The Next Trend: Games Inside Instagram

Or more precisely, inside Stories.

Why will they become a trend?

Instagram is the most popular social network, and Stories is perhaps the most popular format for communicating with the audience. Combining it with games can have a strong effect for a personal or corporate page, provided the game is simple enough and still captures attention.

The second reason they could become popular is augmented reality technology. To control a game, you have to look into the camera and then perform one or more of the following actions to control it. For example:

• Blinking
• Tilting the head left and right
  
• Nodding the head
  

And so on. It would not be difficult for a programmer to make some action in the game happen when you open/close your mouth or move your eyebrows — the question is whether it makes sense. All these facial movements are tracked and identified by the Spark AR development environment from Facebook (the parent company of Instagram).

These games will not take over the gaming niche, because you cannot create games more complex than colorful Tetris in them, but they can entertain you for a few minutes. Instagram games can be made in 3D, but most often it is wiser not to complicate things and to come up with some fun idea in 2D.

For those who publish them, this gives an opportunity to increase the number of followers on their account and engagement.

What does it actually look like?

Like this, as in the video here. But it can be done better.

Why haven't they become a trend yet?

The Spark AR framework is relatively new and is primarily intended not for games, but for creating effects/masks for Stories (you have certainly seen them 100%). Most potential clients still do not realize that you can create something other than masks there, or cannot find a contractor for games — insufficient (so far) demand means there are few specialists who have already figured out Spark AR. But this is fixable.

Spark AR has documentation (and there is never enough of it) for developers, but a minimal number of people who can share their knowledge and experience: the Mecca of all programmers, Stack Overflow, is completely useless for questions about the Facebook framework. For now, again.

There are several good tutorials on YouTube, but they are not geared toward feedback between developers.

How are they created?

Spark AR (probably due to its youth) has a lot of shortcomings and bugs, but this can be offset by ease of creation.

You can write code there, but it is not always required. Most of the development is done using ready-made blocks, schematically.

And, of course, you need to make sure you have ready graphic objects to implement in the game — they can be 2D PNGs or 3D objects (DAE, etc.). It depends on the needs.

Can a non-programmer do this? In theory, yes, but it is still better to have an IT background: knowledge of code may not be required, but algorithmic thinking definitely will be.

Evgeny Blazhko