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10 Most Popular Games on Facebook – A Closer Look

Shark Lady Games — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 11:31:16 +0000

Facebook has become the most popular casual games platform around. There aren’t many casual games that can boast tens of millions of active users each month, and it seems that getting into the top-10 list of Facebook games is a very sought-after achievement.

Is there a formula to it? Can you easily create a successful Facebook game? Let’s take a look at the 10 most popular games on Facebook and see what we can find.

#10 – Zoo World by RockYou!

Cute animals are a sure magnet for kids and cute-crazed people. Zoo World has over 18 million monthly active users. This game offers basic, childish graphics and annoying MIDI music. The goal is to manage a successful zoo. The social features are the regular ones – send gifts to friends, boast your zoo achievements and more. The game sends constant status updates about your activity to the profile. You can also buy items and animals using real money – the usual scam. Despite its popularity, the game has a rating of only 3.5 stars.

#9 – PetVille by Zynga

Again with the cute animals. This time – tamagotchi style. In PetVille, you take care of one pet. You need to dress, feed, and decorate its house. The game borrows heavily from PlayFish’s Pet Society. It was launched about 2 months ago, and has over 18 million active users per month.

#8 – Pet Society by PlayFish

This game (again) allows you to grow a virtual pet and interact with it. In Pet Society, you can play games, decorate your house and bring gifts for your friends when you visit them. You can also compete against other pets in the stadium. These are all familiar features if you’ve ever been to NeoPets.com. As we can already see – originality isn’t a required feature when it comes to popular Facebook games. The game has about 18.7 million active users per month.

#7 – Mafia Wars by Zynga

Mafia Wars was more popular in the past, but it seemed to have slid down in the rankings. In the game, you need to start a Mafia family with your friends, do crime jobs for cash, buy weapons and fight – your regular life of crime. Mafia wars leans heavily on its social features – the more members you have in your mafia, the more options you get. This turned the game into a spam machine, where people constantly implore you to join their mafia. Mafia Wars has 24.6 million monthly active users.

#6 – Texas HoldEm Poker by Zynga

This game simply rides on the huge popularity of Texas Holdem, with some added social features, free chips and many announces to remind you that you didn’t play today. There’s also a leveling system to keep it a tad more interesting. Zynga’s Texas Holdem has over 25 million active users per month.

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#5 – FishVille by Zynga

Fish are a strong theme among the popular Facebook games. They are, apparently, cute and attractive enough to gain the favor of Facebook users. This game replicates the successful model of FarmVille – raise fish, invite your friends and gather items. FishVille has 25.3 million active users per month.

#4 – Happy Aquarium by CrowdStar

Fish theme, remember? Yet another grow-your-fish game, this time by CrowdStar. Players can purchase tropical fish, teach fish cool tricks, decorate their fish tank, and visit other facebook friends in Happy Aquarium. There are over a 100 levels in this game, which accounts for long playing hours and stickiness. This game has 26.3 million active users every month.

#3 – Café World by Zynga

Café World puts the player in charge of a restaurant where they can serve food, collect money, and decorate their restaurant. Time management game developers already know that restaurant management and food games attract a big crowd. Gameplay is very simple and it’s time-based: dishes take a predefined amount of time to prep, and you have to coordinate your game accordingly. The game has 30.2 million active users per month.

#2 – Birthday Cards by RockYou!

Why is this app considered a game? Don’t ask me. Using this app, you can send cards and gifts to your friends, create a custom card or choose from pre-made card designs. This might be a useful app, but that doesn’t explain its popularity, especially after the security blunder, in which 32 million passwords were compromised by a hacker. Still, this app has over 45 million active users per month – which is rather impressive.

#1 – FarmVille by Zynga

The top of the top of Facebook’s games can hardly be considered a game, really. You are a farm owner – raising crops and gaining money by selling them. You can’t lose or die – only advance. The only challenge is how to design your farm and where to stuff your animals. There are many tips and guides on how to make tons of (virtual) money on FarmVille, but in the end it’s basically the ultimate, easy time-killer. Just point and click, and cute sheep will come to you. The lack of challenges and the easy, mindless gameplay are probably the explanation to the huge popularity of the game, which currently has over 70 million active users per month. Sending ducks to your friends has never been more popular.

So, what have we learned from looking at the top 10 games on Facebook?

Not for hardcore gamers – Facebook games are obviously not created for serious gamers. They are even below the average when it comes to casual games – they are easy, you can’t really lose and the main purpose is to keep you around and maybe make a buck or two when you are tempted to use real money to buy virtual products.
You don’t need to be original – On the contrary! Take an already popular game and copy it – the users will come. Zynga’s games are all the same one, basically, only with different graphics and “plot”. Even Texas Holdem, which breaks the pattern, isn’t original in any way. Facebook players, it seems, like the familiar.
Cute RULEZ – Cute animals, cute fish, cute burgers – whatever. Just form a cute game with cute graphics and cute sounds, and the players will flock over.
KIVVSS (Keep It Very Very Simple, Stupid) – Facebook users don’t want challenging levels or mind-flexing games. They want it simple and easy – point, click, get duck. That’s it.
Tons of levels – 100+ levels that can be reached is a surefire way of keeping the players playing.
Social Features – Invite friends and get a bonus, send gifts, get your neighbors to help you around the farm – all of these are good social features which helps games advance and gain more users.
Achievement for every move – You planted your first tree? Achievement! Reward! Invited 3 friends? Bonus! Got a pink fish? Here’s a medal! Well, you get the point – create a huge amount of possible achievements, and make them really easy to achieve.

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Zynga Gets Hit: Facebook Bans Fishville

Shark Lady Games — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 11:29:47 +0000

Only two days after the launch of Zynga’s new Facebook game, Fishville, it was unceremoniously banned from Facebook. The reason? Facebook says that they are not sure Zynga demonstrates compliance with Facebook restrictions — as well as Zynga’s own restrictions.

Zynga is the creator of the most popular game on Facebook today – Farmville. Lately, the company has been the target of tons of criticism over its use of dubious advertising and monetizing techniques. Zynga is trying very hard to remedy some of the issues, and stated in its blog that: “we recognize it is our responsibility to ensure that offers which generate a bad user experience are not shown with any of our games.”

Currently, Fishville is not available on Facebook. There are several aquarium games you can play, like Happy Aquarium. Despite the outrage, Farmville remains, at the moment, the most played game on Facebook, with over 63 million monthly active users.

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Farmville Tips, Tricks and Strategy Guide

Shark Lady Games — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 16:21:51 +0000

All your friends play it. Your mother might even be in on it. That’s right – it’s Farmville, the hottest game of Facebook at the moment, with over 61 million monthly players.

Farmville isn’t very complicated or challenging. It’s a game you play to pass some time, have some fun and connect with your friends. Still, if you want to better your Farmville gameplay, there a few things you can do about that.

Here are Farmville tips, tricks, cheats and guides

#1
Log on daily – Logging on to Farmville every day will help you win raffles and get random events, that give you XP and coins.

#2
Visit friends and help them on their farm for some easy XP and coins.

#3
Give free gifts to friends, so they will gift you back. It’s even better if you have high-level friends, because they’ll give you gifts that you can’t even buy yet.

#4
Get 8 neighbors as fast as possible, so you can start saving for farm expansion.

#5
Top ten crops to plant on Farmville

Peas
Asparagus
Onions
Grapes
Sugar Cane
Tomatoes
Sunflowers
Ghost Chili
Green Tea
Coffee/Blackberries

As you can see, peas are the best seed to plant. You can harvest them in 1 day and make a profit of 176 coins for each patch.

#6
How to level fast on Farmville? Plant berries. By planting strawberries you get 288 Experience every 4 hours if you have a 12X12 farm.

#7
Schedule Smartly: Plant seeds you know you can collect on time, so they won’t whither. For example, don’t plant strawberries if you can’t log on to Farmville at least every 8 hours. Remember – Crops will start to wilt after a period of time equal to their growth, so a 1 day crop will start wilting after 2 days have passed since planting.

#8
Farmville profit calculator: this spreadsheet, on Google Docs, will help you estimate the profit you can make from different crops.

#9
If you have enough money, buy hay bales. They will give you 5 XP each. Buy as many as you have room for, delete and buy more.

#10
Best Farmville Animals: Horses, Goats, Ducks and Rabbits give the biggest amount of coins.

#11
Best Farmville Trees: The best trees on Farmville are Pomegranate, Banana and Passion fruit tree’s (100 coins each).

#12
Farmville speed trick: Plow, harvest and plant real quickly. All you have to do is put 4 notes around yourself. Check out this video for a demonstration:

#13
Stacking Hay Bales: Watch this video to learn how to stack Hay Bales and earn more XP using less space.

#14
Complete the Farmville achievements. There are many achievements you can obtain bycompleting various tasks within the game. Completing achievements on Farmville will give you experience, decorations for your farm and coins.

More Farmville Guides, tips and tricks:

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5 Hottest Games on Facebook

Shark Lady Games — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 14:12:42 +0000

Hardcore gamers might snicker at Facebook’s ultra-casual games, but they do serve one important cause – wasting a lot of time. All those bored kids, bored high-tech workers and bored unemployed people are very happy to pass big portions of their day with the simple games of Facebook.

Here are 5 of the currently hottest games on Facebook:

Texas Hold’em Poker

Hold’em has become one of the most popular games on the net – not only on Facebook. This Facebook version of the engaging card game allows you to play against your friends and waste tons of time while you’re at it.

Paf Le Chien

This silly little game requires almost no skills at all, but still manages to be addictive and slightly amusing. Your job is to kick Paf as far as possible. Your kick launches the creatures, and things along the way either help it fly further or slow it down. You can post your high scores to your profile and annoy your friends because you broke THEIR record by two meters.

Mafia Wars

If you have always dreamed of becoming Don Corleone, here’s a chance to practice – the Mafia Wars game on Facebook enables you to start your own Mafia, with the help of family and friends. The goal is to become the most powerful familia, while annoying as many as your friends with stupid Twitter updates and direct messages.

Bejeweled Blitz

The guys at PopCap sure know their jobs – even when it comes to Facebook games. The all-too-addictive game of Bejeweled Blitz is a huge hit among ladies. It’s simple – you have one minute to score as many points as you can. True to PopCap tradition, the game is full of colors, fun and cool sound. There’s also a ranking system with medals, which keeps you going and going, in order to get them all.

FarmVille

Currently the most popular game on Facebook, with 55,268,478 monthly active users, FarmVille has spread like diseased crops in every corner of social media sites. The goal is to build and maintain your own farm, and develop it over time. The game continues even when you are not around. If you are into crops, cows and sheep – this is the game for you.

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