What is this shenanigan?
It’s about this:
And then search engines find the stuff.
And then you get traffic.
This stuff works also other than words like “fhriesoxpcdsuhwwnjrdchjdisowiquhfrdcsa” you know…
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The trailer gives a few clues as to the sequel’s angle. There’s evidence of a narrative constructed around revenge and vivid depictions of violence that suggest a higher level of visualization than what we saw in the text-based original game. Mafia Wars is perhaps best known for popularizing the social network game mechanic of recruiting as many friends as possible to your “mob” to better accomplish gameplay objectives, though many social games before Mafia Wars’ time made use of this feature. The core gameplay loop involves players spending regenerative resources (health, stamina and energy) to complete jobs or fight other players to earn more resources, items and virtual currency.
Mafia Wars is one of few Zynga games to be offered on other social networks and games portals besides Facebook, as well as a standalone mobile game. The game was removed from Tagged and MySpace possibly as a result of declining platform performance or perhaps due to an exclusivity agreement with Facebook revealed in Zynga’s IPO filings. On Facebook, the game has been in decline over the last year, showing only a brief spike in activity thanks to a cross-promotion run with Zynga sibling CityVille run in late March 2011. It currently enjoys an audience of 5.1 million monthly active users and 875,734 daily active users on the platform.
We’re still not certain how effective modern social game sequels are at extending the life of a franchise, given that only a few have launched in recent months. We’re also not certain if the crime genre hasn’t reached a point of saturation in social games with rival titles like Crime City launching on Google+ and Kabam’s upcoming Godfather game looking to make a big launch on Facebook. Mafia Wars is one of the oldest social games still running, however, and at one point it was one of the largest at 28.1 million MAU and 7.3 million DAU on Facebook. If any social game franchise was primed for a sequel, Mafia Wars would be it.
Here are the top fashion games on Facebook today by traffic:
Games By Genre: Fashion
The earliest fashion games for Facebook weren’t very complex: dress your avatar and look at the way your friends’ avatars were dressed. These games were limited at the time by technology and by the lower standard of art quality common to successful social games. As the platform matured and this “art bar” rose, however, the fashion genre picked up throughout 2009 and 2010 as developers were able to offer more — and prettier — clothing and accessory items as desirable virtual goods.
Other games introduced the concept of competition, where the way a player dressed their avatar determined the type and quantity of gameplay rewards they reaped from “fights” or other fashion contests. This is also where social features became a natural element in fashion games as friends could not only gift resources, but potentially add statistic bonuses in competition modes.
As the Facebook platform has matured and many developers are at the point in their development cycle where they want to work on new games instead of supporting old ones, fashion games now face a new challenge: how to automate the creation of new content so that the developer isn’t responsible for making new fashion items for the game. After all, “fashion” is only as good as the items for sale; and not all developers have the resources to keep making new content indefinitely.
Moreover, there are other elements of the fashion industry that could be incorporated into a fashion game to greater effect — such as organizing fashion shows or the business of loaning dresses out for modeling events. Lastly, there is a lack of brand integrations with real-life fashion brands. It Girl has had sponsored stores selling branded virtual goods for outfitters like Old Navy; but what if a fashion game could offer coutuer branded virtual goods?
The possibilities are certainly there and it’s looking like the genre is far from saturated at this point.
PlayFirst sent out notice to players today that the Facebook version of its popular restaurant simulation game Diner Dash will shut down on August 29. The developer cited declining performance as the reason for the closure, which as the same reason PlayFirst sunsetted Chocolatier in April.
Diner Dash’s life cycle plays out much like PlayFirst’s other Facebook titles as charted by our traffic tracking service, AppData. The game came to Facebook in January of this year, climbing to 2.2 million monthly active users and over 174,000 daily active users in its first two months on the platform. The game continued to grow in MAU through the month of May, but DAU began a steady decline in April. Diner Dash hit all-time highs of 2.5 million MAU and 257,000 DAU before arriving at today’s levels of 1.2 million MAU and 90,000 DAU.
The game is a faithful adaptation of the original PC download title where players control a waitress responsible for seating customers, taking orders, serving food, and cleaning up messes. A customizable garden was added to the Facebook version to maximize energy mechanics common to games on the platform, as well some gameplay boosts available for purchase with Frictionless Credits. Cross-promotion and connectivity with the other versions of Diner Dash on iOS, PC and Mac were limited to nonexistent, though Facebook players are receiving a coupon code for 50% off on the PC/Mac version.
In the restaurant genre on Facebook, Diner Dash stood out as both a latecomer and an oddity. While many early restaurant sim games like Restaurant City and Cafe World could be likened to Diner Dash’s core gameplay around pleasing customers, neither game placed emphasis on click timing the way Diner Dash has always done. It could be that the early restaurant sim games on Facebook altered player expectations such that the real Diner Dash experience was a bit jarring for players. It could also be that PlayFirst simply lacked enough of a Facebook presence to sustain a social game for an extended period of time being that its previous two games, Wedding Dash and Chocolatier, never came close to the traffic peaks Diner Dash enjoyed.
PlayFirst representatives did not respond to request for comment at time of press. When we last spoke with the developer about long term growth plans for the title, we were told that PlayFirst was experimenting with monetization and player progression through the various restaurant venues. As of today, players can earn more than just one restaurant and the world map has been altered to better reflect player progression toward unlocking new restaurants.
UPDATE: Mari Baker, CEO and president of PlayFirst, says, “We view this as a strategic redistribution of resources to platforms where we see better growth potential and those are the mobile platforms, specifically iOS.”
Aquarium games are like pet simulations, but confined to the pet type of fish. Players are usually tasked with attracting fish to a virtual space by using food, cleaning up debris generated in the space, and by decorating the space to make it more alluring to different types of fish. This type of game lends itself to the asynchronous Facebook audience as it doesn’t require quite as much time-management as a farm or restaurant simulation and the ambiance of a virtual aquarium is more soothing, much like the classic screen savers from Microsoft Windows.
Games By Genre: Fish (Aquarium)
The largest aquarium games by monthly active users — CrowdStar’s Happy Aquarium, Happy Elements Ltd’s Chinese language version of My Fishbowl, Zynga’s FishVille, and TallTree Games’ Fish World — all have long histories on Facbeook dating back to fall and winter of 2009. These games found success throughout the first half of 2010, in the days when the Facebook games platform still offered extensive viral channels through which games could attract new users. As an example, Happy Aquarium and FishVille at one point each boasted more than 25 million MAU and 7 million daily active users during their first three months in contrast to their present-day levels.
After the first three months of growth, each of our top tier aquarium games slowed in growth, creating a gradual downward slope. The beginnings of these slopes happen to coincide with the period of time in which Facebook clamped down on viral channels available to developers — spring 2010. While one could argue that the loss of growth in our aquarium games could be connected to the loss of the viral channels, we’re can’t necessarily reach that conclusion as the downward slopes remained gradual throughout spring and summer of 2010 as opposed to showing a sharp drop-off. Moreover, most social games in any genre see growth in three to four months followed by a period of decline as players simply run out of things to do in-game and move on to other titles. Even so, it’s not hard to imagine that once the viral channels were restricted, each developer faced an uphill battle to bring growth back to the games.
The exception here is the Chinese language version of My Fishbowl, which appears to be on a long-term upward trend begun in early April of this year, up 33% in MAU over the last two months. The reasons for this trend are not immediately clear; other international versions of My Fishbowl aren’t performing nearly as well.
In the mid tier of aquarium games, we see the original My Fishbowl still stuck in a decline slope, but we also see a notable newcomer. Akvaryum is a Turkish-language aquarium sim from Peak Games, a developer that’s seen success in the Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) region where other developers tend to struggle. The game launched only in the last two weeks and is already number five out of all fish games with over 500,000 MAU and 100,000 DAU.
Also in this tier is Gaia Online’s Ocean Party, an older aquarium game with an interesting history. It was the developer’s first Facebook game built off of a similar activity in its successful virtual world, Gaia Online. Based on its experiences with Ocean Party, Gaia Online went on to create monster collection and combat game, Monster Galaxy, which is shaping up to be a Facebook success story. Ocean Party hadn’t seen much activity in the last nine months, but a small spike in MAU and DAU in early June hints at signs of life in the otherwise dead-in-the-water game.
At the bottom of our aquarium spectrum are more language variations of My Fishbowl, several decaying clones of Happy Aquarium, and a slew of games that don’t exactly fit the aquarium genre. The two that make our top 10 — ???? (Happy Fish Ponds) and Fish Isle — do actually fit the genre, but like their siblings in tiers one and two, they haven’t seen significant growth of late.
While the Chinese language version of My Fishbowl and Akvaryum’s sudden popularity suggest that there is still an audience for the aquarium genre in the international market, most of these games tell a sad story for aquariums on Facebook. We don’t think it’s going to completely discourage developers from attempting new aquarium games, however. Already we see mobile developer Jirbo actively try to port its successful iOS aquarium sim, Tap Reef, to Facebook; and other developers like HitGrab are seeing success with variations on the “collect fish” theme of aquarium games as applied to the actual sport of fishing in games like FishHunt.
All data in this analysis was compiled with our social game traffic tracking service, AppData. If you believe a game has been left off this list in error, please reach out to us in the comments.
The full breakdown of growth by country and demographic, including 12-month historicals and projections, is available in this month’s edition of Inside Facebook Gold.
Inside Facebook Gold is Inside Network’s data service providing monthly data on Facebook’s growth outlook through a comprehensive data feed service and growth report.
The June 2011 edition of Inside Facebook Gold includes:
Global Data Feed Service, a comprehensive data CSV supplying vital stats on Facebook’s audience size, demographic distribution, advertising business, and global language distribution.Facebook Global Monitor, 100 pages of leaderboards and charts covering audience change in 160 Facebook country markets.Inside Facebook Gold is a data service designed for analysts seeking to understand and maximize opportunities in the Facebook ecosystem, and presents data on key indicators ranging from the site’s traffic growth to its advertising business and its robust applications platform.
Download the June 2011 data suite at Inside Facebook Gold.
The full breakdown of growth by country and demographic, including 12-month historicals and projections, is available in this month’s edition of Inside Facebook Gold.
Inside Facebook Gold is Inside Network’s data service providing monthly data on Facebook’s growth outlook through a comprehensive data feed service and growth report.
The April 2011 edition of Inside Facebook Gold includes:
Global Data Feed Service, a comprehensive data CSV supplying vital stats on Facebook’s audience size, demographic distribution, advertising business, and global language distribution.Facebook Global Monitor, 100 pages of leaderboards and charts covering audience change in 160 Facebook country markets.Inside Facebook Gold is a data service designed for analysts seeking to understand and maximize opportunities in the Facebook ecosystem, and presents data on key indicators ranging from the site’s traffic growth to its advertising business and its robust applications platform.
Download the April 2011 data suite at Inside Facebook Gold.
