[Editor's note: The below review is for the pre-launch version of the game, not the final build; thus some of the criticisms may no longer apply. We'll update next week, when the final version is released.]

The environment is a delicate thing, and most people are ignorant of that fact. However, the folks over at Greenopolis are seeking to remedy the issue with their new Facebook title, Oceanopolis. Having debuted at the Casual Connect conference a few months ago, the game is preparing to move out of closed beta next week.

Essentially, players are tasked with keeping their own personal island green and clean, while turning it into an ocean-bound paradise of their choosing. The game itself is rather basic, and feels a bit clunky at times. Unfortunately, the performance issue often overshadows the overall message, however noble it may be.

First and foremost, Oceanopolis is a virtual space game. Players purchase any number of buildings, flora, or random accessories to try and make their island beautiful. In order to do this, however, players must participate in the game’s primary premise — cleaning up the land itself.

This rather basic mechanic has players click on the trove of litter that washes ashore their island. Metal cans, plastic bottles, glass, and soda cans can all be recycled, and with each pick up, a blurb of text indicates what is happening and, more importantly, what the user should do with it in reality. As an example, before one can pick up a soda can, they must first “rinse it out,” then “crush it.”

Once the player has collected enough of these items – dubbed “treasures” – they can begin to utilize them in the different buildings that can be purchased. These buildings become a source of income, as set amounts of recyclable items can be turned in to make eco-friendly items to sell.

The big downside to these mechanics is that it takes a painstakingly long time to pick up all the trash — doubly so since users must click once to clean it out, then again to pick it up. Players can click on all the trash sequentially to queue it up, but it will still take two passes to actually finish.

In addition to the litter, players can also interact with virtually everything they place on the island. Plants can be weeded and watered, while huts can be cleaned. Some objects will take a few minutes for the action to complete and others an entire day. However, there doesn’t appear to be any point to these actions, other than the occasional educational blurb of text (though most of it is pretty obvious). These actions don’t even grant experience. Evidently, this is only earned through picking up trash, with the purpose being to gate what objects one can buy.

Curiously, what is perhaps most interesting about Oceanopolis is also the most unclear. According to all the announcements and statements made about the game way back around the Casual Connect conference, players are supposed to be able to earn points during game play that can be combined with points earned, separately, at Greenopolis.com. Unfortunately, the exact means in which to earn them remains elusive within the game itself. Nonetheless, these points, also earnable through actual Greenopolis Recycling Kiosks as well as Greenopolis.com can later be redeemed for rewards or discounts from a rather large number of restaurants, movie theaters, and retailers.

Socially, the game offers your basic implementation of visiting other friends’ islands and helping to clean up. However, this is far from the highlight of the game. That’s reserved for the message itself. As with the tooltips presented when picking up trash, Oceanopolis is sprinkled with recycling knowledge. The most apparent of these are interesting facts about recycling and/or the environment whenever one levels up.

As part of this message, the Greenopolis Foundation even hosted a Twitter event, over the summer, where they donated $1 to Ocean Aid per person who retweeted a message about stopping ocean pollution.

Message aside, it’s going to be hard for the majority of users to really look past Oceanopolis’ clunky presentation. Not only is the game play pretty basic, the visuals are also dull. Some of the static 2D art work is okay, but with flickering animations and a soundtrack made up with “demos from StockMusic.net,” it’s just not a game that feels complete, coming out of closed beta or not.

Overall, as a game, Oceanopolis needs a lot of work. Of course, being an early rendition, and developed by a non-game maker, such issues are understandable, and the cause is certainly worth while. Hopefully, enough people will take part to encourage the developer to put further work into the game.

Having been milling about in the social space for some time now, French developer Ubisoft is releasing one of its top franchises onto Facebook: Assassin’s Creed. Dubbed Project Legacy, this social rendition of the popular games steers a bit away from the stories of Altair and Ezio Auditore and focuses more on the history and storytelling that has made the series memorable.

Project Legacy is the first significant Facebook role-playing game from Ubisoft, which has mostly released city building and sim games thus far. Unlike the console version of Assassin’s Creed, which has players free running through the city streets as an assassin, players take a more passive look through history as Abstergo Industries investigates the “truth” behind truth, and history as it appears in the “genetic memories” of the player. As interesting as this concept is, Ubisoft does show its console roots with a significant lack of social mechanics.

For context, the original Assassin’s Creed games have the player utilize a machine called the “Animus” to relive the time of their ancestors, by pulling memories from their genetic code. This science fiction concept is the core of Project Legacy, as players step back into the machine to investigate the lives, and deaths, of historic characters.

Using basic Facebook RPG standards, players consume energy (Action Points) to complete various missions (Events) and unlock the story. As each mission is completed, new memories become available. These also use the Facebook-standard mechanic of repeating the quest multiple times to achieve 100 percent completion, but the storyline does a decent job of justifying the process.

It’s worth noting that each time the event is repeated, new text or dialogue is presented to make it feel like a chain of events, rather than a repetitious action.

Like other RPGs, many missions require items to proceed. In many cases, like needing swords, these can be purchased, but others require the presence of specific people or soldiers to advance. Many of the missions involve recruitment of some sort and will have a chance of rewarding some type of non-player character (soldier, villager, thief, etc.). Dubbed Chance Items, they cannot be bought, meaning that the player must return to these recruitment missions in order to rally the characters they will need to complete future ones (e.g. a major battle).

There are also chance items such as supplies. For example, there is a mission to forge weapons, but players need iron bars to do so. In order to get the bars, they must do a different mission. However, these chance items are consumable, so in order to reach 100 percent synchronization with the original mission the supply mission must also be repeated.

Doing missions also has a chance to acquire set items called “Mnemonic Sets.” These are no mere achievements, however, as once a set is completed, it can be claimed for various bonuses that will last a set amount of time. For example, should the player complete the Este Family set, they will receive a 25 percent experience bonus for one hour.

Leveling up one’s character is unusual too. Unlike other RPGs, players don’t earn the typical stats of strength, defense, agility, and so on. On the contrary, every point is used to enhance the ability to play and earn rewards. The stats are four in number and consist of Endurance, Sleight, Usury, and Diligence. Each grant bonuses to Action Points, earning Chance Items, earning extra money, or gaining extra crafting slots (thus far, we have yet to unlock this feature) respectively .

It’s certainly an interesting game, and the story is not half bad. That said, and knowing the past Assassin’s Creed titles, Project Legacy will likely get much better and much more confusing, story-wise. In fact, there is even a five question quiz right from the get go centered around one’s opinions and philosophies, and if playing the past titles taught anything, it’s that those answers will come back and play some role sooner or later. Additionally, for a 2D Facebook game, the presentation is done quite well with quality art work, Ken Burns effect movies, and a high quality user interface.

Unfortunately, as a social game, Project Legacy is significantly lacking. As it stands, all players can do is conjure up a wish list of items they need and view achievements earned by their friends. It’s possible the Ubisoft intentionally stunted social requirements, with an eye toward making the game friendlier to console game players who are logging on to unlock items in the main storyline.

As a Facebook RPG, Project Legacy certainly has a different feel than most. It has a number of the same rules, but follows them much more loosely than other’s of the genre. Even the interface is starkly different from its predecessors. Regardless, the current build is focused heavily around the single player mode, and while interesting, lacks in many of the social elements that make other RPGs popular, such as battling in Mafia Wars. Traffic to Project Legacy over the coming weeks should prove whether or not this was a wise plan for Ubisoft.

After a quiet previous week of hiring, things are starting to pick back up. It isn’t a tremendously busy week, save for Zynga, according to data from LinkedIn, but of the top developers, seven are seeing changes or new faces, including quite a few big hires.

Booyah is getting a new Director of Business Development in the form of Shawn Foust and RockYou is getting a new Director & Corporate Controller with Mei Costello. The big hires don’t stop here either, as Zynga gains a new member of its Corporate Counsel with Stephanie Adamson King as well as an even bigger name in the form of Yahoo’s former head of its U.S. Audience unit, David Ko, who will now take the helm of Zynga’s mobile division. As for the overall numbers, this week has still proved more of an average week of hires, with only one or two for most companies.

If there’s anyone we missed, and your company is bringing on new people or making a notable promotion, please let us know. Email editor (at) insidesocialgames (dot) com, and we’ll get it into this or next week’s post.

As for people who are hiring, be sure to check out our Inside Network Job Board.

Here’s this week’s list:

Booyah

• Shawn Foust –As noted prior, Shawn Foust is the new Director of Business Development as well as General Counsel for Booyah. Previously, he was the Head of the Video Game Industry Team at Sheppard Mullin Richter & Hampton LLP.

Kabam

• Amit Ranade — Kabam gets a new Executive Producer this week as Ranade joins the team. Ranade’s prior role was as a Senior Producer at Hi5.
• James Holloway — Also joining Kabam as an Executive Producer is Holloway who was previously part of Product Management at CrowdStar.
• Carolina Tello –In the art department, Tello joins Kabam as a new Art Lead. Her past role was as a Senior Concept Artist at Paragon Studios.

MindJolt

• Marc Siegel – A single hire for MindJolt this week, as Siegel joins the team as their newest Community Manager. Prior experience stems from TBD where he was an Online Community Manager and Social Media Consultant.

Playdom

• Robert Anthony — Playdom makes an internal change as Anthony changes roles from a QA Lead to a Product Manager.
• Swapnil Patni – Formerly a Senior Product Developer at Stratify, Patni joins Playdom as a new Technical Lead.

Playfish

• Andreas Polyviou – Joining Playfish as a new Games Artist, Polyviou comes with a 3D Animator background from Blue-Zoo Productions.

RockYou!

• Jonathan Klein – Now a Sales Planner for RockYou, Klein’s prior experience was as an Account Coordinator for CBS Interactive.
• Mei Costello — Costello joins RockYou as its new Director & Corporate Controller after serving as the VP of Finance & Administration at Gala-Net.
• Nicole Guico –In an internal change for RockYou, Guico changes from a Social Media Marketing Account Manager/Campaign Manager to an Account Manager of International Sales (EMEA).

Zynga

• David Ko — As noted, the former head of Yahoo’s U.S. Audience unit, David Ko, is leaving his role to head up Zynga’s mobile division.
• Kevin Yun — Yun joins Zynga as a new Sr. QA Lead. Yun comes from Sony Computer Entertainment America, where he was a TRC Supervisor – Format QA.
• Stephanie Adamson King –Stephanie Adamson King becomes part of the Corporate Counsel at Zynga. Prior to this, she was a Senior Manager, Legal at Gilead Sciences.
• Kyle Sun — Once a Summer Intern, Sun moves up in Zynga to a Software Engineer.
• Robert Hilario –Formerly a CS Lead for Mobile Games at Zynga, Hilario is now a Community Specialist for Mobile Games.
• Laura Dansingani – Previously a KIN Product Manager for Microsoft, Dansingani joins Zynga as a Sr. Mobile Product Manager.
• Robert Zubek –Another internal change at Zynga as Zubeck moves from Senior Software Engineer to Principal Software Engineer.
• Michael Judge –In yet another Zynga change, Judge switches from Art Director to Creative Lead.
• Kevin Bernstein — Joining Zynga as a new Systems Administrator is Bernstein whose prior experience comes from Genentech, where he was a Systems Engineer.
• Ajinkya Apte — Apte is a new Software Engineer for Zynga. Previously, he was a Graduate Student at the University of Southern California.
• Rocco Di Leo –Now a Country Manager at Zynga, Di Leo was previously CEO at Dextrose AG.

We’ve just released the October 2010 edition of the Facebook Global Monitor through Inside Facebook Gold.

The Facebook Global Monitor is our data report tracking Facebook’s audience growth around the world, and now includes an expanded leaderboard and country profiles for over 60 new country markets that are seeing Facebook adoption and growth.

The Global Monitor tracks Facebook’s international metrics, and provides both historical data and forward-looking projections to enable developers, marketers, and analysts to spot trends and opportunities.

Each month, the Facebook Global Monitor provides the latest comprehensive data on the expansion of Facebook’s audience in approximately 100 global markets. It also includes alerts on breakout and cooling markets, and our latest in-house projections on Facebook’s growth in each country 30 days, 90 days, and 12 months into the future. See the full table of contents below.

All data in the report are based on primary research by Inside Network using data from Facebook, and each section is designed to elucidate key actionable trends. In addition to the Facebook Global Monitor, membership to Inside Facebook Gold includes monthly editions of the Global Monitor, in addition to access to our other data reports on Facebook’s top languages, user demographics, and more.

We believe big opportunities exist for developers and marketers to reach and engage the Facebook audience in these rapidly emerging and expanding markets. As always, we’ll continue to use data from the Facebook Global Monitor data as a foundation for our global growth coverage here on Inside Facebook, but if you’re looking for even more numbers, please check out Inside Facebook Gold.

The Facebook Global Monitor

Tracking Facebook in Global Markets

October 2010

Contents

I. Introduction: The Year That Facebook Went Global

II. Global Market Report

1. Audience Size Today

2. Fastest Growing Audience

• Last 12 months
• Last 90 days
• Last 30 days

3. Market Penetration Today

4. Largest Market Penetration Increases

• Last 12 months
• Last 90 days
• Last 30 days

III. Emerging Market Analysis

1. Growth Projections

• Next 30 days
• Next 90 days
• Next 12 months

2. Technical Alerts

• Breakout Markets: Last 90 Days
• Cooling Markets: Last 90 Days

IV. Regional Summaries

1. Africa

2. Asia / Pacific

3. Europe

4. North America

5. South America

V. Country Updates

1. Argentina

2. Australia

3. Austria

4. Bahamas

5. Bahrain

6. Bangladesh

7. Belgium

8. Bolivia

9. Bosnia & Herzegovina

10. Brazil

11. Bulgaria

12. Canada

13. Chile

14. China

15. Colombia

16. Costa Rica

17. Croatia

18. Cyprus

19. Czech Republic

20. Denmark

21. Dominican Republic

22. Ecuador

23. Egypt

24. El Salvador

25. Finland

26. France

27. Germany

28. Ghana

29. Greece

30. Guatemala

31. Honduras

32. Hong Kong

33. Hungary

34. Iceland

35. India

36. Indonesia

37. Ireland

38. Israel

39. Italy

40. Jamaica

41. Japan

42. Jordan

43. Kenya

44. Kuwait

45. Lebanon

46. Lithuania

47. Luxembourg

48. Macedonia

49. Malaysia

50. Maldives

51. Malta

52. Mauritius

53. Mexico

54. Morocco

55. Netherlands

56. New Zealand

57. Nicaragua

58. Nigeria

59. Norway

60. Oman

61. Pakistan

62. Palestine

63. Panama

64. Paraguay

65. Peru

66. Philippines

67. Poland

68. Portugal

69. Puerto Rico

70. Qatar

71. Romania

72. Russia

73. Saudi Arabia

74. Serbia

75. Singapore

76. Slovakia

77. Slovenia

78. South Africa

79. South Korea

80. Spain

81. Sri Lanka

82. Sweden

83. Switzerland

84. Taiwan

85. Thailand

86. Trinidad and Tobago

87. Tunisia

88. Turkey

89. Ukraine

90. United Arab Emirates

91. United Kingdom

92. United States

93. Uruguay

94. Venezuela

95. Vietnam

Learn more or join to download the report at Inside Facebook Gold.

[Donghee Yvette Wohn is a Ph.D. candidate at Michigan State University; her post, below, is based on research she is doing in social games. Wohn is also editor of Play as Life, a blog examining the cultural impacts of gaming.]

Only two years ago, I was attending a conference on virtual worlds and people were discussing whether or not microtransactions would be a viable business model. Many people were skeptical about whether the success of microtransactions in Asia would translate to North American users. Now, there seems to be less talk about whether or not microtransactions work, and more talk about what makes them work.

Industry stats show that yes, people are spending real money on social games. That said, however, the percentage of players who actually spend money is extremely small. From a research standpoint, it has been difficult to find out the characteristics of these spenders because of the difficulty in getting enough people to provide a sample size large enough to derive results that we could generalize.

To look at a larger population, my colleague at Keio University and I collaborated with Puppy Red, a social gaming service in South Korea, to collect de-identified log data. The game that we looked at was for children and tweens, similar to services like Club Penguin.

We collected the data of users who had accessed the site at least once during three months from November 2009 to January 2010. After conducting filtering process on missing data and outliers, the dataset showed 224,827 users. Among this population, 64,076 users (less than 28.5% of total active users) had spent real money at least once and only 17,750 (less than 8% of active users) had spent real money during the most recent three months.

The below graph shows the number of paying users and their cumulative spending. You can see that 2,000 of 18,000 users accounted for nearly half, 46 percent, of the total money people spent on the site.

Factors that contribute to spending real money

We looked at factors that contribute to spending real money, and found several positive predictors: time spent playing the game, length of membership, and overall number of items. However, players who had received more free items spent less real money. This point was interesting, because a lot of marketing research shows that free items are good for getting consumers to purchase more items. Our research suggests that too many free items can decrease the likelihood of spending.

Impact of Gifting on Spending

Perhaps our more interesting findings were those on “social” factors. For instance, giving virtual gifts and receiving virtual gifts were positively associated with the spending of real money. The number of friends did not determine whether one player who purchased virtual goods spent more money than another, but spenders did have significantly more friends than non-spenders. This implies that while more friends don’t lead to higher spending, players without a lot of friends may not spend any real money at all.

Implications

For those who want to cash in on microtransactions, our research suggests the following:

1. Provide a lot of virtual goods so that players can customize their game space and avatar.
2. Limit your amount of free virtual goods.
3. Encourage multiple types of exchange behavior between players; this is the second study we’ve done that implies that social players spend more
4. Incentivize having friends. Friends can increase playing time, encourage social interaction, and create competitive elements that contribute to spending.

Yesterday on our list of fastest-growing games by daily active users, a new, high production value Facebook title popped up called Crime City. Set with the same theme as Facebook’s various mafia games, the new title appears to be by a San Francisco developer called Funzio, and has quickly grown to over 325,000 monthly active users.

Crime City takes players into a hybridization of RPG, city building, and classic console concepts as they wreak havoc through the city streets. Stylishly presented, it’s an app that is surprisingly well done for being so under the radar. Of course, that doesn’t mean it’s perfect as it does suffer from frequent, social “reminders.”

Players take on the role of your common, everyday thug out to make a name for themselves. In order to do so, users follow the typical Mafia Wars steps of doing jobs to build up that reputation, earn cash, and grow stronger. The big difference is that this game is not a text-based RPG. On the contrary, it’s actually an isometric world that players walk about and physically interact with.

Of course, “interact” is a term used somewhat loosely, as doing jobs consists of clicking on buildings and non-player characters while the player’s avatar performs some animation. Usually this involves, shooting, beating, or hitting something. Regardless, no actual skill is involved; it’s essentially Mafia Wars with graphics. Once a job is performed bits of cash, experience, and other random items pop out FrontierVille-style. As the user grows in level, more demanding jobs begin to appear (some of which must be done multiple times).

The game is driven by a quest system that tasks the player to travel to different parts of the city and perform specific jobs in order to grow their mafia. Such jobs include robbing stores, performing hits, extorting businesses, and just about every other crime one can think of. In order to do them, however, specific items are required, and as the buildings and victims become more protective or “higher level,” for lack of a better term, more powerful equipment is needed.

This becomes the basis of a simple story, but in truth, the narrative is rather shallow. Granted, it’s a Facebook game, so award winning plots are hardly expected. Despite this minor complaint, the whole of Crime City is of high quality, and there’s far more to do than just these jobs.

A whole other aspect of the game comes in with city building features, used to build up the player’s “hood.” This isn’t the kind of complex city building that requires a happy population and other political calculations, but players are able to construct various structures to earn supplemental income and decorate their virtual space as they see fit. After a period of time, structures will pay out a sum of money, and can be upgraded to pay more. Additionally, some structures are needed to produce building materials, such as steel, which is a requirement to building most everything beyond decorations. Some equipment, such as cars, also require certain structures to acquire. In this case, a parking garage would be needed.

The city building mechanic is also a catalyst for some social mechanics. Like many games in the genre, special buildings require the help of friends to complete. Producing special items (e.g. energy instead of money), these structures, such as the Coffee Shop, require friends to send the user specific gifts by clicking on a wall posting link, as well as requiring the user to perform a certain action, such as gifting a friend.

The social elements don’t end there. Aside from joining other players’ mafias to increase collective strength, players can visit not only friends’ virtual spaces, but opponents’ as well. This is a feature deserving of praise as typically, players compete with one another by just clicking “attack” and having a random, text-based outcome. Here, while the result is the same, users actually visit that player’s hood, and can physically rob all the stores as well as attack the player’s avatar itself.

These aggressive actions can earn a tertiary currency called “Respect Points.” Thus far, however, we’ve haven’t seen what these points are used for. Another in-game virtual currency, called “Diamonds,” is earned by doing jobs in the various missions, and used to purchase more expensive equipment (such as cars).

Also on the social menu is the concept of posting achievements where one “shares” earnings. Yes, this is done a lot, but the difference here is that players receive the opportunity to not only share coin, but Respect Points, Diamonds, and even experience.

Our only other, minor, complaint about Crime City is that the game frequently “reminds” the player of inviting friends to join their mafia. This isn’t a huge deal, but the frequency can become annoying.

Overall, Crime City is a surprising improvement on the mafia-style RPG, and its incorporation of city building mechanics adds a good deal of play to the game without feeling tacked on. Granted, the core is the same as any other mafia RPG, but the presentation both more rewarding stylish.

Facebook’s product announcement today, a major change to Facebook Groups, was touted by Mark Zuckerberg as a big shift for real-life social units like families and business colleagues. However, there’s also an important potential for game-related groups.

New groups will be created and administrated by individuals on Facebook. Each will come with three potential settings: Open, Closed and Secret. The last two options are for private groups, while all the content and members of Open groups will be publicly visible.

We’ve covered the new features in depth over at Inside Facebook. In brief, there are four important points to note: ease of creation, notifications about new messages, group chat, and API access for developers.

Here’s how Groups could end up helping games:

• More communication channels for players. While this point seems obvious, having to coordinate channels off Facebook has been a barrier that has kept all but the most hardcore players from having real interaction around a game.
• Real-time coordination between players. While most Facebook games are built for asynchronous play, some have experimented with in-game chat and groups. Facebook is now offering another channel for real-time communications, left under the control of players.
• Potential benefits to retention. Once players have  formed tightly-knit groups around a certain game, they’re less likely to stop playing. Users shy to talk about games in their main feed will now also have another outlet.
• Fewer spam apps. Hundreds of apps built specifically for players of large games like FarmVille have popped up on Facebook; most have subsequently been banned. Groups provide a good alternative.

There could also be downsides to the new groups. Players will find it easier to coordinate activities meant to break or circumvent the structure of games, for instance, and unlike the communication channels on MMOs, game administrators won’t be able to secretly tap into their communications.

And since the new Facebook Groups functions are designed for smaller social units, the functionality may break down when a group becomes larger. Facebook has addressed this to a degree; for instance, the company already plans to turn off group chat when a group has over 250 members. But there will ultimately still be a need for forums, blogs and other external communication channels.

Overall, the Groups changes look positive for games. How useful Groups will be depends on users, who will how to show how far they are willing to take the new features.

Recently, we launched the Inside Network Job Board – dedicated to providing you with the best job opportunities in the Facebook Platform and social gaming ecosystem.

Here are this week’s highlights from the Inside Network Job Board, including positions at Playdom, Wild Needle, and Lolapps.

• PHP Developer (Eugene, OR)
  
• Flash Developer (Eugene, OR)
  
• Game Designer (Mountain View, CA)
  
• Creative Director (Mountain View, CA)
  
• Senior Game Designer (Mountain View, CA)
  
• Art Director (Mountain View, CA)

• Lead Mobile Game Developer (iPhone or Android) (Palo Alto, CA)
  
• Creative Director (Palo Alto, CA)
  

• UI Artist/Designer for Social Games (possibly a Director role) (San Francisco, CA)
  

Listings on the Inside Network Job Board are distributed to readers of Inside Facebook and Inside Social Games through regular posts and widgets on the sites. That way, you can be sure that your open positions are being seen by the leading developers, product managers, marketers, designers, and executives in the Facebook Platform and social gaming industry today.

With over 8 million monthly active users, Metrogames has become a strong, mid-sized social game developer. Their new title for Facebook,  Mall Dreams, recently appeared on our top emerging apps list and currently has more than 860,000 monthly active users.

Following recent city-building games, Mall Dreams contains aspects of  Mall World, but players run an entire mall rather than just one store. It’s certainly a logical extension of the mall concept, and Mall Dreams proves entertaining. Unfortunately, the game play requires significant micromanagement and its requests to publish information becomes repetitive, both of which bring the game down a bit.

In Mall Dreams, your goal is to construct a successful mall. You build various stores and after a period of time, collect the income they earn. The time it takes to collect income from a store depends on the amount of stock items it has to sell. After you collect a store’s income, you must pay a set amount of money to refill sold wares. The higher the restock value of what you purchase, the longer it will take to collect money, but the more the store will earn. The amount of stock depends on the level of the store as well and many can be upgraded.

As patrons file into the mall, thought bubbles will show what they are looking for. They are often searching for stores, but sometimes other items including ATMs, benches and so on. To benefit from the needs of your customers, you must click the NPC and issue “help” (or drag them to what they’re looking for). Doing so will earn you extra experience and expedite the time it takes to collect income from stores.

You must also be vigilant of trash and moles to clean up. Moles function the same way trash does, and we’re not sure why the designers chose moles per se.  Anyway, “cleaning” the space grants small monetary rewards. Not cleaning will prevent you from placing of any new items where the  trash and moles exist.

Many of the stores take up a lot of space and this sometimes feels completely arbitrary. For example, the game’s pet store requires four empty spaces in front and two behind. No part of the building fills these squares, they’re just there. Perhaps these areas are to accommodate upgrades at some point, but for now they feel like wasted space.

Customers in Mall Dreams also seem completely helpless, requiring assistance every couple of seconds. Granted, you don’t have to continually assist them, but it is annoying to see dozens of thought bubbles littering in your space. This becomes particularly acute when you purchase extra transportation hubs (e.g. bus stops, airports, etc.) that increase the number of patrons. We’d like to see these NPCs be a little bit more independent.

Beyond these qualms, the game prompts you to make a wall posting every time a new store is built or upgraded. Since building is a big part of the game, this pop-up becomes annoying quickly.

To run your mall, you hire workers in shifts. Stores will only earn revenue so long as someone is working and some shifts earn more revenue than others. To reduce the cost of workers friends can be hired to work the stores for you.

Additional social elements include basic gifting and leaderboards. You can visit friend’s malls to clean up trash and help customers. Much more interesting, however, is the concept of “investments.” With this mechanic, you can spend money on a friend and when they reach a certain level, they will pay out a return to you. For example, if you invest 125 coins in a friend and  they reach level 20, you will earn 1500 coins back.

As for any final features worth mentioning, Mall Dreams has a nice quest system to give the player some direction and monetary reward. You can also use Facebook Credits to start a “Sale” that will dramatically increase revenue for a set period of time.

Overall, Mall Dreams is an decent game, with familiar but solid core mechanics. Some of its less important features and mechanics can get in the way of  the overall experience, but players who enjoy shopping or city-building games should give it a look.

If there’s any theme to this week’s AppData list of the fastest-growing Facebook games by daily active users, it’s that several of the titles are new — if not to Facebook, at least to our top 20 lists. Here’s the list:

	Name	DAU	Gain	Gain,%
1.	Millionaire City	2,073,078	+256,585	+14%
2.	ESPNU College Town	253,552	+202,834	+400%
3.	開心魚塘	234,727	+170,501	+265%
4.	Mafia Wars Game	4,269,328	+103,525	+2%
5.	Pet Society	2,266,755	+72,402	+3%
6.	Madden NFL Superstars	249,067	+70,013	+39%
7.	Fantasy Kingdoms	115,846	+53,066	+85%
8.	Hunch	54,511	+50,946	+1,429%
9.	Bingo Island 2	91,873	+46,129	+101%
10.	MMA Pro Fighter	365,816	+45,550	+14%
11.	Pacific Poker	42,409	+37,988	+859%
12.	德州撲克(中文版)	932,239	+33,880	+4%
13.	Critter Island	121,086	+29,409	+32%
14.	Car Town	1,141,883	+26,621	+2%
15.	Crime City	70,366	+26,213	+59%
16.	Mynet Çanak Okey	87,365	+24,977	+40%
17.	Party Central	28,766	+22,358	+349%
18.	Cupcake Corner	121,673	+19,526	+19%
19.	Birdland	227,844	+18,863	+9%
20.	War Of 2012	19,068	+18,485	+3,171%

Millionaire City has finally hit the top of the list, and crossed two million DAU, making it Facebook’s tenth-largest game by that measurement.

In second, ESPNU College Town is the latest from Playdom. The game essentially repurposes the Social City / Age of Wonder concept to a college campus, using ESPN’s branding and real team and school names. Like the titles it takes after, ESPNU is growing fast.

Skipping past a few familiar titles, Fantasy Kingdoms is one of the games that’s newer to our list. The Sneaky Games title has been around since May, when we first reviewed it. Just under two weeks ago, it began growing, and has since doubled in size. This new growth is likely due to new promotion of the title by the company.

Bingo Island 2 and Pacific Poker have an obvious thematic connection, and they’re also by the same developer, Mytopia. As with Fantasy Kingdoms, the growth of the two virtual gambling apps looks like the result of new promotion.

Finally, Crime City is a brand-new game. While the name may make this game sound like another Mafia Wars retread, it’s actually fairly unique, combining the popular crime theme with city building and missions. Some effort obviously went into this title; unfortunately, we’re not yet sure who the developer is.