Most Popular Facebook Games: Adventure World Crosses 20M Users

[Every other week, Gamasutra examines the most popular Facebook games (according to monthly active users), looking at the top titles and developers on the social network to see who's attracting or losing players.] Less than three weeks after it debuted on the site, Zynga's social puzzle game Adventure World has rocketed up the chart and is the sixth most popular game on Facebook, attracting over 21.6 million players, likely thanks in part to the developer's strong cross-promotion network. The title was built by Zynga's Boston studio, which the company acquired last August when it was still known as Conduit Labs. Unlike most of Zynga's other big hits, this title is less about base management and more about solving puzzles in adventure-themed environments. CityVille, also a Zynga title, continues to have the biggest audience out of all the games and apps on Facebook with 72 million monthly users. That's diminished somewhat since our last App Leaderboard chart two weeks ago, though, when it had 75.4 million players. And the second most popular game, Electronic Arts and Playfish's The Sims Social, is fast closing in with 60.3 million users two months after its debut. Just 14 days ago, the game had 36 million players, and it's nearly doubled that amount since then. Two more Zynga games take the #4 and #5 spots, turn-based war strategy title Empires & Allies with 34 million users (down from 39.9 million two weeks ago); and virtual card game Texas HoldEm Poker with 34.3 million users (down from 36.6 million). Disney/Playdom's Gardens of Time has 15.9 million users (down from 17.1 million) at #7, followed by Zynga's FrontierVille follow-up Pioneer Trail with 13.1 million users (down sharply from 22.2 million) and Words With Friends with 12.5 million users (down from 13.2 million). Closing out the top ten, Wooga's Diamond Dash has 12.4 million players (up from 11.5 million). You can see the full list of the top 20 Facebook games along with exact monthly active user counts below: All charts and data are courtesy of Facebook application metrics and trends site AppData.