Could Twitter Games Replicate Farmville-Sized Success?

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Fledgling social gaming company play140 wants to make your microblogging habit into addictive game play.

No doubt attempting to recreate the success of social gaming giant Zynga, the creator of online juggernaut Farmville, play140 is trying to jumpstart gaming a la tweets. And the company will make its attempt with very little competition. Zynga currently supports games through Facebook, MySpace, Yahoo and Apple’s iPhone only, leaving the Twitterverse as unclaimed territory.

(More on Techland: Are Video Game Developers Growing An Audience For Apple Devices?)

Yesterday, the company announced the beta launch of its site and the first iteration of games played solely through Twitter and SMS. T.A.G. (The Acronym Game), Be Greedy, and Robot SMASH Battle are up and running in beta preview only and though wrapping my head around using Twitter as a non-location centric game (I haven’t forgotten you, Foursquare) was a little difficult at first, how could these ideas be any more unlikely to hit success than a game about virtual farming? (Which, also just announced the soon-to-be-published Farmville For Dummies guidebook.)

Here’s a breakdown:

Be Greedy: “A game of strategy and greed where players race to collect the most gold before the end of the game.”

T.A.G.: “The game’s account will tweet an acronym and a category, and players create a response that matches the letters and fits the category. The players then vote for their favorite answer, with the top answers facing off at the end.”

Perhaps massively multiplayer online games (MMO) via Twitter just don’t have a market quite yet, but I think there’s something to be said for it in the future, if this “Twitter” thing catches on. Which, I think it just might.

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