Rovio’s Angry Birds Friends takes the top spot among this week’s fastest-growing Facebook games by daily active users, bringing in 467,893 DAU for a 36 percent gain. The game, which was originally conceived as the more social, Facebook version of the original title for iOS, now returns to mobile devices with the added features.

Pretty Simple’s Criminal Case came in at the No. 2 spot with 386,021 DAU for an 8 percent gain. The No. 3 spot went to Social Point’s Dragon City, which added 267,525 DAU for a 5 percent increase. Playdom’s Marvel: Avenger’s Alliance seems to be enjoying the increased publicity around the Iron Man 3 feature film, returning to the No. 4 spot after a long hiatus from the top 5. Finally, King’s match-3 game Farm Heroes Saga is slowing down from it’s massive debut, coming in at the No. 5 spot with 101,415 DAU for 2 percent increase, bringing it to an estimated total of 4.2 million DAU.

One other notable gainer this week is U4iA’s multiplayer first person shooter Offensive Combat, with 30,364 DAU for a gain of 56 percent. You can read our recent review of the game here.

	Name	DAU_ESTIMATExxxxx	Gain	Gain,%
1.	Angry Birds Friends	1,779,682	+467,893xxxxxxxx	+ 36%
2.	Criminal Case	5,378,789	+386,021	+ 8%
3.	Dragon City	5,699,375	+267,525	+ 5%
4.	Marvel: Avengers Alliancexxxxx	1,278,870	+125,071	+ 11%
5.	Farm Heroes Saga	4,257,860	+101,415	+ 2%
6.	Ninja Saga	394,177	+97,376	+ 33%
7.	Cafeland	713,947	+79,518	+ 13%
8.	Car Town	628,231	+57,139	+ 10%
9.	ไพ่เท็กซัส	432,971	+46,724	+ 12%
10.	Stick Run	552,843	+42,818	+ 8%
11.	Social Empires	1,480,940	+40,791	+ 3%
12.	Marketland	505,043	+37,480	+ 8%
13.	Offensive Combat	81,770	+30,364	+ 59%
14.	FarmVille	1,714,116	+28,956	+ 2%
15.	Social Wars	1,018,233	+24,380	+ 2%
16.	Lucky Slots	729,919	+23,986	+ 3%
17.	Jewel Journey	179,350	+23,255	+ 15%
18.	TrainStation	170,284	+19,238	+ 12%
19.	Words of Wonder	292,357	+18,135	+ 7%
20.	德州撲克(中文版)	234,016	+15,310	+ 7%

All data in this post comes from our traffic tracking service, AppData. Stay tuned for our look at the top emerging apps on Friday.

Read our reviews of…

• Offensive Combat
• Car Town
• Farm Heroes Saga
• Stick Run
• Dragon City
• Criminal Case
• Words of Wonder

The Inside Network Job Board is dedicated to providing you with the best social media job opportunities across social and mobile application platforms. Here are this week’s highlights from the Inside Network Job Board, including positions at: KIXEYE, Playdom, DeNa and more.

Acquinity Interactive

• Partner Sales Manager
• Director of Partner Sales
• Advertiser Injections Developer
• Sr. Email Marketing Manager

App Minis LLC

• Senior Unity Game Programmer

BrightRoll

• Associate Manager, Client Development, Brightroll
• Campaign Manager (NYC)
• Manager, Publisher Business Development
• Manager, Publisher Development
• Marketing Manager
• Account Manager (CHI)

DeNa

• Performance Marketing Manager

Disney Interactive | Playdom

• Mobile Game Designer
• Sr. Game Designer

Fandango

• Social Media Marketing Manager

GameDuell

• Lead Artist (m/f)

King

• Senior Game Developer

KIXEYE

• Unity Gameplay Engineer
• PHP Engineer
• 3D Game Engineer
• Server Engineer
• Mobile Client Engineer
• Technical Director of Game Engineering

Play Games24x7

• Marketing Lead – Social Casino Group

POPSUGAR

• Sr. Web Engineer
• Java Search Engineer

Tradeshift

• Enterprise Sales Engineer: East Coast

Wooga GmbH

• Software Engineer – Backend
• iOS Games Developer
• Game Designer – New Mobile Game

Gaming giant Electronic Arts today reported $1.04 billion in non-generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) net revenue for its fourth fiscal quarter of 2013, up 6.4 percent year-over-year from 977 million in non-GAAP net revenue from Q4 2012.

Sales of $1.04 billion were within the company’s guidance of $1.025 billion to $1.125 billion. Non-GAAP diluted earnings per share (EPS) were $0.55, which was slightly below its guidance of $0.57 to $0.72, while non-GAAP loss per share was $($0.17).

EA didn’t report a non-GAAP net loss in this quarter, but expects a non-GAAP net loss of $188 million and a non-GAAP loss per share of $0.62 for Q1 2014. Non-GAAP net income for the quarter was $169 million, up from $56 million from the same quarter a year ago. Non-GAAP digital revenue for the 2013 fiscal year totaled $1.7 billion.

Overall, the company’s non-GAAP digital revenue for Q4 2013 amounted to $618 million, up from $425 million in Q4 2012. Revenue from mobile, including handhelds, contributed approximately $104 million to this total.

“We remained focused on this segment due to the significant growth in the smartphone and tablet market,” says Blake Jorgensen, chief financial officer of EA, in today’s earnings call. (more…)

SpellRush is a new iOS game from Tappily. It’s available now as a free download from the App Store, and carries a single optional in-app purchase to unlock the game’s “premium” features.

SpellRush is a simple word game that gives players a grid of letters and then challenges them to find as many words as possible before time expires. Successfully making words causes their component letters to disappear, and more letters will fall from the top of the screen to take their place. Creating words worth more than 10 points rewards the player with a “star,” and collecting three stars causes a multiplier to appear on the board, allowing the player to earn significantly higher scores with careful construction of words.

The game has two modes of play — Quick Play is a single-player mode in which the player takes on a single round by themselves and tries to score as many points as possible, while Challenge Friends mode allows players to compete against their Game Center friends in one-on-one, best of five battles to see who is the best at the game. Game Center integration with the game is good, as it allows challenges to be issued from the game’s own interface rather than having to pull up the jarring, skeuomorphic “casino-style” Game Center interface. There is one odd little quirk, however — the list of Game Center friends presented to the player to issue a challenge does not appear to be organized in anything even resembling a logical order. They’re not alphabetized by first name, last name or username — and the latter is not visible. There’s no search function, either, so players hoping to challenge a specific player will have to scroll through this disorganized list until they find the person they’re looking for. It’s a relatively minor issue, but for those with a bulging friends list it is an annoyance that doesn’t need to exist.

(more…)

King’s Farm Heroes Saga is once again this week’s fastest-growing Facebook game by monthly active user, bringing in 3.6 million monthly active users (MAU) for a 31 percent gain.

Pretty Simple’s Criminal case retook the No. 2 spot after dropping to the No. 3 spot last week, up 9 percent with 1.5 million MAU. RoyalCactus’ Jelly Glutton  jumped up from the No. 8 spot to the No. 3 spot  with 371,038 MAU for a 32 percent gain, amounting to an estimated total of 1.5 million MAU. DoubleDown Casino Slots & Poker came in at the No. 4 spot with 299,095 MAU, up 5 percent. Finally, Qublix’s Solitaire Tales closes out our top five fastest growing Facebook games by MAU with 268,934 new players for a 23 percent gain.

There were no other notable gainers on this week’s list of fastest-growing Facebook games by MAU, without a single game gaining 50 percent or more.

	Name	MAU_ESTIMATExxxxx	Gain	Gain,%
1.	Farm Heroes Saga	15,319,723	+3,633,012xxxxx	+ 31%
2.	Criminal Case	19,890,673	+1,595,599	+ 9%
3.	Jelly Glutton	1,536,453	+371,038	+ 32%
4.	DoubleDown Casino Slots & Pokerxxxxx	6,152,216	+299,095	+ 5%
5.	Solitaire Tales	1,414,817	+268,934	+ 23%
6.	FarmVille	9,948,537	+208,526	+ 2%
7.	Jewel Epic	2,375,101	+187,505	+ 9%
8.	Bingo Bash	3,284,169	+185,075	+ 6%
9.	Pool Plus	750,941	+178,651	+ 31%
10.	Words of Wonder	2,842,439	+173,051	+ 6%
11.	Social Empires	8,802,599	+169,408	+ 2%
12.	Slotomania	5,448,008	+148,297	+ 3%
13.	Cafeland	3,866,741	+136,109	+ 4%
14.	Dessert Shop	2,579,961	+131,937	+ 5%
15.	Bubble Saga	6,741,190	+126,317	+ 2%
16.	المزرعة السعيدة	7,650,258	+123,886	+ 2%
17.	Race Track Rivals	782,952	+119,512	+ 18%
18.	Offensive Combat	777,584	+119,184	+ 16%
19.	Cristiano Ronaldo Footy	601,137	+118,694	+ 25%
20.	Hoop De Loop Saga	5,351,980	+117,376	+ 2%

All data in this post comes from our traffic tracking service, AppData. Come back for our look at the fastest-growing Facebook games by daily active users on Wednesday and top emerging apps on Friday. You can learn more about Facebook’s new ranking system here.

Read our reviews of…

• Farm Heroes Saga
• Jewel Epic
• Words of Wonder
• Jelly Glutton
• Criminal Case
• Dessert Shop
• DoubleDown Casino Slots & Poker
• Jewel Epic
• Bingo Bash
• Words of Wonder
• Social Empires

Taptiles Saga is a Facebook game from Arkadium. It’s available now for anyone to play on the social network, and is receiving regular promotion via sidebar ads in App Center.

Taptiles Saga is essentially a three-dimensional take on mahjong solitaire, with cubic tiles stacked in a tower-like arrangement rather than a flat design with tiles stacked atop each other as in conventional mahjong solitaire. This means that the arrangement can be rotated and viewed from four different angles rather than the top-down view of regular mahjong solitaire. This would actually be a pretty original concept for a puzzle game were it not for the fact that this is now the seventh time Arkadium has used this exact game mechanic across all platforms, and the second time it has used it on Facebook. Still, in a world drowning in Bejeweled-inspired match-3 games and bubble shooters, any game that breaks from the “norm” is worthy of note, regardless of whether the developer has done it before.

Basic gameplay in Taptiles Saga requires players to match pairs of cubic tiles that bear the same symbol. Like in mahjong solitaire, tiles may only be removed if they are free to slide out of their arrangement and are not “blocked in” on two sides. As the player progresses through the game, additional types of tile start to show themselves, including dark magic blocks, which must be matched to clear chains off other blocks, and stone blocks which are unmovable except through use of a “pickaxe” powerup that costs soft currency to use.

(more…)

The Inside Network Job Board is dedicated to providing you with the best social media job opportunities across social and mobile application platforms. Here are this week’s highlights from the Inside Network Job Board, including positions at: Acquinity Interactive, Fandango, King and more

Acquinity Interactive

• Partner Sales Manager
• Director of Partner Sales
• Advertiser Injections Developer
• Sr. Email Marketing Manager

App Minis LLC

• Senior Unity Game Programmer

BrightRoll

• Associate Manager, Client Development, Brightroll
• Campaign Manager (NYC)
• Manager, Publisher Business Development

Disney Interactive | Playdom

• Mobile Game Designer
• Sr. Game Designer

Fandango

• Social Media Marketing Manager

GameDuell

• Lead Artist (m/f)

King

• Senior Game Developer

KIXEYE

• Unity Gameplay Engineer
• PHP Engineer
• 3D Game Engineer
• Server Engineer
• Mobile Client Engineer
• Technical Director of Game Engineering

Play Games24x7

• Marketing Lead – Social Casino Group

POPSUGAR

• IOS Developer
• Java Backend Engineer
• Java Web Engineer
• Sr. Web Engineer

Tapjoy

• Technical Support Engineer

Wooga GmbH

• Software Engineer – Backend
• iOS Games Developer
• Game Designer – New Mobile Game

Dragons and Titans goes into open beta – Zynga partner Wyrmbyte today announced that its MOBA game Dragons and Titans has gone into open beta. You can read about our hands-on demo with the game from GDC 2013, or jump right into the game on Facebook.

Car Town to feature Fast & Furious 6 content — Game developer Cie Games announced that it has partnered with Universal Pictures to add promotional content to its popular Facebook game Car Town. You can read our review of the game here. The partnership between Cie Games and Universal will combine virtual and real-world efforts, including in-game film integration with missions inspired by the movie.

Playstudios launches Mirage — Free-to-play casino game developer Playstudios today announced it’s adding new content inspired by Siegfried & Roy’s Secret Garden and Dolphin Habitat at The Mirage Hotel & Casino to myVegas. myVegas, which reached three million installs since launch, is a combination of a resource management sim and gambling title with slots and card games, as well as regular mini-games.

Phyken Media launches Wizard Ops Tactics – Independent game developer Phyken Media announced that it has released Wizard Ops Tactics for iOS and Android devices. Players take on the role of a Wizard Commander as they build a Wizard Army of Ice, Fire, Earth and Air Wizards which can be combined in 140,000 unique ways. The game is free to download from Google Play and the iTunes App Store.

Zynga adds The Country Fair to FarmVille 2 –  The County Fair will add new content to players at level 20 and above in Zynga’s FarmVille 2. The new weekly event will have players displaying their prized crops and competing with friends. Zynga said on its blog that the The County Fair is a complex feature and that will be slowly rolled out over the coming months.

Facebook recaps stats about its games ecosystem from GDC 2013 – In a blog post Monday, Facebook’s director of games Sean Ryan recapped some stats about its games ecosystem that were revealed during the 2013 Game Developers Conference. Ryan says more than 250 million users are playing games on Facebook each month, and 82 percent of the top 100 grossing U.S. mobile games and 75 percent of the top 100 grossing U.S. Android mobile games are integrated with Facebook. In 2012, Facebook paid out more than to $2 billion to game developers and saw total payers increase 24 percent year-over-year from March 2012 to March 2013.

GREE updates NFL Shuffle with new ‘Talents’ feature – Mobile-social gaming giant GREE updated its card-based game NFL Shuffle with a new feature called ‘Talents’ that is aimed at increasing the game’s competitiveness. Users can now utilize an NFL players Talent, a game-changing boost, to increase a card’s scoring potential. Talents come in the form of gameplay enhancements such as additional swaps, and shuffles, offense and defense team bonuses, and Silver and Gold Football Bonuses.

Ruby Seven Studios’ slots game Slots of Plunder took the top spot on this week’s top emerging games on Facebook, growing by an estimated 20,107 monthly active users for a 48 percent gain. AppData estimates that this puts the game at 61,871 MAU.

Coming in at the No. 2 spot is another slots game, Fupa Games Inc’s Royal Casino Slots with 20,060 new MAU for a gain of 48 percent. Last week’s top emerging Facebook game, Ganymede’s puzzler Last Temple, took the No. 3 spot with 19,800 MAU for a gain of 27 percent. Coming in at the  No. 4 spot for the second week in a row is Boundless’ card game جواكر (“Jawaker”) with 11,068 MAU for a 18 percent gain. Finally, closing out this week’s list top emerging games on Facebook is Idea Channel Ltd’s CASTLOT with 10,200 MAU and a 98 percent gain.

CASTLOT was also the only game with a gain greater than 50 percent, meaning there were no other notable gainers on this week’s list of top emerging games on Facebook.

	Name	MAU_ESTIMATExxxxxx	Gain	Gain,%
1.	Slots of Plunder	61,871	+20,107xxxxxxxx	+ 48%
2.	Royal Casino Slots	61,824	+20,060	+ 48%
3.	Last Temple	92,888	+19,800	+ 27%
4.	جواكر	40,000	+11,068	+ 18%
5.	CASTLOT	20,641	+10,200	+ 98%
6.	Realm Of Empires	30,962	+10,080	+ 48%
7.	WortSalat	30,962	+10,080	+ 48%
8.	Are you Lucky Today ?	30,962	+10,080	+ 48%
9.	Shoot Out	30,962	+10,080	+ 48%
10.	Bubble Shooter	30,962	+10,080	+ 48%
11.	My Bingo	41,283	+9,960	+ 32%
12.	Crazy Car	41,283	+9,960	+ 32%
13.	En Büyük Kim?	41,283	+9,960	+ 32%
14.	Mob Wars: La Cosa Nostraxxxxxxx	51,604	+9,840	+ 24%
15.	EcoCity	51,604	+9,840	+ 24%
16.	Magnificent Millenium	51,604	+9,840	+ 24%
17.	Papa Pear Saga	51,604	+9,840	+ 24%
18.	BVB Fantasy Manager	82,567	+9,738	+ 13%
19.	WWF Play the Game!	30,611	+9,729	+ 47%
20.	Wolf pack	61,925	+9,719	+ 19%

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 today revealed its newest core game title, Solstice Arena, a multiplayer online battle arena game for mobile devices from the A Bit Lucky team.

A Bit Lucky is the developer behind games like Lucky Train and Lucky Space, which were shut down on Facebook in September 2012 while the studio continued to work on Solstice Arena. When Zynga acquired the studio, also in September 2012, A Bit Lucky’s employees became a part of Zynga San Francisco and continued to work on Solstice Arena, though little was known about the game at the time.

Today we finally learned that Solstice Arena is a MOBA game, a genre that originated with the popular mod Defense of the Ancients (DotA) for Blizzard’s PC and Mac strategy game Warcraft 3.

(more…)