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Farmville, Social Gaming, and Addiction
MarkN writes "Facebook has been trumpeting the fact that Farmville, the most popular game on its site, has more users than Twitter, with 69 million playing over a month and 26 million playing each day. Combined with Facebook's announcement that they have hit 350 million users, that means one out of every five people on Facebook is playing Farmville. Gamasutra has a post taking a critical analysis of Farmville, its deceptively slow level grind, how a number of gameplay features end up as simply decorative since they aren't balanced with the benefits of raising crops, and discussing why Farmville succeeds so well in virally spreading itself and addicting people."
Security and "China farmers".
First, the security issue is an obvious one, when you're tempted to hand out your password so someone can "babysit" your farm.
The other one would be an interesting one indeed. So far, I doubt any online farming game (usually browser games) got big enough to even attract "goldsellers", whatever form they may take. Now, I neither have a facebook account nor play this game, so someone who does might be able to give me a hint whether it's possible to hand over money (or whatever resource there is) in the game, but it would be interesting to see what the owners of Facebook think of a sudden dramatic increase of new users who all just play this game, know each other and basically are nothing but a huge grinder farm (no pun intended). I'd guess they wouldn't be too happy since it would poison their data pool quite a bit.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I think the fact that a poor game can be so popular is the fact that they are targeting addicted social network users. That is like saying you can sell games and apps for more on an iphone... duhhh. It is all about the user base. I bet you could shoot fish in a barrel too...
Due to Farmvilles massive spamming, and my inability to make it stop telling me when my sisters/friends/coworkers have found a new cow, I've actually resorted to unfriending people who are farmville addicts. My "newsfeed" went from updates on my friends lives to 3/4 farmville useless announcements, making it effectively useless. I was tempted to install the app to see if I could filter them somehow, but ultimately said forget it.
It's fine if people want to play games, but frankly, the rest of the world doesn't care or need to know that you planted seeds. If I installed a facebook app that broadcasted every time I got a green drop in WoW I'm sure my friends wouldn't be too happy.
Add to this the Mafia wars spam, and these stupid little apps have made a mess out of what was once a useful tool for me to keep on top of my friends day to day and related silliness.
We emerge from our mother's womb an unformatted diskette; our culture formats us. - Douglas Coupland
Are you kidding? I had the same situation, and took the time to breathe one hell of a big sigh of relief that I didn't marry her.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Do you just load the page and wait to see what happens?
There's a lot you can filter if you take two seconds to look.
Call me Mr Grumpy Pants, but my ideal woman is not someone whose idea of a fulfilling life is playing some stupid flash game.
[FUCK BETA]
I've got a friend that purchased on his own a Wii (so his kids/wife can play games) and a PS3 for his hardcore (FPS and fighting) games. He received a xbox360 as a gift from a cousin. Probably has about a $1000 worth of platforms and associated games.
Yet if his wife doesn't tell him "Go to bed, it's late" he can play Mafiawars/Farmville until the sun comes up. Amazing how addictive these games are without having to have massive graphics, sound, rumble controllers, online multiplayer. Just a flash interface and a bunch of clicking.
I'm waiting for Southpark to do an episode on Farmville as a remake of the WoW episode.
You probably should be able to - both games are run by the same company.
Of course, you should also be able to order hits on all of your friends playing FarmVille, so this cross-game thing may not be the best idea after all.
How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
I may be wrong, but my understanding is that FarmVille is a nearly complete ripoff of FarmTown, and FarmTown has a lot more interesting features (interaction with other players, etc).
rooooar
You can disable that.
You can only fully disable it if you completely opt out of using any Facebook applications. While it's true that most Facebook apps are crap, it'd be nice to be able to play Lexulous with friends without having any black-hat or social marketer who's written a quiz have access to my name and list of friends (along with whatever other info I'm not careful enough about).
The option they need is: "only reveal even my mere existence to apps I've explicitly opted into."
Tweet, tweet.
Seriously. Farmville?
I'll do you one better.
I'm annoyed that I need a Facebook account just to receive what we used to call, "Email".
The advantage I see is that open messages can turn into impromptu, albeit simple discussion forums with built-in photo catalogs. This can be more useful than email for some jobs.
But that's not what it's all about, as Farmville indicates. I think Facebook touches some kind of primal-tribal-pack-animal nerve. Farmville itself might represent more than just a dumb game with an addictive tamagachi edge. It might be a subconscious response to the fact that our food supply is precarious and stupid and that survival might fairly soon depend upon being able to raise chickens and grow potatoes in your back yard.
-FL
Something I overheard: "Can I grow weed on Farmville and sell it on Mafia Wars?"
That is funny, but you hit a good point. Since most of the FaceBook games ONLY allow FaceBook users, there is little incentive to share between social networks. This will probably change this next year (if a company is confident theirs is the superior social game for that genre, they should not be afraid to share the API with other social networks, even if owned by another company...of course if they are afraid that they are not good enough, the fear will keep them from opening up their api. It would probably bring them even more users...Note: FaceBook will NOT be the first, their business model is too closed for now, but as new players enter and start opening up their API, as people naturally move to the more open and therefore socially superior environment, they will have to open up or diminish.).
It makes perfect sense for a person in Farmville or Farmtown (different companies I know) grow food and use that food in their Restaurant on Restaurant City. One day, just not today.
If you grow weed on your farm and use it in Mafia wars, should that not open the door for these two scenarios as well...1) Different Mafias coming (only to your farm) and taking it over? 2) The FarmVille police, sheriff, DEA, etc... from paying you a visit?
I wonder if second life will allow you to control your legal framework of your community, so if you wanted to legalize certain drugs, etc...Why should your community not be allowed to. Wouldn't it be something if you could share resources between Second Life, FaceBook and others?
I think its called trade in the real world...makes sense if you want the experience to be more realistic. Of course given the size of people to animals to structures in either Farmville or Farmtown, it is not as real as it should be. Perhaps when they dump flash and start coding in C, PHP, perhaps C++ if not limited to one companies compiler they could implement a Google Earth like 3 dimensional virtual environment, like Second life is now but in Farmville, Restaurant City and Farmtown among others....
Just as Farmville usurped Farmtown's lead, the first company to get away from Flash and move the virtual world to a more robust and feature rich tool set will blow Farmville away. Such a world will not crash because of Flash and that in and of itself will be a huge plus.
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