Aiming to make Messenger more interactive and fun, Facebook today introduced multiplayer video chat AR games for its over 1.3 billion users globally. Users can play with up to six people at a time and you can challenge your friends to two games: see who can hold a serious face the longest with “Don’t Smile”, or see who can better navigate their spaceship with “Asteroids Attack”.
“We’re planning to roll out more games in the coming weeks and months – including passing a beach ball back and forth with ‘Beach Bump’ and a matching cat game with ‘Kitten Kraze – so make sure to check back often,” Facebook said in a blog post.
To play these AR games, users must have the latest version of Messenger installed. Open an existing conversation or find the person or group of people you’d like to chat with and tap the video icon on the upper right corner of the screen. Then simply tap the star button and select one of the AR games – the person or group you are video chatting with will get a notification indicating it’s time to get your game on.
In 2017, on average, over seven billion conversations happened on Messenger every day in 2017 and at the same time, on average, 260 million new conversation threads were started this year, Facebook reported.
Overall, there were 17 billion real time video chats on Messenger, marking two times as many video chat sessions in 2017 compared to 2016.
“People continue to discover video chat in Messenger, with over 17 billion video chats last year, twice as many as the year before. We hope this new experience – made possible by AR Studio – will help you create fun memories with the people you care about most, even when you can’t be together,” the company added.
