Facebook's Hottest Games

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"Dear victim, you have been bitten by ..." is a phrase all too familiar to Facebook users. It is both a challenge and an invitation to join the legions of werewolves, vampires and zombies lurking in the social network's pages.

In the early days of social networks, viral games with catchy names like "Zombies," "Vampires" and "Werewolves," were all the rage. They amassed over 15 million installations--thanks in part to a bonus that rewards players for spamming friends with invites--in a matter of months.

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But once bitten, twice bored. Facebook stat-tracker Developer Analytics reports that of those 15 million viral installations, a mere 153,000, or 1%, of the games' users are active on a daily basis. As a result, social network games are already moving into a second phase of development--dubbed "social games 2.0"--which promises to have more staying power and potentially more revenue.

Social games on platforms like Facebook "should be very engaging, entertaining worlds and lead to the discovery of new friendships and relationships," says Playfish Chief Operating Officer Sebastien de Halleux.

"I see social gaming as a new form of communication that is more interesting than e-mail and AIM [AOL Instant Messenger] in terms of connecting people together," he says. "It drives what we're doing and informs our decisions. We don't want to just stick our finger in the air. We want to create a new category."

Less than a year old, the London-based Playfish already has four games on Facebook. The goal, de Halleux says, is for the game to become incrementally more fun as more real-life friends join in. Such games grow organically as friends truly invite more friends--not just spam their acquaintances.

Playfish launched its first game, "Who Has the Biggest Brain?," in late December by sending it to 100 of de Halleux's friends. Now over 6 million Facebook users have installed it. Playfish launched its fourth game, "Pet Society," in beta earlier this month.

Currently, three Playfish games rank among the top 10 Facebook games. Playfish's games, built entirely in Flash, are polished and immediately tie into players' social networks. For instance, all the games regularly update the scores of players and their friends when they are played--a feature that leads them to issue challenges and taunt rivals.

The tactic is clearly working. In the sea of 27,942 applications now available on Facebook, only a handful see regular repeat customers. The word scramble game "Word Challenge," for instance, is near the top of the popularity heap, attracting on a daily basis as many as 9% of Facebook subscribers who have installed it. Across Playfish's four games--representing a population of nearly 13 million installations--the number of active daily players is about 924,400 people--or 7% of the population.