Snapchat Launches Its Games Platform, Starting With Six Titles

Snapchat maker Snap officially launched its gaming platform at its first partner summit in Los Angeles Thursday, unveiling a six titles from companies like Zynga and ZeptoLabs, and also laying the groundwork for a bigger focus on social gaming.“Last year, mobile gaming was a $77 billion industry,” said Snapchat product director Will Wu Thursday. However, Wu contended that most of those games weren’t easily shareable. “It’s hard to get everybody to install the same game, then find friends to play with, and it’s hard to chat,” he said. “There’s way too much friction.”Snap’s answer is a HTML5-based gaming platform that makes it possible to play games right within Snapchat. Games are accessible from a new rocket button within the app’s group chat, and will launch directly in the app, without the need for any further downloads or sign-ups. Players can chat with each other in real-time via text chat, and also directly talk to each other via voice. To kickstart the launch of games on Snapchat, and to demonstrate the capabilities of the platform, Snap built a title of its own in-house: Bitmoji Party, a series of mini games that uses Snapchatter’s Bitmojis as their avatars. A video preview shown to press showed Bitmoji competing in what can best be described as “American Ninja Warrior”-type challenges.