Thai, Chinese games lead Facebook revolution

Inside Social Games, the games-focused sister website from Inside Facebook, has a post indicating that Facebook games in Thai and Chinese are highly placed amongst Facebook’s fastest growing apps over the last week.

The site, which regularly looks at fastest growing Facebook apps, concluded that English apps and games are overshadowed by these upcoming Asian games.

Below is the list from the blog post:

Commenting on the Thai and Chinese language games, Inside Social Games says:

Chinese-language games have practically overrun the list this time around, assisted by the high retention typical of the mostly Taiwanese users who play them. 

It is somewhat ironic to see Chinese-language games becoming so popular given Facebook’s limited visibility and user numbers in China itself. As the post points out Taiwan, and likely expatriated Chinese, make up the user numbers. Regrettably there is no further data which assess the numbers based on location, as this would be particularly insightful information.

Finally, แฮปปี้คนเลี้ยงหม is worth pointing out. This is the second time in recent memory that we’ve seen a Thai-language game appear among the top growers. Thailand only has about six million users on Facebook for now, but it’s worth watching: not only is the country one of the fastest-growing small markets on Facebook, but its users appear to have some of the same heavy-gaming habits that make Chinese-language users so worthwhile.

The แฮปปี้คนเลี้ยงหมู (which translates as ‘Happy Pig Farmers’) game is very much along the lines of Farmville, which was and remains hugely popular in Thailand, alongside games like Restaurant City.

What is interesting about the game is that it is likely only played by Thais – as few other nations speak the language – and therefore is a valuable metric to assess the gaming levels of Facebook users in Thailand, and expatriated Thais using the social network too. That said, given that Thai-language games make up just a small amount of the total number, many Thais play games across a variety of other languages, chiefly English.

Facebook gaming is so popular in Thailand that Thai bank Kasikorn recently launched its own Facebook game designed to promote business skills and target SME customer for the bank. More details of the Kasikorn game can be found at this post.

The older generation in Thailand is also interested in Facebook gaming according to an article in the Bangkok Post earlier this year.

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