Three apps have gains of over a million monthly active users on this week’s AppData list of fastest-growing Facebook games, and one more comes close. The clear leader is of course CityVille with its outsized growth of 25.8 million MAU, which we wrote about a bit earlier this morning.

Here’s the list:

Top Gainers This Week – Games

	Name	MAU	Gain	Gain,%
1.	CityVille	47,926,318	+25,872,767	+117%
2.	Zuma Blitz	4,813,322	+3,820,088	+385%
3.	FarmVille	56,315,680	+1,276,909	+2%
4.	Monster Galaxy	1,371,509	+924,177	+207%
5.	Texas HoldEm Poker	34,347,919	+656,578	+2%
6.	City of Wonder	8,282,207	+629,893	+8%
7.	Mighty Pirates	2,225,107	+566,377	+34%
8.	Treasure Isle	13,435,348	+512,184	+4%
9.	Café World	17,464,983	+490,013	+3%
10.	FrontierVille	30,936,086	+443,936	+1%
11.	德州撲克(中文版)	4,583,950	+390,752	+9%
12.	Zoo World	7,376,592	+387,802	+6%
13.	Ravenwood Fair	5,459,353	+346,949	+7%
14.	Crazy Cabbie	612,830	+240,619	+65%
15.	Paradise Life	340,748	+209,577	+160%
16.	Island God	2,794,492	+204,631	+8%
17.	Big Business	273,203	+204,505	+298%
18.	Hero	438,486	+202,112	+86%
19.	Galaxy X	501,370	+181,540	+57%
20.	My Vineyard	848,622	+181,085	+27%

Zuma Blitz is overshadowed by CityVille, but on an ordinary week its gain of 3.8 million MAU would look outstanding. Following Bejeweled, Zuma is PopCap’s most popular franchise, so its success on Facebook isn’t a big surprise.

FarmVille comes in at number three. But as we pointed out earlier, the game is losing daily active users, perhaps an effect of CityVille drawing away players. Zynga does have four more games on the list besides, helping it to build back up to MAU and DAU levels last seen in spring.

And Monster Galaxy is the last big gainer, with 924,177 new MAU, marking its first big week. Although quite different in most respects, Monster Galaxy’s monetization is actually pretty similar to the PopCap games, relying on power-ups that aren’t necessary in the core gameplay.

Following its launch on the iPad, the popular pygmy-sacrificing iPhone title Pocket God is making its way to Facebook, courtesy of Quebec-based Frima Studio and Bolt Creative. While the game may not launch for a week or two more, we recently got an early look. The game looks great in its new Facebook home, hosting the same collection of quirky visuals, gratifying sacrifices, and pygmy nonsense iPhone players have come to love, along with a handful of Facebook-only mechanics.

For those unfamiliar with the iPhone original, players are a cruel and vindictive deity whose sole aim is to sacrifice sets of poor little pygmies as creatively as possible. Pygmies can be launched into the ocean, thrown about, slammed inside refrigerators, tossed into volcanoes, struck by lightning, and so on. On Facebook, there are new methods of torture, such as tar pits, a bomb bushes, and the sought-after female pygmy.

The really notable addition is progression, which is more or less absent in the mobile version.  On each island there is an idol that must be activated. When it’s turned on, each sacrifice will generate both the in-game currency, “Sacrifice Points”, and experience. That said, each sacrifice will also consume a recharging energy well called “Devotion.”

Players can only progress while the idol is activated and Devotion is available, bringing Pocket God more into the realm of five-minute social games. This doesn’t mean that players still can’t feed their pygmies to Venus fly traps or turn their whole world upside down at a whim. They can play for as long as they like, they just can’t unlock and purchase new powers until they have leveled up.

Pocket God’s visuals remain quirky, entertaining, and well done on Facebook, and players even have the option of being nice to the pygmies. That may not be as exciting as sacrificing them, but it is amusing to give the worshipers a refrigerator and watch them get drunk off of pina coladas, or grow them a coconut tree, only to open the coconuts with their heads (as a side note, items like these take a set amount of time to appear or grow and many will wither after a period of time).

Socially, Pocket God is a bit underwhelming, when compared to the rest of what the app has to offer. It does have a nifty little feature that allows users to spawn their friends, direct from the game leaderboard, as a pygmy version of themselves. It’s pretty easy to figure out what comes next: they get sacrificed, of course. This works the same as sacrificing any other pygmy, but there’s a nice little message sent to the victim, letting them know they’re now in volcano stew.

Though the developers gave no specifics, they did state that both more powers and social features are planned in 2011, as soon as January. Since many social games revolve around virtual items, such as avatar clothing, it has also been noted that these features too are being considered.

If Pocket God’s Facebook interpretation is lacking in any way, it’s the lack of connection to the original Pocket God. With the leveling system, new powers, and social mechanics, that is understandable but it is unfortunate, as each version has something about it that is much greater than its counterpart. For the Facebook version, that means a lack of the visceral gratification that comes with using the touch and accelerometer controls.

Overall, the level of quality for Pocket God on Facebook is easily up there with the top titles on the social network, and in its own sadistic way, extraordinarily addictive. As it stands, the social elements are fairly simple, but are slated to grow and evolve significantly with future versions. Nevertheless, Pocket God is still fun to play, and we will look forward to its full roll-out in the next couple of weeks.

With just two weeks left to go for 2010, CityVille has become this year’s biggest growth story. The game, itself only 18 days old, has 47.9 million monthly active users, putting it close to FarmVille’s current 56.3 million.

If its current growth rates continue, CityVille will pass FarmVille in three more days. Even if it slows, CityVille should pass the farming game this week.

A week ago, when CityVille had a mere 22 million MAU, we covered four reasons for its growth: cross-promotion, international users, high production values and Zynga’s expertise at working the Facebook platform. Another factor that appears to be helping it is the re-introduction of third-party notifications to the top menu bar earlier this month.

Even with those factors in effect, CityVille’s gains are astounding. No Facebook game has ever grown as quickly. FarmVille, which took about three months to hit the same point, is the only one to ever grow as large.

FarmVille’s top point was over 80 million MAU, which now seems reasonable for CityVille to reach or even surpass, given the growing number of international gamers on Facebook.

Its effects on Zynga’s numbers are still working out. The developer is at 241 million MAU, a gain of about 18 percent over where it stood a month ago. Its daily active user gain of 25 percent, putting it at 55.7 million DAU, is even sharper. But long-term both the hard numbers and percentages should change significantly.

One trend we can see developing is a drop in DAU for Zynga’s core sim titles, FarmVille and FrontierVille. Both appear to be growing, with small MAU gains in the period since CityVille launched. But FrontierVille has lost about eight percent of its DAU in the past month, with FarmVille losing two percent.

We can theorize that a significant number of CityVille players have been recycled from Facebook’s other sims, so Zynga’s gains will moderate over time. CityVille’s DAU as a percentage of MAU, currently at 30 percent, may also drop over time.

The bottom line, though, is that Zynga has a huge hit on its hands. CityVille hasn’t yet received the kind of press attention that FarmVille got at its peak; that may come later, or not at all. But developers should be paying attention, especially those that previously thought another FarmVille-scale hit would be impossible on Facebook.

Platforms, Privacy and Pandora’s BoxCheck out the top headlines and insights this week from Inside Facebook— tracking Facebook and the Facebook platform for developers and marketers.

Monday, December 13th, 2010

• CityVille Grows Huge on This Week’s List of Fastest-Growing Facebook Apps by MAU
• Facebook Widens Test of App Request Notifications, Some Users Complain
• With Over 20 Million Users on Facebook, CityVille Is Already a Metropolis
• UserVoice’s Facebook Tab App Funnels Customer Feedback into Actionable Suggestions

Tuesday, December 14th, 2010

• Top 20 Growing Facebook Pages: Shrek, TV, Zynga, Rihanna, Wikileaks and Cristiano Ronaldo
• Adopt, Care for a Virtual Child, Donate with UNICEF’s New Facebook App
• Facebook’s Top 10 Status Update Trends of 2010 Reflect Its Global Youth
• PostPost Turns Facebook Links into a Socially Curated Custom Newspaper
• Facebook’s Performance Ad Rates In Key Markets: A Couple Surprises
• Facebook for Android v1.5 Mobile App Finally Gives Users Chat and Push Notifications

Wednesday, December 15th, 2010

• Phrases Makes a Full Comeback on This Week’s List of Fastest-Growing Facebook Apps by DAU
• Facebook’s Instant Personalization Improves Suggestions on Clicker Online TV Recommendations
• Highlights This Week from the Inside Network Job Board: Ubisoft, Pileated Pictures, & More
• Facebook’s Zuckerberg Named Time Person of the Year — New Stats Emerge
• Wowd Launches Web Version of its Facebook News Feed Client
• Facebook to Use Facial Recognition to Provide Photo Tag Suggestions

Thursday, December 16th, 2010

• Buddy Media University Will Reduce Support Costs by Training Page Management Clients
• CVS Express Photo App Offers 1-Hour Printing and Pickup for Facebook Photos
• Facebook Accidentally Pushes New Page Layout, Page Accounts, and Removes Landing Tabs
• Facebook’s New User Registration Tool for Websites: Implementation Details and Impact
• Facebook Memories Shows Users a Year by Year Summary of their Activity
• Last Chance for Early Registration for Inside Social Apps InFocus 2011 – January 25th in San Francisco

Friday, December 17th, 2010

• Wildfire Launches Social Media Measurement Tool
• Christmas Titles Show Up on This Week’s List of Emerging Facebook Apps
• 2010: The Year Facebook Passed $1 Billion, and Maybe $2 Billion, in Revenue
• Platform Update: Change Log, Third-Party Unique IDs, Deprecations
• Facebook Roundup: Acquisitions, Rutherford, Zuckerberg, Netflix, Privacy Office, Microsoft, Oodle and Buddy Media

Saturday, December 18th, 2010

• Platforms, Privacy and Pandora’s Box

Zynga Partners with Dr. Dre — Social game developer Zynga has announced it’s first in-game music partnership today. Mafia Wars players will now be able to view the music video “Kush,” featuring Snoop Dogg and Akon, a single from the upcoming album Detox. Additionally, users will be able to collect limited edition Dr. Dre virtual items and experience music content from the new “Hustlin’ wit Dre” portion of the game. Players will also be able to view an exclusive video message from Dr. Dre and become eligible to win signed Beats By Dr. Dre headphones and a signed copy of the upcoming CD.

Happy Island Comes to Bing — Sibblingz has announced that it is bringing the social title, Happy Island to the Microsoft search platform Bing. Users who play the new Bing version will be able to play through the first few levels of the game without any need to sign in, and will then have the option to do so using Facebook Connect. To add to this, CrowdStar is said to be releasing a “search integrated gaming enhancement” mini-game that will allow players to earn in-game rewards on both the Bing and Facebook versions.

Frima Studio Uses Rock Paper Sumo for Charity — Quebec-based Frima Studio has announced that its Facebook title, Rock Paper Sumo will be donating 100% of proceeds earned through marked, in-game items to Child’s Play 2010. The items come in the form of Child’s Play-themed sumo armor pieces (seven in total) that can be purchased individually for anywhere from $0.49 to $1.49, or in a pack for $5.

EA Cuts Prices to iDevice Titles for the Holidays — According to listing on Touch Arcade, Electronic Arts has slashed the prices of its iDevice titles for the holidays to $0.99. Perhaps this presages a bigger move towards the now-burgeoning free-to-play business model?

Pocket Gems Lands $5 Million in Funding — Mobile social developer Pocket Gems has announced the securing of $5 million in growth financing in an investment round led by Sequoia Capital. The funding is slated to be used to fund the expansion of the company’s engineering team to “continue to drive the evolution of mobile entertainment.” The company has also stated that it will be expanding to the Android platform.

BOKU Announces Partnership with Gumtree — Mobile payments company BOKU has announced a new partnership with the UK’s Gumtree.com, allowing users to pay for the online classified listings with their mobile devices. Gumtree spans six countries, including the UK, Ireland, Poland, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa.

Kobe Bryant Coming to Social Games — According to EngageDigital, 6 Waves has announced a partnership with Endemol USA and is planning on bringing basketball star Kobe Bryant to social gaming. Thus far, the game is said to be for the Facebook platform (as well as other social networks and gaming sites) and will be the first social title centered around a “global” celebrity. Bryant will also be involved in the game’s creative process.

Unreal Dev Kit Comes to iOS — Epic Games is releasing its Unreal Development Kit to the public this week, says The Wall Street Journal. However, this free-to-download version is tailored specifically for bringing high-quality visuals and functionality to the iOS. Free though it may be, developers that wish to sell apps that use the tools will have to pay a $99 licensing fee and 25% royalties after the first $5,000 in sales.

Booyah has made a series of changes to its hit Facebook game Nightclub City, with the overall goal of letting users play more and create a wider variety of virtual clubs.

The company is removing Energy, a game mechanic it added in late October that, similar to what you’ll see in games like FrontierVille and It Girl, made all activities cost either time or money. Once a player had used up their Energy for the day, they either had to buy more or wait to recoup their virtual strength. The game grew to a peak of more than 8.58 million monthly active users and 1.27 million daily actives by the middle of December, according to our AppData tracking service, but it has since fallen to 4.92 million MAU and 576,000 DAU. The decline happened before Energy was introduced, but the mechanic hasn’t helped boost traffic numbers.

As social gamers play longer and longer sessions, we’re interested to see if more developers cut back on energy-type limitations.

The other big change — and one that could send those numbers back up — is an expansion of the club concept. Up until this point, you could only have one main club in a given virtual city location. Now you can add an additional one. Each new club will start with a zero rating, and you’ll need to work your way up to five stars. But, with more locations you can through multiple parties at once, allowing you to make more virtual money more quickly.

Nightclub City has had a strong lineup of songs for its soundtrack since it launched in late April — to the degree that it’s also releasing a compilation album on iTunes today — but it’s also been adding bigger names in entertainment, too. Country star Keith Urban provided five tracks from his new album to go along with the game’s addition of a Western theme earlier this month, and in a move beyond music, the new Tron movie also has its own venue. Users can watch trailers for the movie, and the accompanying video game, and gain access to more items.

Booyah head of communications David Diaz tells us that promotions have already generated 2 million Likes on Facebook. Look for more big-name entertainers to come to the game in the first quarter of next year — as well as more products from the company.

We named Nightclub City the #1 new title of 2010, back in the middle of the year (we’ll be providing our year-end take on the industry later this month). The changes today appear to point the game in the right direction, and we’ll be watching for the results.

Paradise Life is a new Facebook social game released by Icebreak Games, developers of the successful Cafe Life. The new title does an effective job of reverse engineering the mechanics that have made FrontierVille and now CityVille into hits, but with small additions that should help make the game do well in its own right.

You start off on a small island teeming with trees, plants, and debris to clean up. There are fish to catch, grass, plants and rocks to clear out, as well as trees to chop for lumber and various kinds of trash. In the process of clearing out your land, you sometimes run into wild animals that require chasing off before you can continue clear-cutting your island.

Apart from those island game features, the basics of Paradise Life boil down to farming. You have crops to plant and harvest, and can nurture animals and trees, consuming energy for every action.  Both income and experience points come from performing these actions, as well as doingquests.

The building mechanics that are now standard to many sims are also present, with the completion of some buildings tied to special items gifted by friends or bought with “shells”, the premium currency in Paradise Life that can only be purchased with Facebook credits.

The social aspect of Paradise Life are also fully fleshed out, with a parallel leveling system fueled by “Favor”, points of which are collected when you visit neighbors and help out around their islands. You can also “hire” a neighbor to complete tasks on your farm, with the amount of work they do determined by favor levels.

There are also the traditional social mechanics of sending or trading gift items with friends to complete buildings and item sets.  For now, Paradise Life is also saturated with pop-ups asking you to publish whatever action you just performed.

Additional features make Paradise Life truly feel like an island-based version of FrontierVille. Debris and wild plants and trees continue to appear randomly as you play, requiring you to expend energy removing them on a daily basis. You also have a chance of uncovering special “collection” items while harvesting or clearing out your land. If you manage to gather all pieces of a collection item “set”, then you get an extra bonus consisting of resources and a special decorative item. If you’re out of energy, you can also buy energy with “food points” that are earned when you collect crops and fruit.

One FrontierVille-inspired feature that hasn’t appeared in many games since is the family. In Paradise Life’s menu bar is an option to view “My Family”, which shows a family tree with empty spots for a spouse and some children.  Of course, this mechanic originally appeared in the SNES title Harvest Moon, which allows you to find a mate to help out around the farm and eventually produce offspring, who also grow up to assist in the daily chores.

The look of Paradise Life is very much cute, simple, and colorful. The graphics give a bright, warm feeling to the game, and nothing looks out of place. There don’t seem to be any noticeable issues with the game, apart from it being sometimes difficult to click on certain items when you are doing a series of actions.

Altogether, Paradise Life has made many improvements to now-standard farming and island mechanics game without becoming overly complex or hard to learn. So far it’s doing well, having picked up 254,121 monthly active users since launching in late November.

Gaia Online’s new Facebook offering, Monster Galaxy gained three times as many new players as any other game on this week’s AppData list of emerging Facebook games, defined as those still under a million monthly active users. Like last week, the rest of the list is dominated by casual titles:

	Name	MAU	Gain	Gain,%
1.	Monster Galaxy	848,868	+725,565	+588%
2.	Crazy Cabbie	522,543	+263,475	+102%
3.	超級職場 — 超人氣！免費休閒養成遊戲！	618,732	+214,267	+53%
4.	Trial Madness 2	306,942	+203,931	+198%
5.	Ninjas Rising	629,361	+171,794	+38%
6.	Galaxy X	419,924	+165,676	+65%
7.	Paradise Life	254,121	+164,306	+183%
8.	Downhill Snowboard	395,052	+164,214	+71%
9.	SNSplus	249,044	+152,307	+157%
10.	Bricks Breaking	337,888	+151,389	+81%
11.	Bouncing Balls	363,508	+147,169	+68%
12.	Hero	338,615	+145,067	+75%
13.	Happy Hospital	882,984	+131,356	+17%
14.	Pool Master 2	641,026	+127,071	+25%
15.	Big Business	166,317	+121,645	+272%
16.	Tavla	322,125	+119,932	+59%
17.	Puzzle Saga	765,760	+107,773	+16%
18.	tko-indonesia	298,976	+104,985	+54%
19.	David Guetta, Play with it!	304,010	+103,305	+51%
20.	Friend Pairs	423,420	+100,357	+31%

Judging from this list alone, Facebook gamers are growing less entranced by what we typically define as social games. Monster Galaxy goes very light on the paid, time-based mechanics that define other Facebook games, a statement that’s also true of the casual games.

Of course, one week does not make a trend, and typical games that are already over a million MAU are still doing quite well. We may also see lower growth for more typical titles over the holidays, due to different use patterns on Facebook.

As for the casual titles, there are eight to find between Crazy Cabbie and Tavla, the latter of which is a Turkish-language dice-based game.

At number three, 超級職場 — 超人氣！免費休閒養成遊戲！ is a Chinese-language game about being an office worker; it also fits broadly into our casual game definition, as it includes some mini-games. Although not elaborate, it’s an interesting title for anyone able to understand the language to glance through.

Digital Chocolate’s Ninjas Rising is finally growing — it’s the last of the company’s reskins to start moving toward a million MAU. And finally, Galaxy X by StudioEx is doing quite well with its simple ballistic combat system, which is common in several Asian games; we previewed the game in early November.

Over the past year, social mobile developer TeamLava has taken Facebook game concepts and translated them over to the iPhone and iPad to create its “Story” series of social games. A fifth title has launched this week by the name of Treasure Story. Essentially a mobile version of the Facebook games Treasure Madness and Treasure Isle, the new game falls hot on the heels of the barely week and a half old Bakery Story.

The premise is basic enough: players are on an island. There is treasure on the island. Treasure is good. Divided up into grid spaces, players tap each square to dig up whatever is hidden beneath. Each tap consumes a set amount of slowly recharging energy, depending on what is on the square (sand, grass, trees, etc.), and coin, food, or treasure will be rewarded, along with experience. As one might expect, each of the treasures are part of a set, that can be redeemed, once complete, for a large sum of in-game currency and experience.

As players complete islands (also granting experience), new ones will unlock, and it’s rinse and repeat. So what does one do from here?

This is where some Treasure Isle “inspiration” comes into play, as players can use their hard-earned income to decorate their very own virtual island. From palm trees to animals, players can use both in-game and virtual currency to create the island they see fit. Sadly, in this initial version of Treasure Story, the number of decorative items is extraordinarily low and most cost virtual currency. That said, décor is a huge part of TeamLava’s story games, so more will almost certainly be more available in upcoming iterations.

Also on the island, and also like in Treasure Isle, players can cook their own food on a pair of fire pits. This food will act like the food dug up on islands, and can be used to recharge small portions of energy. With that in mind, any cooking food works with the typical farming rules, in that if the player does not return in time to claim it, it will spoil. While players start with two fire pits, more will unlock as they level up.

Socially, Treasure Story implements the same mechanics it has had in all four of its past Story apps. This means that players can visit other random players’ virtual islands and “tend” to their decorations, granting bonus experience and coins. Of course, this works both ways, as users that tend to random community members will earn “Star Rating.” The higher this rating, the higher the user will appear in the social menu that displays random users.

Also like previous titles, players can use a Storm8 ID or Facebook Connect to invite friends as neighbors which allows for gifting and more tending opportunities for their island. And photos of the game can be taken at any time and posted to Facebook.

So what’s different about Treasure Story? Not much. Other than the social aspects and extra fire pits upon leveling, the only other change is simplification. Unlike either Treasure Isle or Treasure Madness, there are no mini-games to play, no gems to collect, no bugs to spray, nor any rocks to blow up. Whether or not this is a bad thing is subject to interpretation. None of the Story titles have been very complicated, and the tapping of island tiles to find treasure is, oddly, addictive; and since it’s mobile, it’s easier sit down and play for a few minutes.

Like all games, this will likely get old, but the big issue here has nothing to do with what features it doesn’t reuse, but the concept as a whole. TeamLava has had significant successes by deriving features from popular Facebook titles. In many cases, the differences have been small, and have only become smaller with its past two applications.

But love it or hate it, TeamLava is succeeding with this strategy, and there’s little doubt that Treasure Story will not follow in the footsteps of its predecessors. With its use of the same social mechanics that helped make TeamLava’s past titles popular, and history on its side, expect to see this new title rise in the top app lists in the very near future.