AppData, the company that monitors mobile apps for trends and provides metrics, is showing a huge decline in the number of people playing Words With Friends, the popular Scrabble-like board game app. Though the app started the month of April with more than 20 million monthly users, it now boasts only 18.3 million users – a drop of nearly 2 million players.
Zynga, the game company behind games such as Words With Friends, has certainly noticed the downward trend. Edge Online is reporting that the company is sending out surveys to Words With Friends players, asking them what features, if implemented in the game, might encourage them to play it more often. Some of the survey suggestions seem improbable for Zynga to provide, such as players losing less often or the ability to play proper nouns and slang words. Other suggestions, though, hint at features players will probably see in the future, such as ranked leaderboards, skill-level matching, and a tournament option.
Even taking this decline into account, Words With Friends is still one of the top 10 most-used mobile apps for both Android and iOS devices, according to a recent comScore report. And Words With Friends isn’t the only Zynga game to be dropping players lately. Draw Something, which Zynga acquired at the height of its faddish popularity less than two months ago, is now hemorrhaging users even faster than Words With Friends.
What do you think? Is the decline of players inevitable when it comes to highly popular game apps? Leave a comment below and let us know.
(AppData via Edge Online)