Down on the FarmVille
| By Rajini Vaidyanathan
BBC News Magazine |
A Bulgarian official has been sacked after being caught milking a virtual cow on the hugely popular online farming game, FarmVille. So what is it about it that's made it so popular?
At the end of a hard day seeing to patients at the surgery there is more work to be done. Tending to the crops, feeding the cows and making sure the fields are ploughed.
For one GP, who is too embarrassed to be named, the internet game FarmVille has become a part of daily life.
The premise of the game is simple - you are a farmer, albeit a virtual one - with your own plot of land. Your job is to cultivate it and rear animals. You get points depending on how successful you are and the aim is to get the highest score you can.
 What would Old Macdonald say? |
On her farm, the GP grows potatoes, watermelons and keeps chickens and cows. She never tends to her fields during her working day, but is on it most evenings.
"It does seem like a terrible waste of time," she says. "It's like watching trashy TV though, a bit of escapism to help you unwind."
For her and many others, FarmVille has become a guilty pleasure. The game was launched in June 2009, since then more than 80 million people have signed up to it. While it's highly unlikely that everyone who has joined the game plays it on a regular basis, there is no doubting it has a huge regular following, with people around the world, from all ages and backgrounds playing it.
FarmVille is accessed as an application through Facebook and now has its own website too. But it's the game's presence on the social networking site which has given the game such a wide reach, allowing it to tap into Facebook's already large user base.
And its availability on social networks has created a new wave of computer gamers, who wouldn't normally go near a console.
Meaningful effect
Like full-time mum Gemma, for whom FarmVille has become part of the daily routine, in-between nappy changes and feeds. Both her sisters and her mum are signed up too. She was initially dismissive of FarmVille when she was asked to join, but is hooked now. So, what is the appeal?
"It becomes a personal experience and something you care about," says Johnny Minkley, a computer games expert. The game has a certain "stickiness" to it, because of the nurturing element involved, he says.
"What you're doing needs to have some meaningful effect, like the planting and growing of crops."
The game also has a competitive element - it's about having the best farm and earning the most money to see to its upkeep. But it can also be co-operative and it's possible to interact with your friends' farms on the site by watering their plants and feeding their animals.
 Tamagotchi was a huge craze in the 1990s |
The game is free to play, but if you want to buy extra coins to keep up your farm, you are given the option to buy more with your credit card.
Parallels can be drawn between Farmville and the Tamagotchi craze in the 1990s, where people looked after a virtual pet housed in a plastic egg, developing an emotional attachment to their virtual being. But the fact FarmVille has been introduced in an age of social media has had other effects.
For the embarrassed GP, it resurrected an old friendship - sort of.
"There's a girl I went to school with, and who I never speak to, but I now fertilise her crops for her," she says.
To the uninitiated, this behaviour might seem bizarre, but hardened FarmVillers say all of this helps you win extra points and prizes.
It is this sense of reward which keeps people playing, says psychologist Dr Mark Griffiths. He describes FarmVille as "virtual Lego", where building something from scratch and seeing it grow gives players a sense of accomplishment and a "psychological high".
Educational tool
Dr Griffiths specialises in researching technological addictions and says what underlies any addiction is the reliance on constant rewards. But saying you are "addicted" to FarmVille is a bit like saying you're addicted to chocolate, he argues.
"What people really mean is that there is a 'moreishness' quality about it. There's nothing wrong with spending hours on it, as long it's not affecting your personal relationships and work."
There are those who see FarmVille as a blight on their daily Facebook feed, when every time they log in they discover that Georgia has traded 50 gold pieces, or that Andrew has harvested his chicken coop.
 | Top five FarmVille countries 1. United States 2. Turkey 3. The Philippines 4. The United Kingdom 5. Italy |
Others say it is not just a blight, but a downright distraction. It was recently reported that a councillor in Bulgaria was sacked after he was discovered milking a virtual cow on his laptop during a committee meeting.
There are many others who agree with the superiors in Plovdiv and the game has its fair share of detractors. There are several Anti-FarmVille groups online, one called Not Playing FarmVille has more than two million members.
"If you are doing this you have... I repeat if you are doing this you have too much time on your hands", writes one member. Another says, "everyone's worried about the swine flu, but I think we need to be worried about this FarmVille epidemic".
Bill Mooney, VP and general manager of Zynga, the company behind FarmVille brushes off these kind of negative comments.
"If FarmVille is affecting people in a positive way, then we're all for it," he says.
Tenuous
"The best thing is, FarmVille is played in 5-10 minutes sessions, so you really don't have to get too preoccupied or diverted for a long time. It's more like a coffee break or break from studying."
 Does it provide a "real sense of farming"? |
Mooney says the game has had other positive benefits, like generating an interest in real farming. Before the game was developed the company did a lot of research into the area, so they could make the game accurate and give people a "real sense of farming".
In the US the appeal of FarmVille is being seen as one possible way of attracting younger people into farming. But at the Scottish Agricultural College in Aberdeen, Alison Campbell who lectures in farming says the parallels between real and online world are limited.
"A lot of the students we have here come from farm backgrounds. It is quite tenuous to what they know to be real life [on a farm]."
On a virtual farm, it's all about instant gratification - you don't have to wait six months for your aubergines to grow. But then again, you can't eat them either.
Source
~~~~~
Commentary
Farmville reminds me very much of Animal Crossing; a game I still very much love to this day.
While in essence you are wasting time, it's not a stretch to admit it is fun.
Like everything else in this world, moderation, moderation, moderation.
I think the technology looks very interesting but its success depends on the content and how easy it is to use 
