How do you build a business in mobile games?

That was the underlying question in the GDC 2012 Smartphone & Tablet Gaming Summit from Jussi Laakkonen, CEO of cross promotion network Applifier.

Entitled Resistance is futile: Social will assimilate Mobile, he argued that the best way to build a business is to make the games you want to make, and focus on organic discoverability through community gameplay.

"We have infinite shelf space [on the App Store] but very limited retail presence [Featured slots]," Laakkonen said.

"But users of games don't have a discoverability problem. Developers have a discoverability problem."

Best platform

Solving is, he argued, means integrating heavily with Facebook.

While there are standalone mobile social networks such as Game Center (around 80 million registered users) and OpenFeint (around 160 million), these are not being extensively used by a wide community.

This means the number of friends on each is low, and hence the density of the social graph is very weak.

In contrast, Facebook on mobile has over 120 millon daily active users  (obviously the number registered is much higher), most of whom have several hundred friends. The result is that Facebook can offer a massively more rich social graph.

"You need to be discovered and the best way of doing that is integrating natural discovery mechanics into your games," said Laakkonen.