Conduit Labs' Nabeel Hyatt, who will be presenting a lecture on Facebook games at the upcoming Worlds in Motion Summit, has an analysis of the same topic currently up at his Brinking blog. Hyatt was surprised to learn, by checking out Facebook's statistics, that at a glance, Facebook games do not appear to do any better, among the top 100 most active Facebook applications, than any other non-gaming app. Their user percentage, according to Hyatt, is only marginally higher, even when you include game-like apps that aren't necessarily games.

Being that games are as popular online as they are, it seems odd that things should play out this way on Facebook -- but Hyatt took a closer look and found that by only counting the multiplayer games, which are better suited to Facebook's social nature, the picture's much different, as Hyatt explains:

"Ahh, that's more like it. Multiplayer social games such as Warbook and Scrabulous average 11.4% active daily users, a good 30% higher than the average top Facebook app (8.01%). I'm sure if we could actually get engagement, attention, and retention metrics we'd see the same trend. This combined with the relatively high percentage of games represented in the top 25 applications (7 games) would suggest that there is simply a lack of quality, socially-focused games on Facebook.

With an average install base of 2.7m users for top Facebook games, this is a massive new distribution channel that makes the curated Xbox Live Arcade look like a backwater."

Early registration for the Summit ends on the 16th, by the way, so if you're interested in seeing Hyatt's talk and the other exciting sessions we've got going on, now's a good time to register for the early rate!