Zynga’s FrontierVille achieves 5.2m users

23 Jun 2010

Almost a fortnight since launch and it seems Facebook’s gaming partner Zynga has achieved 5.2 million daily active users for its latest game, FrontierVille.

The game which has a Wild West theme and differs from FarmVille in that for the first time Zynga is introducing virtual families, allowing players to customise a spouse and raise a virtual family. Additionally, FrontierVille, the first game from the Zynga East studios, is a “living world,” where players contend with wildlife encounters, varying weather and vegetation growth.

Zynga was formed in 2007 and is now valued at US$366m as its online-gaming empire grows to include a myriad of gaming applications, from Poker to Café World and Mafia Wars.

A mutually lucrative relationship with Facebook looked endangered in recent months, with Zynga threatening to walk away because of a spat over Facebook Credits, the social-networking site’s emerging currency.

However, last month Facebook and Zynga signed a five-year strategic alliance around social gaming on Facebook.

Zynga has more than 230 million monthly active users playing its games.

According to TechCrunch, more than 10 million people have actually created homesteads on FrontierVille, half a million have had their avatars get married, 5 million friends have completed 550 million tasks and 6.5 million players have chased away snakes.

John Kennedy is a journalist who served as editor of Silicon Republic for 17 years

editorial@siliconrepublic.com