Facebook's new Messenger games are betting big on augmented reality

Scrabble doesn’t cut it: these days games with friends mean animated face-filters and halos of exploding hearts around your head.

Last week Facebook launched two augmented reality (AR) games in its Messenger app — you can play with up to six friends over live video chat.

Don’t Smile is essentially a high-tech staring contest that detects your grin and uses AR to turn your face into an enormous joker’s smirk if you lose. Meanwhile, in Asteroids Attack you have to protect the spaceship perched on your nose from falling asteroids.

There are two more are on their way within the next few months: in Beach Bump you pass an AR ball back and forth, while Kitten Craze is a cat-matching game.

To access the games just hit the star button in the upper right-hand corner of your video chat: this opens the filter menu, then you can select which game you want to play.

Your friends will get notifications asking them to join in, then you can share screenshots with the group as you compete.

AR games are a work-in-progress. The Facebook Messenger app now has more than 1.3 billion users and it introduced AR filters to video chats last year. Facebook says the animated filters and effects helped double the number of video chats from 2016 to 17 billion in 2017. Turning chats into a game opens up new ways to keep us on the apps for longer — especially if the conversation is starting to dry up.

Pokémon Go created a buzz around social AR gaming back in 2016 and Snapchat joined the hype earlier this year with the launch of its own multiplayer version, called Snappables, where you’re transported into space or a disco dance hall.

Some users have remarked that Facebook’s Asteroid’s Attack is similar to a Snapchat space-shooter game that rolled out in April, while Snapchat is reportedly building its own game development platform to come soon.

Let the AR games begin.