Traditional Video Game Titles And Tie-Ins Top This Week’s List Of Emerging Facebook Games
Auto Hustle tops our list of top 20 emerging Facebook games this week just two weeks after its official launch on Facebook and only one week after debuting on our weekly rankings. Farther down the list, Uno Boost keeps its number two spot for the second week running while the Chinese language version of Boss Vegas classes out of our rankings, having broken the 1 million monthly active user mark.
We got closer looks at both N.O.V.A. Elite and UFC Undisputed Fight Nation in the past weeks, giving us an idea of how traditional video game genres and franchises are fairing as they try to make the jump to social games. We can also see traditional gaming influences in Auto Hustle and Uno Boost, as the former is a Grand Theft Auto homage and the latter got a lot of positive critical reception from console gamers when it came to Xbox Live in 2006.
Top Gainers This Week – Games
| Name | MAU | Gain | Gain,% | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. | 466,423 | +303,317 | +186% | |
| 2. | 984,731 | +180,864 | +22% | |
| 3. | 295,450 | +154,089 | +109% | |
| 4. | 726,841 | +148,170 | +26% | |
| 5. | 269,259 | +146,795 | +120% | |
| 6. | 761,727 | +146,213 | +24% | |
| 7. | 230,443 | +144,074 | +167% | |
| 8. | 901,015 | +138,744 | +18% | |
| 9. | 878,055 | +133,021 | +18% | |
| 10. | 296,922 | +112,515 | +61% | |
| 11. | 396,045 | +104,686 | +36% | |
| 12. | 111,087 | +100,812 | +981% | |
| 13. | 215,463 | +97,707 | +83% | |
| 14. | 358,518 | +90,151 | +34% | |
| 15. | 425,604 | +85,987 | +25% | |
| 16. | 219,024 | +82,301 | +60% | |
| 17. | 560,492 | +80,206 | +17% | |
| 18. | 663,016 | +79,307 | +14% | |
| 19. | 367,128 | +78,326 | +27% | |
| 20. | 388,782 | +78,131 | +25% |
In the case of N.O.V.A., developer Gameloft went with a high end Unity-programmed first person shooter in the tradition of PC games Doom and Unreal Tournament. The game has some steep system requirements that make us wonder what sort of user the developer hopes to acquire, as players with computers that could run N.O.V.A. probably already have access to more sophisticated FPS games than what any Facebook variation has to offer.

Meanwhile, UFC Undisputed Fight Nation seems to be a successful attempt by video game publisher THQ to port its existing branded sports title to the social game experience with a Mafia Wars-style approach to organizing gameplay loops around training and fighting in the Ultimate Fighting Championship circuit. The game doubly benefits from the existing fan base for the THQ console games within the franchise and from the UFC fan base on Facebook.

All data in this post comes from our traffic tracking service, AppData. Stay tuned for our look at the top weekly gainers by daily active users on Wednesday, and the top emerging apps on Friday.



May 7th, 2011 at 3:51 pm
Your DAUs are actually MAUs. Makes a huge difference.
May 9th, 2011 at 8:47 am
Copy-paste error in the chart title, only — thanks for the catch :)
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