Zynga Titles Lead Fastest-Growing Facebook 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.] Zynga's newest release CastleVille, like all of the company's games debuted in the last year (e.g. Adventure World, Empires & Allies, CityVille), is still growing very fast a month after its launch. The medieval-themed sim picked up 7.1 million users in the last week. With a total of now 33.6 million players, that makes CastleVille's audience the second biggest out of all the games on Facebook -- behind CityVille's 49.1 million but ahead of popular titles like Texas HoldEm Poker, The Sims Social, and FarmVille. Speaking of FarmVille, the Zynga staple is the second biggest "gainer" in the last seven days, adding 600,000 new players. It now has a total of 31.6 million virtual farmers, and is the third biggest game on the social network despite releasing two and a half years ago. Zynga's Adventure World (9 million total) and Words With Friends (13.1 million total) also made big gains, both picking up 500,000 new players each. Tetris Online's Tetris Battle (8.4 million total) and Wooga's Bubble Witch Saga (9.7 million total) brought in 500,000 new users, too. At number seven, OMGPOP's puzzle title Gem Rush attracted 320,000 new players and has a 920,000 total. That's followed by another gem-based puzzler, Bayou Blast by GameHouse, which has 240,000 new players and a 310,000 total. RockYou's Zoo World (1.9 million total) and HalfQuest's Arabic game Happy Farm (3.4 million total) take the last two spots of the top ten, both bringing in 200,000 new players each. 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.