Having made made its gaming presence felt on Facebook over the last year while continuing to build on its long-time mobile app business, Digital Chocolate has announced today that it has raised a $12 million round of funding led by Intel Capital.

Starting off at 709,000 monthly active users and 94,000 daily active users this time last year, it has since grown to a peak of nearly 29 million MAU and 4.23 million DAU in the middle of last December. But, the developer has dropped down since then, falling gradually by this month to 17.6 million MAU and 2.91 million DAU as of the past few days. Millionaire City, by far its biggest hit on Facebook — and , appears to be pretty stable, while the next four top games have continued to drop.

		Name	MAU		DAU
1.		Millionaire City	12,234,902		2,441,802
2.		MMA Pro Fighter	1,292,251		131,879
3.		Vegas City	1,289,284		156,270
4.		Epic Fighters	990,704		54,935
5.		Island God	623,301		49,780

Whatever has been happening in the last few months, it’s still twelfth and ninth largest of all developers on the platform going by MAU and DAU rankings, according to AppData, our tracking service for top apps and developers on Facebook, and fifth among social gaming companies by both counts.

Intel Capital, the venture arm of the semiconductor giant doesn’t mind investing in later stage, but another interesting angle is the relatively small amount. Social gaming market leader Zynga just raised up $500 million on a $1 billion valuation according to a variety of financial publications, and it has considered going public at various points — in 2012, according to some of the reports. Younger mobile and social gaming competitors have meanwhile sold already, including Playfish, Playdom and Ngmoco for hundreds of millions of dollars apiece.

Rumors have gone around social gaming circles suggesting that the company has also looked to sell, but this new round indicates that’s not happening quite yet at least.A wide number of well-known firms have invested in the company since it was founded in 2003. Before this fourth round of funding, it also has Chengwei Ventures, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Sequoia Capital, Sutter Hill Ventures, Bridgescale Partners, Outlook Ventures, Montagu Newhall Associates, DN Capital, Glynn Capital Management, and CHI Capital on board. Venture investments total around $44 million, along with a line of credit in the millions that Digital Chocolate announced with Bridge Bank last June.

In November of 2009, Electronic Arts Inc. acquired Playfish, a leading creator of social network games such as Restaurant City and Pet Society, with an eye on strengthening EA Interactive, a division focused on web and mobile. Adam Gutterman (previously of Three Rings Design) was brought on in August 2010 and he took Monopoly Millionaires to market on Facebook. We spoke to him about the challenges of bringing a board game to the social game space.

Inside Social Games: Tell us something about yourself and Playfish / Hasbro / EA plans for social games.

Adam Gutterman:I am a Producer here at Playfish and I am the Producer for Monopoly Millionaires. Hasbro and EA partnered together for bringing quite a few of Hasbro titles to the video game playspace and as you know, EA acquired Playfish. EA wants to bring their IPs and titles such as Madden to the social gaming world and Monopoly, being one of Hasbro’s most storied and beloved board games was chosen to be the first.

ISG: What were the challenges in bringing a competitive board game like Monopoly to the social gaming space?

AG: Well, as you mentioned, it’s competitive. Someone wins and others lose. That’s the first challenge. Secondly, in most board games, there is a defined beginning, middle and end; and thirdly, most board games are limited to a small number of players; from two to perhaps eight. To get a game like Monopoly to work as a social game, we kept the things that are familiar and recognizable to game of Monopoly; the entire classic board, the movers, the core mechanics of moving, collecting and building. Then we had to add features to make it a cooperative social game.

ISG: So what did you do to make Monopoly into a social game, and why would players want to get friends to play Monopoly Millionaires with them?

AG: In Monopoly Millionaires, everyone has their own board to build and express themselves with, and the core mechanic in the game is to visit other boards. You have to visit other boards in order to collect property cards to build on your own board. Social exchange also draws people to visit each other, and we let you know who’s come by to visit. For example, if I see that Drew has come by to roll on my board, I’ll want to go back to roll on his. Apart from that, there are also quests to roll on other boards and what we call “treats” – little piles of treasures such as gold, extra rolls and property cards that spawn randomly on boards that you collect if you land on the space.

ISG: What’s with these traps that suck Monopoly money from you? All that has done for me is to let me know whose board I’m not visiting.

AG: (laughs) We thought to put some competitive aspects into the game, and as you’ve expressed and per other player feedback received, traps are going to be re-imagined and will re-appear in a different fashion. Along with the re-imagined traps, we will also have player placed treats which will help attract players to your board.

ISG: What is the goal of Monopoly Millionaires?

AG: The key word is Millionaires. The goal is to acquire wealth, to be a real estate magnate, to be the one with the most popular boards and to do that, you want to attract players to your board. I’ll say it again; the core mechanic of Monopoly Millionaires is visiting your friends. In most social games, visiting your friends is a side mechanic. I want to go on record as the first to make that our core mechanic.

ISG:  What plans do you have for players to make their boards attractive and to attract players to Monopoly Millionaires?

AG:We will be expanding missions, and provide a way to build out the board. The center of the board right now is a blank canvas. We’ve got some decorations, but will have ways to expand the hotels, to build attractions and generate more revenue. As mentioned we will re-imagine the traps and provide player placed treats. We are not done designing the board yet. There are 99 levels right now, and that’s many, many weeks of play.

With a variety of somewhat successful sports gaming titles on Facebook, including EA’s FIFA and Madden Superstars, Playdom’s Bola and ESPNU College Town, and Nordeus’ Top Eleven Football Manager, the National Basketball Association is making its own move to attract Facebook users. Released about a week ago, the NBA and developer Lionside have created a new Facebook title by the name of NBA Legends.

It focuses more on developing the individual player than many other sports games we’ve seen, removing management elements, seen in most Facebook sports titles, such as recruiting and trading players. Although well put together, with a good amount of social interaction, the title suffers mostly from a lack of pizzazz and style. Other than the use of official NBA teams, players, and logos, there’s just nothing terribly special about this app.

Players start out as an NBA rookie, with the idea being to work one’s way up the leaderboards to a Legend status. In order to do so, players utilize a Game Credits(energy) resource to play games and perform drills in order to improve the overall performance of the “team.” Truth is though, there’s not much of a team, as the player really only sees their avatar, with the only control over the rest of the team being who plays what position in the starting line up.

Unfortunately, there doesn’t appear to be any recruitment elements as with other sports games, but likely that decision is made because all of the teams are made up of the actual NBA players. That said, not all of the game’s features are available right from the start. Rather than level, many features are gated via the in-game mission system, requiring users to complete a specific mission before something unlocks. The downside, is that many missions can take a while (several hours), making unlocking everything a bit slow at first. Additionally, one cannot see future missions — only the ones currently assigned, thus there is no way to know when a new feature will be unlocked.

One of the things that can slow players down are drills. These are basic RPG-style actions that can be done to improve a variety of player statistics (like outside shooting) over the course of a few minutes up to a day. There’s nothing particularly extravagant about these other than that they enhance specific offensive or defensive stats, but these do play a role in the social play.

Users can actually perform team drills with both friends that play and non-player characters on the actual NBA team. These drills only take a few seconds, but allow for users to gain a stat called “Chemistry.” Draining over time, higher chemistry enhances the performance within games. Moreover, performing drills with friends will help boost their player stats as well which comes in the form of a blue basketball that must be collected by the friend.

While on the topic of friend interaction, players can also taunt one another. This is more than just a little bit of bragging, but will actually drain, and steal, their Chemistry over the course of a few hours by placing a foam finger in their virtual space. It appears to be in place to act as a means to mitigate the natural decline of Chemistry, but if one has vindictive friends, may be more trouble to use than its worth. That said, the taunted player can remove the taunt upon their return to the game and prevent further Chemistry draining.

As for other minor social elements, invited Facebook friends act as “fans” in game as well. Once unlocked, players will receive endorsements that produce periodic income, with more becoming available with more friends. Other than this, the game has more standard social mechanics such as gifting and wall posts (e.g. bragging/sharing when players win a game).

As for the games themselves, these are all automated in a rather, unspectacular, simulation with the team holding the better stats typically winning. There are a few ways to augment these results though. The first is players can use the money they earn from games to purchase special, consumable, enhancements that will boost a stat (like shooting) for the duration of that game. In addition to these, players can also eventually purchase both uniforms for their avatar and décor for their virtual home court. Both of these will also boost various player stats on a more permanent basis.

Players play against actual users of a comparable level and can do so in both exhibition or season matches. In the former, the games are picked by the player, but the latter will put users through a mock season, playing users that correspond to teams that the game picks out. Technically speaking, there doesn’t appear to be much of difference, but the season mode does have an added goal of trying to make it to the NBA Finals.

The biggest problem with NBA Legends is that the game just doesn’t feel all that exciting. Everything it does is an element that’s been done before, and feels like it was implemented because it had worked before. The game just plays it safe, and other than having the official NBA brands, offers nothing terribly unique or special. At most, the features revolving around Chemistry are interesting, but even then, similar mechanics where player stats drop due to inactivity is nothing new either.

On the monetization front, NBA Legends is fairly standard. Consisting only of items that cost virtual currency (Lion Bucks) and the ability to add the energy resource (Game Credits) when they run out. Other than these, players can replay a match they lost at the cost of virtual currency — at least in the season mode — as what appears to be a sort of “redo.”

In the end, NBA Legends may be an official NBA game, but there’s just nothing significantly new that it brings to the table. It is well put together, and has a few interesting perks here and there, but just holds no style of its own. All the same, the application is very new and will likely evolve over time; hopefully, for the better.

Another week of huge gains for Ravenwood Fair has gone by with the game acquiring 547,293 new players. According to AppData, our tracking service for analyzing the top applications on Facebook, Ravenwood Fair has now crossed 10 million monthly active users and is well on its way to break into the top 10 games on Facebook. LOLapps have clearly been devoting a lot of resources to the game, keeping it stocked with new items to buy and features to try out.

Diner Dash is another game we have covered extensively here on Inside Social Games. The popular time management restaurant sim also gained over 500,000 new players this week and is about ready to cross over the 1 million MAU mark. Crowdstar’s It Girl is still going strong, showing a 2% gain this week with another 201,000 players. Dog Show Friends is also continuing to gain traction in the number 12 position on our list; you can see our full review of the Purina and NBC branded game here.

Name MAU Gain Gain,% 1. Ravenwood Fair 10,025,333 +547,293 +6% 2. Diner Dash 930,452 +511,875 +122% 3. Okey Oyna 539,012 +426,343 +378% 4. Birthday Cards 6,126,227 +302,283 +5% 5. Ninja Saga 5,281,928 +242,128 +5% 6. Dragons of Atlantis 2,461,854 +236,086 +11% 7. It Girl 8,972,742 +201,194 +2% 8. Big Business 2,260,314 +158,746 +8% 9. Salon Street 1,120,660 +153,723 +16% 10. Glory of Rome 881,677 +153,584 +21% 11. Fantasy Kingdoms 591,167 +152,705 +35% 12. Dog Show Friends 1,015,740 +149,801 +17% 13. Happy Hospital 2,353,665 +149,743 +7% 14. Texas HoldEm Poker 38,173,008 +142,667 +0.38% 15. Zoo World 5,887,452 +137,576 +2% 16. Backyard Monsters 3,686,753 +130,982 +4% 17. Draw My Thing 1,364,015 +127,691 +10% 18. Okey Oyna 416,164 +125,421 +43% 19. ESPNU College Town 1,667,584 +117,529 +8% 20. Komşu Çiftlik 2,337,415 +106,791 +5%

Backyard Monsters is the oddly compelling strategy game that we reviewed last July. Since its release, Casual Collective have been updating Backyard Monsters and improving upon some of the issues we pointed out last summer. Backyard Monsters has continued to slowly grow and is at its peak MAU of 3,686,753. Backyard Monsters has an above average retention rate, with 24-26% of its monthly players enjoying the game each day. If the game monetizes well, Backyard Monsters could be bringing in a nice chunk of change for Casual Collective. We certainly support game developers who aim to bring something new to Facebook strategy games for a core audience other than Evony clones.

Wooga’s Happy Hospital is faring well on this week’s list of fastest-growing Facebook games as well, although its growth has been very slow. The over-the-top cutesy art style of this hospital sim makes for a whimsical experience that would probably cause the game to spread like wildfire if the gameplay wasn’t so simple (as we noted last November). Players take care of and decorate their own hospital comprised of compartmentalized rooms (much like Hotel City) and tend to pet patients that come in needing assistance with creative ailments. Players have to micromanage each step of the curing process, whether it is by waiting for the step to complete, powering it with batteries, or waking up their hospital staff by providing them coffee. Happy Hospital is now over 2.3 million MAU, but its daily active users is still plodding along at 278,000.

The data in this post comes via AppData, our data service tracking growth and trends across the Facebook platform.

Tami Baribeau is Senior Community Manager at ZipZapPlay and a contributor to Inside Social Games.

Though last year had a wide range of soccer-based Facebook apps around the time of the World Cup, a younger app by the name of Football Life is coming late to the game. Developed by 109studio, this soccer title takes a role-playing approach to the sport. First appearing on our emerging apps list earlier this month, the game now hosts north of 209,000 monthly active users but a rather low daily active user count of around 15,000.

A sort of sports RPG that consists of primarily training teams and playing matches, Football Life is filled with many of the standards one might find in a mafia-style RPG. Though clean-looking and holding a decent production value, the game suffers from a lack in both depth and clarity. It’s an issue that is ironic considering that elements that cause the former involve the game telling the player exactly what to do. Moreover, the title lacks any sense of success or progress, which likely contributes most to the low DAU count.

Players are put in charge of their own soccer team, made up of random non-player characters. The objective, in theory anyway, is to build up one’s team so they can be at the top of application leaderboards. Using energy as a resource, the idea is to train one’s team in areas such as speed, strength, creativity, and so on, in order to defeat other random users’ teams.

In terms of the training, there are eight different aspects to build upon. Each stat increases match performance in some way, but the differences feel rather negligible, at best (more on that in a bit). Players click a button to “train” in a text-based quest fashion, and a percentage of “mastery” increases. Once it is at 100%, the level of the skill increases, and so does the performance of the team. It’s pretty mundane, though, as it all boils down to repeatedly clicking a button, and unlike the noted mafia-style RPGs, there’s no interesting story, of any kind, or significant reward, to go along with it.

In addition to these qualms, the game literally tells the player what they need to level up in terms making the team stronger with a giant “Recommended” tag (or, if users desire, they can follow quests that take you right to other needed stats). This isn’t a bad thing, but the training is mindless enough as it is. The problem stems from the fact that the information about each statistic’s benefit is nothing more than an arbitrary statement about what it sort of does. With this lack of information, the player isn’t able to make educated decisions on how to level up their team the way they see fit.

Not that leveling up seems to mean much either, as there doesn’t ever feel like there is any progression. Yes, the player levels up number-wise, and they even do so very quickly, but no matter how much training was done, we never once won a match. Not one! More than anything else, this is likely the biggest cause to the game’s low DAU. Who wants to play a game where they never win?

There is no control over the matches either. All users do is sit back and watch it play out automatically. Moreover, even when the game ended in a draw, we still lost. With each incident of this, there was a small “P” icon by the winner, so we’re assuming that means we lost in penalty kicks. Of course, the game doesn’t tell anyone that.

There are currently three types of matches: Quick, Cup, and League. The first allows users to just play a quick one on one game, while the second allows users to enter a tournament ranging from four to 32 teams. Don’t worry though, all the user has to do is enter, and the rest is played out in their absence. As for League, this appears to run in a similar fashion to Cup mode. The only notable differences between the three, however, appear to be the amount of cash earned at the end.

Unfortunately, cash is pretty useless too as the only thing that seems available for purchase are items that cost Facebook Credits or the game’s virtual currency. To top that off, the usefulness of these items remains unknown. Players can purchase various colored soccer balls, that apparently boost… something, but lord knows what that is. They have to be important for something, as once users hit level 12, they can build a building that periodically produces them (Mafia Wars style) with the help of friends.

As for other social mechanics, players can invite friends to play on one another’s teams, but once again, the benefit remains vague, at best. Thus far, there doesn’t appear to be much visible benefit for doing so, and the only other plus to having friends play is being able to gift each other energy or visit them and “help” out their team for a daily energy reward.

Regarding any final hopes for redemption, there is one interesting mechanic that involves players finding random biography books. When opened, they cycle through different bios, casino-slots-style, with one randomly being found. Though we didn’t “win” any, it looks like some of those bios might be actual soccer players. That in mind, the bio won can be applied to a user’s players to boost their individual statistics.

In the end, Football Life looks decent, but is ultimately shallow with no goals for the user to truly reach. Players spend tremendous amounts of time repeating the same mundane tasks in order to improve upon something with negligible and unclear benefits. Even when the game is “clear” it really only boils down to it explicitly saying “do this” or “do that” rather than giving the player enough information to make their own educated decisions. All that said, the developers do state that the app is still in a “pre-beta” state, so significant changes may be on the way in the near future.

Here are all the latest headlines from around Inside Network.

Inside Mobile Apps

Tracking the convergence of mobile apps, social platforms, and virtual goods.

Sunday, February 13th, 2011

• Motorola Scoops Up Stealth Mobile Enterprise Startup 3LM Well Before Launch

Monday, February 14th, 2011

• Microsoft Showcases a Kinect-Windows Phone Integration That May Entice Game Developers

Tuesday, February 15th, 2011

• Free Trials Fuel Paid App Downloads on Windows Phone
• Apple’s App Store Now Supports Subscriptions For Media Publishers
• Inside Network Happy Hour Today — Washington DC and Barcelona
• Facebook Makes Its Presence More Deeply Felt Among Smart and Feature Phones

Wednesday, February 16th, 2011

• Arkadium & Backflip Studios Expand Mahjongg Dimensions to iOS
• Four Android Developers to Check Out From Mobile World Congress

Thursday, February 17th, 2011

• MetroGames Ports Typing Maniac to iPhone
• New Hires in Mobile Gaming: Booyah, EA Mobile, Gameloft & More

Friday, February 18th, 2011

• Gameloft Goes Adventuring on iOS with Sacred Odyssey: Rise of Ayden
• OpenFeint, Scoreloop Extend Their Reach With Carrier Deals, New Platform Products
• Mobile App Roundup: Itsmy, Game Closure, Verizon iPhone Sales, and More

Inside Social Games

Covering all the latest developments at the intersection of games and social platforms.

Monday, February 14th, 2011

• Sim Games Perform Well on This Week’s List of Fastest-Growing Facebook Games by MAU
• Top Social Games Get Affectionate For Valentine’s Day

Tuesday, February 15th, 2011

• Inside Network Happy Hour Today — Washington DC and Barcelona
• Two of Playfish’s Cofounders Are Leaving Their Positions at EA
• TrialPay Partners With Facebook to Bring DealSpot In-Game Offers to Developers Using Credits

Wednesday, February 16th, 2011

• FrontierVille and Chinese Games Lead This Week’s List of Fastest-Growing Facebook Games by DAU
• Blue Fang Brings Iconic The Oregon Trail Title to Facebook
• Highlights This Week from the Inside Network Job Board: NaturalMotion, Meteor Games, Casual Collective, & More
• Konami and Parature Partner to Provide Real Time Customer Support on Facebook
• Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego? On Facebook, Sort Of

Thursday, February 17th, 2011

• King.com Brings Its Casual Games and Tournament System to Facebook
• 4mm Games, NBC, and Purina Pet Food Bring Dog Show Friends to Facebook
• Supercell Announces Closed Beta of New MMOG, Gunshine
• New Hires in Social Gaming: Booyah, Gaia Online, GamesAnalytics, & More

Friday, February 18th, 2011

• Fantasy Sports, Virtual Spaces, & Racing Meet in Title Town Racing on Facebook
• Smart-Depth: Adding More ‘Game’ to Social Games
• Diner Dash Serves the Competition on This Week’s List of Emerging Facebook Games
• Social Gaming Roundup: New Zynga Funding, SNAP, New Social Gaming Entrants and More

Inside Facebook

Tracking Facebook and the Facebook platform for developers and marketers.

Monday, February 14th, 2011

• Badoo, Yahoo, Games and Love on This Week’s List of Facebook Gainers by MAU
• Valentine’s Day on Facebook: Causes, Flowers, CityVille, Topps and More
• Sponsored Stories Ads: Walk-Through and Marketing Campaign Strategies
• Bug Prevents Facebook Old Page Walls and Iframe Tab Apps From Loading if Logged Out
• Facebook’s Updated Platform Policies: Changes to User IDs, Ad Providers, and Iframe Page Apps

Tuesday, February 15th, 2011

• Inside Network Happy Hour Today — Washington DC and Barcelona
• Featured Facebook Campaigns: Taco Bell, Boeing, Pesek Zman, El Al and Mercedes-Benz
• Facebook Makes Its Presence More Deeply Felt Among Smart and Feature Phones
• TrialPay Partners With Facebook to Bring DealSpot In-Game Offers to Developers Using Credits
• Personera Receives $1.4 Million in Funding to Create Merchandise for Facebook Pages

Wednesday, February 16th, 2011

• Chinese, FrontierVille, Social Statistics and Connect on This Week’s Fastest Growing Facebook Apps by DAU
• With Compliance Deadline Looming, List of Approved Facebook Platform Ad Providers Reaches 43
• Highlights This Week from the Inside Network Job Board: Bulbstorm, Badgeville, W3i, & More
• Facebook Enables New App-generated Requests, Updates Bookmark Count Functionality [Updated]
• Bug Stops Some International Ifram Facebook App Users From Making Purchases With Credits

Thursday, February 17th, 2011

• Facebook Hires and Departures: Ad Leader, Real Estate, Transactions, Marketing and More
• Facebook Career Postings: Singapore, Dublin, Finance and Japan
• Facebook Page Redesign 2011: Marketing Strategies and Best Practices
• Microsoft Releases New Version of Bing Bar Toolbar With Facebook Integration
• Facebook Wins Search-Related Patent for Visual Tags
• Facebook Splits Typeahead Search Results into Categories

Friday, February 18th, 2011

• Valentine’s, Turkey, Video and Games on this Week’s List of Top 20 Emerging Facebook Apps
• Facebook Tests Ad Surveys Asking Users Which Ads They Prefer
• Facebook Adds New Relationship Status Types, but Not to the Ad Tool
• Facebook Roundup: President Obama, Vitrue, Messages, Places, Photos, Events, Causes, Justin Bieber and More

Saturday, February 19th, 2011

• Platform Update: Test Users, Timestamps, Displayed Key/Value Pairs, and Bug Reports

New Zynga Funding — A number of financial publications reported this week that Zynga is raising a large new round of funding. The Wall Street Journal kicked things off on Monday citing sources saying the company is looking to raise around $250 million at a valuation of between $7 billion and $9 billion, following profit of $400 million and total revenue of $850 million last year. Bloomberg then reported that the valuation could be $10 billion, from T. Rowe Price, and Fidelity Investments. Then All Things D and The New York Times reported yesterday that Zynga is finalizing a $500 million round worth $10 billion from those investors and others; the latter publication said the company is considering an initial public offering as soon as 2012, according to sources.

SNAP Interactive Releases Curious Valentine’s Numbers — SNAP Interactive announced some numbers regarding Valentine’s Day virtual items late last week. Based on their Facebook connected AreYouInterested.com, the holiday marked a significant spike in virtual gifting with over 100% more Valentine’s style virtual gifts being purchased in the past month, over the prior, and a 15% increase overall.

Tribeca Film Institute & Ford Foundation Partner to Support New Media — The Tribeca Film Institue and the Ford Foundation‘s JustFilms initiative have entered a partnership and launched the Tribeca Film Institue New Media Fund. The $750,000 fund is said to provide support and funding to film projects that incorporate newer media platforms including video games, mobile apps, social networks, and micro-blogging.

Big Fish Games to Close Treasure Quest — According to Worlds in Motion, Big Fish Games is closing its Facebook title Treasure Quest on March 15th. The game marked the casual developer’s first venture into the social gaming market, but currently only garners around 48,000 MAU.

Nexon Getting into Social & Mobile Games — MapleStory developer, Nexon, is looking to move into making social games for Facebook as well as for mobile, says VentureBeat. In order to differentiate itself, Nexon is looking to hook players through game play that connects users with an online community.

Game Closure Launches Cross-Platform Multiplayer App — According to TechCrunch, Game Closure has launched a new SDK that will allow developers to easily create, host, and deploy HTML5-based, cross-platform multiplayer games. Shown at SSE Labs‘ Demo Day at AOL, the SDK is compatible across iOS, Android, and Facebook apps.

Richard Garriott Plans to Beat Zynga — Richard Garriott and his new startup, Portalarium, is set to release their first title in about a month, and says he’s planning to beat out Zynga, says VentureBeat. Though he has released no specific details about the game, it is noted that it will be released on Facebook, Hi5, and other such networks and will not be a “plagiarized” concept; referring to some of Zynga’s past games.

PlayFirst’s Diner Dash game has come out on top of this week’s list of emerging Facebook games (defined by applications that have less than 1 million monthly active users). This isn’t totally surprising considering it’s a classic title that people will instantly recognize when receiving a viral request, and that the gameplay is likely compelling for those who have played it in the past.

Yet, as we’ve noted before, Diner Dash is a more synchronous title requiring the player to spend more time playing in a session — that hasn’t historically proven out to be a successful model on Facebook, in most cases. According to AppData, our metrics service for analyzing the top apps on Facebook, Diner Dash gained a whopping 770,000 new players in the last week.

Top Gainers This Week – Games

Name MAU Gain Gain,% 1. Diner Dash 842,673 +770,246 +1,063% 2. Okey Oyna 408,955 +308,685 +308% 3. Glory of Rome 859,063 +243,508 +40% 4. Fantasy Kingdoms 563,789 +217,484 +63% 5. Dog Show Friends 987,945 +204,733 +26% 6. Miner Speed 609,798 +164,753 +37% 7. Okey Oyna 415,609 +157,063 +61% 8. My Shops 850,281 +140,590 +20% 9. David Guetta, Play with it! 644,285 +123,209 +24% 10. MyGame 630,604 +107,268 +20% 11. DoubleDown Casino 870,285 +100,137 +13% 12. Mynet Çanak Batak 311,944 +92,690 +42% 13. 蟲蟲特攻隊(虫虫特攻队) 291,397 +90,957 +45% 14. Daily Horoscope 956,312 +84,598 +10% 15. UNO® Boost 864,649 +81,733 +10% 16. Farm Bonuses 665,939 +80,546 +14% 17. IQ Expert 193,802 +77,603 +67% 18. Woozworld 162,808 +74,733 +85% 19. Feevo 162,197 +74,462 +85% 20. Obyo Games 260,687 +71,006 +37%

Fantasy Kingdoms is a fantasy themed farming game by Sneaky Games that launched in March 2010. When we reviewed the game last May, we noted that it was quite similar to other farming simulations, aside from the graphics. In it, players infuse the ground instead of plow, cast spells instead of plant seeds, and earn mana instead of coins. Fantasy Kingdoms peaked in October and December around 725,000 MAU before sinking for a couple of months. It is now seeing a surge of traffic, which is most likely due to marketing (Fantasy Kingdoms is present on both Appstrip and Applifier cross-promo bars). This week saw over 217,000 new players to Fantasy Kingdoms, bringing its current MAU to almost 564,000.

蟲蟲特攻隊(虫虫特攻队) (or Ant Wars) is a highly polished Worms derivative game by Chinese developer Boyaa. Ant Wars is not dissimilar to Playdom’s Wild Ones, in that players make an avatar (in this case, an ant) and matches up in 1 vs. 1 or multiplayer battles. Combat is handled by players aiming and shooting weapons at their opponents, which can be boosted by spending virtual or real currency. Ant Wars launched last August and has been slowly growing ever since. After a growth of 90,000 MAU this week, Ant Wars is now at its peak at a modest 291,000 monthly players.

The data in this post comes via AppData, our data service tracking growth and trends across the Facebook platform.

Tami Baribeau is Senior Community Manager at ZipZapPlay and a contributor to Inside Social Games.

[Editor's note: Veteran social gaming product leader Henric Suuronen shares his thoughts, below, on how to add appealing, in-depth gaming features to social games.]

Social games are often criticized for lacking “real” gameplay mechanics or even missing a game entirely. In some cases this criticism is warranted but more complex games with more advanced game loops rarely have success on Facebook. So can’t social games on Facebook have more game to them?

I believe they can and they should.

If done correctly, including more depth to a game in a smart way can have great effects on retention. The key is to add “Smart-Depth” game features with a few important things in mind:

a. Novice or beginner players should not need to consciously think about the feature until they figure it out or realize it on their own accord.

b. It should not require dexterity or hand-eye-coordination. Strategic thinking with variable solutions and outcomes is best. Compare Tower Bloxx, which requires users to time clicks in rapid progression to score higher, to a game like Angry Birds which has strategic elements but requires less coordination.

c. It should add a new “layer” on the existing game loop not create a separate one.

d. Players should be able to do it on a basic level almost by accident and feel smart for completing or solving the problem.

e. After doing it once and gaining the rewards players will carry on trying to find an even better solution. It is here the greatest retention effects are achieved.

These may sound difficult but are not as complex to implement as you might expect. Take Millionaire City for example; there players will have great fun simply buying houses, decorations and placing them arbitrarily on the map. However soon they will notice, sometimes by accident, that placing a house or decoration strategically will give greater rewards. This gives the player a feeling they are smart which is a strong emotional driver. In addition, the logic of having bonuses based on layout creates several different puzzle games inside the main game loop:

• How to place decorations strategically to have the highest possible house bonus
• How to optimize money generation in limited space
• How to use as little road space as possible

Other examples can be seen in wooga’s Monster World where players get bonus experience and coins from selling crops to Robert the Robot instead of the general market. Zynga’s Bonus Bar adds a light “clicking optimization” game in CityVille and FrontierVille. CityVille also included the area bonus from decorations concept from Millionaire City. While Zynga’s Bonus Bar actually adds a pseudo arcade layer (requiring dexterity) to the game loop I believe the best is strategic, optimization, logic or puzzle type features. These will fit all user segments and have nearly endless variations.

When designing games with broad market appeal on Facebook it is important not to be too light in gameplay or to be too complex. Using the theory of adding smart-depth gameplay you can achieve this goal and get amazing results.

Henric Suuronen is the Head of Studio at Wooga, and previously helped create Millionaire City, MMA Pro Fighter and Tower Bloxx for Digital Chocolate.