A Facebook Gaming Case Study – Farmville

There is a game on facebook called ‘Farmville’ that has really made a massive impact over the last few months. According to AppData (a service that monitors games), Farmville has over 80 million monthly players. That is a massive number. This is even more amazing when you find out just how basic 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. This is a simple and easy to learn game where the goal is to create and manage a farm. As it turns out, Farmville has enjoyed an enormous amount of success within the last six months. The game has built in viral elements. You are able to get your friends over to play the game against you, so that you can compare scores and achievements. You can even send ‘gifts’ to each other. 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 worth taking a look at how developers of games like Farmville actually make money. Well, the company that develops Farmville (Zynga) recently came under fire from Techcrunch and other news agencies because of the unethical way in which they make users fill out CPA offers and sneaky rebills in return for items and money in Farmville. The CEO of Zynga once said that they would do absolutely anything to make money regardless of how damaging it was to the players. Other developers simply place advertisements in the game, or straight up offer in-game currency for real money. Recently, a number of networks have began that promise to assist developers in making money from their games (offerpal is still the main one).

So you may want to know what games other than Farmville are doing well. One of these games is Yoville, which is already doing pretty well and may get even more players in the coming months. In this game, you play real life in a virtual world, kind of like the Sims. In the game, you do all the same routine stuff you do in real life, like do jobs, dress yourself and perform chores. Not that may not sound like a whole lot of fun. But many people become very addicted to simple games like this. To be one of the best players in the world at Yoville and beat all your friends, you really need to pick up a good 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 one of the very few games on Facebook where you might be able to see some animated violence, although compared to most professionally made games, Gangster City is very mild. 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.

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2 Responses to “A Facebook Gaming Case Study – Farmville”

  1. Farmville is so addicting that my firm just stop Facebook in our network since most employees spend half of their time logged in. One time, our CEO was roving in the financial affairs office and to his dismay, everybody is playing Farmville. The next day, we we were not able to connect to the website and there is a memorandum circulating about restriction of social network sites and instant messengers.

  2. Facebook is the foremost social network but the profile is incredibly dull. I jazz it up by using Chameleon Tom it helps make your profile match your personality.

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