playing Bejeweled on your own was always fun, but playing with and against family and friends takes it to another level."

The Facebook app, titled Bejeweled Blitz, proved a real success for PopCap, and, with a user base of over 200 million, Facebook could prove to be a very popular platform for the game maker. Bejeweled, one of the company's best known titles, was the first to be ported to the social network and attracts over two million players every day with over one billion play sessions so far. Of the five million monthly users, 75 percent are female, a trend that is usual for casual titles.

"Social gaming is a catalyst for growth in the games market and in social network services," Billy Pidgeon, video games analyst at Game Changer Research, added. "Giving consumers more communal and connected ways to enjoy video game content with their ever-growing online networks drives awareness and usage of the game in question while also making the gameplay experience itself richer and more compelling. Accessible and entertaining games on social networks are in effect massively multiplayer experiences that appeal to everyone."

The application's success is a testament to Facebook's power as a platform, but also as a social networking giant, which, because of its size, would allow popular applications to potentially reach an audience far bigger than many other platforms or services would.