Top 25 Facebook Games for December 1, 2009

Last month we compared the 11 month span between the present and our first Top 25 list. Even then the difference in monthly active users was absolutely astounding. Of course, in the past month, it has only increased. To recap, the top game, one year ago, was (Lil) Green Patch, a simple 2D virtual-garden-like game that garnered around 6 million users a month. FarmVille, now has nearly 69 million users. Facebook’s growth to much more than 300 million monthly active users has certainly contributed to the rise of social gaming, but we continue to wonder how much social gaming has contributed to the growth of Facebook itself.

November saw a great deal of individual game growth throughout most of the Top 25, but the top five have not changed in the slightest – something we haven’t seen in a while. The month also saw the rise of CrowdStar, as well as the rapid growth of Zynga’s FishVille and the belated appearance of Mobsters 2. Beyond this, there was a great deal of churn across the board. Here are the highlights:

• Zynga’s FarmVille continued its growth by more than 6 million monthly active users to nearly 70 million. However, this is only a little more than half of what it earned last month. Meanwhile, YoVille lost more than 500,000 users and going from from #6 to #8. Roller Coaster Kingdom stayed at #11 with close to 15.5 million MAUs.
• CrowdStar’s Happy Aquarium continued to grow, holding on to the #4 spot, despite the number of Zynga titles around it. The virtual aquarium game is followed on the list by Playfish’s Pet Society at #5. CrowdStar’s second title on the list, Happy Pets, came in at #22 with almost 5.5 million users.
• After weeks on our Top Gaining Charts, FishVille has made a splash at #6 with more than 21 million users.
• MindJolt Games lost 1.1 million MAU to land at #12.
• And finally, long after its initial release, Mobsters 2: Vendetta from Playdom has made its way into the charts with roughly 5.3 million MAUs, followed by another newcomer, My Fishbowl from 6 waves at #24 with a monthly user count just shy of 5 million.[via www.insidesocialgames.com]