Inside Social Games

Wow. There’s really no other words to describe what an interesting month it has been for games on the Facebook Platform. From uncanny growth to an invasion of international game developers, all sorts of precedents are being set.

Last month, records were set by the astounding growth of Zynga’s FarmVille. However, those records have been broken again this month, and more new faces are appearing on the list — and most of them from other parts of the world. Meanwhile, older games are beginning to drop off, which begs the question: are social gamers flocking to higher quality apps?

Here are the highlights from the past month:

• First and foremost, Zynga’s FarmVille continues to amaze as its previous tally of nearly 33.5 million has been obliterated by a new record of 51,454,512 monthly active users.
• Zynga’s new Moscow expansion for Mafia Wars looks to be paying off as well, bringing the classic game up to nearly 26 million users.
• Playfish’s Pet Society gains another 2.5 million MAUs to retake #4 with Restaurant City moving up again to #7 with over 15.5 million.
• A new face appears at #9. A simple dice game called FARKLE from Viral brings a little chance to Facebook, moving PopCap’s Bejeweled Bliz to #10.
• Playfish’s Country Story also continues to grow in popularity, gaining nearly 3 million users. However, Word Challenge and Who Has the Biggest Brain fall to #20 and #21 respectively, and Geo Challenge exited the top 25.
• German company wooga’s Brain Buddies held strong at #16 with over 5 million MAUs, followed by the new Chinese game My Fishbowl with roughly 4.5 million.
• Greenpatch also makes an appearance at #18 with (Lil) Farm Life.
• Also, Chinese only game, “開心農場,” from ELEX appears at #22 with a French title, GooBox – Jeux Gratuits (Play Free) at #23.
• Lastly, another new title from Chinese developer, Rekoo, appears at #25 called Animal Paradise.

Things are really heating up on the Facebook Platform. With the growth of new apps, particularly international ones, it’s going to be very interesting to see what happens this month.