Games like Scrabulous made it feel natural to have four or five separate games going on at once with different friends, with turns being taken as and when they were online. Of course, it's not an entirely new gaming paradigm: play-by-mail chess arguably invented the idea.
Anyway, another of those asynchronous Facebook games is Anytime Pool, which is the work of UK studio Distinctive Developments more known for its work on FIFA mobile games for EA.
That connection remains, since EA Mobile is now publishing the iPhone and mobile versions of Anytime Pool. We chatted to Distinctive boss Nigel Little (pictured) about the game and its ambitions.
We launched the Facebook version in April last year as a beta version, but the intention was always to release mobile and iPhone versions, he says.
We started work on both shortly after releasing the Facebook version, with the aim of figuring out how to get the connectivity between the three working properly, with a UI that was enjoyable for people. We think we've achieved our goals there.
Even judged as a standalone pool game, Anytime Pool is very slinky indeed, with impressive visuals and a mean 3D engine.
Little says Distinctive wanted to create a game that would provide a decent challenge in single-player mode, with a world tour. But of course, the social aspects are the real selling point.
Anytime Pool DOESN'T use the recently-announced Facebook Connect technlogy to synch mobile and iPhone players with Facebook mainly because, well, it's only been recently announced, while the game has been in development for a year.
We host the games ourselves on a server, and then when somebody plays on Facebook, it requests the game from our server, explains Little.
That means the mobile version goes from mobile to our server, rather than through Facebook's servers. It means the server load is less, we can manage the authentication better, and we can get the user experience to be a little tidier.
However, Little says Distinctive is open to the idea of including Facebook Connect in a future update for the iPhone version. As it is, players get a 'social play code' from the Facebook app, which they enter in the mobile or iPhone version to synch up.
From then on, their matches can be played from any of those platforms they can take a shot on their PC, and then take the next one on their iPhone.
What's the business model behind this kind of game, though? On both iPhone (for now) and mobile, EA can only charge a one-off fee for the game, while on Facebook it's free to play. Don't the costs mount up?
There is some cost involved in terms of hosting, which increases as we get more users, says Little.
But the business model we're running is we want to build up a loyal user base on Facebook and on mobile, which we can then obviously cross-sell games to, as well as any sequels that we create. It's about creating a fanbase we can communicate with.
Little says Distinctive hasn't put a huge amount of effort into building up the community playing the game on Facebook, preferring to let it spread by word of mouth in advance of the iPhone and mobile versions' release. At the time of writing, the Facebook version has just under 3,400 monthly active users.
We're starting to market the game a little bit more now, to push it out and make it more viral, says Little. However, it seems those already playing Anytime Pool online have provided useful feedback.
It's not about making a product and pushing it out for a one-time release, he says. You're building momentum to the game, and constantly evolving it by implementing features that your user base requests. It's the kind of feedback we've never really had in mobile before, where you start to understand your consumers and what they're thinking. That's really exciting.
Given that Distinctive is hosting the Anytime Pool servers itself, it could presumably have self-published the iPhone version of the game, so why opt for a publishing deal with EA?
One word: marketing.
They've got a huge marketing budget, they can cross-promote from their website, and if they were only publishing the mobile version, they'd have a bit of a conflict of interest internally, and might not want to put as much marketing budget behind it that would ultimately promote the iPhone version, says Little.
He also says EA has provided valuable development support in terms of suggesting improvements and helping with QA. EA Mobile has a good record of working with talented independent developers, so Anytime Pool certainly fits into that part of the publisher's strategy.
Although Distinctive is looking at self-publishing for iPhone in other areas, Little has some candid thoughts on the increasing difficulty of cutting through the clutter on the App Store, even if your game is good.
The only independent games that are really succeeding on the App Store are games that are being featured by Apple, he says. You might be getting 20-30 sales a day without being featured, and then 10,000-20,000 a day if you get featured. It's all down to luck at the end of the day, and hoping somebody at Apple likes your game.
With that in mind, he sees an increasingly dog-eat-dog environment on the App Store.
People are discounting to get their sales up in the first place, but I don't think that's a sustainable model, he says. That's what EA gives us the marketing budget to really sell the game at a price where we can actually make some money.
Distinctive funded the development of Anytime Pool itself before signing the publishing deal, so the game represents a big bet by the developer. We have to recoup that cost, says Little.
If we had self-published, we might have been able to recoup, but it would have been a might. With EA, we definitely will recoup, and hopefully make a profit.
With Anytime Pool about to be released, what else does Distinctive have planned, other than the evolution of that title according to player feedback that Little referred to earlier?
He says that next time Distinctive launches this kind of social game, it'll aim to launch the Facebook, iPhone and mobile versions at the same time.
We feel we've proved that it can be done and done well, so we're thinking of some entirely new concepts linking up some of the unique features of mobile devices to the social networking sites, he says. One of those products is in development right now.
