CityVille Growing at Breakneck Speed

FarmVille is the poster child of social gaming, but its little brother has already surpassed its success in record time. VentureBeat reports that the spin-off title CityVille has reached 100 million users in only 43 days.

FarmVille, by comparison, reached an all-time high of 83.76 million users in March of last year. However, FarmVille's 34.5 million daily active users beats CityVille's 18.5 million. Together, the two games help push Zygna's combined tally to almost 300 million monthly active users. Facebook currently stands at over 600 million users, which means roughly one in six have at least tried CityVille, and half are trying at least one Zynga game.

While the core audience may turn up their noses at social gaming, it's hard to argue with numbers. The 100 million strong player base of CityVille may not consider themselves gamers, but success like this means they're part of a trend that we'll see shaping the industry for years.