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Top 25 Facebook Games for May 2010
May 3rd, 2010
| By Christopher Mack | 40 Comments » |
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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May 3rd, 2010 at 12:00 pm
[...] > Continue reading on Inside Social Games. [...]
May 3rd, 2010 at 3:16 pm
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.
May 3rd, 2010 at 3:44 pm
[...] mas a queda também, embora neste caso concreto o Farmville se mantenha em excelente posição no top25 de Maio (78 milhões) sem mostrar desgaste e com vantagem significativa em relação aos seus competidores [...]
May 3rd, 2010 at 4:29 pm
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
May 3rd, 2010 at 6:31 pm
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.
May 3rd, 2010 at 8:20 pm
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.
May 3rd, 2010 at 9:19 pm
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
May 4th, 2010 at 12:13 am
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”?
May 4th, 2010 at 8:31 am
[...] than just a few players, as 4.4 million users decided, for one reason or another, to call it quits. Inside Social Games has all of the data associated with the loss, and claims that the most likely reason players [...]
May 5th, 2010 at 4:00 am
[...] miramos el Top 25 de juegos de Facebook para el mes de mayo de 2010 destaca un nombre sobre todo: [...]
May 5th, 2010 at 8:01 am
[...] active users, is not the only application to lose traffic. According to Inside Social Games, 18 out the 25 top games lost traffic in April, and the theory is it was the notifications that killed the [...]
May 6th, 2010 at 6:53 am
[...] its name, complete with built-in lag! Freeware Game Pick: Challenge from Kiyoshi (8bits fanatics) Farmville lost 4.4 million players last month, but is still the #1 Facebook game. Puzzle Quest 2 comes to Facebook, productivity drops. [...]
May 6th, 2010 at 7:36 pm
[...] 越多更多可以访问games.com或者inside social game [...]
May 7th, 2010 at 10:23 am
[...] Facebook and developers need to get along and work out solutions appealing to everyone. Facebook should appreciate the growth and the revenue that Social Gaming has provided them with. As mentioned by Inside Social Gaming, it is their opinion that, ” Facebook and the industry need 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.” (Source: Inside Social Gaming) [...]
May 8th, 2010 at 5:00 pm
[...] you want some evidence, the best place is some real metrics. According to Inside Social Games, 18 out of the 25 top Facebook games lost monthly active users during April, following the month of [...]
May 9th, 2010 at 1:57 am
[...] Die Zahl aktiver Spieler des Zynga-Flagschiffs FarmVille sinkt. Zwischen April und Mai sank sie von 82,8 auf 78,4 Millionen. Viele andere Facebook-Spiele sahen ebenfalls einen Rückgang der [...]
May 11th, 2010 at 8:49 am
[...] as of late, but there just isn’t enough to make it really take off, that we can see. With even FarmVille slowly losing users, it is time for new core concepts to come about. To dig deeper into the social gaming market, [...]
May 11th, 2010 at 4:08 pm
[...] as soon as this month. Organic growth is next to nothing now, according to most developers. Many of the biggest games are losing users, according to our own [...]
May 11th, 2010 at 9:05 pm
wild ones is best to
May 11th, 2010 at 9:05 pm
and nightclub city
May 17th, 2010 at 7:49 am
[...] from the US showed a massive downturn last month and Facebook’s top casual game apps are haemorrhaging users at an alarming [...]
May 17th, 2010 at 8:59 am
[...] their removal on March 1st all of the incumbent top 5 developers have seen big drops in MAU and DAU. There have been many loud complaints about this removal and this is allegedly one of the things [...]
May 18th, 2010 at 10:34 am
[...] bad time, just after reducing functionality for them to notify their users, resulting in significant active usage drops. And worse, Facebook is taking a 30 percent cut of all credits, just like Apple does on its iPhone [...]
May 19th, 2010 at 2:47 pm
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…
May 21st, 2010 at 7:44 am
I’m surprised that MY TOWN is not on this list. IMHO, the best of the FB social games.
May 21st, 2010 at 1:09 pm
[...] 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. [...]
May 26th, 2010 at 3:19 am
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!
May 31st, 2010 at 9:08 am
[...] Lien : le classement des 25 jeux sur facebook sur Insidesocialgames [...]
June 1st, 2010 at 10:33 am
[...] than half of the 25 largest games on Facebook lost users in April, but the trend picked up last [...]
June 1st, 2010 at 10:35 am
[...] than half of the 25 largest games on Facebook lost users in April, but the trend picked up last [...]
June 8th, 2010 at 9:10 pm
[...] 25″ list of popular Facebook games based on number of monthly actives. Reviewing the May 2010 list got us to thinking: What is the magic formula that has made these Facebook games so popular? [...]
June 9th, 2010 at 1:08 pm
[...] [Source] Faites tourner ! var a2a_config = a2a_config || {}; a2a_localize = { Share: "Partager", Save: "Enregistrer", Subscribe: "S'abonner", Email: "Courriel", Bookmark: "Signet", ShowAll: "Montrer tout", ShowLess: "Montrer moins", FindServices: "Trouver des service(s)", FindAnyServiceToAddTo: "Trouver instantanément des services à ajouter à", PoweredBy: "Propulsé par", ShareViaEmail: "Partager par l'entremise d'un courriel", SubscribeViaEmail: "S'abonner par l'entremise d'un courriel", BookmarkInYourBrowser: "Ajouter un signet dans votre fureteur", BookmarkInstructions: "Appuyez Crtl+D ou ⌘+D pour créer un signet vers cette page", AddToYourFavorites: "Ajouter à vos favoris", SendFromWebOrProgram: "Envoyer depuis toutes adresses courriel ou tous programmes de messagerie", EmailProgram: "Programme de messagerie" }; a2a_config.linkname="Farmville perd ses adeptes"; a2a_config.linkurl="http://lahyene.com/farmville-perd-ses-adeptes/"; a2a_config.show_title=1; [...]
June 10th, 2010 at 11:05 am
[...] Cela dit, le phénomène n’est pas propre à FarmVille. De nombreuses applications intégrées dans le réseau social ont connu le même sort, comme en témoignent les statistiques publiées mensuellement par le site InsideSocialGames.com. [...]
June 10th, 2010 at 5:54 pm
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.
June 25th, 2010 at 4:01 am
[...] from the US showed a massive downturn last month and Facebook’s top casual game apps are haemorrhaging users at an alarming [...]
June 26th, 2010 at 10:50 pm
[...] Inside Social Games reported that it was Facebook’s removal of third-party notifications, which previously told players about new developments in games, as the main reason for the decline. Zynga CEO Mark Pincus has suggested this drop in numbers is only for the “short term”, as FarmVille wasn’t the only game from the company to lose some followers. [...]
August 18th, 2010 at 12:28 am
hehehehehe……..pang 14 yung hotel city.anu ba yan kakaiinis ha…laro kayo hotel city,happy pets..pls………..
August 20th, 2010 at 12:04 am
laro kayo nightclub city
August 23rd, 2010 at 7:11 pm
[...] from third-party applications like Farmville–and that these changes are attributed to a multi-million-user decrease in players of these games between April and May 2010. But the onslaught of updates throughout late [...]
August 23rd, 2010 at 10:55 pm
[...] usage numbers and say that the Zynga FarmVille campaign at 7-11 has been a massive failure. From 75mm MAUs in May to 63mm MAUs by the end of [...]