Brainbow Dr. Newton: The Great Brain Adventure

Certain Affinity, Age of Booty: Tactics

Dragonplay, Live Hold'Em

Gameloft, Kingdoms & Lords

KiwiGames Shipwrecked

Outplay Entertainment, Monster Legacy

Space Ape, Samurai Siege

WeMade Entertainment, WIND Runner

Gamevil, Train City Despite well-known partners like Gameloft and Gamevil, Morris says the goal of the initiative is to work with, in general, "smaller and medium-sized developers" which are "not necessarily very well established." It's "one more way for Facebook to create a path to success," in his words. Moving forward, Facebook is looking at both existing games and those which have "not been released yet but are later in their development." Of course, the company is also looking for games with "potential for long-term monetization," says Morris. While the company will not be funding games, it won't stop at just promoting them, says Morris. "We're not going to share any specific data about users or so forth, but one of the activities a traditional mobile games publisher does is share best practices, share analytics insights, so developer partners can tune their games for maximum success, and we will be working in that capacity with our partners."

Where the program came from, and how it works

When Gamasutra asked Morris why developers wouldn't just buy ads on Facebook instead of participating in this program, he specifically reiterated that this is an option to appeal to less well established devs. While many large companies can make effective use of existing advertising channels, says Morris, smaller developers are "not necessarily the best-equipped companies to compete in some of the existing channels." "It's a response to a really obvious pain point in the ecosystem," says Morris. "So we've been working in pretty close coordination with a small number of pilot partners to see if we can offer that path, and so far the early results are pretty encouraging." "We're trying to open the door further for some other companies," he says. "We really try to think of it as having a path to success moving forward for different kinds of developers." The goal, says Morris, is to "match games to audiences" -- in many possible ways, "using a range of channels to promote games to Facebook users who haven't seen them before." One example, according to Facebook, would be promoting games in a specific genre to players who already play other games in the same genre.

How do I get my game on board?

Participating in the program doesn't require any changes to games, Morris says, as long as they're integrated with Facebook already. He was cagey, however, about what requirements there might be -- saying there are "no specifics I'd be ready to share about what is required or mandatory" but also mentioning that there's "no special API" required and "nothing SDK related" to get your game ready to go with the new program. In fact, he says, games in the program are not required to co-brand with Facebook, though developers can if they "really want it." If you're interested in finding out more Facebook Mobile Games Publishing and applying to the program, you can head Facebook's official page. Don't expect you'll get in immediately, however. "We'll be looking at those going forward," says Morris. "We're in a pilot program with a very limited number of developers, it's not something that's scaling today."