The Top 25 Facebook Games for August 2009

It’s now official: farming games are all the rage on the Facebook Platform. Of all the big moves we saw in this month’s Facebook gaming charts, none are more pronounced than the staggering popularity of the farming “genre.” FarmVille is now the most popular game on the Facebook Platform with over 16.6 million monthly active users, and Slashkey’s Farm Town has skyrocketed 40% in the last month as well to near 15 million monthly players.
This month’s charts are pretty dramatically different than July’s. Smaller games have grown drastically in reach, new faces have appeared, and even long time leaders are falling from the top. The social gaming space is growing beyond just numbers. It is starting to mature.
Here are the highlights from the past month:

* Long time #1 Texas HoldEm Poker fell from the top spot it held for a long time not one but three places to #4, getting beat out by FarmVille, MindJolt Games, and Mafia Wars.
* Zynga’s FarmVille is now the #1 Facebook game, with over 16.5 million MAU. That is an 11.5 million MAU growth for the new game in the last 30 days.
* Playfish’s Pet Society also dropped from #3 to #6 with 14.3 million users this month, as Farm Town held at #5.
* PopCap’s adapted version of its hit Bejeweled title has shown why the company sets the standard in casual games – the title grew by 1.5 million users in July to move up from #11 to #9.
* Another farming title from TheBroth, Barn Buddy made an impressive leap from #18 to #11 with nearly 5 million MAUs this month.
* A classic card game we saw a while ago, UNO BETA also made its first appearance on the charts with close to 3 million users while the odd game of Pillow Fight defies previous predictions and hangs on at #23.




As social games developers compete with one another, the quality of games is going up, and the players are liking it. Will a new era of higher quality games ascend the charts this fall?