Facebook Names Top Games of 2011

Social gaming was a big trend in 2011 and we expect the market to continue to grow in 2012. Facebook, the biggest platform for social games, released its list of the most popular games of 2011.
Unlike most year-end lists, this one actually has quite a few surprises. I fully expected CityVille, Zynga’s hit social game, to top the list. Nope. According to Facebook’s measurements, that honor belongs to Gardens of Time.
In the update announcing the list, Facebook does say it is basing its ranking on “games that drew the most active users and received the highest user recommendations.”
That probably accounts for some of the discrepancies we found against other Facebook app data sources, like AppData.com. According to AppData, CityVille is the most popular game with 48.8 million monthly active users. Conversely, Gardens of Time ranks much further down the list with 8.5 million monthly active users.
Accounting questions aside, here are Facebook’s ten most popular games of 2011:

1. Gardens of Time (by Playdom)
2. The Sims Social (by EA)
3. Cityville (by Zynga)
4. DoubleDown Casino (by DoubleDown Entertainment)
5. Indiana Jones Adventure World (by Zynga)
6. Words With Friends (by Zynga)
7. Bingo Blitz (by Buffalo Studios)
8. Empires & Allies (by Zynga)
9. Slotomania-Slot Machines (by Playtika)
10. Diamond Dash (by wooga)

What Facebook game got your attention this year? Let us know.

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