VC Defends Farmville, Touts Virtual Tractor Sales

theodp writes "In a blog post, venture capitalist Fred Wilson gives his thoughts on ripe areas for tech investment in 2010 — mobile, gaming, new forms of commerce/currency, Cloud platforms/APIs, education and energy/environment. Asked to comment on scams and social gaming (he is an investor in Zynga), Wilson defended Zynga's Farmville: 'Zynga makes almost all of its revenue on virtual goods. I said in my etsy/san telmo post the other day that more tractors are sold every day in Farmville than are sold in the US every year. That's where the money is in social gaming. The "scammy ads" thing is total red herring that everyone got excited about but is almost entirely irrelevant.'"

Comments

So?

[Sycraft-fu]

In my Civ 4 game I built more battleships than the US ever produced in its history. Know why? Because it's a fucking game!

I fail to see how they think that their number for tractor sales has anything to do with the fact that it is a borderline scam, and a crap game to boot.

Re:So?

[xouumalperxe]

and a crap game to boot.

That's your opinion (and mine as well, actually). But what are we when faced with the sheer amount of people who do play it, and when enough of those play it hardcore enough that they'll pay for virtual property to keep a company afloat?

Re:So?

[sopssa]

And even more so, why should you hate or think the people are "stupid" just because they pay for entertainment they enjoy? I wouldn't pay for it. I don't think it makes that much sense either. But if they like it and think it's worth it, just let them do what they want. It doesn't make them more stupid, they just have different priorities or things they enjoy.

Just as well as they probably think you are being stupid to buy that newest $800 graphic card or spend so much configuring your linux when you could just run windows or mac.

Re:So?

[sopssa]

On a slightly related funny note, people really bitch about everything:

"Civilization IV: Colonization Called 'Morally Disturbing'"

I literally exclaimed "holy sh*t" out loud when I was reading an e-mail this morning listing the "Games for Windows" coming out this year and I came across this:

“Sid Meier’s Civilization IV: Colonization” (2K Games). In “Sid Meier’s Civilization IV: Colonization,” players lead one of four European nations on a quest to conquer and rule the New World."

But goddamit, am I the only one who think it's morally disturbing to make a game that celebrates COLONIZATION? It's ironic, actually, because just a few months ago a friend sent me a link to some information about the original "Colonization" game from 1994 (pictured left) that this one updates. At first, I thought it had to be a joke, but sure enough, it was real. However, I dismissed it as a relic from a time when neither developers nor players took videogames seriously as media with moral implications.

But the idea that 2K and Firaxis and Sid Meier himself would make and release a game in the year 2008 that is not only about colonization, but celebrates it by having the player control the people doing the colonizing is truly mind boggling.

Remember all the debate when Newsweek's N'Gai Croal said of the "Resident Evil 5" trailer with the African zombies that "Even if you are familiar with the franchise, if you are familiar with those images and their historical weight, you look at it and say, 'Man, that’s kind of messed up.'" Well, I agreed with N'Gai on that issue, but in my opinion, a game about colonization is about 100 times more messed up. "Throughout history, colonization regularly involved stealing, killing, abuse, deceit, and the exploitation or decimation of native people," he added. "Anybody with a shred of moral conscience who studies the history will be appalled. Whether it was British rule in India or slavery in Africa or Aboriginal children kidnapped and taken to Christian schools in Australia or the dislocation of Native Americans in the U.S., there were no positive colonization experiences."

Fritz said he's not calling for a ban on the game, emphasizing that 2K has every right to release it for sale. "But I think personally they shouldn't release it, if it's at all what it appears to be based on the early marketing," he continued. "And I'm hoping a lot of people agree with me and will say so publicly."

That's pretty ridiculous. Imagine if he knew there were nuclear weapons and slaves in Civ 4.

Re:So?

[Anonymous Coward]

The scam part is not in buying tractors or trading gifts, but in the "offers" that give you FarmVille currency in exchange for handing over your cell phone number, to which monthly subscription charges begin accruing without your knowledge. This usually comes hidden in a survey or game of some sort in which you either hand over the cell phone number directly (in the case of some surveys) or after playing, in order to get a PIN to let you access results from the survey or game. There's clearly no need for a PIN, as the results could just be displayed on the computer without one—the scammer just wants the cell phone number.

My rule of thumb.

[Eric S. Smith]

I know nothing about this story, but I just always assume that anything built on Facebook is a scam, whether for money or ID theft. Go sell your virtual cheese elsewhere, vampire gangsters.

Re:Aquarium Screensaver

[Xelios]

It seems ridiculous to you and me, but to the millions of people who aren't as versed in technology as the average /. user maybe not. A few weeks ago I finally caved and opened a Facebook account (albeit with fake info), solely to keep in touch with friends back home after moving to Europe. Quite a few of them are into the Farmville thing (mostly the women), so I checked that out and my first thought was "Wow, people actually pay money to buy things in this game?". I never would, but some of my friends have. I asked them why, why pay money for such ridiculously simple [crappy] games? "Why not?" they said.

I thought about it for a while, and I really didn't have a good answer. I've paid monthly fees to play MMOG's before. I pay money for a usenet account. To most of my friends spending money for these things would seem just as ridiculous. It's all a matter of perspective. For them, that tractor in Farmville is about as far as they've ventured into the gaming world outside of consoles, so why not spend a little money for it?

Now the really scary thing happened when I first opened my Facebook account. All the info I gave was fake, including my name, except the email address. I entered a really old Hotmail address that I stopped using years ago. Since then it's been my disposable email address for anything that wouldn't accept 10mintemail addresses. From this one piece of real information Facebook built a list of probable friends, and 80% of them were people I know. How they managed to pull this off with a 6 year old Hotmail address is beyond me.

Re:tractors - ??? - real money

[Anonymous Coward]

In Farmville things either cost coins or FarmVille Dollars (FVD). Coins are easy to get: whenever you harvest something, you get coins. Coins are spent on the "mundane" things. Crops, some decorations, tractors, barns (red only), a small pond etc.

FVD are difficult to get. You get one FVD every time you level. Or you buy them. FVD's are used to buy more exotic things: barns (in a variety of colors), a large pond, special purpose seasonal stuff, a different class of decorations, fuel for your tractor, etc.

Now, you don't strictly need to have all these goodies, but as people play, they have the oppurtunity to get more stuff (of course), and you need to have a place for your stuff. The only way to get more room for your stuff is to expand your farm. Now, you can expand your farm by either having lots of friends that play FV, and then it only costs you coins, or you can buy a bigger lot, which costs FVD. If your the type of person that buys a lot of the specialty stuff, your already buying FVD so buying the larger farms isn't that big of a deal.

Now, to specifically answer the question: Although tractors, seeders and harvesters are coin based purchases, the fuel refills are not. Now, you don't need to buy the fuel, you can wait a day and get a free refill, but if you have one of the larger farms, you will not be able to harvest, plow and seed all of it on the one refill. And since you have a very limited supply of FVD that you earn.... It becomes a habit that must be paid for.
 

Re:Aquarium Screensaver

[karnal]

I'll elaborate on the AC that posted a reply to you. In my experience, Facebook does 3 things to find friends for you:

1. Look through your address book and attempt to find people who match that are already in the system by e-mail (and sometimes name)
2. Dig your e-mail address out of other people's address books that they've harvested from e-mail accounts. (this may or may not be a true statement, but judging by your comment...)
3. Offer up "Friends of Friends" - chances are, you're friends with other people's friends, so they offer those too as suggested friends.