Facebook is serious about playing games on Messenger

Facebook has rolled out plenty of games on its Messenger platform over the years, but it’s ready to deploy even more. Today, the company has announced that it’s expanding the reach of Instant Games to even more users around the world. Additionally, the company is now ready to launch the richer gameplay features it first announced at F8 a couple of weeks ago. Think: turn-based games, leaderboards and tournaments. Depending on the title, you could even see the occasional “game bot” pop up to either cheer you on or notify you of additional options.

Some of the first games to have these new features include Zynga’s Words With Friends, which is getting turn-by-turn embeds. There’s also Blackstorm’s EverWing, which utilizes a game bot. These are just two of the 50-odd games that are now available for Messenger, a big improvement over the 17 or so that debuted a few months back. With chatbots, businesses, Stories and games, Messenger is so cluttered these days that you’d be forgiven if you found it nigh-unusable (in which case, we’d probably suggest Messenger Lite as a chat app alternative). These games and features will roll out to both iOS and Android over the next few weeks.