Convert a unity game to Facebook instant games All steps and file
Introduction to Facebook Instant Games
This is the first part of my tutorial series that covers Facebook Instant Game Development. Over the coming months, I will be covering all areas of the IG SDK, providing information, examples, and hopefully working code. I will also be throwing in some back-end tutorials, showing how to write bots, messaging systems, and so on. Eventually, I will move onto the IGX SDK, which is a wrapper that enables you to deploy your Facebook Instant Games to other places without code changes.
What is Facebook Instant Games?
Facebook Instant Games (IG) is a relatively new gaming platform that runs on the Android, iOS, and desktop platforms. It is supported via the various Facebook apps such as Facebook and Messenger. The main features of the platform include:
- Connecting players – Friends can play games together using a sort of turn-based mechanism using contexts. Players' scores can also be tracked via leaderboards. These features are useful for bringing in new players and increasing retention.
- Social sharing – Players can share their game progress with friends, this is useful for bringing in new players.
- Game bots – Players can sign up to be notified about changes within the game or changes made by friends within the game which is useful for retention.
- Monetization
– Developers can earn revenue from interstitial / rewarded adverts. Android and desktop also support in-app purchases. - Game switching – You can push users to your other games via game switching. This is useful when marketing a new release.
- Analytics – You can track various default events for your game as well as send custom events which you can view in the analytics section of the developer dashboard.
Word of advice, do not waste your time developing games for the Facebook Instant Games platform for these reasons:
- There is very little money it
- The platform is highly buggy
- There is absolutely no support
- Your games will be removed at the drop of a hat
- Your income will be cut of with very little warning, but don’t worry you will be provided a cryptic explanation
- The Facebook team have absolutely no respect for developers
Welcome to the Facebook Instant Games SDK Tutorials. This series of tutorials covers many aspects of using the Facebook Instant Games SDK.
