Top 25 Facebook games of Dec. 2010: Digital Chocolate takes distant second place

Top 25 Facebook Games December
The results are in from Inside Social's list of the top 25 Facebook games for Dec. 2010 and they're somewhat surprising given AppData's recent developer rankings. Zynga grips tightly to the top seven spots on the list including staples like FarmVille in first with 53.7 million monthly players, FrontierVille taking the third spot with nearly 30 million players and Mafia Wars in fourth sporting 21 million players a month. But just after Treasure Isle in sixth place comes Millionaire City, the newest game by Digital Chocolate, with 12.7 million players--808 thousand more than last month.

Millionaire City, if it keeps going at this rate, could easily knock CrowdStar out of tailing Zynga and Takeoff Monkey--the folks behind Phrases. Especially considering its top game, Happy Aquarium, is lagging behind in the 11 spot with 9.8 million players. However, Millionaire City's success does come with Zynga losing millions of users in all of its games aside from FrontierVille, where it gained 86 thousand.

The same goes for other top developers like CrowdStar and Playfish who each lost hundreds of thousands of players over the past month in games like the aforementioned Happy Aquarium, which lost 1.2 million players, and Pet Society that lost 118 thousand players last month.

Rounding out the list are a few gems like Car Town, a new game from Cie Games that gained 1.1 million players last month to bump it into the number 15 spot. And in the most massive gain this month, Funzio and its crime game hit Crime City took 18th place thanks to welcoming 3.5 million more players into its felony-filled walls.

You'll notice on this list that FarmVille's new arch nemesis, Phrases, is nowhere to be found. This is because Inside Social believes that the sheer number of new Facebook games that have popped up in recent months warrants their removal. (A good move, I'd say.) But what's this? According to AppData's most recent app leaderboards, Zynga and FarmVille are back on top as the most popular app on Facebook with 53.7 million players. Though, CrowdStar still has a long way to go--about 20 million more players--if it wants to send Takeoff Monkey and Phrases farther down the ladder. We know you got it in you, guys, now make it happen.