The Current State Of Farmville
There is a game on facebook called ‘Farmville’ that has really made a massive impact over the last few months. If you take a look at AppData, which is an online script that monitors the popularity of Facebook games, Farmville has over 80,000,000 players each month. That is a massive number. It is especially impressive when you consider just how simple the game is. This is totally different to games like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, by the way. Farmville can be played by anyone with a facebook account, on any computer, and there are no fancy graphics or special effects. It is a very straightforward game where you need to build and manage a farm. As it turns out, Farmville has enjoyed an enormous amount of success within the last six months. Farmville has a lot of things inside the game to encourage you to invite your friends to play with you. You can invite your friends over, and compare your farm to theirs. It’s also possible to send items and gifts to other players. I suppose a lot of people just like showing off the farms they made to their friends for a bit of friendly competition. And interestingly enough, there are people that really badly want to do well in the game, so they will pay for in-game currency. There is definitely also a big demand for a decent Farmville guide right now.
It is very interesting to research the ways in which developers of popular facebook games actually monetize their games and make profits. Well, Zynga (the company behind farmville) has had some negative press and lawsuits lately because of the way they incentivize users to fill out bogus surveys and offers in exchange for in-game items. The CEO of Zynga once said that they would do absolutely anything to make money regardless of how damaging it was to the players. Some other development companies monetize their games by putting in advertisements, or having a ‘buy page’ where you send real money for virtual money. Lately there have been a few networks that help developers monetize their games better (gwallet is one).
Now, you probably are curious about what games apart from Farmville are currently popular. One of them would be Yoville, which is not that big yet but certainly has the potential to become huge. In this game, you play real life in a virtual world, kind of like the Sims. You do all the mundane stuff like furnish your house, go to get a haircut, customize your character, and go shopping. Doesn’t sound too exciting does it. But many people become very addicted to simple games like this. If you want to get good at Yoville, then I would recommend picking up a trusted Yoville guide.
Another interesting game is Gangster City. Compared to Yoville, this game is much more hardcore. Players are able to take the role of a criminal gangster, and their objective is to sieze control of a large city. This is the only game on facebook where there is a little bit of voilence (although it is still very conservative compared to most mainstream PC games). As of now you will have a lot of trouble finding a good Gangster City guide, because the game is still very new. Otherwise you can always just play the game yourself and learn how to get good through trial and error.
Discussion | Share Feedback