 |
|
|
| |
Zynga Stalwarts Lose Millions Of Users, While FrontierVille Audience Surges
by Eric Caoili [PC, Console/PC]
|
|
| |
|
July 8, 2010
|
| |
[Every other week, we examine the most popular Facebook games (according to monthly active users), looking at the top titles and developers on the social network to see who's attracting or losing players.]
Though many of most popular games continued to lose no small number of users this past week, those losses aren't nearly as dramatic as the negative trends we've seen in the months following Facebook's changes to its application notification system, which cut "app spam" but limited the viral nature of many titles.
For example, Zynga's FarmVille, still the #1 app on Facebook with 63.8 million players, lost almost 1.4 million users in the past two weeks, which is more than most social games have for their total audience. This time last month, though, the farming simulator surrendered almost 9 million users.
The studio's Texas Holdem Poker at #2 fared better, giving up around 125,000 users for a total of 28.5 million virtual poker players. RockYou's non-game Birthday Cards, which was at #3 just two weeks ago, dropped to #8 as it bid farewell to 5.6 million birthday celebrators.
Taking Birthday Cards' place at #3 is Zynga's Treasure Isle, as it managed to climb up a spot despite losing 1.2 million users, now at a total of 20.3 million. Zynga also took the fourth spot on the chart with Cafe World, which only lost 463,221 patrons and has a total of 20.2 million players.
At #5, Mindjolt Games, a portal for more than a thousand casual games, lost 1.3 million players and has a total of 18.1 million. Mafia Wars by Zynga comes in at #6, less 760,165 mobsters (perhaps sleeping with FishVille's fishes), its total audience down to 18.1 million users.
Zynga's FrontierVille, which has seen explosive growth since its launch last month, shot up ten spots to #7 after attracting 7.4 million new players in just the past two weeks, as the pioneering simulator now boasts a total user count of 16.8 million.
The developer's PetVille and Electronic Arts/Playfish's Pet Society take up the last two spots of the top ten most popular Facebook games list, with the former at #9 losing almost a million users and at a total of 14.4 million, and the latter at #9 - relinquishing 531,116 players for a total of 14.3 million.
You can see the full list of the top 20 Facebook games along with exact monthly active user counts below:
All charts and data are courtesy of Facebook application metrics and trends site AppData.
|
| |
|
|
I for one am more on the casual side of Facebook gaming -- I check out several games, but don't usually play them for more than a few days or weeks. Overall it looks like a lot of monotonous gaming is burning people out. Not a lot of original games... seems like a lot of rehashes of the same basic few games. There's the "farming game" -- farms, pets, fish, gardens, etc... similar gameplay different themes. There's "empire building games" -- queue a bunch of stuff and wait hours or days.... and so on. All the Mafia War clones, etc.
It just reminds of how some large publishers seem quite happy to churn out sequels until the sales start to die. Well the way I see it, a whole lot of people are venturing to grab their tiny slice of Facebook pie.
I have worked with a lot of people that are now at Zynga, and they are all good guys. I just hope they are working on something fresh and innovative to stay ahead of this stagnation curve.
"We Reap what we Sow."