Who would have guessed—in an age of rapidly advancing technology—that one of the most popular online games would be a game about good old fashioned farming?
Zynga, one of the biggest social gaming developers, just hit 100 million monthly users across its various games on Facebook.
Much of Zynga’s success is owed to one of its newest games, FarmVille, a real-time virtual farming game quietly released on Facebook in mid-June. Users choose crops to plant and purchase all sorts of equipment with which to tend their harvest. As All Facebook reports, farm gaming is looking to be a big business on Facebook. They count nine different farming applications, just in the site’s top games. All the farming applications combined see 72 million active users a month.
Zynga’s product differs from some other farming games, however, in that it provides a better social experience by encouraging users to interact with their Facebook friends within the game.
“FarmVille demonstrates the huge market potential of social gaming – in just 9 weeks the game has become a cultural phenomenon,” said Mark Pincus, founder and CEO of Zynga.
Capitalizing on the virtual goods market, FarmVille allows users to purchase in-game cash and coins with a credit card, through PayPal, or via various other payment system. Zong, for example, allows users to pay with their mobile numbers, appending the charges to their cell phone bill.
Today, FarmVille alone sees over 11 million daily active users and has, since its launch, attracted 1 million new daily active users a week, on average. With 30 million monthly active users, FarmVille makes up nearly a third of Zynga’s massive user base.
Less than a month ago, we reported that Zynga had reached the already-impressive milestone of 72 million monthly users. As the social gaming company has now rocketed past the 100 million mark, Zynga leaves no doubt that it is the most popular social gaming developer out there. Making up well over a third of Facebook’s 250 million member count, the Zynga user base shows no signs of slowing its growth.
