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Farmville

From a nice essay on why farmville is less social but more a sociopathic game!!

Some snippets from the post for the newbie.. or the avid player...

What it is.... ??
"Farmville is a free, browser-based video game that is played through one’s Facebook account. Users harvest crops, decorate their farms, and interact with one another, in what is ostensibly a game about farming."

How many play these...
" over seventy-three million people play Farmville.[7] Twenty-six million people play Farmville every day. "

And how do you advance is such a game....
"Farmville is defined by responsibility and routine. Users advance through the game by harvesting crops at scheduled intervals; if you plant a field of pumpkins at noon, for example, you must return to harvest at eight o’clock that evening or risk losing the crop. Each pumpkin costs thirty coins and occupies one square of your farm, so if you own a fourteen by fourteen farm a field of pumpkins costs nearly six thousand coins to plant. Planting requires the user to click on each square three times: once to harvest the previous crop, once to re-plow the square of land, and once to plant the new seeds. This means that a fourteen by fourteen plot of land—which is relatively small for Farmville—takes almost six hundred mouse-clicks to farm, and obligates you to return in a few hours to do it again. "

Uh... ridiculous right so they why do people play this one!!...
"people are playing Farmville because people are playing Farmville."

What's Zynga's revenue. and valuation if they go public.....gulp!!
"Zynga’s revenue (roughly eighty million dollars) . Analysts estimate that, if the company goes public in the summer of 2010, Zynga will be worth between one and three billion dollars."

Intrigued then this is a must read... or thinking of making something similar read on...

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