The Sims Social explodes, the third most played Facebook game daily

Wait, so this is where my mom was during this weekend's mess? The Sims Social, the ambitious social version of EA's massive franchise by Playfish London, has grown into the third most played social game on Facebook. Better yet, that measure is through daily players, which is far more telling of a game's success early on than monthly players. As of now, according to AppData, The Sims Social enjoys over 7.2 million daily players.

More importantly, that beats out two more of Zynga's most popular games, Empires & Allies and Zynga Poker. The game already surpassed Pioneer Trail last week, and now EA as a little over a million daily players to go to become the first Facebook game to trump FarmVille in a very, very long time, if ever. (The game begins to flinch a bit at 8.4 million daily players.)

Of course, The Sims Social is a far cry from the behemoth that is CityVille, but hot diggity is it gaining fast. Yes, use of the word "diggity" is deemed appropriate in such impressive circumstances. Remember, this is especially significant considering the game got off to a rocky start, with outages and performance issues aplenty upon its release. If anything, it speaks volumes to the fact that this brand may have found new life on Facebook, and everyone else better watch out.

The Sims 3 Showtime: A Facebook game, minus Facebook

A live news feed, in-game gifting and the ability to visit your friend's games -- this might sound like the next big 'Ville' game on Facebook is actually none other than a new expansion for the hit PC game Sims 3.

This new add-on, Sims 3 Showtime, lets Sims take the stage as a performer -- a DJ, acrobat, what have you -- and eventually work their way to the top of their chosen profession. This will all take place with the help of friends though -- not Facebook -- but an in-game network that will have Facebook-like functionality. Players will be able to send in-game gifts, post updates to a news feed and visit each other's customized stages using something called a Sim-Port. Whether this new Sims network will be confined to this game -- or something larger -- remains to be seen.

sims 3 showtime

It's interesting to see this kind of convergence of social gaming and more traditional types of games. We've been watching Facebook games crib from more traditional games, in an effort to beef up the gameplay experience, for a while now. Maybe things are starting to go the other way as well.

Sims 3 Showtime will roll out in March 2012 for Mac and PC.