An Arabic-language farming simulation joins a slew of pet games at the top of this week’s list of emerging Facebook games while a few familiar favorites maintain steady growth patterns that may well graduate them from this list by next week.

At number 8, The Sims Social stands as an example of pre-release hype paying off. Many social game developers are still struggling to determine how much energy should be spent on announcing a game before release, with many believe it to be a waste of resources and others claiming that it puts upcoming games at a tactical disadvantage if a rival developer releases a copycat game first. The latter point is the reason EA says it will not be disclosing upcoming PopCap Games social and mobile releases in its earnings reports; although we’ve observed that being first doesn’t necessarily mean a game wins the larger audience. The Sims Social is also probably shielded from copycats by its recognizable brand.

Top Gainers This Week – Games

Name MAU Gain Gain,% 1.  المزرعة السعيدة 628,703 +443,249 +239% 2.  Animal Party 592,934 +302,516 +104% 3.  แฮปปี้เบบี้ 809,295 +258,398 +47% 4.  Perfect Getaway 731,575 +254,124 +53% 5.  Pet Tales 808,111 +160,081 +25% 6.  Total Domination: Nuclear Strategy 320,606 +145,602 +83% 7.  小小忍者 – 動漫主題網頁遊戲巔峰鉅作 405,864 +134,437 +50% 8.  The Sims Social 864,538 +123,002 +17% 9.  MMA Pro Fighter 889,766 +97,067 +12% 10.  My Country 846,169 +87,205 +11% 11.  Six Gun Galaxy 135,403 +86,195 +175% 12.  Smeet 612,326 +85,736 +16% 13.  The Pokerist club — Texas Poker 414,856 +81,526 +24% 14.  Roman Taxi 194,845 +73,097 +60% 15.  Fortune Stones 669,355 +70,807 +12% 16.  Crazy Taxi 379,205 +65,749 +21% 17.  Punch Punch Revolution 292,539 +65,483 +29% 18.  Martial Arts Masters 609,760 +65,423 +12% 19.  Monster Fusion 151,527 +64,776 +75% 20.  Texas HoldEm Poker – Deluxe: Your Poker Portal 870,769 +61,932 +8%

المزرعة السعيدة (or Happy Farm), is a farming sim from a developer using the game’s name as its own. Like FarmVille and many others like it, players plant and harvest crops and care for animals to earn virtual currency, which can be spent on building more farming industry structures or decoration items. A distinguishing feature is the types of things players can produce from their farm — like coffee, honey from beehives and cheese. Also, players can raise camels.

All data in this post comes from our traffic tracking service, AppData. Come back next week for our top weekly gainers by monthly active users on Monday, our daily active users on Wednesday, and the top emerging apps on Friday.