Dragon City and CityVille are this week's gainer and loser among the Top 25 Facebook games of October 2012

We're getting close to the end of October, meaning we're now looking at the top half of the Top 25 Facebook Games of October 2012. This is where games start having large enough daily active user groups that significant shifts in traffic may not cause them to move much — if at all — on the list. As always, we're examining the games' DAU numbers because that's the best way to gauge a title's core audience. Here's what we've looked at so far: Oct. 11, 2012: No. 25 (Hidden Chronicles) through No. 19 (The Sims Social) Oct. 19, 2012: No. 18 (Slotomania) through No. 12 (Bejeweled Blitz) Today we're looking at No. 12 through No. 7 12. CityVille CityVille's decline is continuing to pick up speed, going from 2.6 million DAU to 2.1 million. The game's spectacular traffic run is now officially at one tenth of its peak, achieved with 21 million DAU back in March 2011. 2012's seen the game losing up to 1 million DAU a month, and CityVille shrinkage doesn't appear to be slowing down any time soon. Based on these numbers, the game might be closer to No. 20 next week when we check the November Top 25 Facebook games. 11. FarmVille Even though it's one of the oldest games on Facebook and has been surpassed by its sequel, FarmVille's only dropped from 3 million DAU to 2.9 million. Like Zynga's other older "Ville" games, FarmVille's been gradually losing steam over a period of years. Even though it's still one of the top titles on Facebook, the game's traffic is a shadow of its former self; at its peak in February 2010, the game had 32 million DAU. Since January the game's actually only dropped by 3.5 million DAU, meaning it's only been losing an average of about 350,000 DAU a month. The game's DAU/MAU percentage is also hovering a little over 15 percent, meaning it's still considered a healthy game. Looking at this traffic, FarmVille may not even budge on next month's list. 10. Dragon City Social Point's Dragon City is back where it started, returning to 3.1 million DAU after falling to 2.8 million and rising up to 3.4 million. Since the game launched in May, it's seen steady and dramatic growth, but that's slowed down since the end of August and increases have become far more interspersed with periods of flat traffic. Right now the gains are still coming in, but they're far more gradual than before and tend to be broken up by small spikes of a few hundred thousand DAU every two weeks or so. Based on this history, it looks like Dragon City might move up by a 100,000 DAU or so before the end of the month. Even if that happens, though, it may not be enough to move it any higher up the chart in time for November. 9. Bubble Witch Saga King.com's Bubble Witch Saga is up from 3.7 million DAU to 4 million. The game's traffic has been slowly dwindling ever since it hit its April peak of 6.7 million DAU, but the losses have slowed a bit since it launched on iOS as a fully cross-platform game (where we're told it monetizes three times better than it does on Facebook). The month's history shows Bubble Witch Saga has been oscillating between the 3.7 million and 4 million marks, so it doesn't look like the game will make any significant gains before the month is over. That said, if Bubble Witch Saga starts November out with 4 million DAU, then it'll likely move up a spot or two in time for the next Top 25 list. 8. Bubble Safari After surging up from 3.7 million DAU to 4 million at the start of the month, Zynga's Bubble Safari is down to 3.5 million DAU. This is another recent Zynga title that saw a big push from the developer's cross-promotion efforts and then proceeded to fall off after an early peak. Bubble Safari's high point came in June with 7.4 million DAU, but it hasn't seen any significant gains since then. Month-over-month, the game's losses have been accelerating: July saw a drop of 900,000 DAU, August was 1.1 million and September's loss was 1.3 million. This trend looks like it might break and only see a loss of approximately 300,000 DAU for the month of October, but Bubble Safari could very well drop a spot on next month's list. Diamond Dash Wooga's Diamond Dash is down a little from 3.9 million to 3.8 million DAU, but only after seeing traffic swell as high as 4.1 million. This is another long-running game that worked its way up the charts after its early 2011 release and has managed to suffer relatively small traffic losses after it hit 4.7 million DAU in March. The game's actually up from its summer low point of 3.5 million DAU in July, so it'll be interesting to see if it can keep this upward momentum going. If it does manage to regain its traffic by next week, the game might actually move up a spot, but if the traffic remains around the 3.7 million mark then it'll most likely stay in the same place. 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. 6 through No. 1 on the list.

Social Pro Daily

Dragon City and CityVille are this week's gainer and loser among the Top 25 Facebook games of October 2012

Mike Thompson

About

Subscriptions

Events

Publications

WORK SMARTER - LEARN, GROW AND BE INSPIRED.

Subscribe today!

Mike Thompson