IGN reported recently that in the month of November Mafia Wars 2, the follow up to the Zynga smash hit Mafia Wars that was one of the first games to nearly beat our Facebook wall into submission, lost 900,000 daily active users.  More significantly, only 10% of users are playing the game daily, half of Zynga’s average of 20%.

An incident is not a trend, a very wise boss once told me.  Of course, one can’t help but think (as the IGN article mentions) that perhaps this is either an indication of general market saturation, Zynga’s aggressive release schedule (and seemingly monolithic design palate), or both.  Facebook game haters, no doubt, are rejoicing at the news as an indication that they have been right all along.

Well Zynga is still headed towards an IPO with a $10 billion valuation.  That will not change. Nor will the tendency for plenty of people to throw down serious money for playing their Facebook games. 

Perhaps it is indeed an indication of market saturation, however.  More interesting from our perspective at CLE though, is if the demand is waning- where is it going?

We can’t help but think, hope (and maybe even pray) that much like we all grew tired of the thousands of NES titles that were pumped out, gamers have lost their giddy excitement about the experience and are now hunting for quality. In that case, I think we can see this as another indication that Coray’s design tenants for Facebook games may be an outline for what Facebook gamers are demanding.