Top Eleven and The Sims Social this week's gainer and loser among the Top 25 Facebook games of October 2012

Now that GDC Online is finished and we're on on our way home, which means it's now time to start looking at the gainers and losers among the Top 25 Facebook games of October 2012. Once a week, we take a look at six or seven titles that appeared on that month's list and examine their traffic in terms of daily active users (the best gauge for a title's core audience). Based on the traffic behavior, we try to predict how their position on the next month's list will change. This week, we're looking at the titles in the No. 25 through No. 19 spots. 25. Hidden Chronicles Zynga's Hidden Chronicles is down a bit from its 1.5 million DAU starting point, having bounced up and down this month before settling at 1.45 million. Hidden Chronicles launched and peaked in January with 7.1 million DAU but has seen regular declines in traffic since then. The dwindling numbers have been particularly dramatic over the past couple of months, as the game's regularly been one of the largest traffic losers on our monthly Top 25 lists. Lately, though, Hidden Chronicles' numbers seem to be steadying out, but it's very possible that this may not be enough to keep the game on next month's list. 24. Angry Birds Friends Like Hidden Chronicles, Rovio's Angry Birds Friends is slightly lower than where it began this month following some regular jumps in traffic. The game began October with 1.8 million DAU and now has 1.78 million. Launching in February, Angry Birds Friends saw some dramatic audience swells early on before peaking in April with 3.4 million DAU. The game hasn't been able to recapture the insane user numbers of its mobile counterparts, though, and traffic's been falling since then; the most dramatic months being May and June when numbers plummeted from 3 million DAU to 1.9 million. The past few months, though, user drop-off has been minute. If traffic stays around this level and no newcomer game surpasses these numbers, Angry Birds Friends could possible stay on next month's list, albeit still at the bottom. 23. Monster World Wooga's summer traffic slog seems to have abated, as Monster World is actually up a little from 1.8 million DAU to 1.85 million. Since peaking from March through May with 2.2 million DAU, the game's users dropped to around the 1.9 million mark over the past couple of months before holding steady. It looks like Wooga's plans to expand the game onto mobile platforms appear to be paying off, since traffic loss has been so small and DAU is now holding steady. Likewise, the game's DAU over MAU percentage is 27 percent; anything above 20 percent is considered a game with a very healthy player base. Monster World probably won't move much in either direction on November's Top 25 list, barring any dramatic shifts from other games on the chart. 22. Top Eleven Be a Football Manager Nordeus' Top Eleven Be a Football Manager is up from 1.9 million DAU to 1.92 million. This is in line with the game's history of gradual but steady growth ever since it launched in 2010. Between the international appeal of soccer as well as the strong multiplayer components, Top Eleven's audience has continued to expand over the past year, but with stretches of steady levels broken up by occasional spikes and then inactivity. Since June, the game's gone from 1.5 million DAU to its current levels and doesn't show any sign of slowing down. It also should be noted that Top Eleven's DAU/MAU percentage is now sitting at a very strong 32 percent. Based on these continued traffic increases, it's entirely possible Top Eleven might move up a couple of spots in time for November. 21. المزرعة السعيدة FunPlus Games' المزرعة السعيدة ("Happy Farm") continues its steady decline, moving from 1.9 million DAU to 1.785 million. The game launched in March 2011 and saw steady gains until March 2012 when it peaked with 3 million DAU. Since then, the traffic's been falling off and seemed to stabilize in August when it hit the 2 million line. Over the past couple of weeks, though, DAU numbers have been a bit more erratic and have repeatedly dropped before returning to around 1.9 million. Now, it looks like we're about to see another significant drop in traffic, given how the game's lost over 100,000 DAU and we still have nearly three weeks to go in the month. If the numbers continue to fall, Happy Farm will probably still be on November's list, but it'll be way closer to the bottom. 20. Pool Live Tour Geewa's Pool Live Tour is another title that began October at 1.9 million DAU and has seen a traffic drop, currently at 1.748 million DAU. One of our longest-lived games on the list, Pool Live Tour launched in October 2009 and began to see noticeable user gains in January 2011. It peaked in August with 2.2 million DAU, but the numbers have been on the downslope since then. It's tough to say if the traffic losses will continue or if Geewa will be able to turn them around, since this is the first period of time the game's seen users leaving the game for any extended period of time; the DAU/MAU percentage is currently at reasonable 19 percent, so this doesn't seem like too impossible of a task. If the losses continue, though, Pool Live Tour will probably be somewhere around No. 23 or No. 24 next month. 19. The Sims Social EA's The Sims Social continues to slip, going from 1.9 million DAU to 1.647 million. A year after the game proved to be lightning in a bottle on Facebook and had 11.3 million DAU, The Sims Social has just over a tenth of those users still playing. In June, EA managed to give the game a shot in the arm, too, by releasing new content that saw active players bringing in new players and lapsed users in order to meet time-sensitive milestones. At the time, the game's numbers moved from 2.5 million DAU up to 3.2 million in July, but it seems this was just a flash in the proverbial pan. Now, traffic loss seems to be accelerating, and if The Sims Social isn't able to slow down its decline, it may not even be on next month's list. 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. 18 through No. 13 on the list.

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Top Eleven and The Sims Social this week's gainer and loser among the Top 25 Facebook games of October 2012

Mike Thompson

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Mike Thompson