Facebook games: behind the numbers

Given that social networking games - or, to give them their real name, Facebook games - are treated in so many quarters as the only party in town, it's worth looking behind all the acquisition headlines. In other words, what are people actually playing?

Looking at Inside Social Games' charts for the month just ending, the Zynga dominance is immediate and startling. FarmVille tends to be the de facto association most of us make when we hear about this news-magnet of a developer, but the number of games they have in the top 25 is extraordinary. As is the number that are potentially cannibalising its own audience. PetVille, YoVille, FishVille...

There is an argument that the reason for Zynga's recent success is it can identify and capitalise on simple yet arrestingly fresh concepts. FrontierVille, for all its obvious similarities to its forebear, speaks clearly from its title alone of a different, more adventurous world to gentle cow-rearing. PetVille, FishVille? Less so.

Animals and derivations of 'city' dominate this chart, and it's hard not to hope that all the money being spent on social devs is intended purely to make more of these, rather than to pursue newer horizons. For all the money that Disneys and Googles are madly throwing at their social dev acquisitions, do they really intend to then make yet more versions of those same themes? And is that more or less of a risk than trying to muscle into the top MUA echelons with something new and different?

What's also telling is to look at the quiet giants, and from that perhaps we could make projections about possible targets for the next round of investments and acquisitions from hungry media companies. Zynga, Playfish/EA and Playdom might grab the current limelight, but looking at AppData's developer charts reveal that CrowdStar and RockYou! are major players. Their remit extends beyond games and into general applications (such as slideshows, quizzes and Chuck Norris quote generators).

They may not be purely game devs, so we're perhaps not seeing them in as many headlines - but their userbase means they're probably pulling in as much potential revenue. It's these hybrid app developers, rather than those who focus purely on games (and especially copycat games) who may ultimately prove most successful – the same versatility is no doubt of use for iPhone App development too.

There's another trend in the App Data charts worth considering – there are very, very few games gaining anywhere near as many monthly active users as FrontierVille and FarmVille. There is a question of if a ceiling is approaching. As World of Wacraft has ably demonstrated in the MMO space, there appears to be a finite amount of people wanting to play a fee-based online roleplaying game. Rivals arrived and tried to steal some of its audience as well as attract those who hadn't picked a virtual world yet, but ultimately there just didn't appear to be room for anyone to co-exist on WoW's scale. To make matters worse, the more Blizzard drew ahead, the more money they had to spend on further marketing and shoring up audience-leaks. How could anyone compete?

The rich got richer, leaving one giant occupying the paid subscription model, with a few fascinating outliers such as Eve finding their own ways to slow-build a smaller but passionate audience. So we've seen a raft of closures and dramatic reinventions as free to play from WoW's one-time rivals. There was only so much gold in them thar hills. Time to find another hill. (Free to play being the current one).

Could the social games sector hit the same problem? Zynga endlessly recyling its own audience between a slew of new games and sequels, as a raft of copycats snap weakly at its gold-plated heels? We've yet to see the fruit of that torrent of recent investments and acquisitions, after all. In a few months, we will – and let's hope they're new concepts and new mechanics intended to capture new audiences, not to try and lure the stragglers of the existing, spoken-for ones.

A final observation: there are far too many social game developers with 'Play' in their names. They'll come to regret it when people stop being able to remember who's who. It's like all those The bands that sprung up when The Strokes went big.