Casual gaming is becoming ever more important since the large growth of social networking sites such as facebook. Users like to be engaged where they are living a large portion of their online time. And that is increasingly facebook.

This morning PlayFirst and RockYou will officially be announcing a partnership that will kick off a significant trend in how casual game publishers distribute and monetize content. As more users spend their time on social networks, it’s a natural progression that game publishers will want to follow their users to the places where they already spend their time online.

As more users find and share content with friends in centralized locations, like social networks, game publishers will need to give users access when and where they want it. The PlayFirst and RockYou partnership marries the expertise of two leading companies that understand the needs of their users and the importance and urgency of migrating successful game experiences onto social networks.

“The importance of innovative distributors like RockYou is that they enable companies like PlayFirst, who have deeply engaging intellectual property, to leverage the audiences of Facebook and other social networks to attract more users,” said Rich Roberts, vice president of sales and business development, PlayFirst. “It has always been a PlayFirst goal to reach casual gamers wherever they play and we view social networks as the next great internet platform.”

Additionally, PlayFirst announced that they have secured $16.5 million in Series C financing led by DCM, which will, among other things, enable the company to continue to expand its new business model of incorporating micro-transactions into its popular games

Let the games begin. The company will roll out an application based on the hit title Wedding Dash, for the Facebook platform.

All the “brides to be” can start their wedding dash on facebook starting later today.
(I can’t find the facebook app just yet).

UPDATE: It looks like the first application will launch in about 3 weeks.

[tags]facebook, playfirst, rockyou[tags]

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