CityVille Growing at Breakneck Speed

January 17, 2011 2:30 PM

FarmVille is the poster child of social gaming, but its little brother has already surpassed its success in record time. VentureBeat reports that the spin-off title CityVille has reached 100 million users in only 43 days.

FarmVille, by comparison, reached an all-time high of 83.76 million users in March of last year. However, FarmVille's 34.5 million daily active users beats CityVille's 18.5 million. Together, the two games help push Zygna's combined tally to almost 300 million monthly active users. Facebook currently stands at over 600 million users, which means roughly one in six have at least tried CityVille, and half are trying at least one Zynga game.

While the core audience may turn up their noses at social gaming, it's hard to argue with numbers. The 100 million strong player base of CityVille may not consider themselves gamers, but success like this means they're part of a trend that we'll see shaping the industry for years.

Steve Watts

Editor-In-Chief

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Walterbennet

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January 17, 2011 2:35 PM

100 million users? 1/6 of all Facebook users play this game? Yet I haven't seen a single one of my friends play it. Interesting.
- SlingBlaze
  
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  January 17, 2011 2:40 PM
  
  Get more than 4 friends.
- zehh
  
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  January 17, 2011 2:40 PM
  
  That's probably the number of ids that ran the game at some point in time rather than the number of people who actively play it.
- supermonkeyballz
  
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  January 17, 2011 2:42 PM
  
  Ive never heard of it till now
  - Sturm08
    
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    January 17, 2011 7:41 PM
    
    Facebook recently modified the viral channels so that you won't see facebook game spam unless you play the game. It's greatly hindered Facebook gaming companies' marketing abilities. Luckily for zynga they already have a hojillion people playing their games.
- daggot
  
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  January 17, 2011 2:55 PM
  
  The problem with the number of Facebook users is that there's no way to claim the number of unique users. I know several people that have multiple accounts just to have more friends per Zynga game. I've seen plenty of ads for this game on the right column...
  
  ugh.. Let's face it... Zynga "games" are not games at all. Pure time wasters and eventual money sinks if you let yourself.
  - crabsncancer
    
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    January 17, 2011 3:37 PM
    
    What do you mean they aren't games? They present a ruleset and objectives within the ruleset for the player to achieve. That is a game.
  - zehh
    
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    January 17, 2011 3:53 PM
    
    Pure time wasters and eventual money sinks if you let yourself.
    
    Have you been to an arcade 20 years ago?
  - wurzle
    
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    January 17, 2011 4:24 PM
    
    That sounds remarkably similar to how most people felt about ALL games 20 years ago.
- rubicant
  
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  January 18, 2011 9:27 PM
  
  I think they've cut down on the application notifications. I can't remember the last time I got one and I know for sure that a number of my friends play these games.