FarmVille

For those who don’t have (or don’t use) a Facebook account – FarmVille is a real-time farm simulation game, available as an application on Facebook. Several of my friends were playing it and I was curious what’s so fun about it. Now I’m at level 25. I have no idea how many levels there are, but I don’t know anyone who survived level 32.

In Farmville you get a piece of land that you can plow and plant seeds on, then collect the fruits or vegetables and earn money. You can spend your money on the market to buy seeds, trees, animals, buildings or machines. When you plow your land, plant seeds or build buildings you get experience points. Those points help you to move up the level ladder. You can also earn experience points by visiting your neighbours’ farms and giving them a helping hand. When you help your neighbours, you get to see their farms too. It’s fun to see how people run their farms.

There are people who don’t take it all too seriously which seems rather appropriate in case of FarmVille. A cow here, an apple tree there, a daffodil, a potato, then a daffodil again.

There are people who care about quality of life and don’t care about money and prizes all that much. Those use plenty of space for the house, and their animals are allowed to walk around freely.

Then there are those very successful farmers: they manage to combine high quality of life with the maximum efficiency when it comes to using their resources.

And this is my farm. I use all the space and have my storage full of items too. My farm is a continuous production process, no hedonic or aesthetic pleasures. I adopt animals not because I feel sorry for them or because I like them, but because adopted animals earn me points. My animals are not allowed to walk. There was no place to walk anyway up until this morning when I received a reindeer as a present. I have cleared up a strip of land so I could put it there. Then I felt guilty for treating my animals like this and let this one reindeer walk around. This guilt feeling is hunting me and I think I’m going to give in and reorganise my farm to make it a nicer place. I just need one more neighbour so I can expand my farm. Please sign in for the FarmVille and add me as your neighbour! (After you’ve done that you can forget all about FarmVille again.)