Facebook seems like the last platform on which a small, independent games developer would want to get started. Cost per acquisition is rising, competition is fierce and when someone does come up with a unique game concept, the clones aren’t far behind. It is where 5th Planet Games got started, however, and its story is proof that indies can make it on Facebook despite the odds. At three years old and with just 300,000 monthly active users, the developer is on track to make over $10 million in annual revenue this year.

Here’s what the odds on Facebook look like going into 2012. Zynga dominates the market, projecting up to $1.5 billion in annual bookings for 2012. As of its first quarter earnings report, Zynga makes 5 and a half cents average revenue per daily active user, with 65 million daily active users across social and mobile platforms. Farther down the developer leaderboard, the picture is less clear as private companies avoid disclosing revenue and ARPDAU. Mid-market developer Kixeye, however, recently told TechCrunch it’s expecting $100 million in 2012 revenue at something like 80 cents ARPDAU. Cost per acquisition is lower for Zynga than for Kixeye by virtue of its massive cross-promotion network; but we’ve heard the average CPA on Facebook is around one dollar.

This picture was very different when 5th Planet launched its first game, Dawn of the Dragons, on Facebook in 2009. For one thing, Facebook Credits were not mandated for game developers back then. The social network had also clamped down on virality, cutting off social games from posting stories in News Feed. To get its hardcore collectible card game off the ground with no funding to its name and no actual marketing budget, the 5th Planet had to get creative.

“The only choice we had was guerilla marketing,” CEO Rob Winkler tells us. “We set up our official forums and started talking to people, then we started talking to them on their walls, then in Facebook groups they had for other games and so on.  What began touching as many message boards as possible, which grew into over 1,000 posts and messages across hundreds of forums and walls to drive that initial traffic surge.”

Dawn of the Dragons peaked on Facebook at over 300,000 MAU and 54,000 DAU in August of 2010, as tracked by our AppData traffic monitoring service. Those are not big numbers compared to other games of the day, but they were enough to keep retention north of 15 percent (which indicates a reasonably healthy social game). A second game, Legacy of a Thousand Suns, launched later that year and managed to climb to over 500,000 MAU and 60,000 DAU at peak traffic — but retention slipped below 10 percent. Its third game, Clash of the Dragons, launched on Facebook in July of 2011 and didn’t even break 100,000 MAU. The platform had changed so much that 5th Planet was forced to change the way it did business.

“Facebook Credits and rising CPAs certainly changed the way we viewed the platform,” Chief Business Officer Braden Moulton says. “Our CPA [in 2011 was] in the $.50 range, so we were better than most. Today that same user would be well over $1.”

This led the developer to look at expanding to new platforms and games networks. For its first expansion, 5th Planet settled on Kongregate, a games portal purchased by brick-and-mortar video game retailer GameStop in 2010.

“The integration was very easy,” Moulton explains. “One of the main differences (and attractions) for working with Kongregate is that they handle promotion themselves. So while they take their cut of revenue, we aren’t burdened with driving users to our games. When we launched Clash of the Dragons there in December 2011, Kongregate poured a ton of traffic into our game — 300,000 installs in just 30 days. We had never seen numbers like that.”

At the 2012 Game Developer Conference in San Francisco, Kongregate broke some of those metrics out for the audience — highlight an average spend per paying user of $120 per month and 90 percent of revenue from players spending over $100. Moulton updated us to say that spend per paying user is now closer to $160. Even so, average revenue per monthly active user is still higher on Facebook than Kongregate for Dawn of the Dragons — a little over $3 compared to $2. Across Facebook, Kongregate and its destination site, 5th Planet sees around 70,000 daily active users and calculates ARPDAU at about 40 cents.

5th Planet Games is planning to debut its fourth game exclusively on Kongregate in June before expanding it to Facebook and European platforms. It also plans to release mobile versions of its game sometime this year. Beyond games, 5th Planet recently acquired collectible card game developer To Be Continued and will likely look for other indie studios to acquire as it expands. The developer is still proudly boostrapped, but Moulton says 5th Planet would explore funding if the right opportunity to accelerate growth came along.

As for other small studios looking to get onto Facebook, Moulton advises, “Make something completely unique or make a good slots game. Facebook can still be profitable, but it’s going to be tough.”

Now that we’ve published our May Top 25 Facebook list and given it a week to breathe, it’s time to take a closer look at the traffic patterns of each game mentioned.

Counting down from No. 25 we’ll examine the behavior of six or seven of the games on the list each week, based on their daily active user history (the best way to gauge an app’s core audience), and predict how this traffic will affect a game’s position on next month’s list. For the first week of May, we’ll examine No. 25 through No. 19.

25. Marvel: Avengers Alliance

Disney Playdom’s Marvel: Avengers Alliance is reaping the benefits of the massive marketing campaign for the record-breaking film “The Avengers.” The movie came out last Friday, so the Avengers IP is still in the public eye, meaning Avengers Alliance is continuing to bring in new players. Since May 1, Avengers Alliance gained 300,000 DAU, bringing its total to 1.5 million. If traffic continues to increase like this, then the game may very well place somewhere around No. 15 next month. Whether or not Avengers Alliance can maintain this user acquisition remains to be seen, though, especially when the movie leaves theaters in a few weeks. “The Amazing Spider-Man” is due out in theaters on July 3, but it remains to be seen whether or not the inevitable cross-promotion with that film will be enough to keep users coming in at this pace.

T21. DoubleDown Casino

DoubleDown Interactive’s DoubleDown Casino is holding steady at 1.3 million DAU, the point the game has continuously returned to since December 2011. DoubleDown Casino managed to spike up a few times to 1.4 million DAU over the past ten days, though, so it could return to that point again soon. The game showed high growth during the second half of 2011, but this has slowed since DoubleDown Interactive was acquired by International Game Technology in January. Since DoubleDown Casino doesn’t seem to be gaining or losing significant traffic, it will probably appear on our June Top 25 list, but stay on the tail end of the chart.

T21. Hoop De Loop Saga

King.com’s Hoop De Loop Saga is up to 1.4 million DAU, a gain of 100,000 since it debuted on the Top 25 list. The game hasn’t been climbing the charts as quickly as other “Saga” games, but it has showed steady gains since it launched in January. Hoop De Loop Saga’s total traffic is up by nearly 500,000 DAU since April 1, so it seems likely that the game will continue to grow and move up a couple of places for June’s Top 25 list.

T21. Candy Crush Saga

King.com’s newest “Saga” game continues its traffic sugar rush. The game has already gained 500,000 DAU since the May Top 25 list was published, bringing its total up to 1.8 million. Since the game launched in April, it’s proven a hit on Facebook and has regularly topped our weekly lists of fastest-growing games. If Candy Crush Saga manages to keep accumulating users, then it may very well add another million or so DAU to its total, which would easily move it up to the top half of June’s Top 25 list.

T21. Top Eleven – Be a Football Manager

Nordeus’s Top Eleven – Be a Football Manager continues to hover at 1.3 million DAU. This is another title that’s showed slow, but regular, gains since it launched in May 2010. The past few months show Top Eleven will generally hold steady at a traffic point for about six weeks before it moves up by 100,000 DAU. It’s been almost four weeks since the last increase, so the game will probably show a noticeable gain towards the end of May. The game may not move on June’s Top 25 chart even if this happens, since it took 1.2 million DAU this month to just to get onto the list. If minimum DAU increases, the game might wind up even closer to No. 25.

20. 開心水族箱

Happy Elements’s Chinese language aquarium sim 開心水族箱 (“Aquarium Open Heart Box”) is still bobbing along at the 1.5 million DAU waterline. Even though it launched in 2009, this is a title with impressive staying power, even though its DAU figures aren’t anywhere near its peak of almost 2.4 million DAU. Since May 1, the game’s traffic bounced up and down, but it’s returned to 1.5 million. 開心水族箱’s traffic regularly moves in waves, and April marked a valley with 1.4 million DAU.  The game’s numbers are starting to improve again and it may very well gain another 100,000 DAU by the end of the month, possibly moving it up another spot or two in June.

19. Empires & Allies

Zynga’s Empires & Allies continues to lose users at a steady pace, down by 200,000 DAU since May 1. Zynga designed this to appeal to mid-core strategy fans, but it hasn’t had the lasting appeal of its “Ville” titles. The game launched and peaked in June 2011, hitting a high point of 7.7 million DAU before starting to noticeably shrink that August. Empires & Allies is currently at 1.5 million DAU, meaning it’s dropped by 700,000 since February alone. If Empires & Allies continues to decline at this rate, it may not even be on the Top 25 for June.

All data in this post comes from our traffic tracking service, AppData. Stay tuned for next week’s continuation of our Top 25 gainers and losers, when we look at No. 18 through No. 12 on the list.

Hiring in the social gaming industry was up this week, with 13 companies reporting 27 recent hires. According to data from LinkedIn and other sources, Zynga and Vancouver’s Eruptive Games reported the most activity with five hires. The highest profile move of the week belonged to Mob Science which saw David Callahan come on as vice president of product and operations.

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.

6waves

• Christopher Lucas, Product Manager — Lucas joins the company’s Tokyo team, overseeing social games on Mixi and Yahoo! Mobile.

Digital Chocolate

• Mauri Jääskö, Game Programmer — Jääskö was previously a lead programmer at  Tuonela Productions.

Disney Playdom

• Damon Osgood, Lead Programmer — Osgood was formerly a principal lead programmer for gameplay at Electronic Arts.

Double Down Interactive

• Steven Alatorre, Software Engineer — Alatorre was previously a software design engineer at Cequint, Inc.

East Side Games

• Jon Chew, Jr. Game Analyst – Chew was previously a marketing intern at Invoke Media.
• Jennifer Kim, Co-op Software Engineer — Kim has previously worked as a co-op toolset developer at Polycom.
• Jason Verhiel, Software Engineer — Verhiel was formerly an AI engineer at Slant Six Games.

Eruptive Games

• Derek Young, Product Director — Young co-founded Sanity Check Entertainment and was an artist at Radical Entertainment, before joining Eruptive Games.
• Ryan Smith, Community Manager — Smith comes to Eruptive Games from ADK, where he was a fraud manager.
• Rui Qian, Interactive Designer — Qian was previously a technical artist at EA.
• Isaac Murdock, QA Lead – Murdock was a quality assurance lead at A.C.R.O.N.Y.M.
• Melany Hamill, Project Manager — Hamill comes to Eruptive from HotHead Games, where she was the studio manager.

Kabam

• Michael Holcomb, Senior Artist — Holcomb was previously an artist as Mass Media.
• Michael Pierce, Marketing Manager – Pierce moves up at Kabam, from an SEM analyst to marketing manager.

King.com

• Alexander Skepp, Creative Solutions – Ad Operations — Skepp comes to the King.com team from Midasplayer AB, where he was a graphic designer.

Mob Science

• David Callahan, Vice President of Product and Operations — This week’s highest profile hire belongs to Mob Science. Callahan was previously a product manager at Zynga, working on the Mafia Wars franchise.
• Chad Wilson, Senior Game Designer — Wilson was previously the lead game designer at Crowdstar.

Playtika

• Guy Goldberg, Affiliate Manager – Goldberg was formerly with Extent Technologies, where he was also an affiliate manager.

Plumbee

• Segilola Jolaosho, Associate Customer Relationship Manager — Jolaosho makes a major career jump in joining Plumbee. She was previously a restaurant manager.
• In other Plumbee news Owen O’Donnell has joined the company’s board as an  independent non-executive director. O’Donnell was previously the CFO at Financial Times, Betfair, King.com and Joost. He is also a director with Rank Group.

Spil Games

• Paolo Iannelli, Back End Performance Engineer — Iannelli was the tech lead and software architect of LeaseWeb CDN.
• Frank van Gemeren, Front-End Performance Engineer – Before joining Spil, van Gemeren was a core CMS developer (back-end) and general web developer at insyde.nl.
• Lucas Rolff, Performance Engineer — Rolff was a web developer in Denmark before joining the Spil team.

Zynga

• Ryan Bitanga, Software Engineer — Zynga grabs four team members from the Lolapps side of 6waves Lolapps. Bitanga was previously a software engineer at 6waves Lolapps.
• Benjamin Hurst, QA Engineer I – Poker — Hurst was a QA tester at 6waves Lolapps.
• Tian Han, Software Engineer — Han was a game developer at 6waves Lolapps.
• Jerry Tzeng, Concept Artist — Tzeng was a senior 2D artist at 6waves Lolapps.
• Kenneth Cromack, QA Engineer — Before joining Zynga Cromack was a production specialist/quality assurance analyst at HighWire Press.

Self Workout in the Park for Facebook is a new social game based around Self Magazine’s fitness events of the same name. The game challenges players to get their avatar fit and healthy, and hopefully inspire their real-life self to do the same.

The game commences with the creation of a custom avatar. This is accomplished through the purchasing of clothes, haircuts and other body features with soft currency, a short lifestyle questionnaire and the selection of the avatar’s “body type.” Since Self Magazine is primarily aimed at women, players may only create a female avatar regardless of their own gender.

Once the game begins, the player’s experience is directed by a series of quests from three different female “coach” characters. Through these quests, the player is encouraged to purchase fitness equipment and refreshment stands for their park, engage in workouts and invite their friends to join them. By doing so, players earn various types of “points” and level up their character.

Workout in the Park makes use of a fairly complex system of statistics and rewards in order to encourage players to think about all aspects of their fitness. Visiting a refreshment stand, for example, can provide players with water, protein and vitamin points, which can then be spent on participating in workout activities. These, in turn, provide players with experience points in Fitness, Nutrition and Wellness categories, and in order to level up all three of these point banks must be filled up to 100. On top of all this, the player has an Energy bar, though unlike many social games this may be simply restored by visiting a coffee stand. Gameplay becomes a matter of balancing workout and refreshment activities in order to earn points at a good rate.

All activities may be undertaken at one of three “intensity” levels. In each case, the costs increase with each level of intensity, but the rewards are greater. Higher-intensity activities also take longer periods of real time to complete, though it’s possible to spend the game’s hard currency to immediately finish an activity if the player desires.

Alternatively, players may play the “Zen Match” minigame — two more games are also coming “soon” — while they wait for time to pass. This is a rather poorly-executed Diamond Dash clone in which players must clear groups of three or more connected gems by clicking and dragging to draw lines over them, as opposed to simply clicking as in Wooga’s title. The game does not explain its rules to players upon first playing it, and upon clicking the “help” option, players are provided with a page of information written entirely in placeholder “Lorem Ipsum” text. It also features numerous errors in its game logic: when the board has no more moves available, players must simply either quit the game or wait for time to expire, and sometimes valid moves register as illegal. The game also supposedly features the facility to compete against friends for score, though exactly how the player compares their score against their opponent isn’t made very clear.

The main gameplay features a number of flaws that spoil the experience, too. Despite a lengthy loading screen upon first starting the game, performing any action or purchasing any object seems to result in a noticeable pause while the requested animation or item loads. The game doesn’t remember the player’s preference to turn off the sounds and music — indeed it’s impossible to turn off the music independently of the sound effects. The Zen Match minigame does not respect the player’s choice of whether or not to have the sound on, instead featuring its own option button. When building items, the screen automatically scrolls when the item is moved towards its edge, but must be dragged during normal play. And certain convenient social game conventions, such as the inclusion of a button to jump straight to the appropriate store page from a “build this item” quest, are conspicuously absent.

Also worthy of note is the fact that while Workout in the Park’s core values — eat well, get fit, preferably with friends — is admirable, the heavily-stylized art used in the game is both disconcerting and completely at odds with this message. The three “coach” characters are each depicted with tiny waists, huge breasts and abnormally-long necks. The player character looks more realistically proportioned, but when picking their body type upon character creation, even the “plus size” option couldn’t reasonably be described as “overweight.” This could potentially alienate some players who could stand to gain a great deal from the game’s core message — as could the fact it’s not possible to play as a male avatar. While Self Magazine is aimed at women, the tips and advice the game gives apply just as much to men.

These issues aside, Self Workout in the Park has the potential to be a decent fitness-themed game with a good core message. At this time, the title’s flaws prevent this from being worthy of an unreserved recommendation, but it’s perhaps one to check on after a little more active development has taken place.

As a new title, Self Workout in the Park is not yet listed on our traffic tracking service AppData. Check back shortly for a detailed breakdown of the game’s figures, including MAU, DAU and retention statistics.

Wait

An unusual social game with an admirable message, but one which needs a bit of work before being recommended wholeheartedly.

Facebook is replacing the current Apps and Games Dashboard with a new App Center feature that sorts Facebook apps by category and user ratings.

Detailed on Facebook’s developer blog, App Center will be viewable from Facebook.com, mobile web and Facebook’s iOS and Android apps when it rolls out over the next few weeks. Clicking on an app from within App Center directs a user to that app’s native platform, where the user can install the app. The new feature also introduces app detail pages, which is where users will land when typing an app name into Facebook’s search function. Apps are also filtered into additional categories for “top grossing,” “recommended” and “trending,” as well as module that displays friends’ apps.

Read the rest on our sister site, Inside Facebook.

Developers GREE, DeNA, Mixi, CyberAgent, Dwango and NHN Japan have announced they are removing a controversial monetization mechanic called “kompu gacha” from all their mobile-social games by the end of the month.

Kompu gacha (“complete gacha”) is akin to a virtual toy machine where players pay real world money to receive an in-game item at random. Players have the opportunity to win grand prizes, but only if they can acquire complete sets of specific items. Although an extremely lucrative income stream for Japanese developers, kompu gacha has drawn harsh critisism both for how close it is to real-world gambling and for the easy access children have to it. Over the weekend the mechanic was found to be in violation of Japanese law and a ban is widely anticipated.

Although the news will mainly affects Japanese developers, several western companies also make use of the mechanic in their Japanese mobile-social games. Zynga, for example includes kompu gacha in its Android role-playing game Montopia. For a more detailed explanation of kompu gacha and how its elimination will affect developers outside of Japan, read our feature investigation at our sister site Inside Mobile Apps.

Empire, developed by Happy Giant, is a new social game based on the life of hip-hop mogul Jay-Z. In execution, the game is rather similar to other “urban” titles such as Crime City and Mafia Wars 2, but a strong emphasis is made on making moral choices rather than following a fixed, linear progression path into criminal depravity.

Players begin by designing their own custom avatar and giving it an appropriately “hip-hop” name, players are then thrown onto the streets of Marcy Housing in Brooklyn. From this point on, it’s up to them to ensure that their avatar makes the right choices in order to escape a life of poverty and make it as a star of the hip-hop world.

Players are directed through the game by a series of quests, though an interesting twist on the formula appears early on when the choice is given between two “opposing” objectives. Should “Big Momma P” go hang out with her man or stay home and write some rhymes? Choosing between these objectives generally has an effect on the rewards on offer, and some have an impact on the player’s “karma” rating. Robbing a store with a friend, for example, might provide a short-term injection of cash, but negatively impact the player’s reputation.

The player is ranked through several different ratings — experience, fame, cred and karma. Karma goes up and down according to the choices made, but the other three may only increase as time goes on. Various different combinations of ratings in experience, fame and cred are required in order to unlock various clothing items in the in-game store, though these requirements may be bypassed by spending Facebook Credits directly. Each of these clothing items then subsequently provides a player with a further reward to these statistics.

The majority of actions in the game are of the “click and wait for reward” variety, but a number of minigames are also incorporated to break up the experience and provide a greater sense of interactivity. Some of these take the form of simple gambling games, while challenging a non-player character to a “rap battle” uses a simple card battle mechanic. Here, three of a player’s “skill” ratings are compared to their rival’s, with whoever scores the most points being the winner. The game doesn’t make it entirely clear how the final score is calculated, however, since the result often seems to bear no resemblance whatsoever to the “preview” of the two rappers’ skills before the battle.

This is something of a pattern for the game — it often doesn’t explain exactly how a player should accomplish a task, and there are frequent ambiguities which make these things somewhat difficult to work out. For example: Early in the game, the player is told to go and “write rhymes” in order to complete a quest. There are three different locations on the map with the “write rhymes” action attached to them, and only one will trigger completion of the quest. Similarly, quests often demand the player gather specific items, with no indication of what actions might allow the player to locate these items. It becomes a matter of trial and error, though the game’s energy system prevents too much experimentation.

This issue aside, the game isn’t bad at all, and the “moral choice” element provides it with a much greater feeling of interactivity than other similar titles. In a nice touch, the background music for the game is provided by a Spotify playlist of Jay-Z’s work, helping get around social games’ usual issue of repetitive soundtracks and providing some convenient cross-promotion for both Jay-Z’s work and the music-streaming service in the process. It is, however, worth noting that the playlist features explicit versions of the tracks in question with no warning to users, while the game itself remains relatively “family-friendly.”

Empire currently has 20,000 monthly active users and 1,000 daily active users. Follow its progress with AppData, our traffic tracking service for social games and developers.

Play

A decent game with a strong theme that just needs a bit more explanation for some of its mechanics.

Electronic Arts is exploring social games publishing. The company has announced a partnership with developer Insomniac Games on a new Facebook IP, Outernauts. This is the first time EA has published an original third-party game on Facebook, a development that wasn’t even mentioned during the company’s earnings call earlier this week.

This is the first Facebook game for Insomniac, the developer behind AAA console games like Ratchet and Clank, Resistance: Fall of Man and the upcoming Overstrike (which EA is publishing for consoles and PC).  Insomniac’s been working on getting into the social games industry since it established Insomniac Click in March 2011; the studio is entirely focused on bringing games to web and mobile platforms.  Chief Creative Officer Brian Hastings described the new studio as an expansion rather than a shift in focus, but getting into social games was a “pragmatic necessity.”

When President Peter Moore outlined EA’s upcoming social plans during this week’s earnings call, he mentioned that new games were coming but didn’t say anything about the company starting to publish original third-party social titles. While the development is surprising, it’s also easy to see why EA is looking to diversify its presence on Facebook to include publishing. Until now EA’s Facebook games have been in-house productions, mainly from EA Playfish and subsidiary PopCap Games.

The game could help shore up EA’s traffic on Facebook: the company’s daily and monthly active users soared last summer when it acquired PopCap and launched The Sims Social, peaking at 102 million monthly active users and 18 million daily active users. However, EA’s subsequent offerings like  Risk: Factions have floundered and EA’s overall numbers have been dropping since September.

Publishing Facebook games represents a lower risk for EA, as it allows the company to try different kinds of games and might even give it access to new IP. Likewise, traditional developers that are expanding onto social platforms are likely to work with EA if they’ve had success doing so in the past.  EA also has plenty of previous experience working with independent developers in the console space, on EA-owned IPs like Dante’s Inferno.

Clarification: It’s been noted that Playfish published Atakama’s Labs defunct game Little Cave Hero until the developer was acquired by DeNA. The game received some promotion in the Restaurant City bar, though it’s unclear if the game was cross-promoted across EA’s other social games at the time.

EA’s large audience and name-brand recognition also give it an advantage over other publishers like 6waves. The only bigger social game publisher is Zynga, but so far many studios have seemed reluctant to work with the company.

Outernauts is a role-playing game that that has players working as an “Outernaut” for United Earth. Outernauts have to capture and train alien monsters, explore the story behind the “ancients” of the galaxy and fight pirates and evil corporations. The game will feature asynchronous co-op and player-vs-player mechanics. The game will likely draw fans of Insomniac’s titles who are curious about what kind of Facebook title the developer will make. The game is scheduled for release this summer.

The Inside Network Job Board is dedicated to providing you with the best job opportunities across social and mobile application platforms. Here are this week’s highlights from the Inside Network Job Board, including positions at: King.com, Kixeye, PopCap Games, Nuukster, Sneaky Games, GameHouse,  Ryzing, Machine Zone,  SoJo Studios, Lowe’s, Townsquare Media, Sociable Labs, Fiveonenine Games, SponsorPay and IMVU.

• Senior Producer, Skillgames
• Hadoop Developer/Engineer
• Game Artist
• Senior Producer, Social Games
• Business Developer
• Business Intelligence Developer
• Game Artist Malm
• Game Artist Mobile
• Game Programmer
• Game Developer
• Graphic Designer – Vanadisplan
• Graphic Designer – Malm
• IT Technical Recruiter
• Java Developer
• Product Manager
• Senior Systems Developer
• Awesome 3D Artist
• System Administrator

• Technical Director of Game Engineering
• Senior Accountant – Revenue

• Lead Animator
• Technical Marketing Campaign Manager

• Flash Engineer

• Programmer

• Lead Software Development Engineer

• AS3 Flash Developer

• Senior Graphics Engineer

• Mobile Games Lead (PM/Design)

• Social Community Manager

• Digital Account Executive – NJ 101.5 FM

• Social Interaction Designer

• Director of Monetization

• Senior Agency Sales Executive

• Senior Program Manager

Listings on the Inside Network Job Board are distributed to readers of Inside Social Games, Inside Facebook and Inside Mobile Apps through regular posts and widgets on the sites. Your open positions are being seen by the leading developers, product managers, marketers, designers and executives in the Facebook Platform and social gaming industry today.

King.com’s Candy Crush Saga is once again at the top of our list of fastest-growing games by daily active users, gaining 400,000 DAU for a 29 percent bump. Bubble Witch Saga took the No. 2 spot with a 300,000 DAU increase, good for a 5 percent gain.

Name DAU Gain Gain,% 1.   Candy Crush Saga 1,800,000 +400,000 + 29% 2.   Bubble Witch Saga 6,600,000 +300,000 + 5% 3.   Marvel: Avengers Alliance 1,500,000 +300,000 + 25% 4.   Mystic Ice Blast 290,000 +240,000 + 480% 5.   Buggle 520,000 +150,000 + 41% 6.   Monster World 2,300,000 +100,000 + 5% 7.   Pool Live Tour 2,000,000 +100,000 + 5% 8.   Texas HoldEm Poker 7,000,000 +100,000 + 1% 9.   開心水族箱 1,500,000 +100,000 + 7% 10.   Angry Words (Apalabrados) 320,000 +80,000 + 33% 11.   麻將─神來也麻將 150,000 +70,000 + 88% 12.   Astro Garden 400,000 +60,000 + 18% 13.   Disney Animal Kingdom 320,000 +60,000 + 23% 14.   كملنا بلوت (Kammelna Baloot) 60,000 +59,000 + 5,900% 15.   Hanging With Friends 890,000 +50,000 + 6% 16.   Car Town 870,000 +40,000 + 5% 17.   Solitaire Castle 170,000 +30,000 + 21% 18.   Township 260,000 +30,000 + 13% 19.   Grepolis 30,000 +26,000 + 650% 20.   Bizim Çiftlik 400,000 +20,000 + 5%

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

Read our reviews of…

• Candy Crush Saga
• Marvel: Avengers Alliance
• Buggle
• Township
• Astro Garden
• Disney Animal Kingdom Explorers
• Bubble Witch Saga