CasualCharts: Build-a-lot 2 Dominates the Charts

May 20th 2008 at 09:59 by James C. Smith

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Overview of Downloadable Casual Games 2008-05-04 through 2008-05-10

Build-a-lot 2 is turning out to be just as popular as the original. This sim game has more than double the score of the next most popular game this week and is in the top three ranks at five of the seven portals summarized in this analysis. Two click management games are tied for seconds place in the overall ranking of downloadable games. Pet Shop Hop is first in Yahoo’s top sellers list and also appears in the Top 10 lists of iWin and Big Fish. Airport Mania is number one in Reflexive’s top sellers and third at iWin. Tied for the overall fifth place are Family Feud Online Party and Hidden Mysteries - Civil War.

Family Feud is currently only in iWin’s Top 10 list but it held the number one spot there every day this week to earn 70 points. It has been number one on iWin nearly every day for the last two years. Hidden Mysteries also earned 70 points by being number one on Big Fish every day this week. Big Fish currently has an exclusive on Hidden Mysteries - Civil War but it is safe to assume this hidden object game will be on many other portals in a couple weeks. The exponential scoring system used for these overall ranking heavily favors games that hold the number one spot. If a linear scoring system was used you would find Dream Chronicles 2 and Westward 2 near the top of the list since each of these games is currently in four of the seven portal’s Top 10 lists but not number one in any of them.

(For those who haven’t been following along every week, this analysis includes AOL, Big Fish, iWin, Real, Reflexive, Shockwave, and Yahoo. MSN and Pogo would have been included if they had updated their top 10 lists in the last 30 days.)

This week the rankings of most popular core play mechanics is nearly a three way tie between hidden object games, sims, and click management games. Match 3 and adventure games are a not to distant fourth and fifth place. If you look at the Top 10 lists on all seven portals as a grid with 70 squares you will find 80 per cent of these squares will by occupied by games using one of those five play mechanics. The remaining 20 per cent of the squares have a wide variety of genres including strategy, trivia, word games, bingo, mahjong, solitaire and many more.

New Releases

Notable new releases this week include Pet Shop Hop, Airport Mania and Carrie the Caregiver 3.

Pet Shop Hop has been exclusively on its publisher’s web site at PlayFirst.com since Match 17th. This week it launched on five of the seven portals discussed here. You can expect to see it in next week’s overall top 10 best sellers.

Meanwhile, Airport Mania launched on three more portals this week and is now on five of the seven portals discussed here.

Lastly, Carrie the Caregiver 3 launches exclusively on Shockwave this week. The first two games in this series did fairly well on most of the portals. All three of these are click management games.

Tune in next time to see if any of them can challenge Build-a-Lot 2 as the overall number one downloadable casual game of the week.