FarmVille: The Hottest Land On Facebook?
Remember the virtual worlds of Habbo Hotel and Second Life? If you did not believe in social gaming yet, how about FarmVille on Facebook? Where close to 80 million active users flock to FarmVille to perform virtual farming daily.
The most popular online Facebook game ever, FarmVille Facebook hit like a hurricane and didn’t go back. Just think, this game started online June 19, 2009. The developer, Zynga, states that FarmVille “is bigger than Twitter and [was] valued at $1 billion last month (mashable.com)”.
FarmVille’s popularity is exploding online and won the most prestigious award this year: The 13th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards ceremony declared last month in Los Vegas that “the top honor in the ‘Social Networking Game of the Year’ category went to Zynga’s massively popular Facebook game FarmVille”.
Since this game is connected with Facebook, the developer Zynga, believes while people check in on their Facebook sites, they will also check into FarmVille and tend to their crops and help their neighbours with their farm work as well.
In the virtual farmland of FarmVille, farmers must first create their own avatar (a virtual image representing themselves). According to the rules there are “six plots of land, four of which are in the process of growing, and two (eggplant and strawberries) which are fully grown”. As in real life farming, the market calls the shots where items can be purchased such as “seeds, trees, animals, buildings, decorations, vehicles and more using “farm coins”.
In addition to the billions of virtual crops Farmville has generated, a whole economy of Farmville facebook guides, hints and tips has “cropped up” to take advantage of the hype. As people new to gaming and the Internet comprise a significant portion of Farmville Facebook players, easy-to-read e-books are making lots of (real) money and becoming very popular purchases for occasions such as birthdays and even the upcoming holiday season.
Read more in this Gregory West article.