Facebook Pages have had a varied history. When they were first released, the goals of Facebook Pages were a bit fuzzy.  They have since evolved to be equal to Facebook Profiles but with no limit on the number of fans a company, product, or celebrity can have. With Facebook Pages now a central component of the Facebook experience, there are millions of pages set up for companies, organizations, celebrities, products, and more. Here, we take a look at the top 10 Console/PC Video Game Fan Pages, and discuss how each of them use the page to increase engagement with their users.

Today, according to Facebook, Pages they re “for organizations, businesses, celebrities, and bands to broadcast great information to fans in an official, public manner.” They were realigned on March 11, 2009 and now act in a similar role to Facebook Profile Pages.  Corporations and brands have adopted them as their method of reaching out to their user-base. Video game fan pages have popped up all over the place.  A big problem that Facebook has tried to address is that you sometimes can’t tell whether these pages are owned by the actual Business owner, or just by a fan.  This would be interesting to address.

Also of note, we do not include Facebook Applications in this list of fan pages, and those pages will be the subject of another discussion shortly.

Insights into the Top 10 Console/PC Video Game Game Fan Pages

1. Guitar Hero

1,139,069 fans

The most popular console video game Page is for Activision’s Guitar Hero, and they really actively engage their community.  The Guitar Hero franchise in general focuses on user generated content with its studio offerings and uploadable tracks, and we can see here that they reward their power users.  They hold user-generated content contests, sponsor exclusive concerts for their fans and update nearly 8 or 9 times a week.  Their latest contest was to ask users to submit photos of their Pet with a GH Guitar, the winner getting 500 “likes” in a week.

2. The Sims 2

820,613 fans

Interesting to note, that with almost a million fans, The Sims 2 fan page hasn’t been updated since September 2008, naturally, as the Sims 3 was launched and focus was placed there.  EA didn’t want to replace this fan page with the Sims 3 fan page, as people are so this page remains in stasis, with 800,000 subscribed users.  Maybe it would be interesting if Fan Pages were ranked like Applications, in Monthly Active Users or Page Views.

3. The Sims 3

766,090 fans

The Sims 3 is one of the busiest video-game Fan Pages on Facebook.  There are posts several times per hour by users, and it acts more as a discussion forum than a simple group.  Users submit pictures, stories and comments about their experiences with The Sims 3, and this page helps to build a vibrant community around the game.  This page also highlights the question about the difference between Pages and Groups.  Groups have a better way of discussing content, but the ability to have an extremely higlighted post in a Fan Page is very tempting to players of games like the Sims, where showing off your creations and adventures is paramount.  It is a bit busy, and it would be very difficult to get any news about the game from this page.  The discussions tab has a lot of activity, and it seems like that is where people post their serious questions/threads.

4. Modern Warfare 2

733,894 fans

Modern Warfare 2 supports user generated content, similar to the Sims 3 page.  It is overrun with random activity, and while it demonstrates the popularity of the game, it is effectively a place for MW2 Gamers to converge and post their ideas about random topics.  I found it interesting that the profile photo for the group is the recent MW2 GameInformer magazine cover, as if Activision needs to use that real-estate to post crucial news.  The discussion board is extremely active, and perhaps allowing for Moderators to have “sticky” topics would help distinguish the official news from the random conversations.

5. Pro Evolution Soccer

633,399 fans

User generated content page like The Sims 3 or MW2.  Difficult to find information, and no discussion tab.

6. Mario Kart

614,762 fans

The fans that run this simply created it as an ode to the game, and it is one of those pages that people add themselves as fans to just to show their loyalty to the brand.  The activity level is nonexistent, with the last update of random Mario Kart photos being in 2008.  I find it interesting that Nintendo doesn’t make any moves to engage this group of 600,000 extremely devoted fans.  Even a small contest would go a long way to maintain brand loyalty.

7. Worms

492,939 fans

The page is in French, but contains detailed information about the game and company.  It is almost impossible to tell if this is developed by the company or by a fan.  There is a decent amount of information and updates on the game, but nothing that engages the users.

8. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare

483,932 fans

Another user-generated page, making it very difficult to find any information about anything specific to the game.  You can meet other players  here, and people use it to post their GamerTags.

9. Super Mario Bros 3

430,289 fans
No real information regarding the game, and no activity.  Just 500,000 people who want to have “Super Mario Bros. 3″ written on their own profile page!  Virality can be a strange thing.

10. Tetris

413,543 fans

It never fails to shock me as to how many people will just jump on this page, post “I LOVE TETRIS”, and leave.  There are two to three of these types of comments every single day.  Make  no mistake, these aren’t discussions: These are one-shot posts to the other Tetris lovers in the world.  The Facebook Page phenomenon surely brings out interesting social behavior.

Special Mention:

Game Boy

465,861 fans

This is the highest ranking console in the “Game” category, but we can see that the Xbox has 750,000 members in the “Consumer Product” category.  Somehow, the categorizations make it difficult to sort and find the largest fan pages.  A tag system might help with this.  This would have been right above Super Mario Bros 3.

Rockstar Games

465,595 fans

Rockstar is the top game publisher page, and they use the Page as I’d imagine it would be used.  They post screenshots, information and new game announcements on the page.  It has a few posts a week and is very organized.  It has a  “GTA Quiz” tab, which is a quick quiz game (with a bunch of strange bugs!).

You can browse all the “Game” category Facebook pages here.