The rise and rise of Sims Social

Raptr has released a new report, The Sim Social: EA's Volley Into The Social Gaming Space, offering its insights into the rapid rise of the Facebook game.

At the time of writing, the game has 66,016,362 monthly active users, lagging just behind the number one Facebook app, Cityville, which has 76,611,878.

"EA is a rising force in the social games industry," said CEO Dennis Fong

"Data from the previous Raptr Report outlined the strength of Zynga's position in the social gaming space, but EA is poised to capture significant market share if it can capitalize on the popularity of The Sims Social. With this report we examine the basis of The Sims Social's success and the potential significance of EA acquisitions of Playfish and PopCap to the company's future social strategy."

The report, based on information taken from Raptr's 10 million users, shows that the average player logs into the game eight times a day spending around five minutes per session interacting with their character and completing tasks.

This pattern mirrors that of some of the larger Zynga titles.

It also suggests that one of the reasons for the games rapid growth since its release on August 9 is marketing efforts by EA, that targeted players already accessing The Sims 3 on other platforms and other EA social games.

The strategy converted between 34 per cent and 65 per cent of the player per game to the new Sims Social, with Restaurant City by Playfish offering the most conversions.

It's bad news for social gaming giant Zynga, as Sims Social also attracted its users and has taken around 10 to 20 per cent of playtime away from Zynga's top games, Farmville, Cityville and Empires % Allies.

The data for the study was collected from Raptr users between 2007 and October 7 2011.