Facebook, Inc. (NASDAQ:FB) is upping the ante in the social media in-house gaming department, as it has just released its Facebook augmented reality video chat games. These games are very similar to those released on Snapchat but Facebook’s games allow you to play with up to six people.

Facebook AR is Live

There are multiple games available on the Video Chat. To play the games, you start a video chat and hit the Star menu button to open the filter menu. From there you can select one of the games.

‘Don’t Smile’ is a game that is like a staring contest that detects if you grin. When someone actually grins the AR contorts your face into an exaggerated Joker’s smirk to let your opponent know they won.

‘Asteroids Attack’ uses its AR to follow your face to navigate a spaceship on the screen. The point of the game is to avoid rocks and grab laser beam powerups floating around in space.

Facebook also plans on launching two new games very shortly. ‘Beach Bump’ is passing an AR ball back and forth, while ‘Kitten Craze’ is a kitten matching game.

Gaming in Video Chat

With apps like Skype and WhatsApp, the video chat market is extremely saturated; not to mention the fact that all iPhone users have Facetime built into their phones. Facebook is trying to incentivize users to utilize their Video messenger by adding games and making it more interactive to video call someone.

Most often, if video chats go long, we do things to pass the time—Facebook is giving us a way to do that right on the video message. Currently, there are no ads or sponsored branding on the messaging games.

However, the Facebook augmented reality video chat games will offer Facebook another opportunity to make money, and as all of their revenue comes from ads, expect something down the road.

>> IKEA Opens Its First Store in India: “India will Be the Future”

Featured Image: Twitter