It’s been a rough going for MySpace lately. In past months, the platform has suffered the loss of top executives and more recently, laid off 47% of their workforce or roughly 500 employees, and parent company News Corp. has been assessing possibilities that include both sales and mergers.
However, the numbers for top MySpace games continue on their stable trend… in a manner of speaking. Last month, many of the RockYou titles on the social network were no longer found, and this time, the last remaining title from the company, Speed Racing, is now apparently gone. Additionally, Zynga’s role-playing counterpart, Street Racing, while still appearing in the app gallery appears to have also been shut down. These developers appear to be scaling back their investments in the platform.
With the removal of the two noted games, two new applications have made their way into the top 25 in the forms of Special Forces and Friend Factory; both from Zynga.
Here are the highlights for the Top 25 MySpace Games for February, 2011:
- Thought the future of the platform if uncertain, the stability of Playdom’s Mobsters and Zynga’s Mafia Wars remains. The total users for each title, this months, comes to just over 15 million and 13.4 million respectively.
- The collection of more toy-like apps also continues to do well on MySpace. The titles of Bumper Stickers, Own Your Friends, and BitRhymes’ Tag Me all see moderate growth with their totals coming to approximately 13 million, 10.3 million, and 8.5 million.
- The BitRhymes virtual drinking game Cheers!! remains at #9, gaining just over 5,000 new users.
- Zynga RPG Vampires stands alone this month at #10 with 5.3 million total users. Typically, the game is followed by the now shut down Street Racing.
- With the loss of Street Racing, Sorority Life moves up to #12. The women-targeted RPG totals out at over 3.7 million users this month.
- Playfish title Pet Society grows slightly this month at #23 having gained 7,601 new users for a total of 1,492,269.
- Zynga adds one returning title and one newcomer to the top 25 with Special Forces and Friend Factory. The apps earn a total of 1,482,442 and 1,457,821 users respectively.
Three RockYou titles have suddenly disappeared from the MySpace app gallery, including the previous #7, #10, and #14 apps: Truth Box, RockYou Pets, and SuperHug!. The RockYou website also no longer promotes its MySpace games. Back in October, the company laid off part of its workforce; the MySpace disappearance could be another possible cut-back.
With RockYou gone, three applications reappear on the top 25: Fashion Wars (Zynga), What My Friends Think About Me (Grong!), and Pet Society (Playfish). This is the biggest change over last month, although several apps grew significantly:
- Crime continues to pay with Playdom’s Mobsters gaining close to 38,000 new installations, with Zynga’s Mafia Wars trailing at #2 with a gain of 8,518.
- BitRhymes holds steady on MySpace with its selection of five applications, including Tag Me at #5. The app boasts over 8.4 million users in total. BitRhymes’ lowest app comes in at #17 with Whats my Impression on friends, with around 2.9 million users.
- SuperPoke Pets, from Slide, moves up to #8 with the loss of RockYou’s Truth Box. The game gains over 9,000 new installations for a total user count of approximately 7.1 million.
- The middle ranks of the top 25 still find themselves filled with role-playing titles from Zynga and Playdom. At #10 and #11 are Vampires (5.3 million users) and Street Racing (4.6 million users), and at #13 comes Sorority Life (3.7 million users).
- Coming in at #19 is the last standing RockYou game, Speed Racing. Earning 2,632 new installations this month, it totals out at just under 2.6 million users.
- Fashion Wars reappears at #23 with a total of 1.9 million users with What My Friends Think About Me, from Grong!, trailing with 1.7 million.
- Wrapping up the list is the long running Playfish title, Pet Society, who currently plays host to approximately 1.5 million users.
This month, the number of users for the Top 25 MySpace games have remained in roughly the same range as a month prior. Even so, none of the applications experienced negative user changes, unlike their Facebook counterparts.
Here are the highlights for the Top 25 MySpace Games for December 2010:
- Playdom tops the list this month with the old school title, Mobsters. It totals out at just under 15 million users.
- Zynga, on the other hand, continues to play second fiddle with Mafia Wars, hosting around 13.4 million users.
- Remaining at #5 is Tag Me from BitRhymes. A simple, social app though it may be, the title has gained over 46,000 new users in the past month, reaching 8.4 million in total.
- As noted already, December 1st is host to the return of YoVille, at#6, with approximately 7.9 million users. Though the app never dropped in the rankings, it had stopped reporting its user count several months ago.
- Pets fill up the middle of the list with SuperPoke Pets and RockYou Pets from Slide and RockYou. Each app experienced positive growth this month, totaling around 7.1 and 6.1 million users respectively.
- Behind the pets come the role-playing games with Zynga’s Vampires and Street Racing. The former currently hosts about 5.3 million users, while that latter holds around 4.6 million.
- Moving down the list to #20 is BitRhymes with What’s my Impression on friends. With roughly 2.9 million users, the title shows that the simplier, social enhancement applications still do quite well on MySpace.
- Rounding out the list is a minor swap in titles as RPG Bloodlines takes the #24 spot with a gain of 31,905 new users, pushing Slide’s SuperPoke! down to #25 with a gain 1,387 new users.
As with last year, the holiday slowdown is underway, but while numbers seem to drop around this season, the decline of monthly active users over the past few months have already been quite high — Especially bad last month, many of the older running titles are still losing users in the millions. That said, December 1st has revealed a few new faces on the Top 25 as well as the rise of fresher titles in general, including the still growing Millionaire City, Car Town, and Crime City.
Looking at the top 25 also obscures the bigger stories of the year. Developers of all sizes, including the owners of the apps you see here, have greatly improved monetization regardless of growth. And hundreds of smaller apps have been growing more than ever, as we’ve covered in detail here.
With more and more social games increasing their sophistication and production quality in terms of play, storytelling, and overall engagement, such will no doubt continue to grow whereas the older titles will experience the natural decline of age.
And a note before we get started with the details: with so many new social games appearing on the Facebook platform – from both large and small developers – we’ve since removed the “game-like” applications, such as Quiz Planet and Birthday Cards to make room. Even still, the top titles will likely remain where they are on an MAU-basis simply due to larger advertising budgets, cross promotions and other efforts.
Here are the highlights for the Top 25 Facebook Games for December 2010:
- As expected, Zynga remains on top of the list with six of its titles, leading the way with FarmVille. However, all save FrontierVille (having gained around 88,000 MAU) have lost over 1 million MAU, with FarmVille, Mafia Wars, and Cafe World losing well over 2 million.
- In after Zynga, at #7, is Digital Chocolate and their highly successful real estate game, Millionaire City. Having moved up another two rankings, the title gains over 800,000 MAU.
- PopCap also sees positive growth with its, now older, title Bejeweled Blitz. Currently, the game hosts around 11.8 million MAU.
- Once again, MindJolt Games finds itself fluctuating around the middle of the pack, having lost 1.2 million users this month. Nevertheless, it’s a title that has long remained stable in its position.
- CrowdStar is seeing declines as well in its long running Happy Acquarium and Happy Pets. At #11 and #17, the titles have lost approximately 1.2 million and 800,000 MAU respectively.
- Zoo World from RockYou comes in at #13, and is yet another game experiencing growth. With about 480,000 new users, its MAU count totals out at about 8.1 million.
- Cie Games sees the second largest growth this month with Car Town. Boasting 7.2 million MAU, the app had gained over 1.1 million new users.
- It was Funzio’s Crime City, however, that saw the biggest numbers. With around 6.6 million users, its MAU growth was a tremendous 3.5 million.
- Girls-only-game Mall World also makes an appearence this month. Developed by 50 Cubes, the title gains 449,235 MAU to come in at #21.
- Rounding out the list is the return of Wooga’s Bubble Island with an 800,000 MAU gain, followed by the title Ninja Saga, who loses a little over 300,000 MAU.
Though last month saw only moderate losses for the top Facebook games, this month has 18 of 25 applications losing significant numbers of monthly active users. The drop is not entirely unprecedented, as each year, starting around this time, the activity for social games tends to drop. Even so, the overall losses are significantly more than this time last year — perhaps in part because many of the games on the list are a year or more old.
To counter these declines, many of the games on this list, especially the Zynga apps, have had boosts in advertising going as far back as this spring, but the new players don’t always stick around. For example, FarmVille saw minor growth last month, but has dropped over 5.6 million MAU this month.
The handful of growing games are mostly either newer or experiencing fresh growth after long declines. The new games include Millionaire City and Car Town, the latter appearing for the first time with growth of over a million new MAU in the past month. There is, however, a boom among smaller developers, which we’ve covered in more detail here.
Here are the highlights for the Top 25 Facebook Games for November 2010:
- Zynga’s top title, FarmVille, easily takes the top spot despite losing north of 5.6 million MAU.
- Even with the FarmVille loss, Zynga’s classic Texas HoldEm Poker sees a gain this time around with over 700,000 MAU, as does Mafia Wars with 2.5 million MAU.
- We began tracking CrowdStar’s Quiz Planet title this month with its sizable 16.1 million strong user base.
- Though not a new game to the list, Millionaire City, from Digital Chocolate, sees the largest growth this time around, moving from #15 to #9 with a gain of 3.2 million MAU and a grand total of 11.9 million users.
- MindJolt Games fluctuates again this month, dropping to #10 with a two million MAU loss.
- Following up MindJolt is the single PopCap entry, Bejeweled Blitz, which remains at #11 with approximately 11.7 million users.
- RockYou has breathed new life into its long running application, Birthday Cards, which is connected to its game Zoo World. It moves up from #21 to #14 with 2.1 million new users.
- Playdom’s City of Wonder deflated over the month, losing many temporary users who were picked up during its heavy initial marketing push. Its loss of 3.8 million MAU was the most severe decline in percentage terms, with the game losing a third of its MAU overall.
- Coming in towards the end of the list with 6.1 million MAU is newcomer Car Town from Cie Games, at #23.
- Finally, making a return at #24 is the ninja role-player, Ninja Saga, with nearly 6 million total users.
Despite the inclusion of more game-focused features, the MySpace platform remains calm with only a handful of applications losing users over the past month. This is similar to what we saw last month. In fact, the only change in ranking came at the tail end of the list with Playdom’s role-playing title, Bloodlines, ousting the Zynga RPG, Fashion Wars from the chart.
Also, RockYou’s Truth Box does not appear when browsing the MySpace app gallery, and the app appears to be offline. This may be a part of a larger change. The primary RockYou website does not list any of its MySpace titles under its list of games, sticking only with Facebook titles such as Toy Land, Zoo World, and Hero World. The company recently laid off part of its workforce to focus on its gaming business — and perhaps it’s cutting back on MySpace as part of its move.
Here are the highlights for the Top 25 MySpace Games for November 2010:
- As usual, Playdom and Zynga remain at #1 and #2 respectively with Mobsters and Mafia Wars gaining approximately 100,000 and 15,000 new users respectively.
- BitRhymes’ long running Tag Me title comes in at #5 with a total of approximately 8.4 million users, having gained 65,000 new installations this past month.
- The mysterious disappearance of RockYou’s Truth Box has not affected it much. The title remains at #6 with 7.8 million users, having only lost 179 since last month.
- Along with Truth Box, RockYou also loses a negligible number of users, 122, from its game, RockYou Pets.
- Coming in at #12, Zynga loses the first significant numbers (though the term is used loosely) with the RPG, Street Racing, dropping by about 5,000 installs.
- The largest gain, as of November, comes from one of the smaller developers on the list, Oxylabs and their app, What is your Street Reputation. Closing in on the 3.9 million user mark, the title gains over 126,000 new installations this month.
- Moving down the list, “Whats my Impression on friends” grows as well. The BitRhymes application gains 32,606 installs, and comes just shy of the 3.9 million user mark.
- Rounding out the list is Playdom’s Bloodlines at #25. Boasting near 2 million users, the game returns to the top 25, having ousted Zynga’s title, Fashion Wars.
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