WildBlueSkies – Trends and strategies in Digital Media

Of the estimated 300 million active users on Facebook, a staggering 63.7 million are on Farmville – a real-time farm simulation game from Zynga available as an application on Facebook which combines The Sims with Tamagotchi pets (in other words, 1 in 5 people you come across on Facebook are merrily tending a virtual farm, and raising virtual animals on their patch of cyberspace). Global warming seems like a distant possibility in cyberspace, if only we had the same proportion of farmers in the real world (FarmVille players outnumber actual farmers in the United States by more than 60 to 1). Love it, or hate it, you can’t miss it (definitely not with the deluge of invites, and when most of the posts from your friends feeds refer to it).
Farming has traditionally been a family vocation, but FarmVille allows an individual to be one (with a bit of help from their friends). What makes many users describe it as satisfying or addictive (even bordering on obsessive)? Does this game give vent to farmer in all of us minus the mess? Is it a means to satisfy the urges we can’t meet otherwise (think sacrifice)? Is it the thrill of getting something after having “worked” for it? Or is it a twist on the “I have more friends than you?” syndrome (to accessorize your farm, or expand it in size, it helps to persuade other friends to join the community)?
Whatever it is, people take it seriously enough to stage a protest if their country’s flag is not available on FarmVille, to create works of art (think Mona Lisa) with their crops, and set up websites giving cheats to the game.
With an revenues expected to cross $150 million of real money this year Zynga seems to have hit a nerve – people do not shy away from paying real-world money to buy special, limited-edition animals and magical seeds that grow special crops which quickly move players up the ladder of the top ranking cyber-farmers. Not that much when you see that Playdom, sold more than $200,000 worth of pink virtual Volkswagen Beetle in two days or that Second Life addicts spend $500 million a year on digital goods, but then Farmville is barely 6 months old, and already has the distinction of being the largest social game online. This would be just the beginning.
When you see that Twitter in its 3 and a half years of existence has managed to rack up a measly 5.5 million twitterers; World of Warcraft, the largest massively multiplayer game that dominates MMO market reached 11.5 million in December last year after 4 years, and FarmVille launched in June 2009 already has 63.7 million, the movement takes on a different perspective.
Hoping to capitalize on their success, Zynga has already launched FishVille – a virtual aquarium game on Facebook. Incidentally, it goes to Zynga’s credit that none of these are new ideas. Plenty of other virtual farming and virtual aquarium games exist on Facebook, but none are as successful as FarmVille.
Are we going to have virtual families next? That should make for an interesting game, given the profile of most people online.

Related posts:

1. iFarm – Farming On Your iPhone
2. Facebook Crosses 350 Mln Users, To Remove Regional Networks
3. Kids’ Virtual Worlds – The New Growth Driver
4. Schools Go Virtual
5. Rediff – Net Loss $0.42 Mln, Revenues $7.32 Mln

Filed under: Business, Digital culture, Trends