Top 25 Facebook Games - July 2011: Zynga's Empires & Allies conquers (almost) all

Hear ye, hear ye -- the numbers are in and it looks like Zynga's Empires & Allies has successfully arrived and conquered the competition since its launch last month, bumping its sibling FarmVille out of its #2 spot and possibly looking to overtake CityVille this summer. 

Empires & Allies, often described as a combination of Risk and CityVille, seems to have struck a chord with social gamers who are hungry for something different. Instead of a standard simulation game where you tend a farm or build a city -- this new Zynga game adds a little more risk and competition than the usual Facebook fare, requiring players to grow their empires by building armies, managing resources, and then go to battle to keep their empires safe from invasion. 

That, plus the fact that Empires & Allies launched simultaneously in 12 languages and Zynga's impressive cross-promotional marketing powers, have helped ensure that the game starts strong. Now it's most likely a matter of time until we see the empire builder's popularity peak and then -- if it follows the same trajectory as CityVille and FarmVille -- drop and level off after a few months for a more realistic picture of its success.

Other big Facebook game winners for June 2011 include Gaia Online's Pokemon-inspired Monster Galaxy(gaining an awe-worthy 6.6 million players), Playdom's hidden object game Gardens of Time (up 1 million players) and Wooga's Bejeweled clone Diamond Dash (up 800k players).

Other Zynga games, in the meantime, did not have as spectacular a showing as Empires & Allies in June. FarmVille hemorrhaged another 6 million players, 1 million players went missing from Mafia Wars and YoVille has dropped off the top 25 list completely. This highlights the fact that social games need to innovate or die -- and it'll be interesting to see how upcoming brand-name games, such as Sid Meier'sCivilization World and Playfish's Risk Factions, will shake things up in the next few months.