![]() Similar to Mitchell's Puzz Loop/Magnetica series, Zuma has players frantically aiming with their mouse and firing colored balls at a chain of incoming spheres, matching three similarly colored orbs to explode a segment of the stream. Just as puzzler fans were finally pulling themselves away from Bejeweled Blitz, PopCap brought another of its addictive PC/console/mobile titles to Facebook. The developer has naturally followed up Millionaire City's success (nearly 13 million monthly active users) with recent releases like Vegas City and Hollywood City. For developers looking to create social games with more complexity and a satisfying sense of progression, there are few better titles to imitate than these two classics, which have enslaved players for decades.ĭigital Chocolate, a strong proponent of the idea that social games shouldn't be shallow, created one of the most popular sims with Millionaire City, which is more about snatching up and managing real estate than carefully planning the layout of a city. The game offers missions, achievements, the ability to visit friends' towns, and other features designed to grab and keep players' attentions quick. If 2009 was the year of countless farming and mafia game clones, 2010 was teeming with empire-building simulators inspired by Sim City and Civilization. Here are our picks for the top five social network games featured on Facebook and exemplifying that trend: It's an approach that many social gamers, especially those new to gaming and now looking for more depth in Facebook's offerings, surely appreciate. Since then, more developers have espoused the idea that their titles need to focus on compelling gameplay and metrics-based design, rather than virality tricks, to succeed. ![]() Zynga's FarmVille, the biggest Facebook app for most of the year, dropped from its peak of 84 million monthly active users to now 57 million, according to AppData. It wasn't an easy year for the titles that relied heavily on viral channels for their inflated user base numbers, though.įacebook sent a message to developers with changes it implemented in March: the social network would not stand for spam-like tactics that many games relied on to attract and retain players.Īfter Facebook limited the application "notification spam" that aggravated its users but benefited social games looking for fast/cheap growth, many of the site's most popular games lost millions of users. The giants in the industry, like Zynga and Disney/Playdom, grew not only their total audience sizes but also their headcounts and coffers, opening and acquiring a myriad of studios around the world - expansions funded by the hundreds of millions of dollars raised from investors wanting a piece of this flourishing market. ![]() For the social game leaders who've built their empires on social network Facebook's platform and the backs of its users (which accounts for pretty much all of them, although iOS is an increasing force here!), 2010 was just as much a tumultuous year as it was a prosperous one.
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