CityVille reaches 100 million players, nearly half of all Facebook gamers

Honestly, we all kind of expected this to happen. CityVille has reached 100 million monthly active players, Mashable reports. Though, it is still staggering to see one Facebook game reach nearly half of all social gamers in just about 40 days when it took the previous champion, FarmVille, months to reach a mere 84 million players. (It's crazy to call 84 million players of a single game "mere," but c'est la vie.)

Actually, CityVille hasn't quite reached the 100 million mark yet, but with 99,903,740 players and up to 400 thousand added daily it truly is only a matter of time, according to Mashable. Regardless of whether CityVille has eclipse the rest of the Zynga game lineup, they're not going anywhere. Zynga games hold four of the top five spots in AppData's list of largest Facebook apps. In fact, a game by another developer doesn't appear on the list until 17th place with Digital Chocolate's Millionaire City. However, it's unlikely that CityVille can retain 100 million monthly players for long much less stay on top. Then again, it's more than likely that it'll be yet another Zynga game that eventually topples the gargantuan city builder.

How long do you think CityVille will remain on top? What game or developer do you think can give CityVille and Zynga a challenge?

Top 25 Facebook Games - August 2011: Gardens of Time hits the big time

For all of the Playdom and Disney nay saying lately, the duo seems to be proving everyone wrong with a single game. Gardens of Time has been on a steady climb since its release, and this month it's the fifth largest Facebook game at nearly 16 million monthly players. Just last month alone, the game garnered another 1.7 million players, which is impressive for any game that wasn't made by You Know Who. (Has Zynga reached Voldemort-like proportions yet? We like to think so.)

Of course, Zynga maintains the same top four spots it did last month, even as CityVille lost over 8.5 million monthly players and Empires & Allies lost over half a million. Even FarmVille lost another 3.4 million monthly players, though it'll take a lot more than this for Zynga to lose its reign.

And oddly enough, Monster Galaxy lost a whopping 8.4 million monthly players last month just after gaining over 6 million the month prior. This caused the game to fall back from the mighty top five to now eighth place at 10.6 million players. In fact, loss is somewhat of a trend this month, with 18 of 25 games losing monthly players. This could be attributed to a list of factors, but we're gonna' go with: It's summer, and most folks would rather be outside than in front of the computer.

AppData top 25 Facebook Games August
New additions to the Top 25 are Mall World, which comes in at number 24 with 5.3 million monthly players, and Zoo World 2 in the 20 spot with 6.4 million monthly players and a gain of nearly 3 million. However, publisher RockYou, according to Inside Social Games, uses the same app ID for the sequel to Zoo World as the original, meaning RockYou has not separate the traffic from both games.

Unfortunately, Ravenwood Fair was knocked off the leader boards this month, as was MindJolt Games from the rise of Mall World and It Girl's far leap from 21st place in June to the 14 spot this time around. Gardens of Time has hit the coveted top five because, while there are hidden object games out there, it seems that Playdom hit the previously untapped genre at just the right time. It speaks volumes to Facebook games partnership director Sean Ryan's plea for developers to experiment with new genres (at least to Facebook). At this point, it just might be the only way to reach at least fifth place.