After installing the game, players are launched into a brief tutorial in which they are introduced to their new cricket ground — little more than a dirty wasteland at the outset. This is where team management mode introduced. While in the management part of the game, the player is able to hire, fire and train players, with their abilities affecting match outcome; hire coaches for limited periods of real time to provide bonuses to the team’s skills; acquire sponsorship deals with numerous rather unsubtle bastardizations of recognizable brands to provide income; and build up the team’s stadium to provide greater rewards from playing matches. Incentive to continue playing is provided through a gradual unlock system, with better coaches and stadium parts available to higher-level players, or those willing to spend real money on the game. Gameplay in this section is simple but provides opportunity for players to build up their team — optionally guided by a series of tasks at the side of the screen — and see the fruits of their labors through the growth of their ground.

When the time comes to play a game, the player has two options: a practice match against a computer-controlled team, or a social match against either a friend or another worldwide player. A tournament facility is also planned for an upcoming update. During practice matches, the player takes on active control of the batsmen in the game, while the team’s turn to field is simulated at high speed with no visuals. In a social match, gameplay is asynchronous — the challenging player is first up to bat against the opposing team’s bowlers with their abilities determined by their statistics, then a challenge notification is sent to the other player to inform them it is their turn to bat. When both players have played, the final result is calculated.

The game assumes a basic familiarity with the rules of cricket as it does not take any time to explain how to play outside of showing the basic keyboard controls. These are kept simple, with two shot buttons for varying degrees of power and directional controls determining in which direction the ball will be hit. If the player successfully lands a hit on the ball, they are able to trigger their players running by simply pressing a key, with their speed determined by their statistics and upgrades.

A match is straightforward and relatively quick to play, and allows cricket fans the opportunity to enjoy the game at a much faster pace than real matches, which often continue for several days. The player is encouraged to develop a sense of ownership and pride in their team by customizing their colors, choosing a name and even renaming their players — with a profanity filter firmly in place. Presentation is solid with clear visuals in the management section and realistic sound effects and smooth animation in the match section. The only element which feels somewhat unfinished is the fact the management part of the game is completely silent, with no music or sounds at all.

One mildly questionable aspect of the game is the amount of  unnecessarily sexist imagery throughout. While it’s a fact that Indian Premier League cricket (on which the game is based) does indeed make use of female cheerleaders in revealing outfits, in the case of this game every “out,” “four,” “six,” and even the end of a match is punctuated by a gratuitous full-screen animation of three cheerleaders gyrating provocatively. The whole game is presented in a lighthearted, cartoonish style but this feels a little too much at times — and may even be off-putting to some fans considering playing the game.

Even so, CricVille is a well thought out game that is easy to understand yet provides a great deal of opportunity for friendly competition between fans — and, by extension, a strong built-in viral promotion and retention strategy. Even those with only a basic grasp of the rules of cricket will be able to find the experience of challenging worldwide opponents and Facebook friends to be enjoyable.

From a business perspective, the usual reliable combination of premium items and an energy mechanic mean that — assuming Zapak is able to acquire a healthy player base — the game has potential to be quite profitable, particularly in those parts of the world where cricket is a popular sport. Developer Game Ventures saw some success last year with its Facebook cricket game, Howzat Cricket.

CricVille has picked up 6,000 monthly active users and 1,000 daily active users since its launch in late January. To follow its progress, check out AppData, our tracking service for social games and developers.

Play

Questionable imagery aside, this is a solid offering for cricket fans.

Early experiences in the game are taken up with a very lengthy tutorial that walks players through the building of their first buildings, what all the resources mean and the game’s technology researching mechanic. Rewards of the game’s premium “Rubies” currency are provided liberally throughout the course of these tutorial tasks and players are kept safe from attack during the tutorial period. An unfortunate flaw in the system, however, is that if the player completes a tutorial task before it has been formally offered as a “quest,” whether accidentally or deliberately, they are not given credit for having completed it and must do it again. If the task involved the spending of money or resources that the player now does not have, this may lead to protracted wait times or the spending of premium currency. It’s a small issue, but one which should be addressed to provide a slicker introductory gameplay experience — or to cater to those who wish to jump straight in to the meat of the game.

The game has very high production values. The artwork is detailed and well animated, and the majority of the tasks offered to the player are presented with full (though thankfully, given the questionable quality of the acting, optional) voiceovers. An unfortunate side effect of the detailed artwork on buildings is that it sometimes becomes difficult to distinguish buildings from one another without moving the mouse pointer over them, particularly if they are tightly packed together. The 45-degree isometric viewpoint also suffers from the usual problem that tall buildings can easily block out smaller buildings placed behind them, making them difficult to click on at times. Fortunately, as with most games of this type, it’s possible to move buildings once they have been built, meaning that such inconveniences can be avoided with a little rearrangement.

The game is strongly geared towards interaction with other players. Regular popups to invite friends remind players of the various benefits offered by having a large “crew” — the opportunity to claim loot from friends’ havens, the ability to recruit said friends as an army of undead pirates, and the ability to set up alliances. Alongside the usual friends mechanic, the game as a whole takes place in a large, persistent world populated by everyone else who is playing the game, or who has played it in the past. Glancing at the in-game map allows players to visit nearby players’ havens, set up trading agreements with them, scout their defenses or even attack them. Players are protected from attack until they reach level 9 partway through the tutorial, and attacking anyone over level 15 immediately surrenders a player’s “Novice” flag, indicating that they are ready and willing to engage in the full game.

Despite the few little interface niggles mentioned above, Pirates: Tides of Fortune is a polished game clearly ready for the prime time. Its complexity may put off more casual players used to simpler game mechanics, and the long tutorial may put off impatient gamers, but for those seeking a deep, complex and rewarding title in which they can play alongside a large and growing player community, Pirates: Tides of Fortune is a solid offering.

Play

While unlikely to enjoy universal appeal due to its complexity, Pirates: Tides of Fortune is well worth playing for its high production values and deep gameplay.

According to our traffic tracking application AppData, WeTopia currently has 430,000 monthly active users and 70,000 daily active users.

WeTopia is, at its heart, a very conventional citybuilding sim. Players are tasked with building up a community by raising its population using houses; developing income streams by building shops; cultivating supplies for businesses through growing crops; and decorating the city for additional benefit. The basic mechanics are almost identical to the many other examples of this crowded genre on Facebook, with one notable exception: the Joy system, and this is where the game’s charity angle comes in.

Certain buildings, actions and quests produce Joy in addition to the usual citybuilding game rewards of experience points, soft currency and supplies. Joy items, which appear in the form of hearts, are collected in the same manner and stored in their own bank. When a player has accumulated 100 or more Joy, they are able to make use of their Joy Center structure. By clicking on this, players are presented with a variety of real-world charitable initiatives in the U.S. and Haiti (with African projects promised “soon”) and invited to donate their Joy to a project that appeals to them. The player then sends a balloon filled with their sent Joy to the project in question, which spits out rewards of soft currency and additional Energy while it is on its way.

Joy benefits these real-world projects by taking 50 percent of the game’s profits from advertising and premium item sales (and no less than 20 percent of revenue, according to Sojo) and sending to the non-profit partners who have signed up to benefit from the game. At the time of writing, these include Save The Children, Help Heal Haiti, BuildOn, Stop Hunger Now and the Children’s Health Fund. So far, the game has helped to successfully fund a “summer enhancement” program in the U.S. from Save The Children; a hot meals program from Help Heal Haiti; the construction of a school in Moline, Haiti by BuildOn; and the provision of a pharmacy to the Haitian people from Help Heal Haiti.

Social features in the game include various viral promotion mechanics to encourage friends’ participation. A number of special Joy-producing buildings in the game require staffing by Facebook friends in order to complete construction. Players are also able to visit each others’ communities to help out, and may also send gifts to one another.

The game monetizes through the direct use of Facebook Credits in-game. Buildings which require staffing by friends may also be filled by spending Facebook Credits, and a variety of special structures may only be purchased through the use of Credits, also. Many of these premium structures produce considerably more Joy than those purchased using only soft currency, so paying players will be able to have a greater impact on the game’s partner projects and thus raise their in-game “Joy Level” quicker, unlocking access to more and more profitable structures.

You can follow WeTopia’s progress with AppData, our traffic tracking application for social games and developers.

According to our traffic tracking service AppData, Atlantis Fantasy currently has 260,000 monthly active users and 80,000 daily active users.

Atlantis Fantasy, like Kobojo’s previous game PyramidVille (recently reimagined for iOS), is a citybuilding sim based on popular mythology — in this case, a mix of Greek legends and the myth of Atlantis. The player is cast in the role of a minor undersea deity tasked with rebuilding a ruined settlement. Various well-known gods and goddesses from Greek mythology put in an appearance throughout the course of the player’s rebuilding efforts, and it’s through the missions that these deities provide that the game’s basic mechanics are taught.

Being a citybuilding sim, gameplay is mostly familiar with a few twists on the established formula of the genre. Firstly, unlike most games of this type, where buildings can be scattered fairly haphazardly, in Atlantis Fantasy, a building will not function if it is not connected to a road. This encourages the player to design the city in a somewhat more realistic fashion, clearing debris and building roads before placing buildings. Although the game’s Architect Mode allows players to move or rotate buildings once they’ve been placed, meaning there are few consequences for unwise placement, this mechanic does demand a greater degree of forward planning than some other examples of the genre.

The city’s population is also far more than a simple number for bragging rights. More residents means that structures and resources can be produced faster. When undertaking any construction project, whether it’s creating a new building or setting a production building to make resources, workers can be assigned from the city’s population. The greater the number, the shorter the amount of real time that the construction will take. Construction of anything can also be rushed, but unlike most games of this type, rushing construction uses energy rather than hard currency. Energy is restored upon leveling up, also, so canny builders can play for some time without having to sit and wait or purchase energy restoration items.

Socialization features of the game include the facility to visit others’ towns, with gifts on offer for doing so. Players can also send gifts to one another, and a number of the quests and buildings in the game require resources which can only be acquired through the help of friends.

Monetization is handled through the sale of the game’s hard and soft currencies, known as Pearls and Gold Coins respectively. Both of these can be purchased using Facebook Credits. Gold Coins are used throughout the majority of the game to produce essential structures, often in conjunction with resources created through production buildings. Pearls, meanwhile, can be spent on various items that cannot be acquired using Gold Coins. These include resources; special buildings; vanity decorations; and energy restoration items.

Since its launch in mid-December, Atlantis Fantasy’s MAU and DAU figures have been slowly but steadily climbing and look set to continue this way for some time. The game’s good production values and twists on the established conventions of the citybuilding genre will hopefully be enough to distinguish it from the variety of similar titles available.

You can follow Atlantis Fantasy’s progress with AppData, our traffic tracking application for social games and developers.

In Vostu’s experience, what makes a successful traditional social game (defined here as games with common social features like quests and gifting) is building a highly dedicated and engaged long-term userbase that plays up into very high levels in the game. Game play in high levels becomes complex and extremely social. (High-level users exchange a lot more gifts than low-level ones, for example.) These games lose a lot of users early on, but those who stay (at least in a good game) are there for long periods of time and are highly engaged with the game. And, hopefully, they’re paying users.

In contrast, casual games (defined here as games that are social but rely less heavily on traditional social features like quests and gifting) have a tougher time engaging a long-term audience. Gameplay in high levels tends to be the same straightforward, simple activity that it was in lower levels. That means it is harder to continuously engage users in casual games when they reach high levels. This game type does have its advantages, however, as it is easier for users to re-engage with a casual game after a lapse.

From our perspective, social games are soap operas while casual games are sitcoms. The retention characteristics for a traditional social game like MegaCity, our city-building simulation, are very different than those we see in a casual game like Gol Mania, our real-time soccer game. But some of these differences clearly point to opportunities for casual games to learn from social games and vice versa.

We’ll quantify a number of key differences between MegaCity and Gol Mania below. First, at a very basic level, we see the amount of minutes that users play per day shows a divergence between the two games. When we drill into this and break down the userbase of the two games by level, we see that this divergence really stems from the fact that (a) social games have a higher portion of high-level dedicated users and (b) these high-level dedicated users actually play longer each day than their analogous users in casual games. The chart below shows the percentage of users who play x minutes or less per day. “Social game” stands for Vostu’s MegaCity, and “Casual game” is Vostu’s Gol Mania. For example, in Gol Mania, 80 percent of users play 30 minutes or less per day, while in MegaCity, just 60 percent play 30 minutes or less per day.

In the graph below, we see that low-level users show very similar time played per day for both games. Note that it normally doesn’t make sense to compare levels across games, as level 10 in a poker game is bound to be different than level 10 in a cafe game. In our case, however, we can calculate our games’ level curves in a way that an average user levels up every 1-1.5 days regardless of which type of game they are playing. This is interesting: in a user’s early days, casual vs. social games don’t differ.

Mid-level users start to show differences in the duration of play per day:

This difference becomes even more extreme as we progress to very high levels. Hard-core users in MegaCity are highly engaged. A full 50 percent plays more than 30 minutes per day. That’s not the case for long-standing fans of Gol Mania, which are less engaged.

As we can see, the main difference between the two games in minutes played per day is that MegaCity enjoys a larger portion of high-level users and that these users play more minutes per day than those we find in Gol Mania.

Similarly, we see that as a whole, the games show a different distribution of their users’ “login intensity.” We define this term as the fraction of distinct days since registration that the user actually played the game. For example, if you played eight out of 10 days since you joined, your login intensity would be 80 percent.

The left skew for MegaCity is apparent. As a whole, its userbase logs in more frequently; in fact, nearly one in five MegaCity users has logged in more than 80 percent of the days since registering. We can attribute some of this behavior to the fact that MegaCity does a better job pulling users into higher levels. We can also say, however, that the game’s age plays a significant role, as MegaCity is old enough to have accumulated a lot of high level users whereas Gol Mania is comparatively young.

So we’ll look at login intensity by level below, across both games:

In terms of login intensity, casual and social games actually turn out to be pretty similar once you normalize correctly for game age, etc. While active users log into both games at about the same rate, they play casual games less intensely once they’re logged in, however. This behavior is very clearly a function of the fact that casual games are less social than social games.

The chart below illustrates the point. It shows the percentage of game sessions that started with the user entering the game through a “social” channel, like clicking on a news feed story or accepting a gift.

There are a number of powerful observations in this chart. First, casual games and social games work very similarly when it comes to viral acquisition. In early levels, users are about equally likely to enter the game because of some viral channel like a canvas app ticker story.

But social games exhibit a higher virality via in-game activity. At higher levels, users in a social game are a lot more likely to get back into the game because of some viral activity like an in-game gift request. This is because viral activities like exchanging gifts to build stuff are the bread-and-butter of the high level user experience. That type of gameplay also explains some of the differences we’ve seen in previous charts: viral mechanics like gifting lead to more intense engagement for higher levels in social games.

In contrast, there is no high-level gameplay loop at work in casual games. We’ve recently begun experimenting with this by adding more personalization to Gol Mania. For example, we introduced in-game “private rooms,” where users can directly challenge their friends to an immediate real-time match. In a period of a few days, roughly 7 percent of active users invite their friends to Gol Mania, whereas 17 percent of those users who enter a private room invite their friends to a match. So, there are ways of making casual game more social — and therefore more viral.

To us, this represents an opportunity for casual games. An important share of a social game’s everyday traffic is users who had left the game “waking up” from a lapse in daily play and returning. If casual games could recreate the viral “wake up call,” they could potentially enjoy an even larger audience of high level users.

That may be easier said than done, however, as social games naturally encourage users to return — or suffer consequences like withering crops or expired storyline quests. Here, casual games gain the upper hand as users suffer fewer consequences for a lapse in gameplay, meaning there’s less of a barrier to returning. The chart below is a bit complicated: it shows the probability that a user returns to the game after being gone, depending on how long the user has been away from the game. While it is true that the longer a user is away, the less likely they are to return (the lines both slope down), an extended break does not decrease the probability as rapidly in a casual game as in a social game:

In casual games, crops don’t wither, quests don’t expire and the gameplay is more or less the same as it was when the user left. No matter how long a user is gone, it’s just as easy to return to the game as it was when the user was playing daily. The effect is powerful. Casual games get a lot more out of waking-up users than social games.

Moreover, once a user wakes up in a casual game, they are more likely to play more frequently. We believe this is because a casual game feels new and more self-contained each time a user plays. The graph below shows the login intensity for users who wake up and return to a game:

Social and casual games need to learn from each other. Social games need to make it less burdensome for users to return: ease users back into the game instead of showing them the one hundred feature launches they missed while they were gone. Casual games need long-term investment opportunities for the user.

For Vostu, it makes sense to keep a portfolio of both social and casual games. Our casual games have a higher chance of getting users back into our portfolio and also bridge the gap between big social game launches. We think of them as the sitcoms you flip to during the commercial breaks in your prime time soap opera. Having the soap opera, though, is necessary to really build a longer-term, engaged and paying audience.

The game offers three main modes of play: a simple “Arcade” mode, which allows players to jump in to a variety of different race types immediately; a multiplayer mode which is currently undergoing beta testing; and an in-depth “Career” mode that tasks players with completing license tests along with purchasing and upgrading cars as well as the racing itself.

Racing takes a realistic approach, featuring 111 different licensed cars from 26 different manufacturers. It’s possible to play the game from a variety of camera angles, including an in-cockpit view featuring authentically-recreated interiors of the cars in question. A healthy degree of skill is required to make progress in the game, though a variety of assistance options are available for those with less experience in realistic racing simulations. These include a “suggested line” superimposed on the track, indicating where players should accelerate and brake; traction control to help prevent out of control skidding; assistance with braking; and an Electronic Stability Program (ESP) setting to help the player stay in control of the car and keep it on the track.

The game is monetized through the sale of soft and hard currency. Most cars can be purchased with either soft or hard currency, and hard currency can also be spent on skipping challenges such as license tests. It’s also possible to purchase experience points directly, which is unusual for a social game. Since experience levels unlock game content such as new cars, those players who wish to jump straight to the part of the game with high-end concept cars can do so by spending money. Conversely, those willing to put in the time and effort to work their way through the early game can gain access to almost all of the game content — though some later cars and performance upgrades can only be purchased with hard currency.

“Gameloft is very excited about offering our games to Google+ users,” said Baudouin Cormon, VP of publishing for the Americas at Gameloft. “GT Racing is bringing a stunning racing experience right in the browser, and we are happy to be pioneering the field with Google to bring the social gaming platform to the next level.”

We didn’t hear back from Gameloft prior to the publication of this review, but it’s clear what the future could hold for GT Racing. Racing games are, by their very nature, modular experiences to which it will be easy to add new cars, tracks and challenges. The game’s multiplayer options will also ensure that an active community will arise around the game, particularly as regular play is incentivized by daily bonus packages.

The social network version of GT Racing: Motor Academy is currently exclusive to Google+. The game is also available for iOS and Android devices, but the mobile editions do not have any link to the computer-based social network versions.

According to our traffic tracking service AppData, Animal Land currently has 250,000 monthly active users and 10,000 daily active users.

Game producer Saori Koizumi describes Animal Land as a “city management game where players must explore land, build houses and shops, and decorate their own city with trees and facilities to attract cute animal residents.” It is similar to established takes on the genre, including such well-worn mechanics as farming, stocking businesses using a finite “supplies” resource and gradually expanding the community’s borders. Players can build a variety of housing, businesses, farms and special structures by placing them on the map and then clicking several times to complete building. Businesses and housing generate income at a regular rate, while farming allows for the production of supplies, allowing the player to create a self-sufficient community.

The animal theme is used to power a “collection” aspect to gameplay. Different houses attract different animals to come and live in the player’s town, with each new animal being recorded in the in-game “Animal Book.” Completing pages of the book offers rewards which can’t be acquired in any other way.

Progression through the game is tied not only to collecting experience points and leveling up, but also to the construction of “community buildings,” which must be staffed with the player’s friends. Successfully building and staffing a community building such as a City Hall allows the player to increase the population limit of their city, thereby allowing them to construct more housing and increase their income further. As Animal Land is an entry into a highly saturated genre, CyberAgent America is likely hoping that this viral promotion mechanic will encourage greater numbers of people to try the game.

Animal Land’s monetization is entirely handled through Facebook Credits, which are integrated directly into the game as its hard currency. Credits can be spent on acquiring additional soft currency; purchasing limited-edition city decorations and instant-growth crops from the in-game store; acquiring Expansion Permits, required to increase the usable area of land; completing quest objectives without having to wait; and restocking energy. Facebook Credits can also be used to staff community buildings with virtual friends, allowing players to continue progression through the game by spending money if they don’t have enough friends playing.

CyberAgent America believes that Animal Land offers an unprecedented level of freedom in the crowded city-building genre. This is achieved in part by the fact that players are free to modify the land mass on which their city is positioned using an “Edit Land” tool. This lets players swap tiles between being either land or sea, allowing for the creation of customized play areas. Converting land to sea does not mean the player will lose the use of that land, either — available buildings are split roughly evenly between land and sea-based structures, so it’s a matter of personal taste — or a desire to complete the game’s many quests — that will determine whether a player wishes to make their community more land or sea-heavy.

“The impact of Animal Land on Facebook will be the huge degree of freedom each user can experience in designing their very own land with their friends,” explains Koizumi. “The quality of illustrations and the degrees of freedom users have is unlike none before.”

Early Growth Slowing Down

Though CastleVille took off like a shot in the first 10 days of launch, we observed at the time that several of Zynga’s more recent launches have “burnt out” after only a short period of growth on the platform. In some cases, we’re beginning to see signs of recovery — such as a recent resurgence in monthly active users for Adventure World — but most of the games launched from Empires & Allies onward have experienced loss of users after about a month. This doesn’t necessarily mean that these titles have “failed,” as we know that games tend to see higher average revenue per users after early (non-paying) adopters drop out. A consistent decline in traffic across multiple new games, however, could indicate that Zynga is struggling to attract new users while longtime users continue to lapse.

According to our AppData traffic tracking service, CastleVille’s growth is slowing down. In its first 10 days, the game reached nearly 10 million monthly active users and almost 6 million daily active users. For the next 10, it grew 120% in MAU to around 22 million MAU and a more modest 26% in DAU to 7.6 million. For the 10 days after that period, growth slowed to 50% in MAU and just under 12% in DAU. In the last eight days, CastleVille has grown 15% in MAU and has lost 1% of DAU.

Gameplay Gives Players Lots to Do Early On

At launch, CastleVille provided players with a larger landscape that any other Zynga game (save perhaps for Adventure World) with familiar gameplay mechanics to get them started on opening up new areas of the playable map. There are 81 sections of land on a 9×9 grid that the player can only unlock by first having a minimum “castle level” (determined by what structures the player has built in their town), then by having a certain number of Exploration Crystals (which are crafted by gifted materials after the player has built a workshop), and lastly by spending a fixed amount of coins. Some sections of land contain bonus items like free structures or animals, a few have new non-playable characters that provide players with new quests, while others contain only new resources to be harvested.

Cast in the role of a medieval settler, players begin the game by meeting two non-playable characters that provide them with their first quests that involve clearing land and building structures. As players complete these quests and unlock new areas of the map, a main storyline guides them toward a search for the source of “Beastie” enemies that periodically show up as the player is completing everyday game tasks (e.g. harvesting crops or collecting money from structures). Certain “coming soon” structures discovered on the map (see below) imply that the player will be able to leave their map to explore some other terrain — much like the new gameplay mode Pioneer Trail expansion introduced to FrontierVille.

Where CastleVille differs from other social games is primarily in presentation and the amount of virtual items available at launch. The game has a rich art style and very high graphics quality and a soundtrack provided by a full orchestra. Aside from those features, most of the game’s core elements — farming, building, visiting friends, crafting, character and building customization — had previously been implemented in other Zynga Facebook games. CastleVille notably ditches the Collections system introduced first in FrontierVille, instead incorporating the collection element into the crafting system.

Scaling the Walls with New Features and Cross-Promotion

In the 40 days since launch, the developer has added decoration content packs and some minor tools to make the game more manageable (e.g. adjusting the crafting menu to display the last page the player viewed rather than starting at the very top of the list). It’s also now possible to sell most items in a player’s inventory, although the game still hasn’t introduced the item trading feature highlighted during CastleVille previews. Special holiday-themed quests and content have also appeared in the game within the last two weeks as we move closer to December 25th.

In general, we do not see decoration content packs kickstarting growth rates among games — particularly those that are still in their first three months on Facebook. Holiday content also doesn’t generate much growth as most players take a break from social games for at least a few days of the holiday season, which can bring down overall growth. More complex content updates that add new modes, however, may show traffic increases — and Zynga has been able to spike growth for some of its titles using cross-promotion between games.

The issue here is that the strongest cross-promotion comes from similar games and CastleVille could be missing out on that. For example, a CityVille cross-promotion in Mafia Wars did trigger a sharp climb in MAU and DAU for the latter — but nearly all the new DAU in Mafia Wars disappeared within the week likely because CityVille players found the text-based crime sim to be too different from city-building. In contrast, promoting Empires & Allies within CityVille in the first month of the former’s launch helped drive in early users as the games feature identical city-building mechanics. CastleVille is enough like FrontierVille to where one game could support the other with cross-promotion, but FrontierVille has suffered a serious decline after the launch of its Pioneer Trail expansion failed to migrate all FrontierVille users to the new app.

Storming the Castle in 2012

Based on the behavior we’ve seen from social game players on Facebook in the 2010 holiday season, we expect to see slowed growth or decline in traffic across most games in the last week of December continuing possibly into the first week of January 2012. A notable exception to this behavior is CityVille, which beat out the holiday slump in 2010 to become the largest Facebook app of all time in early January 2011. At this point, with growth slowing as it is, we do not expect CastleVille avoid this sluggish period. The game could, however, bounce back in early 2012 depending on Zynga’s cross-promotion strategy and on any major content updates the developer might make to CastleVille. New game releases — such as the upcoming Hidden Chronicles — could also trigger growth if those games are successful in attracting users new to Zynga games.

As for whether or not CastleVille will pass CityVille on our AppData traffic tracking leaderboards, we can only say it is possible — as the latter game continues to decline — but not likely to occur for another month or so.

A year is typically the better part of a social game’s life cycle for titles launched on Facebook after 2009. During those first 12 months, a game will grow rapidly in first three months, peak in overall traffic, then begin to shrink over the following six months. During this shrinking period, the percent of daily active users as a percent of monthly active users (or DAU/MAU) will often decline toward 10%. Generally, we find that if engagement rates fall below 10% DAU/MAU, a game has a very strong chance of being sunsetted, as its developers seek to cut their losses.

By December 2011, almost all of January’s top 10 games have lost much of the traffic they had at the start of 2011. However, this does not necessarily mean they’re candidates for sunset in 2012. Many of these games maintain high levels of engagement, and probably continue to earn decent revenue for their developers. At least one game, EA PopCap’s Bejeweled Blitz, retained most of its traffic while increasing engagement levels through 2011.

At the start of 2011, these were the top 10 Facebook games by MAU, according to AppData:

In January 2011, top entry CityVille had the advantage of being the newest game among the first 10, having launched the month before. Still, several top games which launched in 2008 — Pet Society, Texas HoldEm, and Mafia Wars — also maintained ranks in the top 10. (The others in the January’s top 10 launched in mid 2010, with the exception of FarmVille, which launched in mid 2009.)

By the end of the year, Facebook’s top 10 had changed dramatically, with just three games in the January 2011 list ranking in the top 10 for December 2011:

The three January 2011 holdovers — CityVille, FarmVille, and Texas HoldEm Poker — are from Zynga, reflecting the company’s continued dominance in the market, and its strategy of maintaining the lead by releasing numerous new games and cross-promoting across its titles. However, several competing developers managed to grow their own audiences to attain top 10 status since then.

Here is where January 2011′s top 10 games stand now, according to AppData:

CityVille – Zynga: 48.9 million MAU, 10.4 million DAU
December rank, by MAU: 1

Launched at the end of 2010, Zynga’s city management sim enjoyed stratospheric growth in January 2011, when it reached over 100 million MAU. In February and March, the game attained a peak of daily active users (or DAU) of about 21 million. Since then, however, CityVille has experienced a slow but steady decline in both MAU and DAU. While it retains the number one position in December, its MAU and DAU have fallen by over 50% from its peak. At the same time, CityVille’s DAU as a percent of MAU has remained strong, at about 20%, throughout the year.

FarmVille – Zynga: 31.7 million MAU, 7.3 million DAU
December rank, by MAU: 2

Popular since its launch in 2009, Zynga’s farming sim steadily lost MAU and DAU through 2011, beginning the year with nearly 60 million MAU and 16 million DAU. As with CityVille, it lost about half of those users by year’s end. DAU/MAU for FarmVille has fluctuated throughout 2011, falling and rising between about 20 to 30%. It now stands at nearly 24%, retaining strong engagement rates (if many less total users.)

Texas HoldEm Poker – Zynga: 28.9 million MAU and 6.3 million DAU
December rank, by MAU: 4

At the close of 2011, Zynga’s online poker game maintains its place in the top 10, and even grew during the first few months. (The game had about 35 million MAU and 7 million DAU in January, then grew to a peak of about 38 million MAU and 7.75 million DAU in February.) After some eight months of relatively stable user rates, the game began losing traffic. However, compared to Zynga’s CityVille and FarmVille, which both lost about half their maximum number of users over the year, the HoldEm Poker game has retained about 85% of the total players it had at the start of 2011. The game even managed to increase DAU/MAU engagement rates over the year, at first fluctuating between 16 to 20% through 2011, but from late October to now, fluctuating between 21 to 23%.

FrontierVille – Zynga: 1.2 million MAU, 230 thousand DAU
December rank, by MAU: 83

The 2011 performance of Zynga’s adventure/RPG game is somewhat complicated, due to the launch of Pioneer Trail, a standalone expansion to the game released in August. At the start of 2011, FrontierVille had about 30 million MAU and 6 million DAU. By the time Pioneer Trail launched, the original game had dropped to about 12 million MAU and 3 million DAU. At first, Zynga encouraged FrontierVille players to install the new Pioneer Trail app, then eventually made redirection automatic, so that users attempting to search or access FrontierVille would instead be taken directly to Pioneer Trail. FrontierVille now has just 1.2 million MAU and 240,000 DAU, with a 18% in DAU/MAU. By contrast, Pioneer Trail maintains 5.3 million MAU and 1.7 million DAU, for an impressive DAU/MAU rate of about 30% and claimed a place on the top 25 Facebook games for December. So while FrontierVille has fallen far from its high usage rates at the beginning of 2011, its successor has inherited a relatively large and very committed base of players.

Mafia Wars – Zynga: 2.7 million MAU, 590,000 DAU
December rank, by MAU: 37

Zynga’s crime-theme role-playing game also had an interesting performance in 2011. Mafia Wars enjoyed a peak of about 20 million MAU and 3.5 million DAU at the beginning of the 2011, but steadily lost traffic through the year, down by 85% from its January totals. At the same time, the game enjoyed a modest increase of DAU/MAU in 2011, going from about 15% in January to between 20 and 25% from October to November. This increase in engagement occurred despite Zynga’s heavily promoted launch of Mafia Wars 2 in October. While the sequel still enjoys higher traffic (now 7.4 million MAU and 670,000 DAU), its DAU/MAU has fluctuated between 7.5% and 8.5% over the last couple months. Given Mafia Wars 2′s steady decline of players compared to Mafia Wars’ relative stability, it’s quite possible the original game will eclipse its sequel in 2012.

Café World – Zynga: 6.6 million MAU, 1.5 million DAU
December rank, by MAU: 17

Zynga’s restaurant sim has lost over 60% of the audience it had at the beginning of the year. However, as with Zynga’s Mafia Wars, Café World’s loss of total players was coupled to a gain in engagement. The game climbed from a DAU/MAU rate of about 18% in January, to between 22 and 30% in the last three months of 2011. This high engagement suggests the 2009 game has managed to maintain a large group of dedicated players.

Treasure Isle – Zynga: 2.1 million MAU, 410,000 DAU
December rank, by MAU: 55

Dropping from a peak of 15 million MAU and 3 million DAU in January, Zynga’s treasure hunting game lost some 83% of its audience in 2011. Despite this loss, Treasure Isle’s DAU/MAU ratio has remained relatively consistent and healthy through the year, fluctuating between between 20 and 25% for most of 2011.

Millionaire City – Digital Chocolate: 2.4 million MAU, 410,000 DAU
December rank, by MAU: 44

Digital Chocolate’s city sim lost some 80% of its traffic through 2011, and saw a decline of DAU/MAU from 22% in January, to between 16 and 18% from October to December.

Pet Society – EA-Playfish: 6.2 million MAU, 1 million DAU
December rank, by MAU: 19

EA Playfish’s pet care sim lost over 50% of the players it had in January (when it enjoyed 12 million MAU and 2.25 DAU). Engagement rates have remained relatively low through the year, fluctuating between 12 and 16% for most of 2011.

Bejeweled Blitz, EA/Popcap: 8.7 million MAU, 2.9 million DAU
December rank, by MAU: 14

Of all the games in the top 10 for January 2011, EA PopCap’s casual arcade game has seen the strongest performance this year, maintaining 70% of the players it had 12 months ago. It also enjoyed extremely high engagement rates throughout the year, fluctuating between 26 and 36% DAU/MAU through 2011.

It’s interesting to note that most of these games still maintain healthy DAU/MAU rates above 20%, even one to three years after their launch. Only three, FrontierVille, Millionaire City, and Pet Society, currently have a DAU/MAU rate closer to 15%. However, this rate, while not optimal, is still suggestive of relatively strong engagement rates. It’s therefore likely that most of January 2011′s top 10 will continue to generate revenue for their developers well into 2012.

Clarification: This game is not licensed or operated by SyFy.

According to our traffic tracking service AppData, Being Human currently has 60,000 monthly active users and 10,000 daily active users.

In Being Human, players take on the roles of the series stars — a vampire, werewolf, and ghost — who go on missions in order to improve their aura and earn money to spend on household decor and clothing. The game is divided into two portions, the world and home. While out in the world, players must use the characters’ unique abilities to fight other supernatural beings, which increases the player’s reputation meter. There is also a humanity meter, which fills as players perform actions such as helping humans. When both meters are full, the player goes up a level and unlocks more missions, items, and so on. The gameplay out in the world relies heavily on exploration, with players spending energy points each time they wish to interact with anything. Energy replenishes over time, but can be immediately refilled by players if they purchase boosts.

Energy also refills faster as players interact with the home portion of the game. As they purchase new furnishings for their home, a Home Score meter fills. The more full it is, the faster their energy replenishes. In addition to improving their homes, players can purchase new clothing and styles for their characters, as well as choose names for them. The game also offers a means to expand the size of the player’s home.

Social features come in the form of bragging about accomplishments via viral channels, visiting friends’ homes, and adding friends to the game. By visiting their friends, players can earn energy boosts. They also earn one additional energy boost per day per friend they have playing.

Being Human is monetized using Facebook Credits in exchange for many of the game’s household deco items, clothing, and appearance improvements. Some items can be purchased with the soft cash currency, which can also be had in exchange for Credits.

Utinni Games has recently expanded the game with additional “episodes” and expects to do so on a regular basis. The developer is also taking a very active approach to the game’s Wall, soliciting feedback on features that should be included in future updates from its community.

You can follow Being Human’s progress using AppData, our traffic tracking service for social games and developers.