CityVille Dethrones FarmVille As Biggest Game on Facebook: What's Next For Zynga?

First reported the other day on Social Times, CityVille was on its way to dethrone FarmVille as the biggest game on Facebook. As we all wake up to do our last minute Christmas shopping, CityVille surpassing FarmVille is probably the last thing from our mind, but I'm proud to report that CityVille has now taken the throne. According to AllFacebook.com, CityVille surpassed FarmVille by about 5 million monthly active users (MAU) this morning. CityVille, with now a daily growth of about 7 million users, has established itself once again in the social gaming world after its launch in early December. On the day of CityVille's launch, over 290,000 gamers were attracted to CityVille, making CityVille the largest launch ever in Zynga's history. CityVille, with now over 61.6 million monthly active users, currently has a weekly growth of 23 million users with a base of 16.7 million daily active users. FarmVille, with 16.3 million daily active users, is not far behind CityVille with regards to daily active users. FarmVille's 56.8 million monthly active users also is not that far behind CityVille's 61.6 million monthly active users. However, FarmVille is lacking in the growth department. FarmVille is only bringing in a daily growth of 216,000 users and a weekly growth of 1 million users. The most remarkable part of CityVille dethroning FarmVille is that CityVille shows no signs of slowing down growth wise. With growing growth like this, it will be interesting to see if CityVille's peak will be able to overcome FarmVille's peak of 84 million monthly active users. While Zynga's CityVille has an increasing daily growth, other Zynga games are decreasing in daily growth. FrontierVille, with a growth of -254,954 daily users, is trailing right behind Texas Hold'em, while Zynga's Mafia Wars Game has a growth of -13,706 daily users has locked itself into 5th place. Without a doubt, Zynga will be at the top of the social gaming community for a long time. As long as "Ville" games attract users, Zynga will continue to make them. Zynga's logic is based on a simple idea: if it's not broke, don't fix it. Earlier in the week I reported about the new Create application that was developed for Facebook users. Create, as stated in the article, has a lot of similarities of an older game called The Incredible Machine. Gaming developers tend to do this quite often: take an old idea that worked and tweak it (I will be writing a whole article on this idea in the near future). Zynga has been able to grasp this concept and take advantage of it every step of their social gaming developing career. On a final note, what type of "environment" will Zynga come up with for the next "Ville" game? Could it be a game that takes place in America's colonial period? What about recreating an environment something like the middle ages? The possibilities may seem endless, but eventually the type of environments will run out. When they do (and they will), what type of direction will Zynga take? Will social gaming decrease in popularity if Zynga does take another avenue?

Social Pro Daily

CityVille Dethrones FarmVille As Biggest Game on Facebook: What's Next For Zynga?

CityVille surpasses FarmVille!

CJ Arlotta

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CJ Arlotta