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FarmVille

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FarmVille
Developer(s)Zynga
Platform(s)Internet, iOS, Android
ReleaseFriday, June 19, 2009[1]
Wednesday, June 23, 2010 iPhone
Genre(s)Simulation, RPG
Mode(s)Single-player with multiplayer interaction
This article is about the real-time farm simulation. For geographic locations, see Farmville (disambiguation).

FarmVille is a real-time farm simulation game developed by Zynga, available as an application on the social-networking website Facebook and as an App on both the Apple iPhone and Android. The game allows members of Facebook to manage a virtual farm by planting, growing and harvesting virtual crops and trees, as well as raising livestock.[2] FarmVille started as a clone of the popular Farm Town on Facebook in June 2009,[3][4] but has since grown to be its most popular application, with over 62 million active users and over 24.6 million Facebook application fans as of September 2010.[5] The total FarmVille users are over 10% of the users of Facebook.[6][7] Despite this, Farmville is still classed by Zynga as being in Beta testing stage, with "all of [their] players ... currently considered Testers." On February 4, 2010, Microsoft's MSN Games has also launched FarmVille on its website,[8][9] requiring a Facebook account but not a Windows Live ID in order to play the game. On June 7, 2010, at Apple's WWDC, the CEO of Zynga announced that they were porting FarmVille for the Flash-less iOS platform.[10] It was later released on June 23, 2010 for the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad.

Gameplay

One player's customised farm.

Upon beginning a farm the player first creates a customizable avatar which may be changed at any point.[11] The player begins with a simple farm and a small amount of "farm coins", the primary currency in the game which are earned by harvesting crops and selling the produce from animals. Players also earn experience points (XP) for performing certain actions in the game such as ploughing land or buying items. Earning XP increases the player's level. As the player progresses more items, crops and animals will become availible to them via the "market" where items can be purchased using either farm coins or "farm cash", which is earned by levelling up, completing offers or microtransactions.

Crops

One way a player can earn farm coins is by planting crops in a segment of land that has been ploughed. After an amount of time dependent on the type of crop it becomes harvestable, giving an amount of farm coins if the player clicks on them. If the crop is left for too long it withers and gives no money[12]. As the players levels up crops with a higher payoff will unlock.

A player may also buy livestock and trees, which do not wither but instead give preset amounts of money when clicked after an amount of time after the last click. This time is dependant on the type of tree or animal.

Neighbors

Like most Zynga games, FarmVille leverages the social networking aspect of Facebook. Players of Farmville may invite their friends to be neighbors, giving them access to each others' farms. Neighbors may also send gifts to each other and complete specialised tasks together for rewards.

Controversy

FarmVille had given its users virtual cash for various advertising offers: for instance, the player would get some virtual currency for signing up for Netflix. However, FarmVille has been accused of scamming its users through misleading offers, such as filling in bogus survey or IQ tests which in fact subscribe the users to an unwanted service which appears on their phone bill.[13][14] In a video posted November 9, 2009, Zynga CEO Mark Pincus says "I did every horrible thing in the book too, just to get revenues right away. I mean we gave our users poker chips if they downloaded this Zwinky toolbar which was like, I don't know, I downloaded it once and couldn't get rid of it," in regard to business practices.[15] Michael Arrington of TechCrunch accused Facebook of allowing Zynga's FarmVille to continue these practices because a great deal of the money it gets from such leads is reinvested in ads inside the Facebook network.[14] In response to this negative publicity, Zynga removed all virtual cash offers on 8 November 2009 only on those pages within the farmville.com domain, but at least as of July 12, 2010 farmville.com still offers its virtual cash.[16] Players accessing the game from within Facebook itself can still see the offers as of October 2010.

FarmVille has been criticized for being "almost an exact duplicate" of its previously released competitor Farm Town.[17]

See also

References

  1. ^ "Zynga's FarmVille Becomes Largest and Fastest Growing Social Game Ever" (Press release). Market Watch. August 27, 2009. Retrieved October 11, 2009.
  2. ^ "Facebook farmers want India flag". BBC. October 9, 2009. Retrieved October 11, 2009.
  3. ^ Gardner, Jasmine (September 29, 2009). "Futurology: FarmVille on Facebook". London Today. Retrieved October 11, 2009.
  4. ^ "Zynga Launches "FarmVille". Does it Look Familiar?". All Facebook. June 22, 2009. Retrieved November 3, 2009.
  5. ^ "Facebook's Farmville Application Page". Facebook. July 22, 2010. Retrieved July 22, 2010.
  6. ^ Walker, Tim (February 22, 2010). "Welcome to FarmVille: Population 80 million". The Independent. London. Retrieved May 2, 2010.
  7. ^ Peretti, Jacques (March 6, 2010). "Modern Warfare 2 is all very well, but give me indie gaming". The Guardian. London. Retrieved May 2, 2010.
  8. ^ "Zynga's 'FarmVille' Facebook Game Debuts on MSN Site". Bloomberg. February 5, 2010. Retrieved February 4, 2010.
  9. ^ Farmville
  10. ^ "Farmville Coming To The iPhone In June". TechCrunch. June 7, 2010. Retrieved 2010-06-07.
  11. ^ "FarmVille Wiki".
  12. ^ "How long does it take for a crop to wither?". Zynga. 2009-10-01. Retrieved 2009-10-28.
  13. ^ "Are You Getting Scammed by Facebook Games?", Time, November 6, 2009
  14. ^ a b Arrington, Michael (October 31, 2009). "Scamville: The Social Gaming Ecosystem Of Hell". The Washington Post.
  15. ^ Michael Arrington (6 November 2009). "Zynga CEO Mark Pincus: "I Did Every Horrible Thing In The Book Just To Get Revenues"". Techcrunch. Retrieved 14 March 2009.
  16. ^ Zynga To Remove All In Game Offers
  17. ^ Zynga Launches "FarmVille". Does It Look Familiar? Nick O'Neill, June 22, 2009, www.allfacebook.com. Fetched from website April 6, 2010.


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