Mr.Farmville

Though last month saw only moderate losses for the top Facebook games, this month has 18 of 25 applications losing significant numbers of monthly active users. The drop is not entirely unprecedented, as each year, starting around this time, the activity for social games tends to drop. Even so, the overall losses are significantly more than this time last year — perhaps in part because many of the games on the list are a year or more old.

To counter these declines, many of the games on this list, especially the Zynga apps, have had boosts in advertising going as far back as this spring, but the new players don’t always stick around. For example, FarmVille saw minor growth last month, but has dropped over 5.6 million MAU this month.

The handful of growing games are mostly either newer or experiencing fresh growth after long declines. The new games include Millionaire City and Car Town, the latter appearing for the first time with growth of over a million new MAU in the past month. There is, however, a boom among smaller developers, which we’ve covered in more detail here.

Here are the highlights for the Top 25 Facebook Games for November 2010:

• Zynga’s top title, FarmVille, easily takes the top spot despite losing north of 5.6 million MAU.
• Even with the FarmVille loss, Zynga’s classic Texas HoldEm Poker sees a gain this time around with over 700,000 MAU, as does Mafia Wars with 2.5 million MAU.
• We began tracking CrowdStar’s Quiz Planet title this month with its sizable 16.1 million strong user base.
• Though not a new game to the list, Millionaire City, from Digital Chocolate, sees the largest growth this time around, moving from #15 to #9 with a gain of 3.2 million MAU and a grand total of 11.9 million users.
• MindJolt Games fluctuates again this month, dropping to #10 with a two million MAU loss.
• Following up MindJolt is the single PopCap entry, Bejeweled Blitz, which remains at #11 with approximately 11.7 million users.
• RockYou has breathed new life into its long running application, Birthday Cards, which is connected to its game Zoo World. It moves up from #21 to #14 with 2.1 million new users.
• Playdom’s City of Wonder deflated over the month, losing many temporary users who were picked up during its heavy initial marketing push. Its loss of 3.8 million MAU was the most severe decline in percentage terms, with the game losing a third of its MAU overall.
• Coming in towards the end of the list with 6.1 million MAU is newcomer Car Town from Cie Games, at #23.
• Finally, making a return at #24 is the ninja role-player, Ninja Saga, with nearly 6 million total users.

Source: Inside Social Games