Fastest-Growing Facebook Games: From Mafia Wars 2 To Bubble Games

[Every other week, Gamasutra examines the fastest-growing Facebook games (according to monthly active users), looking at which titles and developers are having the most success attracting new players on the social network.] The fastest growing game this week is Mafia Wars 2, Zynga's first ever numbered sequel, which has managed to gain 12.2 million users since launching less than three weeks ago. 837,909 of those players tried out the gangster social game in just the last seven days. Just as farming, turn-based strategy (e.g. Empires & Allies), and Sim City-styled games were popular genres for Facebook in the past, the latest trend appears to be bubble-themed puzzlers that play more than a little Taito's long-running Puzzle Bobble/Bust-A-Move franchise. King.com's Bubble Witch Saga, for example, is at #2 on the list this week after attracting 566,980 new players for a 5.6 million total. The same developer also has Bubble Saga sans witches at #7 with some 200,000 new active users and a 5.8 million total. Then there's Bubble Speed at #8 by GameDuel, which also picked up 200,000 new players in the past week for a 1.3 million total. And while it isn't on the chart this time around, Wooga's own bubble-matching game Bubble Island is also quite popular with 9.2 million total users. Zynga's Texas Holdem Poker took #3 (+500,000 users, 29.8 million total), followed by 6waves/LOLapps' Ravenskye City (+442,220 users; 4.3 million total), Social Point's Social Empires (+300,00 users, 4.3 million total), and Happy Elements' 開心水族箱 (+300,000 users, 3.8 million total). At the bottom end of the chart, Zynga's PetVille takes #9 with 200,00 new users (2.4 million total), followed by DoubleDown's DoubleDown Casino with 200,000 new users (3.7 million total). The games ranked #7 to #11 made the same gains under Facebook's new active user metrics. The full list of the top 20 fastest growing Facebook games along with exact monthly active user counts, are as follows: All charts and data are courtesy of Facebook application metrics and trends site AppData.