Whether you are active on Facebook or not, you most likely have heard friends, family and even the media talk about games such as "Farmville" or "Mafia Wars". These "social" games have been one of the largest growth areas in the video game industry, however recently the category has shown signs of decline. Several of the most popular Facebook games have dropped in popularity over the last few months.
According to Inside Social Games, 23 of the 25 most popular Facebook games saw a month over month decline in monthly average users, some by as much as 20%. Below is a chart from Inside Social Games:
Many are pointing to Facebook itself as the main reason for the drop in user participation. Industry experts believe that the root cause of the decline began in March when Facebook made a change to their social game notifications. The company disabled a feature that sent users an instant notification every time there was a move made in the games. Facebook described this as an effort to make the process "more streamlined, clear, and less spammy for users."
While most of the games now offer email notifications, not every gamer has made the move with them resulting in a reduced visibility into the activity on the Facebook games that they are/were a part of.
This certainly does not mean the end for social gaming as earlier in the week during Apple's unveiling of its newest iPhone, Zynga (a leading social game developer) showcased the latest version of Farmville, which will operate on the iPhone. In addition, Zynga is rolling out a new Wild West themed game, titled Frontierville, designed by Brian Reynolds of Civilization II fame. The game is being described as "Oregon Trail meets Little House on the Prairie meets FarmVille" and is Reynolds' first social game.
The decline in usage of these popular Facebook games however has not impacted the abundance of smaller Facebook games, which continue to grow in daily usage. One of the most notable is a new title from EA Sports, FIFA Superstars, released to in time to piggyback on the attention and excitement of the World Cup.