Fastest-Growing Facebook Games: From The Sims Social To Smurfs

[Every other week, Gamasutra examines the fastest-growing Facebook games (according to monthly active users), looking at which titles and developers are having the most success attracting new players on the social network.] Electronic Arts and Playfish's The Sims Social, a Facebook adaptation for one of the biggest video game franchises ever (The Sims franchise has sold over 140 million copies total worldwide), is unsurprisingly the fastest growing app at the moment, already up to 7.3 million monthly users. The game became available with an open beta two weeks ago, and it formally launched on August 19. In just the past seven days, The Sims Social gained 4.7 million players, a 182 percent jump. Expect continued growth for this title, despite some of its flaws. Ubisoft's The Smurfs & Co., which was the biggest gainer in our charts two weeks ago, is now the second fastest growing app with a total of nearly 5.2 million players -- 1.8 million of those users started playing the game based on the popular animated series in just the last week.  During a span that seemed particularly kind for gambling games, Kama Games' The Pokerist Club took #3 with a million new virtual card players and a 3.3 million total. After that, GnomeTown by Disney/Playdom attracted 842,744 users, bringing its total to 1.8 million. RockYou's Zoo World (which counts the original Zoo World and its recently launched sequel) is at #5 after serving 709,980 new patrons, adding up to a 9.4 million total. And Wooga's Magic Land made a nice debut at #6, gaining 521,639 new users for a 571,442 total. At #7, there's Zynga's Texas HoldEm Poker (+488,818 users; 35.3 million total), followed by Playtika's Slotomania (+405,273 users; 5 million total), Nexon's MapleStory Adventures (+397,764 users; 1.7 million total), and Ninja Saga (+363,427 users; 5.3 million total). The full list of the top 20 fastest growing Facebook games along with exact monthly active user counts, are as follows: All charts and data are courtesy of Facebook application metrics and trends site AppData.