Inside Social Games

There are no big surprises on this week’s AppData list of top games by growth in monthly average users (MAU), but several games are present that look set to become big successes, including a pair of newer titles from the larger developers Playfish and Playdom.

The pack is led by Birthday Cards, a persistently growing gifting app that we’ll cover over on Inside Facebook. Here’s the list:

	Name	MAU	Gain	Gain, %
1.	Birthday Cards	41,242,773	+6,009,722	+14.57
2.	FarmVille	75,476,475	+1,120,699	+1.48
3.	Happy Island	10,612,387	+892,445	+8.41
4.	Tiki Farm	6,333,103	+801,700	+12.66
5.	FishVille	25,221,818	+705,243	+2.80
6.	Mafia Wars	24,398,295	+591,077	+2.42
7.	Gangster City	706,173	+568,997	+80.57
8.	Little Warrior	1,057,079	+530,889	+50.22
9.	Wild Ones	2,197,693	+523,510	+23.82
10.	MindJolt Games	16,109,140	+472,473	+2.93
11.	Texas HoldEm Poker	25,066,873	+464,276	+1.85
12.	My Town	1,551,376	+390,730	+25.19
13.	Country Life	8,017,883	+379,550	+4.73
14.	開心寶貝	1,158,474	+316,825	+27.35
15.	Garden World	1,469,260	+232,973	+15.86
16.	Nestle Crunch Challenge	282,214	+215,813	+76.47
17.	Café World	30,264,162	+195,691	+0.65
18.	MiniPlanet	473,165	+172,923	+36.55
19.	Sanalika	445,682	+170,589	+38.28
20.	DRIVe Around The World	547,196	+169,296	+30.94

As usual, the presence of Farmville on the list doesn’t mean much in terms of its percentage growth, not to mention the four other Zynga hits that registered: Fishville, Mafia Wars, Cafe World and Texas Hold’em Poker. Still, it seems that almost all of these games are continuing their growth, if very slowly, and Farmville did pass the significant milestone of 75 million MAU this week.

The island games, Happy Island and Tiki Farm, appeared to be slowing down when we posted last week. Nevermind; both have added more players this week.

Down in the seventh, eighth and ninth positions we have a trio of interesting games: Gangster City, Little Warrior and Wild Ones. To some degree, these are all action oriented games, at least insofar as they don’t involve nurturing something furry or scaly.

Wild Ones, a Worms-style artillery game by Playdom, has been appearing here for several weeks and hasn’t slowed its trajectory much. It does, however, face challenges in retaining players. The other two games are newer, and Gangster City is especially of note, as it’s Playfish’s challenge to Mafia Wars. The growth of Little Warrior, from an unknown developer, is also nothing to sniff at.

Glancing down, there are a couple more games that have consistently appeared on this weekly list: My Town, a sim-town game from Broken Bulb Studios, and 開心寶貝. Judging from their traffic (see My Town’s chart below) both will continue to be fixtures for some time to come.