All three of the major Russian social networks have seen heavy uptake of resource-management simulation games in the past year. The genre, brought into the spotlight by FarmVille via Facebook, still dominates the Russian PC social network gaming landscape by some margin: of game activity on My World, VKontakte and Odnoklassniki at the end of October, some 60%, 54% and 58% respectively is given over to resource-management titles akin to FarmVille and CityVille.
By contrast, the genre currently takes up 41% of activity (on a monthly-user basis) on Facebook, but, as we recently reported, this share has been coming under pressure across 2011 from a shift toward more involved genres of game that require sharper reactions or more direct forms of competition. At the outset of 2011, Facebook's share of resource-management gaming was comparable to the current state of Russian networks: approximately 56%. If Facebook is seen to be the market leader for PC social network gaming, and the manner in which game content on myriad networks has slipstreamed Facebook would affirm this, we can expect more of an emphasis on certain genres in the coming year for My World, VKontakte and Odnoklassniki. More specifically, we expect to see rises the shares attained by strategy, traditional games (eg. card/casino games) and action (e.g. puzzle) games as we head into 2012.
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