Top 25 Facebook Games for May 2010
14 of the top 25 Facebook games lost monthly active users over the course of March, as we covered at the beginning of April. This was, more than anything else, the result of Facebook removing third-party notifications early that month — a communication channel that many developers relied on to keep players returning.
Developers saw even bigger slumps in April. MAU losses were tremendous across the board. 18 of the current Top 25 experienced a decline, with other factors, like Facebook platform performance issues, also contributing to the problem.
Nevertheless, the industry trudges forward, as five new games also make their appearances on the Top 25 this month — including the tremendously fast growing Zynga app, Treasure Isle. It’s not clear if those apps, or any growing smaller ones, are just gaining users so through cross-game promotions and advertising, or if there is also new organic growth starting to happen.
Facebook and the industry needs to see organic growth of some form if the industry is going to survive. Despite what some developers might say, the company does want social gaming to continue to exist. Among other reasons these games bring users back to the site, and make it more generally interesting and meaningful; they also present a new opportunity for Facebook to monetize, via the company’s budding Credits virtual currency product.
Developers have been nailed hard by Facebook changes over the years, but they have always rebounded back stronger than before. This will likely happen again. But if Facebook sees that the changes stay overly prohibitive of quality user engagement, we expect the company will look for new ways to enable more virality.
Here are the highlights for the Top 25 Facebook Games for May, 2010:
- The titanic FarmVille experienced tremendous player lost this past month. Having lost just over 200,000 players last time, the farming app lost north of 4.4 MAUs this month. The app still sits tight at #1 with 78.4 million monthly active users.
- The classic Texas HoldEm Poker (also known as Zynga Poker) did see a small gain, however, of just over 100,000 players, surpassing the restaurant title, Cafe World, which lost over 2.6 MAUs.
- Perhaps the biggest news on the charts this month is the rise of Zynga’s newest app, Treasure Islewith over 2.2 million MAUs. The game is already #5 on the list, beating out Mafia Wars and becoming the top social game thus far for 2010.
- Unfortunately for CrowdStar, their top game, Happy Aquarium lost another 4.2 million users this past month, as a continuing decline in virtual aquarium app popularity, well, continues. Nonetheless, the happy fish still take the #8 spot over FishVille at #9.
- MindJolt Games’ collection of mini-games within its meta game structure drops from #8 to #13. However, the game still holds over 13.1 million monthly active users, suggesting that meta game apps filled with strong mini-games can still hold their own.
- Joining the Top 25 at #14 and #15 respectively are Playfish‘s Hotel City (13 million MAUs) and Playdom‘s Social City (12.6 million MAUs), showing that games can still flourish despite the declining trend.
- One of the original farming apps, Slashkey‘s Farm Town suffers another drop in the ranks, falling from #16. It now hangs on at #20 with just over 9 million users.
- Playdom sees another victory for their games, as its tropical vacation destination application, Tiki Resort appears for the first time at #23, pulling in around 6.2 million MAUs.
- Finally, rounding out the list at #25, German company wooga comes into play with its simple puzzle game, Bubble Island, garnering just over 6 million monthly active users.
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I don’t think there’s a whole lot of organic growth in any social games these days. Most of the user growth is from pure advertising spends. The amount of cash these devs spend on Facebook ads to drive traffic is immense.
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Maybe the masses are sated with repetitive farming simulations that are little more than mindless work, but coming from a gamers’ perspective, the quality of the games on FB is ABYSMAL.
I’d be willing to pay money for a good facebook game, but everything is just spammy nonsense.
Apple is going to do a lot with social gaming communiies in the future so FB needs to innovate to stay relevant
Be careful what you try to read from those numbers! It turned into spring last month in the northern hemisphere (i.e. USA and Europe), so a lot more people have started spending more time outdoors. Indoor activities in the colder climates can change very quick as the weather become better or worse.
I *just* finished blocking and ignoring hundreds of apps and “gift requests”, etc. that I’d been blanket ignoring since last fall. Why? Sheer overwhelm. Even the games I used to like have gotten so complex and overwhelming that I don’t enjoy them anymore. I pop into farmville and am hit with dozens of things I need to do before I can even get to the mindless repetition.
Ugh.
My favorite game, Fairyland, isn’t on the list. I like it because it’s simple but challenging. I also like MindJolt games for when I just want to play a puzzle game before bed. I’ve pretty much given up on playing anything else. Games on FB has become too cluttered to function anymore.
I too agree .. There is one developer out there that I hope does great called Mingleplay .. Their first game looks to be released in June.. and guess what its not a Farm/Fish/Mafia/Island/spammy/copy game .. its actually something new and real!
I can’t wait to play it :)
That’s quite interesting to see – almost every game seems to have lost MANY users. However I’m not sure that’s really a bad sign for the companies behind those games – it might just be seasonal fluctuation. I’ve been running a gaming website for almost 10 years now and there always is kind of an 10% visitors drop in March/April/May – only to bring the visitors back during summer. It looks as if that happens to many gaming related sites. Not sure why that is the case, but I can see that every year. Maybe this is also true for “social games”?
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I’m very upset…. I get up at 7:15am every day to play Country Life…. I play more on than off till 1:00Am +.. no w I come home to find my game gone.. with no notice.. and mind you I just purchaced more coins to buy larger plots and other items for the farm for what just to give you my money and get nothing in return…. not good business…
I’m surprised that MY TOWN is not on this list. IMHO, the best of the FB social games.
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like this post !!
but i guess the loads of facebook games that are competing will only give user lots of options.
Number of new sites like http://hotandfresh.in have also announced launching online games that run on facebook platform, so lets see where this takes turn in future!
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i think these companies need something really engaging to ‘enforce’ or ‘motivate’ players to log in daily. I believe TinierMe (TM) and GaiaOnline is a good reference. TM always come up with interesting campaign/ event everyweek to engage players week after week (then after new updates you’ll be back for another week and so on and so forth).
In a way, I personally stopped playing FB games when I noticed some other players are ‘cheating’. When it’s not a fair game, it’s not worth playing.
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Mocospace has launched some cool social games too, including Street Wars: http://www.mocospace.com/html/game/streetwars/
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