How is the Facebook Redesign Affecting Social Games? October Gaming Charts Released

October 24th, 2008

While we’ve been tracking the impact of the Facebook redesign on the application economy closely, we turn our attention now to social games. How has the Facebook redesign affected the top game developers on Facebook? Inside Social Games has just released the October Facebook gaming charts, and many of the results are interesting:

Lil Green Patch extended its lead by nearly half a million monthly active users to 6.5 million total, remaining the biggest game on the Facebook Platform. Green Patch also quietly released sister title Lil Blue Cove recently, which has been growing quite quickly.
Kidnap broke onto the charts with over 2 million monthly active users. Interestingly, Kidnap was originally developed as a sponsored app by Context Optional for the Travel Channel. It’s not the first time that’s happened, Area/Code developed Parking Wars for A&E earlier this year and it grew to over 500,000 monthly actives.
Playfish’s Pet Society gained nearly 750,000 monthly active users since last month to reach nearly 2.5 million in October, while Who Has the Biggest Brain lost 600,000 to 2.9 million. Overall, Playfish retained its leadership position with 4 apps in the top 10.
Several large games saw drops in their monthly traffic numbers - Owned, Friends For Sale, Nicknames, and Speed Racing.
Zynga had a mixed month in terms of growth, but held its position with 4 games in the top 25. Texas HoldEm held at 5.1 million monthly actives nicely, and YoVille grew by over 350,000 users to over 2.3 million. However, My Heroes Ability fell by 300,000 and Scramble by 250,000 during the same time.
Two additional games emerged on the leaderboards as well. TheBroth’s KickMania and Tetris Online’s Tetris Friends each showed impressive gains of around 750,000 monthly actives, starting from scratch.

As KickMania, Tetris Friends, and Kidnap show, ample opportunity exists for new games to emerge and grow quickly - even on the new Facebook. At the same time, top game developers must build increasingly engaging and social experiences to stay on top - otherwise, Facebook game audiences can fade away quickly.

Ultimately, there is a lot of volatility atop the gaming charts on Facebook currently, but the social gaming space on Facebook remains alive and well.

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Posted by Justin Smith

Filed in Applications, Development, Facebook, Games, Marketing, Metrics

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5 Responses to “How is the Facebook Redesign Affecting Social Games? October Gaming Charts Released”

Christopher Ross Says:
October 24th, 2008 at 11:48 am
I read an article the other day (here maybe?) that said most Android downloads are games, no wonder Google is getting to Adsense for Gaming! I wrote a piece about it a couple weeks back, if it’s OK to link:

Google Launches AdSense for Video Games
Hank Stram Says:
October 27th, 2008 at 11:21 am
Where does this data come from? I think that you should do a little bit more research before publishing stories like this. Kidnap is violating the Terms of Service that Facebook enacted in February 2008 by forcing users to invite friends before engaging with the content of the application. If this is the case, then I think the more telling statistic would be Time on Site or Application Removals.

In fact, if you look at the Discussion and Review Boards on the About Page, you’ll see that a number of users are complaining about the forced invites. In addition, Kidnap is violating another TOS, by publishing stories to users’ walls and newsfeeds despite the users’ desire to have their activity remain private.

As a Facebook developer, I’m always excited to see application succeed out of the gate, but in this case, Kidnap is deceiving their audience and attracting huge sums of users by blatantly breaking Facebook’s rules.
mich Says:
October 28th, 2008 at 5:03 am
What is the case of Kidnap in Facebook now? Is it still activating? I hope Facebook could do something about that issue.

I am just an ordinary application user and I, myself hate it when I am required to invite more friends just to increase its number of users. I like to play the games or participate in any groups or applications that I really like. I think that’s fair.

Just like this game that I am playing and getting so addicted to is Realm of Empires. At present, it only has 4,417 active users but it didn’t bother me at all for as long as I am enjoying the game I will add it to my list. Although I hope this would increase and be in the top 25 chart. That would probably be an honor for me that I am part of the success of that application.
Mike Gowen » Hot Sidebar Action: October 28th Says:
October 28th, 2008 at 7:30 pm
[...] How is the Facebook Redesign Affecting Social Games? Inside Facebook takes a look at how the redesign is affecting (or not affecting) the gaming app charts. [...]
D.C. Says:
November 13th, 2008 at 9:09 am
Kidnap doesn’t force you to invite friends. At any point in the game, you have the OPTION of “Kidnap’ng” your friends (by sending them an invite/request)…but this is not a requirement. They even filter your friends list so you can see who’s actively playing with the app and who’s not - so you’re not bugging people who aren’t interested. But technically, you can add and play the app without ever sending out one invite, just sit around and wait to be Kidnap’d yourself.