Farmville has really taken the facebook gaming industry by storm. If you take a look at AppData, which is an online script that monitors the popularity of Facebook games, Farmville has over 80,000,000 players each month. That is a massive number. It is especially impressive when you consider just how simple the game is. This is totally different to games like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, by the way. Farmville can be played by anyone with a facebook account, on any computer, and there are no fancy graphics or special effects. This is a simple and easy to learn game where the goal is to create and manage a farm. As it turns out, Farmville has enjoyed an enormous amount of success within the last six months. The game has built in viral elements. You can invite your friends over, and compare your farm to theirs. You can even send ‘gifts’ to each other. I suppose a lot of people just like showing off the farms they made to their friends for a bit of friendly competition. And interestingly enough, there are people that really badly want to do well in the game, so they will pay for in-game currency. There is definitely also a big demand for a decent Farmville guide right now.

It is worth taking a look at how developers of games like Farmville actually make money. Well, the company that develops Farmville (Zynga) recently came under fire from Techcrunch and other news agencies because of the unethical way in which they make users fill out CPA offers and sneaky rebills in return for items and money in Farmville. The CEO of Zynga once said that they would do absolutely anything to make money regardless of how damaging it was to the players. Some other development companies monetize their games by putting in advertisements, or having a ‘buy page’ where you send real money for virtual money. Lately there have been a few networks that help developers monetize their games better (gwallet is one).

So you may want to know what games other than Farmville are doing well. One of them would be Yoville, which is not that big yet but certainly has the potential to become huge. In this game, you play real life in a virtual world, kind of like the Sims. You do all the mundane stuff like furnish your house, go to get a haircut, customize your character, and go shopping. Doesn’t sound too exciting does it. But many people become very addicted to simple games like this. If you want to get good at Yoville, then I would recommend picking up a trusted Yoville guide.

One other intriguing game is Gangster City. In comparison to Yoville or Farmville, Gangster City is quite a bit more full on. You get to play the role of a gangster in a large city, and you overall goal is to take control of the city. This is the only game on facebook where there is a little bit of voilence (although it is still very conservative compared to most mainstream PC games). Right now, it is quite difficult to get your hands on a decent Gangster City guide because the game is recent and not a lot is written about it yet. Otherwise you can always just play the game yourself and learn how to get good through trial and error.