Since its launch in June 2009, FarmVille has become, by far, the most popular game on Facebook, reaching ten million daily active users just two months later. FarmVille was the first Facebook game to achieve that milestone and, according to Bill Mooney (General Manager at developer Zynga), FarmVille had 85 million active players each month by April 2010, which is more than the monthly number of Twitter users and represents more than 20% of the active users on Facebook.
Building Farms in FarmVille
FarmVille is a game that allows players to build and grow a virtual farm of their own. Starting with a small plot of land, players select from a variety of crops to plant and then wait hours or days for them to be ready to harvest. This gives the player virtual money, called ‘Farm Coins’ they can then use in the game’s market to buy more crops or improve their farm with animals or trees (which can both earn further Farm Coins) or buildings, decorations or vehicles.
Planting crops, as well as earning the player money, also earns them points which are used to progress through the levels of the game and give access to more features and objects to buy, as well as the ability to purchase larger plots of land. Moving up the levels of the game also rewards the player with ‘Farm Cash’ which can be used to purchase objects faster or purchase exclusive objects that can’t be bought with Farm Coins.
FarmVille is a free game to play but players can choose to progress quicker by using their credit card or PayPal account to buy Farm Coins and Farm Cash and this functionality in their games generates most of Zynga’s revenue.
Another key feature of FarmVille is the ability for players to view the farms of their friends in Facebook and even perform jobs on them to earn more money. Being able to see what other farms look like and what level their friends have achieved is an important factor of the success of FarmVille. Players can also send gifts, such as trees and cows, to their friends.
Mobile FarmVille Arrives
Until now, it hasn’t been possible to play FarmVille on the iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch as the game runs in Flash, which isn’t supported by these Apple devices. However, at the recent Apple WWDC event, alongside the introduction of the iPhone 4, it was also announced that Farmville would be coming to the App Store soon.
It’s now arrived!
The mobile FarmVille app gives players all the features of the Facebook version., as well as push notifications and, of course, the ability for players to tend to their farm wherever they are. Players must have a Facebook account to use the app and farms are synced with the Facebook version.
Because of the small screen size of the iPhone and iPod Touch, more scrolling is required and so it can be a more time-consuming and fiddly game to play. There are also some performance issues when played on an original iPhone or iPhone 3G, compared to an iPhone 3GS or iPhone 4. FarmVille plays very well on the iPad, thanks to its larger screen and enhanced performance.
The Future of FarmVille
The arrival of FarmVille on the iPhone and other Apple mobile devices comes at a time when the game appears to be losing some of its popularity and shedding millions of players each month. A report issued at the start of June 2010 showed that FarmVille, now had just over 70 million active players which is a drop of 15 million since March.
Evidence suggests that a key reason for this drop is a change made in Facebook earlier this year which saw the removal of notifications in Facebook from third-party apps such as Farmville. Notifications were an important way for FarmVille to maintain engagement with its players and so the ability to use push notifications on the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch may be key to its success on those devices.
However, despite losing some of its famous popularity, FarmVille remains (by far) the most popular game on Facebook and the new app version may gain it a new wave of players.