One of the key objectives for Electronic Arts (EA) upon buying Playfish in November 2009 was to repurpose its deep catalogue of existing game franchises for social networks. Among all the sports, movies, and perennial sequels, one license stands out as a perfect fit for the social network platform: The Sims. Its long-standing casual appeal and life-management themes make it a strong fit with the biggest Facebook games of the past two years. Created via collaboration between Playfish and EA Sims studio, The Sims Social is a free-to-play game but should players wish to accelerate their progress, they can spend a premium currency called SimCash which can be bought with Facebook credits.

For perspective on The Sims Social's user metrics, Cityville is achieving 75.7 million MAUs and 11.85 million DAUs at an engagement ratio (DAUs of MAUs) of 16%. Farmville is achieving 35.6 million MAUs and 8.4 million DAUs at 23.6%. The Sims Social is reaching an engagement ratio of 26%, but it is still early in the game's lifespan and the DAUs have started to level off, making it likely that from here on in engagement will begin tending to the average of ratio of 20%.

Its success so far was not taken for granted by EA, as The Sims appeared as a massive-multiplayer online game called The Sims Online in 2002, but failed and was shut down in 2008. Indeed, since the acquisition of Playfish, EA has only had moderate uptake on Facebook from titles such as Madden NFL Superstars and FIFA Superstars. Better results were achieved with Monopoly Millionaires, but before The Sims Social, EA's IP-driven games were still lagging behind Pet Society, one of Playfish's oldest original titles.

Given that EA is a traditional publisher that's managing to gain better traction in social network gaming and non-specialist games platforms such as Facebook, this is a positive sign that both are maturing. External gaming IP has typically struggled to matter on Facebook, apart from the occasional noteworthy standout. But with The Sims Social hitting the top 5, Nexon's Maple Story performing strongly, Ubisoft finding breakout uptake with The Smurfs & Co, and Sony's Infamous 2 spin-off Anarchy gaining a worthwhile pre-release audience, there are definite indications that non-social companies are stepping up to the challenges of operating social network games.