Is Snapchat Turning Into A Gaming Platform?

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As we have seen in the past that when a platform gets so popular and big enough, it eventually starts supporting the video games to be played on it. The prime examples of such interfaces are Facebook and Apple iPhone. Now, the app that introduced the ‘Story’ feature in the market, Snapchat, is going to support the gaming feature. Earlier this month, Snapchat announced a freshly developed game that introduced with the help of Bitmoji and couple of other third-party developers.

Getting into the gaming industry isn’t as inevitable by massive platforms considering the demand and financial returns in this specific industry. Even the existing successful apps like Facebook Messenger are trying to take their chunk in this business. However, it is not that easy to succeed and to attract an overwhelmingly top-grossing response in a space that is already piled with numerous thriving gaming apps.
Snap’s solution to this? Planning to go in a slightly different direction that leads towards the company’s existing playful persona. Will Wu, the director of product and the lead on the gaming initiative at Snapchat, believe that the collaboration of Bitmoji Party will result in something fun and personalized and it’s something Snapchat is putting a lot of effort behind. “This is something that we’re very excited about pursuing relentlessly,” Wu rejoiced.
The idea for the project initiated around two years ago. First, Snapchat pulled out strings and acquired Play Canvas, creators of an HTML5 game engine that would help with the core development in the new venture. Then, the company got in touch with Prettygreat, an Australian studio run by the former leads behind the top-grossing hits Fruit Ninja and Jetpack Joyride. The proposal was to build a few gaming apps initially to lash out the new platform.
“A big part of their strategy was to make games in-house,” says Prettygreat co-founder Phil Larsen, who has been a part of Snap Games Studio. “Nintendo has their first-party teams, and they make all of the tent pole games that really innovate and push the platform forward, and so that was our goal.”However, the goal of Snapchat’s new gaming platform isn’t to offer a vast selection of games; it is to attract traffic that will eventually link up with Snapchat. “We want games for all of these unique social situations and social groups,” says Prettygreat co-founder Phil Larsen. “Having too many games that people can’t play or even see, that doesn’t help us or help developers.”