Inside Social Games

It is a new year, and that means that everyone has a fresh start for 2009. So what do the charts look like for MySpace? Well, we’ve had our look and here are the numbers for the start of 2009!

As you can see, MySpace games continued to grow at a good pace in December, though there weren’t many changes in the overall rankings. The highest change in users out of all of the titles this month was just slightly over 300,000 (though that number can be dwarfed by the millions of users that can change in Facebook).

• No major surprise, but Mobsters and Mafia Wars continue to remain in the Top 2 positions respectively with well over 10 million users each. However, it is still Mobster’s that dominates all competition with over 2 million players more than the #2 position.
• Zynga still remains the primary developer within these charts claiming a third of the games within the Top 25. Gang Wars and Dragon Wars swapped places in popularity (at #10 and #11) with Gang Wars emerging on top.  YoVille in the meantime moved up from #17 to #16 with a gain of 206,113 users.
• Fashion Wars went up from the #20 position to the #18 spot, and Special Forces dropped a level, falling to #19.
• Also, a game that breached the Top 25 last month, My Green Garden, continues to hold on to its inclusion into the charts, by actually moving up to #24 with a gain of 117,191 players.

Overall, the Mobsters games continue to do very well on MySpace, with penetration even reaching into older demographics we hear. We’ll keep tracking the latest here on ISG.