[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.]
Zynga's Empire & Allies has not only attracted more monthly users than FarmVille, it now has 10 million more players than the perennial farming sim and is the second most popular game on Facebook, right behind CityVille (87 million monthly users).
The turn-based strategy game launched only a month ago but has been the fastest growing game since, building up an audience of 48.4 million monthly unique users. FarmVille at #3 has 38.6 million users, while a fourth Zynga title, Texas HoldEm Poker stands at #4 with 35.5 million.
Gaia Online's Pokemon-style title Monster Galaxy remains at #5, but it's collected 2.6 million new monthly players, bringing its total to now 18.7 million. The game is followed by Disney/Playdom's Gardens of Time, which moced up a spot and now has 14.2 million users.
Another crop of Zynga titles pop up at #7 and #8, FrontierVille (dropped down a spot) at 13.7 million and Cafe World at 11.8 million respectively. PopCap's Bejeweled Blitz (10.6 million) and Wooga's Diamond Dash (10 million) finish up the top ten chart.
Beyond the top ten, GAN's Games portal, Digital Chocolate's Zombie Lane, and Zynga's Mafia Wars dropped slightly in their placements as Wooga's Bubble Island, Cie's Car Town, and Digital Chocolate's Millionaire City ascended to take their place.
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.
