Good God save us from the craziness of the virtual activity coming over into real lives. Who would have thought that our attempts to make the virtual world adopt things from real life would actually turn around and in fact influence reality? I am being skeptic? I don’t mind it, but Farmville is trying exactly that – teaming with Green Giant to bring Farmville Cash to around 4,000 stores across the US. Bah! Humbug!
Zynga has made it big with its Farmville madness on Facebook. Involving Russians with their heavy investments in the social gaming company, as well as users who have flocked in to waste countless hours making it worth $4 billion. I guess everyone has played a part in making it what it is and whatever was left, Steve Jobs participated further by announcing its legendary Farmville to the iPhone at the WWDC. The latest news is Frontierville, the Farmville reincarnation with the touch of the Wild West.
It’s not that the game is an imitation alone. The game has been modified, albeit the game play being so familiar to the regular Farmville farmers. For example you can now have control over the other avatars and increase the populous, maintain a reputation to gain more popularity amongst your users.
Facebook and Zynga have a history together. Zynga giving the social network addictive games like Mafia Wars and Farmville and attracting the Russian Investor DST [$180 Million]; to inject massive funds in both itself and Facebook. The couple appeared to be made for each other until now, when rumors are dripping out about Zynga and Facebook heading on for a divorce.
Zynga has given the social network users a reason to keep themselves glued to its games with a series of some-Ville named games and that contribution wasn’t small. As of now, Farmville alone has more than 83 Million users who are very active and that doesn’t count those who are playing Mafia Wars, Petville, etc. The games weren’t only about playing, together with Facebook we were seeing implementation of quite new ideas, like Credits that enabled users to purchase gifts with real money and trade them for numerous items within the game. While all appeared good, I am just surprised what actually made Zynga take a break away?
More Facebook News and this one is going to have a gist of almost everything I have been talking about: Farmville, mom, kid, scam, addiction, report, etc. More importantly we have got one more reason to be scared of Facebook: Losing your fortune or at least a part of it being addicted to it. The latest report states that a mom got her credit card over used and exhausted after she discovered her 12 year old son had wasted his savings to buy gifts/coins on Zynga’s addictive game.
We all know that you can buy 7,500 Farmville coins for $5, which seriously is the the worst thing you can do. Sadly enough people do that and this kid was one of them. Now the mom is caught in a dilemma, she has lost her cash and she has the option to report the card stolen to reclaim cash but the result of it will prove to be quite a harsh punishment for the kid. Which means that she will have to bear with the loss and just pay the charges on her own.
No matter how stupid I find the idea of virtual gifts or how much I am against these, one thing is for sure, people would continue to add value to them on the Web. Oh, lets put it more correctly; on social networks: Facebook. We have seen how the the value of anything virtual has grown over time and how valuable people find these. I hate to say this, but people really care what Farmville gift the receive from their friends and might even feel restless if they get none and beg everyone to send one. Zynga is definitely a leader with this.
All the love birds out there are waiting for the Valentines Day and Farmville addicts have already sent more cards in less than 24 hours than what have sent on Hallmark all year round. Sounds small? That number is around 152 million. What exactly is the dimension do these addicts belong to? Does time pass on very slow? Is each hour for these Farmville fans equivalent to a hundred hours of non-Farmville addicts?
When you talk about measuring a popularity of anything you simply look at the stats; number of monthly visits, fans, etc. The popularity of Farmville is by no means questionable. Zynga has by no doubt utilized Facebook to its maximum potential reaching almost 75 million monthly users that spend hours doing farming.
What’s worth mentioning here is the fact that the social game’s fan page now has more fans on it than what Michael Jackson has on his. As of now the page has over 11 million users and all this has come largely on how virally it has grown thanks to the infinite notifications it sends to almost everyone on Facebook. But how long can Farmville leverage the feeds? We all know that Facebook is all set to reduce the presence of apps notifications on user inboxes and profiles. However I personally think that it wouldn’t matter much to Farmville for it has already got a lot of traction and its addicted users would engage with each to give it enough visits and keep it on top.
Now that is more like it! Something to mock Farmville fans about and I salute the creator (Tobusbus) of the video for putting in an effort to show the world what pain Farmville is and how it has taken over the minds of Facebook users. Seriously the game has infected everyone out there, not just kids but adults and more importantly sane professionals who would juice out every bit of broadband to play it for hours.
I never really liked Farmville, the reason for this grudge is perhaps the fact it was one of the major reason why the management at my workplace blocked Facebook. Even for people like me who used it for a very positive purpose. But I will not step back from reporting what’s the latest development on the game. The social gaming phenomena recently came up with an even more fascinating stuff for the users.
The developers are giving Farmville addicts Limited Editions items in Cowprint. These prints are available only for a period of seven days, meaning if you really want your farm to look more dairy. All these are available for free except for the silo which will cost you some Farmville credits. I mean it does cost quite a lot to build one and that too customized to have prints like that of a cow, deserves to have a price.
Social Networking is seeing a boom and with it clings tight social gaming and its growing as rapidly as anything. I am not going to talk about social networks everywhere but stick to Zynga and its winning Farmville. While Facebook has long crossed the 350 Million mark, the game I hate to much has stepped past 70 Million farmers, I am so not calling them users!
70 Million monthly users, that is a huge number and I bet its just the beginning of it. The stats are way over my head, primarily because Zynga itself has around a 100 Million users. Plus the application for Facebook has crossed all limits with a daily user limit crossing 28.4 Million and it calls out loud to any challengers to give it a tough fight. Guess there is no one there to even think of it. Why exactly are people so crazy about it?