Facebook introduced a redesigned home page last week that emphasizes an algorithmically-defined feed of updates from your friends, called “Top Stories.” Before we get into our top 20 Facebook games list for this past week, we need to be clear about the significance of the redesign. It could affect any app developer that has grown primarily through sending “stories” about user actions in a game to the raw, real-time stream Facebook had rolled out in March.

	Name	MAU	Gain	Gain, %
1.	Café World	23,814,664	+3,755,339	+15.77
2.	FarmVille	61,660,329	+1,337,570	+2.17
3.	Bejeweled Blitz	9,387,901	+672,871	+7.17
4.	Pet Society	20,714,196	+432,279	+2.09
5.	Restaurant City	17,454,448	+379,576	+2.17
6.	(Lil) Farm Life	5,767,916	+323,588	+5.61
7.	Pillow Fight	2,276,621	+277,162	+12.17
8.	Sorority Life	7,227,532	+241,824	+3.35
9.	Animal Paradise	3,947,124	+207,116	+5.25
10.	Brain Buddies	5,973,563	+203,424	+3.41
11.	Country Story	8,140,835	+198,876	+2.44
12.	Mobsters 2: Vendetta	3,499,318	+192,998	+5.52
13.	Texas HoldEm Poker	18,573,191	+190,208	+1.02
14.	Barn Buddy	6,863,938	+160,981	+2.35
15.	Forever Friends	1,129,551	+160,185	+14.18
16.	Which Zodiac Sign Are You Most Compatible With?	414,224	+144,078	+34.78
17.	開心農場	4,304,908	+141,047	+3.28
18.	Sunshine Ranch	2,434,995	+139,408	+5.73
19.	JibJab	558,618	+132,643	+23.74
20.	Write In Pictures	541,397	+128,530	+23.74

While the real-time stream is still available on the home page, the default is Top Stories; it is not yet clear how much Facebook is promoting app feed stories within the Top Stories view. Also, the real-time stream has been revised to show you more types of items than it had before, such as who your friends recently became friends with. In other words, feed stories about games may be becoming less obvious to users, both within top stories and within the raw stream.

As the redesign went live on Friday morning, there have been two and a half days for the redesign to have an effect. From this early data, it does appear that at least some of the largest apps are growing slower than they had been. Before diving any deeper, though, we need to caution that not enough time has passed to allow for clear conclusions about the redesign’s long-term effect on gaming apps.

Also, we’ve recently rolled out an update to AppData that shows daily active users. While we’ve been tracking this number for months, we’ve only now made it public. So have yourselves a look at your favorite game on AppData to see how it may be affected.

Here’s a look at the top 20 Facebook games from last week, from October 18th through yesterday.

Slower growth?

Number one on our list, Zynga‘s virtual restaurant simulation Café World still grew fast last week, gaining 3.76 million users to reach 23.8 million monthly actives. The previous week, it gained 9.96 million. Granted, the previous week saw such a huge gain partly for another reason: Facebook hadn’t reported new data on the app from October 9th to October 12th. On October 13th, the backlogged data from those days got reported, which is why you see a flat line then a big jump in AppData. So, overall, this past week was still a good one for Café World. The interesting part is its daily active user count starting on Friday. While DAUs were gradually increasing earlier in the week, they didn’t, starting on Friday — they’ve now leveled out at around 7.55 million.

Certainly, reporting issues affected Café World’s stats, if not other apps. Yet we’ve noticed something larger: The top 20 list gained 26.3 million total MAU last week, but only 9.42 million this week.

Number two is Zynga’s virtual farming simulation, FarmVille. While that app has seen slow growth among DAUs lately, that trend certainly continued last week. It grew MAUs by 1.38 million users to reach 61.7 million, but DAUs stayed around 22 million (which is still an amazing engagement rate, given the apps sheer size).

Bejeweled Blitz, from casual game-maker Popcap Games, had a solid week, coming in at number three in terms of monthly active users. Following on steady growth in past weeks, it gained 673,000 to reach 9.39 million. Its DAUs have been rising in waves, and maybe it just declined temporarily over the weekend from 3.15 million to 3.00 million. Still, given the Facebook redesign, interesting to note.

At numbers four and five are two games from Zynga rival Playfish: Pet Society and Restaurant City. The former game grew by 432,00 to reach 20.7 million MAUs. But it grew DAUs by more than 300,000 to reach 5.30 million from Saturday to Sunday. We see the same trend with Restaurant City, which grew MAUs by 380,000 17.5 million — its DAUs grew by more than 100,000 over the weekend to reach 5.22 million.

Going on down the rest of the list this past week, you can see dips and climbs among every app starting around the time of the redesign. It’s not yet clear how big of an impact the redesign will have, but there already seem to be some apps benefiting from it, and some apps not. Developers, email us or let us know if comments if you have additional thoughts to share.

There are more than 80,000 applications available within Apple’s iTunes store. While games that make it in do go through an approval process, the occasional undeserving title makes it through. As such, the Australian Classification Board, according to iTnews, is expressing concerns to the national government that mobile applications do not go through a game rating system.

“I recently wrote to [Commonwealth Censorship Minister Brendan O’Connor] regarding my concern that some so-called mobile phone applications, which can be purchased online or either downloaded to mobile phones or played online via mobile phone access, are not being submitted to the board of classification,” said Australia’s Classification Board Director, Donald McDonald.

The task of classifying the myriad of iPhone apps, in and of itself, is not an easy undertaking and hardly a decision to take lightly. In 2008 – 2009, the ACB received 4,792 film applications, 1,095 games, and 197 publications; a small number when compared to the deluge that is the Apple AppStore. The concerns are emulating pushes made by the Entertainment Software Association and the Entertainment Software Rating Board here in the United States. It was just this summer, with the 3.0 OS released, that ratings via age appeared. However, this was a sort of “self-policing” policy for developers and the ratings would not go through the ESRB themselves (as the organization would like).

“ESRB ratings empower parents to do their job,” said organization president Patricia Vance. “Considering the fact that the vast majority of parents are already aware of and regularly using ESRB ratings, Apple’s adoption of them for iPhone games seems like a no-brainer.”

Reasoning behind such pushes by these organizations is attributed to a number of factors: Many apps are games yet are not treated like them rating-wise; they are easily accessed by anyone with an iPhone or iPod Touch; the iPhone is becoming a gaming platform in its own right and, in fact, is comparable to both the Sony PSP and the Nintendo DS; and occasionally, apps that should never be released get through the Apple screening process.

A prime example of an app to make it through the submission screen was a “game” by the name of Baby Shaker. All ready you can see the censor flags flying, and for good reason: The object of the game was to shake a crying baby to death. Thankfully, the app was removed shortly after its approval, but it’s the sort of thing that gets rating boards’ attention.

When asked about the game by iTnews, the Classification Board stated that it had to determine if Baby Shaker was a “game,” and could not pass judgment “without seeing the application in its entirety.” However, they did reiterate that “the Board will classify films, computer games and publications upon receipt of a valid application.”

Regardless, according to Apple spokesperson, Fiona Martin, “[Apple will] do what the Australian Classification people tell us to do,” and that the company would be prepared to make any changes needed, in accordance to Australian law. This marks another point of interest: In talks with iTnews, Martin noted that there were currently “no laws” mediating the mobile space. He seemed to suggest that all mobile games will be receiving more scrutiny in Australia.

What does this mean for iPhone game development? Well, should legal precedent be set, it will likely add a great deal of fuel to the ESRB and ESA’s pushes for their ratings on these mobile applications here in the U.S. In turn, this requires more hoops for developers to jump through and a significantly increased time on approvals.

With the growth of social and iPhone games, there’s also been an influx of companies offering support services like payments or analytics. But San Francisco startup HeyZap has kept its focused on the casual Flash game. The company lets site owners embed casual games in widget form, then lets the game’s developers sell things like virtual goods from within the game. It added a few more features last week.

One is a new “Viral API” that allows players to publish stories to Twitter and Facebook. The interface is built directly into the game, and currently allows users to post high scores after a gaming session. Future updates to the feature will include in-game status updates, multiplayer invites, in-game purchase updates, profile updates, and achievements.

In order to put the new API to the test, a game by the name of “Balloon Boy” (yes, like the news story) was integrated with it about two weeks ago. According to HeyZap co-founder Jude Gomila, the simple Flash game was tweeted roughly 5000 times and shared on Facebook an impressive 10,000 times. Of course, the topic of the game likely had a great deal of influence on these numbers, but having been played over 4 million times, the new API probably helped.

Currently, ten casual titles integrated with the Viral API have been announced. However, Gomila says that more elaborate titles are on the way.

In addition to the Viral API, HeyZap has also announced the release of a brand new analytics feature. As expected, this works similarly to any other analytics platform, but will obviously prove more convenient in having it in the same interface as the other Heyzap features. Currently, the analytics tool tracks the number of unique players, total plays, session length, eCPM, and how many times a game has been tweeted, or shared on Facebook. Furthermore, Gomila says that further features are in the works such as seeing where players quit playing.

Having only been around since January, this young company seems to be off to an extremely strong start.

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Vivox gets social — The web voice company has is now available in Gaia Online’s massive multiplayer game zOMG. This way, players can talk each other while they’re playing the game. Vivox also has a new Facebook app out so you can talk with your Facebook friends.

DIY social network Ning introduces virtual gifts — And network creators will have the ability to use, or make and sell these gifts for their own networks. The company will take out processing fees then split the revenue 50-50 with the creator. User-created gifts have proven to be popular on virtual worlds like IMVU, and in some sense the gifting applications on Facebook.

Zong integration raises IMVU mobile pay revenue by 50% — Virtual world company IMVU, which is already seeing solid revenue from virtual goods, got a further lift from mobile payment company Zong, they both say. Zong replaced an in-house mobile payment service two months ago. Its streamlined interface and carrier relationships helped boost revenue.

Dragonica Online also gets social, with Raptr – The massive multiplayer online game is introducing Raptr to let its players easily chat with each other across a variety of instant message networks, including AIM, Yahoo! Messenger, MSN Messenger, Google Talk, ICQ and Facebook Chat.

We’ve been covering how big game maker Electronic Arts may be making a big move into social gaming by acquiring top developer Playfish, but yesterday it made a separate social move. The company launched Facebook Connect for its casual gaming site, Pogo.com. This Connect integration is not as full as other ones we’ve seen — specifically, you have to first log in or create an account on Pogo.com, then use Connect to find Facebook friends and share information back to Facebook.

There’s no way to log in using your Facebook identity instead of creating a separate Pogo.com account. Still, for Pogo users, they’ll now be able to share information back to Facebook so their friends can see. This activity may encourage more Facebook users to go to Pogo, create a new account, log in, and start playing.

Pogo’s traffic has been flat, and its core demographic — older women — has been loving Facebook lately, as Inside Social Games contributor Eric von Coelln notes. Still, the site has come out with some nice games in the last couple of years, like Word Whomp Dash, so maybe Connect will help it get more people playing.

Gaming giant Electronic Arts has been looking closely at acquiring a leading social gaming company, Playfish, we and others have heard from multiple sources in the last couple weeks. However, we have since heard some new details about the valuation, and where the companies are at in the sale process.

Whether the deal goes through or not is significant for the still-young social gaming industry (if “industry” is even the right term at this point). A sale price would help put a valuation on many of Playfish’s rivals, and bring additional credibility to social gaming’s role within the larger gaming world.

EA has been doing due diligence on Playfish, we have heard from multiple sources, meaning it has been going through the company’s financial reports and other information to determine that it indeed does want to make the purchase. We do not know if the deal has fully closed yet. Our understanding is that Playfish has been in a “no shop” period, meaning it won’t talk other potential acquirers as EA completes its review. However, some sources have previously said that the deal may have already closed. We have also heard that Playfish’s banker is J.P. Morgan.

Neither company is speaking publicly about the deal.

Following up on our original story last week, Business Insider published a rumor saying that EA may buy Playfish for $250 million. We had heard the same number, but that it is “way too low,” multiple sources have since told us. One reliable industry insider we spoke with believes the amount is “north of $400 million.” But we have also heard that the number was “less than $200 million.” Hmm. Perhaps the “north of $400 million” number includes some sort of earn-out plan? For sake of comparison, kids virtual world Club Penguin sold to Disney in 2007 for $350 million, with the possibility of earning another $350 million based on performance over the next years.

[Update: Over in London, TechCrunch Europe hears similar things: "Our sources say that Playfish is holding out for another offer, somewhere between $350m at the low end and $500m at the top end, either from EA or another suitor." It also hears that EA may be looking at buying casual gaming site King.com instead of Playfish.]

In any case, we estimate that Playfish could be currently doing roughly a $75 million run rate at the moment, through games like Pet Society, Restaurant City, and a range of others. The company now has around 12.5 million daily active users across all its apps on Facebook, its core platform, so we’re assuming about $0.50 average revenue per user (ARPU) per month in this calculation. Revenue comes primarily through virtual goods in its games. We project that the total US virtual goods market this year will be just over $1 billion, based on our Inside Virtual Goods report.

If the higher price is accurate, it should make many social gaming companies happy. After last week’s reports, we heard widespread concern about the $250 million number among social gaming companies, as it was less than what many believe Playfish to be worth.

EA’s position

One reason neither company will comment could be, of course, that the deal is not yet closed.

Another reason could be that EA is going to be announcing its quarterly earnings next Monday, October 26. Until then, EA is in its quarterly blackout period, when it doesn’t reveal financial information that may affect the stock price.

At an industry event last week, EA chief operating officer John Schappert was asked about various rumors concerning EA acquiring other companies (he was also, by the way, asked about rumors concerning other companies potentially acquiring EA). “Schappert said he couldn’t comment on those rumors,” according to VentureBeat, “and that EA is in its quarterly quiet period just before it reports financial results in the next few weeks.”

We’ll see what EA has to say next week.

The company has $2 billion in cash; assuming any acquisition would be a combination of cash and stock, it could fairly easily afford to purchase Playfish. Other comments by Schapper are also interesting to parse in this context. He compared social games to mobile games last week, and called it a “bubble.” He was referencing his company’s purchase of mobile game maker Jamdat in 2005 for $680 million in 2005. “Schappert thinks that companies such as Zynga are ‘scrappy,’” according to the report, “but he noted that some of the startups will start to come down to Earth because they will have trouble making games for more than one platform.”

Where is Playfish? Mostly on Facebook’s platform, to be sure, but it has also been expanding to the iPhone, Android devices, and other platforms. Also, Schappert said that the social gaming industry will mature in the next two years, and that popular social games will become familiar brands, “not games that we’ve never heard of.”

Those sound like mixed messages to us. EA has had a decent couple of quarters, but it has suffered during the recession along with other gaming companies. In the meantime, companies like Playfish have come to dominate gaming on Facebook. EA has tried and not had significant social gaming hits, to our knowledge. We believe an acquisition would make sense for the company, and given Playfish’s focus on making quality games, the fit could work.

But, as we wrote last week, there are various reasons why a deal wouldn’t happen. Perhaps, for example, Playfish has decided or will decide that its best opportunity is to go solo for the time being.

To dig deeper into the virtual goods market, check out our new report: Inside Virtual Goods: The US Virtual Goods Market 2009 – 2010.

Be they virtual spaces (My Fishbowl) or role-playing games (Reef Life), the fish theme is an increasingly popular one for Facebook apps. The latest title we’ve discovered is Fish World from a quiet company called Tall Tree Games.

It has grown to 8.58 million monthly active users as of today, and up until this point it has received basically no attention from us or anyone else. The only mentions of it on Google for example, appear to be from players discussing cheats.

The game is along the lines of My Fishbowl — a digital fish tank type of virtual space, where you raise fish and then sell them. Players start off with a relatively barren aquarium holding half a dozen or so brilliantly colored salt water fish. Over a period of time, generally a few days, the fish grow up to adults. It is the player’s job to take care of them.

Caring for fish is quite simple. Each fish has a level of hunger and happiness that must be taken into account. As such, users must not only periodically feed their aquatic pets (they will die if you do not), but must also decorate and clean their tank in order to make and keep them happy. Of course, such tasks will earn players more experience towards new levels – which in turn allow the purchase of more expensive and exotic fish – but also make the fish worth more on the fish market part of the game.

Once the fish grow to adulthood, they can be sold for more of the virtual currency coin in the game than they cost as an egg depending on both how exotic the fish is and whether or not if they are happy.

Unfortunately, this is the primary way to earn money, so the game is extremely slow starting out. When beginning the game you can really only sell two fish, thus you can only earn a little over 100 coins; not much when the cheapest item decoration is a 60 coin starfish and the cheapest plant 240. Thankfully, there is a curious feature that lets you express your love for your fish, and this earns you a little extra cash. But this can only be done every 12 hours and doesn’t earn you enough to buy anything but a few more fish. However, if you don’t mind a few Facebook emails, you can earn 1000 bonus coins by simply activating a feature that sends reminder emails to your Facebook account. Now that is a good way to get started — and for the app to grow, apparently.

Once do get going, you can actually create a relatively nice looking aquarium, and with a less cartoony look than past fishy games we have seen. The game also has a number of themed items and fish just for the Halloween season including everything ghostly decorations to pumpkin fish (yes… pumpkin fish).

Sadly, not everything is available via coins. There is another currency called Fishbucks that can only be earned through the completion of offers or direct purchase. Granted, there is nothing wrong with this, but with so many possible items under this currency, it is a little frustrating that you have to buy them (unlike other games that make the better items require more regular currency and thus more play time). Of course, as with many other games, the second currency is also a way to get players to somehow make the developer money.

Of all the games that have been made for the web, the word puzzle game is one of the oldest. Despite its age, however, it has proven to be one of the most entertaining for those with a verbose mind. And so, social developer Red Pipe Media has created yet another, yet significant, variation of this classic genre: Sea Star Scramble.

The game has an underwater premise, fitting in with the growing list of aquatic titles on Facebook. Thankfully, this is not just another game jumping on the virtual aquarium bandwagon. You play a starfish by the name of “Asterisk” who is attempting to unscramble words as they emerge from a collection of seven clams at the bottom of his tank.

What makes this game different from other word-scramble games is that players do not utilize the same set of letters for a very long period of time. In games like, say, Word Challenge, you are given letters and must make as many words as possible before time expires in order to earn enough points to move on in the game. Sea Star Scramble, however, has one set of letters float slowly to the top, which forces the player to move Asterisk around and “shoot” the letters, in a Space Invaders fashion, in order to spell a word before they pop at the surface. Should the player fail to spell something correctly, or fail to do so in time, the water level on the tank recedes. If player scores three words in a row or nail a seven letter word, the water will rise.

In addition to the aforementioned rules, the game also comes littered with various power-ups that are hidden within flashing letters that can also raise the water, boost your score, or slow down time. To this end, the game makes for an interesting concept: Combining somewhat fast-paced, twitch game play with a traditionally slow-paced puzzler.

To be perfectly honest, the jury is still out as to whether or not this premise works for Sea Star Scramble. Granted, other word games have you pitted against a clock, but they do not have you moving around, shooting things (though that is very easy), trying to grab power ups, and changing the letters constantly. Yes, the change makes an old genre a little more fresh, but the question is will a traditional player accept it? Word games are about thinking, and with everything that is going on in the game, the environment isn’t exactly conducive to such.

Frankly, Sea Star Scramble is not a bad game. It looks good, it plays cleanly, you can compete for high scores with Facebook friends and is, overall, well-made. Nevertheless, with the core game play being so different, its appeal will probably be hit or miss with most players. That said, it’s a gamble the designers made to refresh a tired genre that probably needed a little bit of innovation.

Huge news for those of us who are still fighting decades-long addictions the Civilization strategy game series. It is coming to Facebook, according to game creator Sid Meier, and will be called Civilization Network. Let’s just say that we here at Inside Social Games intend to conduct a lengthy review as soon as possible.

Meier posted a few more details yesterday on the game’s Facebook page:

Civilization Network will allow you to join together with your friends to create the world’s most powerful, richest, smartest, or just plain coolest civilization. You can coordinate your strategy to win great battles, share your technology to jump ahead of your rivals, lobby your family and friends to form your own government and win vital elections, manage and grow your cities to maximize production and happiness, spy on your enemies, and work with your friends to create the great Wonders of the World. The game will offer everything you enjoy in Civ in a fully persistent environment – you can play as much as you like, whenever you like, and it’ll be free to play.

Recent version of Civilization, including its amazing Civ IV version, offered ways to play other people online, but the integration with social networks promises to make that a lot easier. Imagine major activities, high scores, and other information going into your Facebook news feed and profile. Imagine being able to find your friends who are playing the game, then team up (or battle) them for world domination. Judging by the description, expect some of the rather rudimentary team features to get big upgrades. Yes, things are about to get very serious for many Facebook friendships.

We’re also interested to see what sort of business model comes with the game: Ads, subscriptions, even virtual goods?

The beta is coming soon, so fan the page if you’re interested in trying to get in on that. The full launch is planned for next year.