Hopefully this has a mostly factual answer.
Someone explain farmville to me. From what little I can tell from the wikipedia page, it seems pretty much just like Sim-city, SimAnt, SimFarm, SimEarth, SimLife, SimTower, SimIsle… You manage some entity, aquire more things, build your empire, maybe interact with other players. What is the big deal?
Why does farmville inspire such passion in people considering that this “simulation” gameplay has been around for literally (1989) decades?
This. The actual gameplay in games like Farmville isn’t the primary draw. Mostly they offer simple and mindless housekeeping tasks. Instead, the fun comes from setting up your little world the way you like, and trading things with other players. It’s less about overcoming challenges and more about playing dolls and swapping baseball cards.
I’ve never played the game, but I get the impression that it involves intermittent reward schedules. That will hook anybody, anywhere, anytime. It’s just that Farmville can be accessed on your phone or at work, where you can’t normally play SimCity.
I also suspect that part of it is that it has hooked people that would previously never have sought out or purchased a computer games. It would never cross their minds to specifically go out and buy say SimCity or SimFarm. But Farmville is a game attached to Facebook so its different (somehow)
It also inspires some craziness.
I spent last year taking an MSc in Translation. Most of my classmates came from Bachelors’ in Translation; technophobia was rampant to levels I wouldn’t have thought possible in people under age 90 and from developed countries. They made my 70yo mother and 95yo grandmother sound like Asimov’s biggest fans ever. Several of them did not consider “phone games” or “Facebook games” as either “computer games” or “video games”, any more than I consider “butterflies” to be “edible” (I have no idea whether there are edible butterflies, it’s just an example of two things that don’t go together in my own mind). Different mental drawer altogeher. Attempts to explain that “if you need a computer to play it, it’s a computer game” met with derision or anger. People who would not touch a video game with a 10ft pole were perfectly happy to talk sheep for hours.
I never did get into Farmville, but I did play FarmTown for a long time, and play Frontierville now. I’d say it isn’t much different from playing any other computer game, but it is cool that you can help your neighbors and trade collection items.
And there is the real time aspect to it too. On Frontierville pumpkins are a one hour crop. Then you always get double the time before they wither. So know that if you plant pumpkins you have to come back in more than an hour but less than three to harvest them. So there is that tiny bit of “strategy” (for lack of a better term).
Plant your crops, tend them and harvest them. Feed your animals, pick your fruit trees. Collect the objects that can drop to trade in for prizes. Go to your friends Farms and Frontiers and do tasks that they need done. Decorate your land. Collect badges or whatever rewards your particular game has.
Frontierville, and probably some of the others, also has quests that you have to complete to continue. It might come up with something where you have to harvest 20 wheat, chop 5 pine trees, and visit 10 neighbors. This will give you some kind of reward (coins, objects, XP, etc.) There is a string of quests that end with your character getting a spouse, and another that give you a child.
Some people think it’s fun, some think it’s stupid. There are all kinds of variants, some of which I’ve played. (CafeWorld, Treasure Isle, Yoville, Petville, Fishville, a zoo one, roller coaster one, etc.)
The real time aspect of it is a big part of what makes it addictive. To get ahead, you have to play regularly and harvest your crops before the wither. You can “help” your neighbors but once per day, (unless you cheat) so if you skip a day, you have lost the income that this generates.
Essentially the game rewards you for playing at least once per day, and the returns on crops are set up to encourage you to play 2-3 times per day.
Then once invested/addicted the farm has grown to the point that it takes a fair amount of time to keep up with. At which point you are faced with quitting (what I did) or spending IRL$ on time savers. (Fuel mainly)
If you happen to be a friend of mine on Facebook, playing Farmville is a sure fired way to have all of your wall activity hidden from my purview.
It’s easier to just hide Farmville. Then you don’t have to worry about new friends playing it. You just never see it no matter who is playing.
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Moved from General Questions to the Game Room.
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