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Farmville has roughly 70 million players.!
vistakah
Member Posts: 118
Point? It doesn't require complexity to attract an enormous fan base. Reason why its so popular is for one the social element of choosing to be able to play it with only the people you want to play it with be it friends, family etc, etc,. Secondly Facebook is the number 1 social communications platform in the world..
This simple concept is the future of MMO gaming. I see MMO integration into Facebook one day in the near future. Modern day MMO's have lost the social element for good. Smart developers already see the correlation between social networking site integration into next generation online gaming and these games won't be flash based but 3D driven.
Comments
Not a joke? Alright.
I'll quit every MMO that integrates with facebook.
Point one sounds a lot like the reasons World of Warcraft is so popular, this isn't anything new.. 'cept farmville is free..
On a side note, Farmville got me to generally stop going to facebook, because all i see is walls and walls of what people did on Farmville today, and I'm not that interested in knowing
WoW already has.
Amen. I swear my wife is the only person I know who figured out that you don't need to notify everyone on your friends list about your Farmville exploits. Personally I think facebook is a joke anyway. Back in my day everyone I knew ran their own bulletin board service, then their own website, then a myspace page, then a facebook page, and now a twitter account.
Notice the trend? The less options you have the more popular the service has become. Pretty soon the next hit will be click on two choices for your status.
Cheers!
MMO Vet since AOL Neverwinter Nights circa 1992. My MMO beat up your MMO. =S
CCP develop a spacebook for eve online and kaos war also build a community before even have the game ready, yes OP have a point
BestSigEver :P
But how much profit does it provide compared to a moderately successful commercial MMORPG?
If it bothered you, why not click Hide and ignore it all? 2 clicks and you'd see nothing from Farmville.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
WoW already has.
If it bothered you, why not click Hide and ignore it all? 2 clicks and you'd see nothing from Farmville.
Honestly, at that point i didnt feel the need for even that little bit of effort or that I could actually do that.
Not too mention, if I did, I'm not sure there would be enough interesting information to go back to, as that seems to be 90% of facebook these days..
Kinda like MTV, one day its music videos, the next day.... not so much ; )
But how much profit does it provide compared to a moderately successful commercial MMORPG?
afaik zynga have like 300 ppl working and that are allot of ppl (almost the same like CCP)
blog.games.com/2009/10/23/will-zynga-make-nearly-250-million-in-2009/
BestSigEver :P
Oh great...now we'll start thread after thread of why this dumb farming game is "The WoW of web based gaming" due to the number of people entranced by it....for whatever reason.
I just don't get how planting crops and then checking on them a couple days later to see if you can click to harvest them is fun. It's like playing EVE JUST to train and nothing more. I guess at least your not paying for it.
If it bothered you, why not click Hide and ignore it all? 2 clicks and you'd see nothing from Farmville.
Honestly, at that point i didnt feel the need for even that little bit of effort or that I could actually do that.
Not too mention, if I did, I'm not sure there would be enough interesting information to go back to, as that seems to be 90% of facebook these days..
Kinda like MTV, one day its music videos, the next day.... not so much ; )
Eh? Pruning undesireable info is huge when it comes to crafting an enjoyable experience.
If I could prune out the undesireable parts of TV, I'd watch it. Because it'd mean cutting out all the useless crap, down to the narrow band of stuff that's quality. And in fact, my roommate getting a DVR actually gets me watching a show occasionally, breaking ~8 years of watching nearly zero TV programming whatsoever. Because you can record exactly what you want to see, and skip commercials.
Same deal with facebook -- the only catch is I suppose you need interesting friends to end up receiving interesting content (mine frequently send links on science/game design/TED/philosophy...the good stuff.) But if you let the spam go unchecked, well...I guess that's your perogative. 2-click-Hide is even less effort than fast-forwarding the commercials with the DVR :P
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
For me the only per say neighbors in this silly game are actual friends though alot will allow ANYBODY to their friends list which i do not. As to the wall thing. My friends are interesting and i like to read what they have to say. To each their own i suppose. I have to laugh when somebody mentioned WOW. Yeah they have a facebook page which is actually smart business there among a million other companies with pages there.
To bad World of Warcraft really has no community to it. That game sold off first time MMO player simplicity but does not set well with us 1st generation MMO gamers. Most of us have seen the social aspect of MMO games fall out with each game release. Sure FV is free like many Flash games. What ultimately separates it from other games is being able to choose who we want to play with, be around and who we don't. This way we gamers and gamer families can make the game into what we want it to be without outside influences if we so choose. Smart game developers already see this. Integration of great games with social networking is the future of MMO's.
As long as Facebook remains an optional thing outside of the game (I had no idea WoW had Facebook apps and features) then I don't care. The moment social networking is forced down my throat is the moment I'll start worrying though.
Yes i have been following the farm games for some time and it is a joke that people play them and worse that people spend a LOT of money on them.I forget the exact numbers but one of the farming games hired a ton of people to be handle all the calls for fertilizer sales.
All this does is show that numbers prove NOTHING when comes to game development and quality...NOTHING.It is not social networking ,it is more a platform that people can show off to the masses or show they are a part of the current TREND or gimmick.This is no different than girls wanting Brittany Spears pants,or boys wanting Air Jordan shoes,quality means nothing,they just want to be a part of the fad or current trend.
A single guy got rich on that iphone tan kgame,it was a complete joke,very simplistic,but everyone wanted something to play on heir new iphone,they wanted REASON to use it,no matter what that reason was.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
While I agree with your premise in spirit, Farmville more likely has 2 million players, and 68 million people that permitted the app, saw it was dumb, and never went back.
FtP sub counts are meaningless enough... tack on FtP(click here and you'll have an account instantly) is even worse.
I still agree, though. Most people will take convenience over a number of other supposedly important things. That's why people embraced MP3's so quickly and left DVD-audio out to dry.
Simple. Accessible. Fun. Those are the traits of the next big MMO.
Yes i have been following the farm games for some time and it is a joke that people play them and worse that people spend a LOT of money on them.I forget the exact numbers but one of the farming games hired a ton of people to be handle all the calls for fertilizer sales.
All this does is show that numbers prove NOTHING when comes to game development and quality...NOTHING.It is not social networking ,it is more a platform that people can show off to the masses or show they are a part of the current TREND or gimmick.This is no different than girls wanting Brittany Spears pants,or boys wanting Air Jordan shoes,quality means nothing,they just want to be a part of the fad or current trend.
A single guy got rich on that iphone tan kgame,it was a complete joke,very simplistic,but everyone wanted something to play on heir new iphone,they wanted REASON to use it,no matter what that reason was.
I have yet to know anybody who spent money on these games, but I know several that sit at their PC's for a long time, waiting for X action to complete. My Ma plays the one where you own a bakery, and I bet her time in front of her PC tripled when she started playing.
Goals and accomplishments, and the barely fullfilled promise of something better over the horizon. These are a big part of the appeal to a game for most people. If you have a good interface, it's all you need in most cases. Look at Pac Man.
WOW REALLY!?
No one on Earth / universe ever thought or thinks that. I'm pretty sure WoW made that quite clear, as did supermario bros, tetris, and several other non-complex bigshots.
Welcome to the gaming world newcomer!
The ONLY reason for farmville's popularity is the fact that its FACEBOOK.
Anyone who truly believes that this is some kind of revolutionary paradigm shifting event must be hit in the head, millions of people play games not dissimilar to TETRIS on websites and social networking sites when they're bored. All kinds of simple shit is insanely popular among the non-gamers on the web.
It's an INSULT to the mmo to even start a thread like this.
Also everything Robsolf and Wizardry said...
- Shijeer
I admit i play farmville myself. Why? curiousity got the better of me and i think i know the reasons why its popular.
Its about collecting, having something of your own you can change and add too. a community aspect where one needs each other, look up to and compare against each other. New fresh content added frequintly so new things to collect or go after.
The first and 2nd reason should sound familiar to you guys. Player housing anyone? aint that exactly the same? You like a community feel too. That and frequint updates with new things to collect and do.
What are developers waiting for? add usefull player housing to your mmorpg "points at 70 million players potential"
Theres a big difference in the target audience for something like farmville. If they had released it as a standalone mmo, with a client and everything, it would have been laughed out of existence by us mmo gamers. But of course it works well for what it is.
However, be careful of what you wish for, I for one would not want the current gamer base to mix with the farmville kind. Remember the whole 'casual' gamer fiasco, yeah... Imagine that but worse, super-casual lol ? Now that's a scary thought ! O_O quickly now my mmorpg.com mates, touch wood !
- Shijeer
Of course its a different audience, but there must be things and reasons why its doing so well.
What i tried to point out is that some people like the collecting and having a place of your own to alter upgrade etc. Its just 1 of the things besides fighting and crafting people used to be able to enjoy in an mmorpg. Yeah I played UO around 98. If it helps retention rate and players got more things to do in a game thats good.
I did not mean a standalone farmville mmorpg lol.
Heh, my standalone farmville mmo example was a hyperbolization in an attempt to reinforce my argument, obviously it would never fly
But yeah, I totally get you. Myself I was introduced to the mmo world through UO, It's a game I adore to this day and in terms of interactivity and non-combat activities everything since has been going downhill. Still I insist that mmos should have nothing to do with farmville, there's nothing there for us. UO is a much much better rolemodel.
- Shijeer
I played for a while, but I'm glad that I saw it for what it was before I wasted more than a couple of weeks (no real money invested).
*edit* In fact after I realized what FarmVille was doing with my time I blocked all apps on facebook regarding these games and my experience on that site got a whole lot better.
Actually come to think of it. It would be pretty nice to be able to alter the land to our needs. To take the farmville example. buy seeds and a shovel. plow seed and find some way to water it and harvest later on. Would make the world more dynamic.
In UO the "farms" where auto spawning produce and you could even harvest wheat take it to some device that would make it into flour and use that to cook with. I prefer that to buying flour at an npc.