Games Update: Expanding distribution for Scores and Achievements

As we continue to drive greater discovery and re-engagement for games on Facebook, today we are announcing scores and achievements stories in the news feed and support for weekly tournaments with our Graph API for scores.

Playing stories bringing new users to games

Since launching playing stories in news feed, we have seen a 60% increase in new users installing games by clicking on news feed stories.

Scores & achievements stories in news feed

Gamers and non-gamers alike will now see news feed stories when their friends get a new high score, pass other friends or earn an achievement in a game, increasing distribution for developers who have implemented our Graph API for scores and achievements. These stories, which will be coming soon to mobile, will enable users to share the competitive and social moments of game play.

Achievement story

Passing story

High score story

These stories also include a call to action to "play", which will direct people to the game. Stories that get the most engagement from friends - clicks, likes, and comments - will get more distribution in news feed and on timeline.

You can track referrals to your game from these stories by looking for the fb_source parameter in the url. The value of the parameter for the above stories will be feed_achievement, feed_passing and feed_highscore respectively.

Graph API for scores now supports weekly tournaments

Instead of publishing new high score stories and passing stories based on an all-time score, we will now store and publish these stories based on a person's current score. Games that reset leader board scores on a regular basis, such as for weekly tournaments, will now get more benefit out of our Graph API for scores.

You can reset the scores for your app by simply issuing an HTTP DELETE request to /APP_ID/scores with the app access_token for that app.

Maximizing the impact of scores

One of the best ways to drive more engagement with scores stories is to have a recurring tournament that ranks a person and his friends on a leader board and declares a winner for that time period. This heightens competition among friends who are playing the game and makes the game more social. When a person sees that a friend has passed him in the weekly tournament, he is likely to go back and try to beat that friend.

How to best use achievements

To drive more comments and clicks on your achievements stories, create achievements that people will be proud to share and that gamers and non-gamers alike can understand. People will be proud to share achievements that require significant skill and effort to accomplish, whereas trivial achievements cause people to lose interest in stories generated by your game. Also consider providing sufficient context so that new users who are not familiar with your game will also find them interesting.

We are continually improving the Facebook ecosystem for developers by driving more discovery of and re-engagement with games. Whether it's increasing distribution opportunities or enhancing our existing APIs, we are dedicated to helping games of all types and sizes grow on Platform. Please provide your thoughts and feedback in the comments below.