It’s a new year and a new decade but we’re seeing a lot of the classics on MySpace’s top 25 based on the last month. Over the past year, we saw little fluctuation on the list. Will this year prove different? Will we see more activity from the social network? December was a pretty good month already, with most apps posting solid gains, relatively speaking.

Note that MySpace does not provide monthly active user counts so the way we generate this list is by tracking top games every month, then comparing the numbers for each game month over month. This is different from Facebook, which reports monthly active users — the number of unique people who have used an app at least once in the past 30 days. MySpace’s numbers are harder to parse but they do provide some view into what is happening on its platform.

Here are the highlights for the Top 25 MySpace Games from December 1, ending today:

• While the two top mafia games hold their ground, Zynga‘s Mafia Wars gains a good 40,000 more new installs than the Playdom title, Mobsters. Nonetheless, the top five applications are still dominated by Playdom three to two.
• BitRhymes also comes up as a major blip on the radar, with its app Tag Me jumping up from #11 to #8 surpassing the time old RPGs of Vampires and Street Racing with roughly 5.2 million installations.
• Also worth noting is BitRhymes’ other title, the drinking game Cheers!! While it sits at #12 with just over 4.5 million installs, after three or so months of being off it finally appears back in the app gallery! What happened?
• Sorority Life continues to prove more popular than Poker Palace with about 150,000 more installs this past month. However, the card game did earn more new users than it did last Top 25 with 52,053 compared to a previous gain of 20,798.
• Another surprise on the charts came, once again, from BitRhymes as their title What’s My Impression on friends takes a huge leap from #22 to #18 with over 230,000 new users. The current number of users is tallied at 2,068,832.
• Lastly, Grong’s app, What My Friends Think About Me, falls off the charts to make way for a new, interesting title from Oxylabs Networks called PhotoBuzz; a game that lets users animate their friends’ photos with hugs, kisses, and other colorful stuff. This title comes in at #24 with a little over 1.6 million installations, just above Playdom RPG Bloodlines.

In a time where the remakes of old games and films have received a great deal of limelight, the folks over at Gameloft have jumped on board with the reimagining of one of gaming’s oldest titles, The Oregon Trail… for the iPhone. More likely than not, most people have played, or at least heard of this game: In it, players lead their party of pixelated family members across one of America’s most treacherous journeys. Of course, the original game was in a floppy disk format and produced in decades ago… so this new version has seen quite the face lift, most notably via mini-games and Facebook Connect integration.

The Oregon Trail was originally developed as an educational tool intended to educate children about pioneer life in the 19th century. The MECC (Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium) published title has been hailed as one of the best-selling educational games of all time. So does this remake live up to its predecessor’s reputation?

Players start out with a basic tutorial as they make their way to the Kansas River. On the way there, they learn the ropes of pioneer life through random events and critical decisions. Throughout the trip, they are tasked with monitoring their party’s health, wagon durability, schedule, funds, and food supply. As they make their way westward, the touchscreen is used to set the pacing (fast, steady, or slow) with the faster settings becoming more hazardous to one’s health.

While traveling, the children and wife in the party tend to make quarky comments to lighten the mood, which, mixed with the cartoonish art style, really seem to fit in well. Of course, that doesn’t help much when someone dies of dysentery. Regardless, when someone isn’t sick, the time is passed by playing mini-games.

The primary mini-game is still hunting, where players move about a top-down view shooting animals that dart on and off screen. As with the original, anything you kill is used as food for your party. Furthermore, this isn’t the only mini-game either as players will also have the opportunity to fish, cross rivers, raft, repair the wagon, and more; all of which is done with touch control. Obviously, this is much more than the original game, and, frankly, it’s for the better as they do add a good deal of extra fun to this mobile title.

Despite the new mini-games, however, the core of The Oregon Trail is still, easily, decision-making. As you travel, you are constantly greeted with random events that could have either fantastic positive results or horrid negative ones. Is that drifter on the side of the road really a banker offering $20 or something worse? Do you pay for the ferry and lose time off your schedule  or risk forging the river? Everything has a risk to it, and there is never any knowing what a poor decision could mean.

Unfortunately, this is where one of the major complaints come into play. A lot of what happens is due to completely unstoppable random events. Perhaps the most obnoxious is the eagle that keeps getting the children…. Thankfully, version 1.6.5 of the iPhone has the option to shoot the stupid thing.

Luckily, the game does somewhat make up for this short-coming though its Facebook Connect integration. While it may not seem like much, it is pretty cool to be able to post your progress to your Facebook feed and share just how far along the trail you are. In addition to this you can also post achievements or send messages directly via email, and if you are playing at the same time as a friend, it is most amusing to boast when you pass them on the way west.

Overall, The Oregon Trail is a refreshing revisit to this classic game. The app is a ton of fun and the new mini-games add a great deal of enjoyment to the title. It could, perhaps, benefit from more of the educational element, but as a game, it does what it is supposed to: Entertain. Unfortunately, as fun as it is, it doesn’t quite feel like it is worth the $5 price tag unless you’re really nostalgic. Maybe it will see a price drop in the future? In the meantime, there’s the pared-down free version. See you on the trail!

Traffic stayed level or fell for most of the biggest Facebook games during December, according to AppData. 10 of the top 25 games saw decreases from December 1, 2009 to January 1, 2010. Another 5 games saw gains of less than 1 million.

We’ve previously seen drops in traffic on this monthly leaderboard. Over the course of November, 8 of the top 25 games had seen traffic drops — but mostly drops of less than 1 million users, whereas this past month almost every game that fell did so by more than 1 million. The reasons for these drops are likely a combination of perennial holiday season decreases together with Facebook’s stricter enforcement policies against some viral growth tactics.

However, the past month also saw major gains for some apps and their developers. Here’s a closer look.

• Zynga had a mixed month. Falling titles included long-time favorite Mafia Wars, YoVille, and Roller Coaster Kingdom. However, its successful launch of PetVille in early December brought in nearly 18 million users. The continuing popularity of FarmVille — still by far the most popular application on Facebook — and FishVille have helped buoy the numbers.
• Playfish‘s biggest apps continued to drop, even as newer titles, like Poker Rivals, slowly make their way up the leaderboards. The company has no doubt been busy integrating with its new owner, Electronic Arts, so we expect it to make a big comeback in the next few months.
• RockYou shows up on our leaderboard this month, for a rather strange reason. It launched Zoo World this past fall, and integrated a window of the game into its other applications, notably Birthday Cards. Meanwhile, it has designated Birthday Cards as a game in Facebook’s application directory, which means it shows up that way in AppData. The kludge integration seems to be working, in any case, as Zoo World and Birthday Cards have seen considerable growth in the past month.
• CrowdStar has been on the rise all fall, starting with the launch of Happy Aquarium. While that game appears to have leveled off in popularity, newer titles including Happy Pets and Happy Island are coming up.

Last month’s big titles continue to rise up on this week’s list of the top growing Facebook games as we enter the new year — not most of the Christmas ones, however.

This list is our way to see which 20 games on Facebook, regardless of overall size, continue to increase their numbers of monthly active (MAU) users week to week. The numbers for this list were provided by AppData and are for the week ending January 3.

	Name	MAU	Gain	Gain, %
1.	Pillow Fight	9,592,634	+3,710,299	+38.68
2.	PetVille	18,530,922	+2,277,325	+12.29
3.	Entrevista tus Amigos	3,750,153	+1,836,965	+48.98
4.	Happy Island	5,867,508	+1,494,320	+25.47
5.	Zoo World	10,495,612	+1,082,577	+10.31
6.	Bubble Popp	2,369,772	+1,061,032	+44.77
7.	Tarjetitas	3,775,578	+935,166	+24.77
8.	Happy Aquarium	28,355,174	+802,924	+2.83
9.	Texas HoldEm Poker	22,484,291	+798,614	+3.55
10.	Tiki Farm	1,607,971	+563,211	+35.03
11.	Country Life	5,929,312	+467,773	+7.89
12.	MindJolt Games	14,824,683	+271,276	+1.83
13.	Jungle Jewels	2,297,381	+238,282	+10.37
14.	Santa Yourself	4,474,347	+228,775	+5.11
15.	Ninja Saga	1,831,168	+215,991	+11.80
16.	Three Kingdoms Online – Best Browser Game of 2009!	310,949	+184,252	+59.25
17.	Happy Pets	12,133,795	+159,985	+1.32
18.	My Stuff	2,623,212	+152,895	+5.83
19.	FarmVille	73,776,308	+151,116	+0.20
20.	Garden World	156,155	+150,778	+96.5

First place title, Pillow Fight, was released years ago, but until recently had gone mostly dormant in comparison to other titles in the top 20. It is a kind of poking non-game in that it requires minimal strategy or skill — just “throw a pillow.” However, seasonal pillows by the developer have raised the title to have more than 10 million users, most of which were gained in the past weeks. The fact that the developer has marked the app as a “game” puts it on this list.

PetVille continues Zynga‘s “Ville” series with a 13 percent gain and 2.28 million new players. Last week the pet care simulator was first place on the list, but it added about 1.48 million less users this week. Meanwhile, FarmVille added about 151,000 new users to its amazing 73.8 million MAU, the largest of any app or game on Facebook.

Entrevista tus Amigos (“Interview your Friends”) is the highest foreign language app on this weeks list, the title has grown at a fantastic rate since its release on December 2nd. In that short period of time, the title has been able to raise its MAU this week by 49 percent to 3.75 million monthly active users.

Happy Island by CrowdStar was released in mid-December and has really come into its own this week. The game rose by 25 percent this week and now has 5.9 million monthly active users.

Last week, 5 Minutes, the recently-funded China-based developer saw their main app, Happy Farm grow to 17th, but the title fell off the list this week. Another notable absence is Birthday Cards. RockYou!’s tie-in between Birthday Cards and Zoo World has kept both in the top 20, yet this week is the first week that the app has not made in appearance in the top 20 for well over a quarter. But Zoo World continued to up users with another 1 million trying the game this week for 10.5 million monthly active users.

Bubble Popp, an arcade puzzler at sixth, was just featured on the emerging list in December. Its strong showing could give grounds to players on Facebook who want more arcade-style games on the site.

At 14th, Santa Yourself is the last surviving Christmas title. The app makes you Santa and that alone has propelled the title to be played by 4.74 million people this month.

Last spot on the list, Garden World saw the largest increase in relation to its size with a 96 percent jump over last week. It was not featured last weekin the top 20.

7-11 Sees Pre-Paid Card Sale Growth — The convenience store chain has doubled the number of pre-paid cards sold for virtual currency in games, according to Worlds in Motion. Now, it has also doubled its selection of cards to 30 brands across console, online and social games. Zynga is the latest to join, and its card let users buy its universal virtual currency. “Electronics and videogames are still the number one request on teens’ holiday wish- lists,” 7-Eleven’s Prepaid Cards category manager Brian Haynes told the publication. “With tighter budgets many are choosing more affordable online games. Virtual currency or points can go a long way to enhance these online games without much cost.”

Mystery company has “ZooVille” trademarked — A company we’ve never heard of called “SocialApps, LLC” has surfaced. It’s the owner of the term “ZooVille,” specifically, trademarked by a one Tom Hansen of California. We’re not sure if it’s the same person, but we also  noticed that there’s a Tom Hansen, President of take(5)social, the developer of early Facebook farming game myFarm.

RockYou Security Breach Fallout, Class Action Lawsuit App maker RockYou was hit with a lawsuit on December 28 after a security breach earlier that month that resulted in one hacker gaining access to 32 million emails and passwords. The suit accuses RockYou of poor data security and a failure to notify users promptly of the breach.

Gaming Blogs Had Stronger November – We may be focused on the business and development of social games, but there’s a wide world of gaming blogs out there. And overall, the traffic to the top 50 gaming sites of one form or another grew to 20.2 million unique visitors in November, up 23 percent over the same month the previous year. Traffic had previously slowed. More people are into gaming now, it seems.

Answer Our Inside Social Games Weekly Trivia Question, Win a Free USB Drive from Surfpin – Tell us the correct answer to the following question before anyone else, and mobile payment company Surfpin will award you an 8GB Surfpin-branded USB drive in the shape of a credit card. The question, drawn from an article we published this week, is as follows: What was your favorite ninja game that we reviewed this week, and why? Send the answer to eric (at) insidesocialgames (dot) com.

2010 is showing shows its promise for gaming success on Facebook according to our AppData numbers for the week ending December 31.

	Name	MAU	Gain	Gain, %
1.	Three Kingdoms Online – Best Browser Game of 2009!	257,675	+137,617	+53.41
2.	Warstorm	220,980	+113,117	+51.19
3.	Nindou International	236,403	+98,558	+41.69
4.	COLLAPSE!	759,514	+72,174	+9.50
5.	My Town	144,404	+63,230	+43.79
6.	Say Merry Christmas	373,499	+60,394	+16.17
7.	Songs	959,697	+60,142	+6.27
8.	Ask a Friend	802,262	+55,097	+6.87
9.	Friend Block	803,289	+52,001	+6.47
10.	Bite Me	386,009	+51,010	+13.21
11.	Tarjetas Animadas – Navidad	114,750	+45,143	+39.34
12.	Happy Habitat	440,639	+44,461	+10.09
13.	點歌零距離	172,200	+40,585	+23.57
14.	Ninja Warz	560,890	+40,413	+7.21
15.	歡樂癲地 Funland	492,876	+35,031	+7.11
16.	Doorbell	738,826	+34,298	+4.64
17.	GridIron Live Football	188,729	+31,703	+16.80
18.	Dogbook	802,435	+30,703	+3.83
19.	Christmas Friends Tree	302,491	+28,898	+9.55
20.	Poll	769,180	+20,955	+2.72

To new readers, the emerging list is comprised of the 20 Facebook apps that both grew by the most monthly active users in the past 7 days and ended the week with between 100,000 and 1 million monthly active users. It is a way to see potentially big titles on their way up the charts.

Its moniker of “Best Browser Game of 2009!” might be a bit overstated and self-absorbed, but this week the game based off the book of the same rose the most of any title on the top 20. Three Kingdoms Online – Best Browser Game of 2009! grew 50 percent this week — 138,000 — to come in first. Its MAU is small, at 258,000 but this could be an app to watch in January.

Warstorm is a fantasy strategy game that rose ten spots from last week. It comes in second in both placement on the list and as the second strategy game on the list behind Three Kingdoms. It was also released in December. Does this mean strategy is the new farming genre for 2010? Maybe. But hopefully what it means is that developers are branching out into new genre’s overall.

Fighting-style role playing game Nindou International has risen 42 percent or 99,000 players and lands on the list at third place. Fourth place belongs to puzzle game COLLAPSE!. A color elimination game, the app rose three spots this week and added about 72,000 new players for an MAU of 780,000.

Fifth place is the first appearance of a farming-care game on the list. My Town takes a page from the Sims and Animal Crossing. Players collect rare pieces to build a bigger city/town. This is different from other simulations in that it does not feature caring for the characters as its first priority, but experimenting with the lives of your virtual town and sharing results with friends. My Town rose to 144,000 MAU this week and was released in November.

Christmas apps on the way down with Say Merry Christmas, Tarjetas Animadas – Navidad and Christmas Friends Tree belatedly making it today.

We also congratulate Bubble Popp and Tiki Farm‘s developers for the titles earning over 1 million MAU. The titles were regular performers on the emerging list and have now surpassed it.