Virtual Environments, Chinese Developers Among Top 20 Facebook Games This Week
FarmVille is, as usual, leading our list of the top 20 Facebook gaming applications this week. Over the last seven days, continued its summer-long spurt, adding 3.44 million this week to reach 53.7 million monthly active users. In all, the list was top-heavy with games based in some sort of virtual environment, with farming being the most popular of the genre. In all, ten of the top 20 games featured some sort of virtual environment.
| Name | MAU | Gain |
Gain, % | Developer | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. |  |
FarmVille | 53,699,607 | +3,443,061 | +6.9 | Zynga |
| 2. |  |
Friend Facts | 3,250,293 | +3,164,733 | +3 698.9 | Topzy |
| 3. |  |
YoVille | 18,535,441 | +936,428 | +5.3 | Zynga |
| 4. |  |
My Fishbowl | 4,768,917 | +576,204 | +13.7 | TwoFishes Interactive |
| 5. |  |
(Lil) Farm Life | 4,317,991 | +535,763 | +14.2 | Greenpatch Inc |
| 6. |  |
Restaurant City | 15,879,276 | +532,228 | +3.5 | Playfish |
| 7. |  |
Pet Society | 18,888,308 | +514,113 | +2.8 | Playfish |
| 8. |  |
Mafia Wars | 25,952,418 | +496,830 | +2.0 | Zynga |
| 9. |  |
Write in Pictures | 423,249 | +423,249 | +0.0 | Write In Pictures |
| 10. |  |
Sunshine Ranch | 1,881,221 | +384,897 | +25.7 | Rekoo |
| 11. |  |
Animal Paradise | 3,143,308 | +374,211 | +13.5 | Rekoo |
| 12. |  |
開心農場 | 3,496,079 | +364,858 | +11.7 | ELEX |
| 13. |  |
Country Story | 7,052,381 | +291,881 | +4.3 | Playfish |
| 14. |  |
Friends For Sale! | 6,450,479 | +238,002 | +3.8 | Serious Business |
| 15. |  |
Texas HoldEm Poker | 17,891,298 | +220,455 | +1.3 | Zynga |
| 16. |  |
Mobsters 2: Vendetta | 2,831,269 | +189,850 | +7.2 | Playdom |
| 17. |  |
Birthday Countdown | 577,795 | +177,491 | +44.3 | Internet Design Zone |
| 18. |  |
Quiztastic! | 729,135 | +171,093 | +30.7 | Playfish |
| 19. |  |
How Sexy Is Your Name Calculator | 361,797 | +139,302 | +62.6 | Internet Design Zone |
| 20. |  |
Jungle Jewels | 720,693 | +134,141 | +22.9 | GameDuell Inc. |
Another recent trend is the rise of Chinese-language apps and China-based developers. Continuing from last week, TwoFishes Interactive‘s virtual aquarium, My Fishbowl, was in the top five. It gained 576,000 to total 4.77 million. While the game is available in multiple languages, most users appear to be speaking Chinese. Beijing-based Rekoo had two games on the list, virtual ranch Sunshine Ranch at number ten and virtual zoo Animal Paradise at number eleven. The former grew 385,000 to 1.88 million, the latter grew 374,000 to 3.14 million. Following at number twelve was 開心農場 or “Happy Farm,” a Chinese-language virtual farming game made by ELEX.
And a final note: Friend Facts came in at number two on the list because it is categorized as a game — the app mines Facebook data to give you random stats about friends, but it’s not a game in a traditional sense.
October 5th, 2009 at 11:24 am
Just an additional note – it looks like ELEX and TwoFishes Interactive are cross promoting their games via a toolbar similar to Zynga’s — see my notes (See my Sept 30th post: http://www.voncoelln.com/eric/2009/09/30/chinese-game-developers-jump-into-top-20-facebook-apps/).
The toolbar has been a big driver for Zynga – it doubled the growth of Roller Coaster Kingdom from 820K daily active users to over 1.67 million in a day.
October 12th, 2009 at 7:48 pm
[...] only 324,000 – Happy Aquarium alone has 10.2 million monthly active users. We’ve been tracking the progress of My Fishbowl lately as it has climbed up the charts. It’s a product [...]
October 15th, 2009 at 12:46 pm
[...] also seen a surge in Facebook gaming applications that are available in widely-spoken languages in the region, especially Chinese. As in the rest of [...]
October 15th, 2009 at 1:20 pm
[...] helping Facebook to grow by 6 million overall in the region. In recent weeks, we’ve also been covering the fast growth of games like Happy Aquarium, My Fishbowl, Happy Farm, and a range of other quality [...]
November 6th, 2009 at 12:30 pm
[...] sure how many big fish games there are on Facebook — there are a few significant ones made by Asia-based developers, for example. Virtual aquarium games, from our understanding, first got big in China, before they [...]
November 18th, 2009 at 5:16 am
Have tried the game and love it alot but now for some reason it wont load up just a blank page, what is wrong and can you help please,miss my game
November 28th, 2009 at 4:26 pm
HI