Farmville. Seems everyone is playing Farmville. Can’t get enough of Farmville…
Well, not me personally, but, reports say that Farmville has more than 400 million users and 80 million active users–people who use the app at least once a day per month! And even more impressive, nearly 30 million playing every day! That’s more people tending their virtual farms than members of Twitter! Farmville is currently the fastest growing social game in history.
Interestingly enough, the past month has brought troubling Farmville reports. No, not virtual cock fighting…
The story says that last week a twelve year old boy from the UK racked up $1,400 worth of debt playing the game. Farmville allows members to manage a virtual farm by planting, growing and harvesting crops, trees and livestock. New users are given virtual coins to set up their farm, and the revenue from matured crops can be used to maintain it. Sounds safe enough!
…But those who are desperate to progress more quickly can buy extra virtual coins using real cash. The desperate 12 year old borrowed his mother’s credit card to aid him in his Farmville quest. This booming business have aided the game developer, Zynga, in its estimated valuation of $5 million.
Zynga did not respond positively to the Mother’s request for a refund.
And last month, the first publicized incident of someone getting fired due to excessive Farmville playing on the company clock was noted when a politician in Bulgaria was removed from a city council committee. This incident is just one of a much larger problem at hand—last year a study found that 8 percent of companies had dismissed employees as a result of their actions on social media sites.
Now the politician may be looking for work on a real farm.
Just for fun, enjoy this parody video I found on Farmville.
Like the gentlemen on the video, I don’t quite understand the Farmville craze. But then again, maybe I just don’t have the time to care? …especially at when I’m at work, Mr. Politician!
Since I never tried FARMVILLE!!! and never responded to anybody’s request that I helped them play FARMVILLE!!!, I often wondered how the designers made any money. From my understanding FARMVILLE!!! is a free game to play. Kudos to Zynga for finding a way to make money off FARMVILLE!!!
You say there are over 400 million FARMVILLE!!! players. Considering the planet’s growing overpopulation FARMVILLE!!! and the continual loss of farms worldwide FARMVILLE!!!, do you think there’s any chance we could persuade FARMVILLE!!! these players to simply stay in their houses and play FARMVILLE!!! until they eventually wither away and are no longer a FARMVILLE!!! burden to other people on Facebook or in real life?
FARMVILLE!!!
When I was a kids I had to lose my parents money one quarter at a time in the arcade or by racking up long distance calls on their phone bill. Stealing a credit card and feeding virtual cows seems too easy.
Seriously, Farmville and the online gaming community better do some serious self-regulating before the FTC gets involved. They’ve shut down and seriously fined unscrupulous telemarketing scams and have strict guidelines when it come to kids and internet pay websites.
I can’t stand all the FARMVILLE posts that take up what seems to be pages on Facebook. I personally have never tried it, but I also never knew that you could actually spend real money on it! That’s crazy!! I have no idea if this is allowed, but I would think Facebook would have some type of regulations on sites like this. It’s a very cartoonish appealing game that could be geared toward very young and naive individuals. I find it a little un-nerving to know that such an innocent looking “game” can actually get you into some financial situations if you aren’t careful.
Cows and chickens aren’t really going to die if they aren’t fed on Farmville!
NoOooOOo! Farmville is my nightmare. I absolutely cannot stand Farmville requests and updates on Facebook. It even got to the point for me that after some very direct status warnings, I deleted friends over Farmville – it seems a little extreme, but it got to be that obnoxious!
And what’s even more annoying is that Farmville is coming to iPhone and iPad, according to The Unofficial Apple Weblog: http://www.tuaw.com/2010/04/21/its-coming-farmville-heading-to-iphone-and-ipad/ – it’s everywhere!
I think it is so funny that you brought up people getting fired for playing Farmville. I was completely against it until friends from work insisted that I join. I could tell it was becoming a problem in my office when almost everyone’s computer screens were covered by their Facebook Farm.
Eventually we all got bored and quit, but thank goodness none of us were ever fired because of it. None of us ever spent any money on the game and would contantly make fun of people who did. I will admit that i’m a bit embarassed on how much time I spent harvesting my crops. Stupid Farmville!