Facebook Messenger Instant Games to Get Live Streaming, Video Chats, and More

Launched in May this year, Facebook Messenger's Instant Games is getting upgraded with features like a new live-streaming option that lets you broadcast Instant Games to all your friends and followers with Facebook Live. Another feature will be rolled out for select games in which users will be able to video chat and play these games during a video call.

Let's begin with the new live streaming functionality for Facebook Messenger Instant Games. Casual gamers who are looking to share their gameplay and have an audience watch it are in luck as Instant Games on Facebook Messenger now supports sharing with Facebook Live. To get started: while playing a game, tap the camera icon located in the upper right corner of the game. Once selected, you can choose the audience you want to broadcast to and add a short description to say something about your video. To start recording, just press the "Start Live Video" button. Once the broadcast ends, the video will also get published to your profile for your followers and friends to view later.

Next up, for over 245 million using Facebook Messenger's video chat feature monthly, the messaging app will begin testing a feature that will enable users to play games while video chatting with each other. Words With Friends from Zynga will be the first game to use it, in early 2018, and will allow friends to watch each other's reactions as they run up the score.

New games coming to the platform in early 2018 include Angry Birds and Sonic Jump that will be added to the ever-expanding Instant Games catalogue.

Messenger, in a blog post, also released statistics for Instant Games. Over 70 game titles have been added in the past six months, over 4.2 billion games of Basketball FRVR have taken place, and 200 million minutes of Pac-Man have been played on the platform.