Facebook casino-style games feature in top list

Social networking giant Facebook’s “most popular games of 2011” list features casino-style social game offerings, indicative perhaps of the crossover potential between social and online gambling.

Industry observers viewed the list with scepticism as Zynga’s popular Cityville game was relegated to third place while Facebook explained that rankings were determined by customer satisfaction of games that have more than 100 000 monthly active users.

Criticism on its methodology, which goes against the norm in determining the most popular games, has prompted Facebook to rename the list “Top Recommended,” saying: “This list was compiled by looking at the top games on Facebook with more than 100,000 monthly active users and giving priority to those games with the highest user satisfaction scores. The result is a list of the games that received the most user recommendations in 2011.”

Facebook’s Top 10 games of 2011, including many familiar names to the online gambling industry, are as follows:

1. Gardens of Time by Playdom (a wholly owned subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company)

2. The Sims Social by Electronic Arts (EA)

3. Cityville by Zynga

4. DoubleDown Casino by DoubleDown Interactive

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 (owned by US land gambling giant Caesars Entertainment)

10. Diamond Dash by Wooga