Top 25 Facebook Games for March 2011 ~ THEGAMETECH

Like last month, 16 of the 25 largest Facebook games by monthly active users have experienced user declines, with seven, including CityVille, steming from social developer Zynga. Many of these games were launched a year ago or earlier, and massive new games are not emerging to take their place, at least in terms of equivalent MAU numbers.

But before we get into the details, the other important thing to note is that while MAU shows total size, the daily active user count is a better measure of the popularity of a game with serious users, and the game’s ability to monetize through virtual goods. CityVille, for example, has been losing MAU but gaining DAU in the past month; Zynga has flat DAU overall versus a month ago, at 52.9 million today. (For details on these stats and much more, check out our AppData service, which tracks the traffic to top Facebook apps and developers.)

MAU numbers still provide valuable information about what new games are gaining significant numbers of new users. Ravenwood Fair, It Girl, and Mall World have done especially well. Moreover, two newcomers join the list from Gaia Online and wooga in the form of Monster Galaxy Monster World, respectively. and

Also, remember that the big trend in 2010 was a wide range of smaller games growing and figuring out how to monetize effectively, as we’ve covered before.

With all that, here are the highlights for the Top 25 Facebook Games for March 2011:

Zynga’s CityVille sees a significant drop this month, losing over 3.6 million monthly active users (MAU). Even with the decline, the game still boasts nearly 95 million MAU in total.
Texas Hold’Em Poker (Zynga Poker) marks one of only two Zynga apps to gain numbers this month with a growth of 544,040 MAU.
Millionaire City from Digital Chocolate surpasses Treasure Isle for the #7 spot, but still loses over 475,000 MAU.
As noted prior, Ravenwood Fair, from LOLapps continues its impressive climb up the charts with the highest gain this month. Growing by approximately 3.7 million MAU to come in at #11.
Right behind Ravenwood comes CrowdStar’s It Girl which grows by approximately 1.2 million MAU.
The #17 spot hosts our first newcomer to the list this week with Monster Galaxy from Gaia Online. The game grows by just shy of 1.5 million MAU for a total of 6,864,568.
Mall World is the second “girls-only” title on the list the month. From developer 50 Cubes, the game earns a total of 6.6 million MAU.
Zynga sees its second gain this month with YoVille which earns 85,374 MAU.
Coming in at #24 is the next newcomer to the top 25, Monster World from wooga. Gaining 456,0623 MAU, the title totals out at just shy of 6.1 million.