The Google+ Games platform is finally beginning to pick up speed with seven new titles appearing on the Games tab in the last month or so. Here’s what’s new:

Uno Boost, GameHouse - Uno Boost is a single player variation on the popular card game, challenging players with a variety of computer opponents and allowing them to use Boost cards – power-ups the player can swap in to make matches and help them win. We reviewed the Facebook version in May.

Millionaire City, Digital Chocolate - Digital Chocolate’s city-building sim follows the developer’s other hit, Zombie Lane, onto Google+. Millionaire City adds a real estate twist to the traditional city building genre, requiring players to purchase land before they can build, then sign contracts with tenants to collect income from buildings. We reviewed the game when it debuted last year.

Shadow Fight, Nekki - Originally launched for Facebook on in May, Nekki’s multiplay fighting game is now available for Google+. The game uses stylized silhouettes rather than full player avatars, and allows players to challenge their friends or compete in tournaments for domination of a worldwide leaderboard. We did a full review of the game in June.

Slotomania, Playtika – Playtika’s slot machine simulation is the first gambling game to be added to the social network since Zynga Poker debuted with the games tab. The game is a fairly straight-forward slots game, but the more players use a machine, the more experience it will gain and the more prize money there is to be won. Developer Playtika also brought the game to iOS recently. Our review of the Facebook version can be found here.

Gol Mania, Vostu – The Brazilian developer’s multiplayer real-time soccer game has been a solid performer on Facebook since its debut in September and is now available on Google+. Players can compete in short game against friends or random opponents, and can either earn or purchase in-game coins to purchase new stadiums or play more games. Our full review of Vostu’s game can be found here.

Happy Kingdom, Happy Elements – Beijing-based developer Happy Elements has brought its older Facebook game Happy Kingdom to Google+. Back in March the game was one of the fastest growing games on Facebook, but has now dropped off to just 20,000 MAU and 4,000 DAU according to our AppData traffic tracking service. In October, Happy Elements announced a second round of funding totaling $30 million.

Bug Village, Glu Mobile – While every other title on this list got its start on Facebook, Glu Mobile’s Bug Village move directly from mobile to Google+ — much like Rovio’s Angry Birds, which served as a G+ Games launch title. Available for both iOS and Android, Bug Village challenges players to build a village for a friendly collection of insects, farming food and placing buildings. Our sister site Inside Mobile Apps reviewed the iOS version of the game in April.

Google+ launched its games tab on August 11 with 16 games previously established on Facebook and iOS. Since that date, new games have been slowly trickling onto the platform as developers submit game concepts to Google for approval. Google’s own game developer, LabPixies, currently has two games on the platform.

6waves Lolapps has teamed up with developer Game Ventures (Howzat Cricket) for Homerun Heroes, a new baseball game for Facebook. The game combines arcade-style batting mechanics with league-based play, power-ups, and training options.

According to our traffic tracking service AppData, Homerun Heroes currently has 5,000 monthly active users and 300 daily active users.

Homerun Heroes lets players choose the name and colors for their imaginary team before heading out onto the field. Rather than play full games, the title has them meet specific requirements to win, such as scoring a certain number of runs without striking out more than an allotted amount. Gameplay unfolds from a viewpoint over the batter’s shoulder, with a clearly defined strike zone and an indicator of where players are aiming their swing with the mouse. Swing types can be switched between center (easiest), left or right field (harder), and power (most difficult to connect). The pitcher throws automatically and players can see where the ball is heading inside or outside of the strike zone a moment before they must swing.

If players are able to hit the ball, they’ll take their base automatically and the computer-controlled fielders will do their best to get them out. Players only control their team when they’re at bat; there’s no fielding gameplay. Players can’t steal bases, but can tell their runners to go home if they think they can make it, but there’s a risk of being tagged out.

Playing a game requires one challenge point. These recharge over time, and the maximum amount of them the player can have increases as they level up. Challenge points can be purchased should players not wish to wait for them to refill automatically. Coins and Glory Points are also awarded for winning games. Coins can be spent on buying new equipment to help their teams play better (one-game use) and on training to restore stats for tired teams. Training takes time, and players can’t play a game while training, but can hurry up the process using Facebook Credits. Glory Points count towards players leveling up.

The game is structure such that there are various tournaments players can enter into that become progressively more difficult and contain a varying number of match-ups. When players have completed all of the games in one tournament, a new one opens up.

Homerun Heroes lets players add their friends so they can compare scores in a real-time leaderboard a the bottom of the screen. It’s also possible for players to share stories about games they’ve won and other activity via viral channels.

The game is monetized using Facebook Credits, which can be spent to purchasing the soft currency, coins, which are then used on power-ups, training, and Challenge Points. Facebook Credits can be used directly to speed up training.

Speaking to Inside Social Games, Game Ventures Founder & CEO Zaki Mahomed explains that the developer hopes to satisfy what he feels is the under-served sports game fan community on Facebook, mobile, and other social networks and web games portals. The management sims that currently dominate the sports game genre on Facebook, he says, have a limited appeal and a lack of intensity. In 2012, Mahomed hopes to see Game Ventures launch five sports games on Facebook and at least one for Android (and possibly iOS). The developer raised a bridge round of $800,000 from investors Neoteny Labs, Digital Garage, IIPL and from the NRF Singapore fellowship program, bringing their current funding up to about $1.1 million.

You can follow Homerun Heroes’ progress using AppData, our traffic tracking service for social games and developers.

While farming games no longer dominate the Facebook gaming platform as they once did in previous years, they still retain a very large userbase. Join us for a look at the top six farming games by traffic, as recorded by our traffic tracking service, AppData.

Beyond FarmVille, the leading five farm games have over 13 million total monthly active users (MAU), spread across a demographically diverse userbase, much of whom are Arab, Turkish, and Chinese speaking Facebook users. Many of these top farm games boast engagement rates over 20%, which is considered high based on data collected in Inside Virtual Goods. This report will briefly review each of these games’ core gameplay loops and monetization features.

[Editor's Note: For the purposes of this report, “farming game” is defined as a simulation where the act of farming forms the core gameplay loop. This list also excludes games where  farming mechanics such as harvesting and planting are used to collect non-farm resources -- monsters, zombies, marijuana, etc.]

Farmville – Zynga

Launched in the Summer of 2009 and reaching a peak of of nearly 60 million MAU in December 2010, FarmVille’s userbase is now roughly half that number, with a downward trend that continued into May 2011. At that point, Zynga launched a branded FarmVille ad campaign linked to pop star Lady Gaga that created a short-term increase in DAU and MAU; a complete expansion launched in September also temporarily increased MAU, but not DAU. Since November, FarmVille has seen a recent drop of DAU as a percent of MAU, falling from 28% in mid-October to 23% now as MAU continues to rise while DAU falls.

Beyond FarmVille, however, activity rates for the top farming games are often quite different:

المزرعة السعيدة (Arabic, Happy Land) – Peak Games & Halfquest

A farming game aimed at Arabic-speaking Facebook users, Happy Land contains art assets targeting that demographic; for instance, the player’s advisor character wears a keffiyeh headdress. In the core gameplay loop, the player harvests farm resources which can be used to feed livestock, or processed, and then sold at market. Players can customize the look of their farm, and compete with other players to gain the most wealth and experience points for developing them. Monetization is through Ranch Cash (purchased with Facebook Credits) used for buying equipment upgrades, special items, and farming power-ups.

Clockwise from top left: Happy Land (Arabic), Happy Land (English), Country Life, and Our Farm (Turkish)

Note that publisher Peak Games also has a Turkish language version of the game called Bizim Çiftlik that enjoys 980,000 MAU and 26% DAU/MAU in addition to an English language version of the game called Happy Land, which now sees 500,000 MAU and 23% DAU/MAU. There also appears to be second English language version of the game, Country Life, with 1,100,000 MAU and 19% DAU/MAU, but as of press time Peak Games has not responded to request to clarify whether or not this game published by it or was perhaps created by developer Halfquest independently of its publishing agreement with Peak Games.

開心農場 (Chinese, Happy Farm) – ELEX


A farming game aimed at Chinese-speaking Facebook users, Happy Farm’s core gameplay loop centers around a 4×7 farming grid, where crops can be planted and harvested. Players have some customization options for the look of their farm, and a ranking system enables competition between friends playing the game. Monetization is built on special Happy Farm currency, purchasable with Facebook Credits, which can then be used to purchase special seeds, plants, equipment, livestock, and special enhanced farm layouts with different backgrounds (such as a fantasy or island theme). Happy Farm enjoys very high engagement rates, with over 40% of its users playing on a daily basis.

Komşu Çiftlik (Turkish, Barn Buddy) – TheBroth & Peak Games

The Turkish language version of TheBroth’s Barn Buddy farm game far outpaces its English language original in MAU (2.1 million versus 1.6 million), but arrives at roughly the same DAU/MAU around 20%. In the core gameplay loop, players tend a field by removing dead plants, spraying for bugs and weeds, planting and watering new crops, and then harvesting and selling them at market for the game’s currencies, Coins and Credits. As with many other farm games, players of Barn Buddy can visit their friends’ farms to help care for their crops and livestock. However, they also have an option to sabotage friends’ farms by adding bugs and weeds, or even steal their crops. This component adds an extra layer of competitiveness to the game’s leaderboards.

Monetization comes through Facebook Credits purchased to buy farm animals, which earn the player extra currency and experience points. This includes guard dogs, which protect against player-to-player crop theft. Among the animals that can be purchased in Barn Buddy is a branded virtual good: Domo, the popular Japanese television character — who also has his own Facebook game developed by TheBroth. Facebook Credits can also be earned in the game by watching embedded commercials.

Farm Town – Slashkey

Among the very first Facebook farm sim games to gain a large number of players back in 2009, Farm Town still maintains a relatively large and active userbase. Players customize and control an avatar, and use him or her to grow and harvest crops, sell them at market, and then use the profits to develop and expand their farm property. In the marketplace, players’ avatars can interact with each other in real time, and earn bonuses for cooperating with each other on their respective farm tasks. (The game has live chat and player-to-player messaging features for this purpose.)

As for monetization, players can also customize many aspects of their farm, adding factories and other buildings, along with livestock. To purchase in-game items, such as seeds, trees, flowers, animals, buildings, additional land, and furniture, players spend Coins (which can be earned with in-game activity or purchased with Facebook Credits) or FarmCash, which are only available for Facebook Credits, or by fulfilling advertiser offers.

Gourmet Ranch – Playdemic & RockYou

In Gourmet Ranch’s core gameplay, players expand and customize their farm, which is attached to an organic restaurant. Commands are directed through a customizable avatar. As with the other farming games in this list, the player must grow, tend, and harvest crops/livestock. Unlike these other games, this harvest is used to bake products served in the player’s restaurant. These harvested goods (along with cooked products) can be sold to other players. Earnings from these sales can be spent to purchase higher quality farm products, to bake more expensive restaurant items, and to develop the farm and restaurant.

Monetization comes via the game’s official currency, GR Coins and Cash, both buyable with Facebook Credits, used to purchase farm and restaurant items. Keys, which unlock game content, and Speedups, which automatically hasten game goals, can also be purchased with GR Cash.

Note that Gourmet Ranch developer Playdemic was purchased by publisher RockYou in January 2011, causing the game to grow steadily as the publisher integrated its ad platform within the game while the developer continued to release content. RockYou recently underwent dramatic restructuring, ultimately selling Playdemic back to its founders along with Gourmet Ranch, which may explain the decline in MAU and DAU reflected in the chart above.

Tetris Online Inc.’s Feevo Blaze tops our list of emerging Facebook games this week with Gem Rush and Storage Wars rounding out the top three.

We’re seeing a lot of old favorites shifting around our list this week from I AM PLAYR to Galaxy 2.0. As far as new games go, Monster’s Planet and Picturiffic appear to be the only games launched in the last month. It’ll be interesting to see if fewer or more games launch in the month of December as developer consider what kind of impact the holiday season has on Facebook’s games audience.

Top Gainers This Week – Games

	Name	MAU	Gain	Gain,%
1.	Feevo Blaze	630,000	+260,000	+70%
2.	Gem Rush	320,000	+220,000	+220%
3.	Storage Wars: The Game	300,000	+210,000	+233%
4.	TubeHero	650,000	+160,000	+33%
5.	Slots Farm – Slot Machines	620,000	+110,000	+22%
6.	GodsWar: Best 3D MMO RPG Browser Game ★★★★★	330,000	+90,000	+38%
7.	Noah’s Ark	200,000	+70,000	+54%
8.	Extreme Makeover: Home Edition Game	430,000	+60,000	+16%
9.	Fantasy Kingdoms	130,000	+60,000	+86%
10.	Monstermind	370,000	+60,000	+19%
11.	Smeet	850,000	+60,000	+8%
12.	超級店長—超人氣！免費模擬經營遊戲！	280,000	+60,000	+27%
13.	$100,000 Pyramid	620,000	+50,000	+9%
14.	House of Fun – Slot Machines	890,000	+50,000	+6%
15.	I AM PLAYR	350,000	+50,000	+21%
16.	Galaxy 2.0: Best Space Sci-Fi Strategy Game	230,000	+40,000	+21%
17.	Monster’s Planet	140,000	+40,000	+40%
18.	Picturiffic	260,000	+40,000	+18%
19.	Pluto Attacks	160,000	+40,000	+33%
20.	Triple Town	170,000	+40,000	+42%

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.

Zynga boosted the amount it may raise in its upcoming initial public offering to $1.15 billion with a potential valuation of between $5.9 and $7 billion, according to a new amendment to its SEC filing today. The capital it may raise is $150 million higher than the $1 billion it originally said would be the maximum size of the offering when it filed in July. The IPO is on track to happen in two weeks during the week of Dec. 12.

As was reported earlier this week, Zynga lowered its prospective valuation further. At $8.50 to $10 a share and with 699.4 million total outstanding shares, the company would be valued at between $5.9 and $7 billion. That’s lower than the $15 to 20 billion range the company reportedly originally sought. It’s also less than half the $14.05 billion valuation that a third-party Zynga hired back in August put the company’s worth at, according to the filing.

With Zynga on track to make around $1.1 billion this year, a $15 to $20 billion valuation would have proved to be a high revenue multiple compared to other publicly-traded gaming companies like Electronic Arts, which has a market capitalization that’s roughly twice its trailing twelve-month revenues. Zynga lower the valuation because of the market backdrop, according to a source knowledgeable about the company’s deliberations. Not only have offerings from Angie’s List and Groupon been weaker than expected, investors are speculating about the stability of the euro by driving up borrowing costs for weaker economies in the European Union.

Zynga has also posted a 30-minute video of its roadshow here. In the video, the company emphasized that Zynga’s games tend to peak in revenues long after they’re launched. They pointed to Farmville, which reached a peak in bookings about two years after it was released. Coupled with the fact that the last six months have been a busy launch period, Pincus says this lays the groundwork for near-term growth even as daily active users have declined for two consecutive quarters.

He also pointed out growth on mobile platforms where Zynga has 11.1 million daily active users, up from 991,000 thousand a year earlier. Android and iOS are likely to be the most promising way for the company to diversify off Facebook, where it earned 93 percent of its revenue in the most recent quarter.

We didn’t pick up much that was new with the filing, excepted an attached letter showing that several of Zynga’s minority investors including Google, Russia’s Digital Sky Technologies and Union Square Ventures also expect to be selling about 15 million shares, or up to $150 million at the high end of Zynga’s pricing range. Google owns 23.3 million shares in the company, or about $233 million at the high end of Zynga’s price range.

Zynga has made $30.7 million in net income on $828.9 million in revenue through the third quarter of this year. That’s up from $401.7 million in revenue during the same time a year earlier. Net income, however, has declined from last year’s $47.6 million through the third quarter as Facebook levied a 30 percent tax through Credits and Zynga invested in research and development for new games. Zynga expects to spend about $50 to 70 million this quarter on network infrastructure, for example.

The company is selling 100 million shares of Class A stock, with an extra allotment of 15 million shares if there is demand. Keep in mind that Zynga has a three-class stock structure, where Class B shares have seven times the voting power of Class A shares. Class C stock — which are wholly owned by chief executive Mark Pincus — have 70 times the voting power of Class A shares. The company is structured so that the Class B and Class C shares, which investors in this IPO have no access to, hold 98.2 percent of the voting power.

Now that the dust has settled after Facebook’s adjustment to its method for counting active users, we take a look at the top 25 Facebook games going into December 2011.

Note: Because Facebook now rounds traffic to the thousands, our rankings now reflect ties with the letter “T” in the rank field.

We begin with the top 25 games by daily active users, which is the most effective measurement of a game’s core audience. About half of our games on the list saw losses in DAU over the last month, with the largest loss reflected in The Sims Social. That game appears to have reached its early life traffic apex right at the end of September before going into its mature state where traffic declines and the lifetime value of users rises. Note that Zynga’s Mafia Wars 2 technically suffered the “biggest loss” of DAU between November and December as it doesn’t even rank in the top 25 going into this month; on November 1, it would’ve been in the top 10 in terms of DAU. The biggest gainer was newcomer CastleVille at No.2, Zynga’s latest and so far fastest-growing game ever on Facebook while  older game Top Eleven makes its debut at No.25:

Turning now to monthly active users, which is a means for gauging a game’s overall reach, we see mostly overall growth with just nine apps losing ground compared to their November numbers. The Sims Social again sees the biggest loss on the list while Mafia Wars 2 sees such a huge loss, it falls off the list completely whereas in November it would have been in the top 10. CastleVille again makes a strong showing at No.5 while Car Town returns to our rankings after a brief absence:

Other somewhat new notable games climbing the rankings for the past several months are Bubble Witch Saga, Tetris Battle, Words With Friends, and Ravenskye City. Each of these games either launched in the last four months or has spent those last four months scaling steadily to arrive in the top 25.

As for overall trends that we’ve observed in the last several months in studying our monthly top 25 rankings charts, it’s clear that “top” games now need a minimum of around 1 million DAU to place. As few as eight months ago, games could get close with around 800,000 DAU — but now there are five games in the 900,000 range, three of which didn’t make the top 25. Another trend is the relative stability of arcade and casino games. Titles like Slotomania and Diamond Dash seem like they’ll never leave this list no matter how old they get.

Join us toward the end of this month for a look back at the top Facebook games of 2011 as the calendar year draws to a close.

Hiring in the social gaming industry was up this week, with eight companies hiring 15 new employees. According to data from LinkedIn and other sources, Loot Drop, Wooga and Zynga showed the most activity, accounting for ten of this week’s moves. The highest profile hire goes to Zynga, who brings on Rob Dyer as Head of Partner Publishing.

If your company is hiring new people or making a notable promotion, please get in touch with us. Email us at: mail (at) insidesocialgames (dot) com, and we’ll get your news into an upcoming post.

If you want to know who else is hiring, the Inside Network Job Board showcases current openings with the industry’s leading companies.

Crowdstar 

• Michael LaGrange, Game Developer - Crowdstar starts off our roundup this week with a single hire. LaGrange comes to Crowdstar from Namco Bandai Games, where he was a game developer/engineer.

Funzio

• Patrick Traughber, Analyst – Funzio also adds one new face this week. Traughber was previously an investment banking analyst at Wedbush Securities.

Kabam

• Heather Nolan, Marketing Intern - Kabam brings on Nolan from her job as a marketing assistant at Clinical Cabinets.

Loot Drop

• Jeremy Forson, UI Designer - Loot Drop returns to our hires roundup with a pair of new faces. Forson was previously a front end developer at Intuit.
• Craig Lewin, Quality Assurance Tester - Lewin comes from PNC Bank, where he was a customer service phone representative.

Nordeus

• Aleksandra Perikoti, HR Manager - Perikoti was previously the HR manager at Vast.com.

Tagged

• Jared Brinkley, Senior Game Designer - Brinkley comes to Tagged from Playdom, where he worked as a designer and developed Gardens of Time.

Wooga

• Victor van Schagen, Senior Game Artist – A pairs hire for wooga this week as well — van Schagen was formerly the art lead at Artifex Mundi.
• Gina Blatt, Head of Human Resources – Wooga brings on Blatt, formerly the head of human resources at Bigpoint, to oversee the company’s push to grow to 250 employees by the end of 2012.

Zynga

• Rob Dyer, Head of Partner Publishing - And finally, it’s been a busy week for Zynga with six hires. Dyer comes to Zynga from Sony Computer Entertainment where he was SVP of Publisher Relations. Full story here.
  
• Max Volkov, Software Engineer - Volkov was formerly a graphics programmer at Mail.Ru.
• Nicolas Bourges, Senior UI Artist – Bourges moves from Ubisoft, where he was an interface artist.
• Anshul Dhawan, Senior Software Engineer – Dhawan was previously a software engineer intern at ngmoco.
• Maheedhar Kandaraboina, Artist - Next up is Kandaraboina, who was a senior flash animator at BIG Animation.
• Sanjay Mangla, Principal Software Engineer Lead – Last but not least is Zynga’s highest profile hire, Mangla, who moves from Xbox Live, where he was the senior development lead.

Electronic Arts said it acquired KlickNation to beef up its RPG games on social networks after we broke the news about the deal yesterday. The Sacramento, Calif.-based company will become part of BioWare’s social gaming team.

EA says the studio will focus on role-playing games for social networks and will be led by KlickNation’s chief executive Mark Otero. The terms of the acquisition were not disclosed, but a source tells us that the total price was roughly $35 million, including earnouts and retention bonuses. KlickNation’s games also probably won’t be sunsetted even though they have seen a slight slip in active usage over the past month.

In acquiring KlickNation, EA enters the emerging core gamer market on Facebook, which is currently dominated by strategy combat games like Kixeye’s Backyard Monsters and IGG’s Galaxy Online 2. CrowdStar and RockYou recently joined this market with their own strategy combat titles released in the last three months.

KlickNation is a relatively small developer compared to other studios producing core strategy games. According to our AppData traffic tracking service, the developer at one point enjoyed 1.3 million monthly active users, and saw around 150,000 daily active users at its peak. Today, the developer sees 395,441 monthly active users and 49,022 daily active users.

ETA: Although we’re reasonably certain that EA is working on a companion social game for BioWare property Mass Effect 3, we don’t believe that KlickNation is working on that project. Given the console game’s March 2012 release window, it would be a very tight development cycle for a fully realized companion social game. BioWare also has a back catalog of IP to pull from (Baldur’s Gate, Jade Empire, etc.) to develop all-new social games.

AJ Glasser contributed to this story.

Zynga may finally be moving toward a larger publishing role in the social and mobile games industry, as signaled by the recent  hiring of Rob Dyer as Head of Partner Publishing, according to a LinkedIn update. Dyer was previously SVP of Publisher Relations at console game publisher Sony Computer Entertainment America.

We’ve heard rumors that Zynga intended to announcing publishing partnerships with game developers in the past, but none of those have borne out into actual products published by Zynga. Instead, Zynga has aggressively pursued companies for talent and studio acquisition, picking up as many as 13 companies in 2011. Other times, Zynga has elected to compete directly  – most recently releasing Dream Zoo on mobile as a competitor to Pocket Gems’ Tap Zoo, for example.

In bringing on Dyer, Zynga now has a head of publishing with experience in brokering long-term publishing deals between game developers and publishers. SCEA’s publishing branch covers a host of second and third party developers that produce multi-game franchises for Sony devices like the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Portable — including Insomniac Games (Ratchet & Clank series), ThatGameCompany (flOw), and Q-Games (which recently self-published its PlayStation Network game PixelJunk Monsters on Facebook). Dyer first entered the video games industry at Crystal Dynamics, which was acquired by publisher Eidos in 1998. He left for SCEA in 2008.

Zynga had no comment on the hire. Yesterday, we reported that monetization and distribution service Tapjoy was exploring a sale to Zynga; Dyer previously worked with Tapjoy CMO Peter Dille at Sony.

Zynga is eying a lower valuation of around $10 billion for a public offering expected in about two weeks. Reuters first reported the news, and we confirmed the details they reported with a source knowledgeable about the company’s plans. Zynga declined to comment.

Zynga expects to raise about $900 million with a price of roughly $8 to 10 a share. A $10 billion valuation would be lower than the company’s most recent valuation of $14.05 billion as estimated by a third-party firm Zynga hired in August, according to their most recent SEC filing. An updated filing is expected toward the end of the week with a pricing range for the shares.

The change was done to reflect the quickly changing market conditions as instability the European Union rattles investors, according to the source. They said it wasn’t a reflection on the fundamentals of the business.

Comparable publicly traded gaming companies like Electronic Arts have a market capitalization of $7.75 billion while Activision Blizzard Inc has a valuation of $14.15 billion. A $10 billion valuation would be about ten times what Zynga is on track to make this year at around $1.1 billion or more. Electronic Arts, in contrast, trades at about two times its trailing revenues.

Such a multiple would imply that investors expect significant growth in Zynga’s future even as its base of daily active users has shrunk for two consecutive quarters. With a series of new releases this quarter like Castleville, Dream Zoo and Mafia Wars 2, the company is trying to prove that it can keep its Facebook users engaged while finding new growth opportunities on mobile.

It also looks like Zynga may move in the direction of supporting third-party games after the company poached Sony executive Rob Dyer to become its head of partner publishing. We’re also hearing that Zynga is engaged in early-stage M&A talks with Tapjoy, a move that would give it broader distribution on iOS and Android.