Farmville

FarmVille is a real-time farm simulation game developed by Zynga, available as an application on the social-networking website Facebook and as an App on the Apple iPhone. The game allows members of Facebook to manage a virtual farm by planting, growing and harvesting virtual crops and trees, and raising livestock.[2] Since its launch in June 2009,[3] FarmVille has become the most popular game application on Facebook, with over 61.6 million active users and over 24.1 million Facebook application fans in June 2010.[4] The total FarmVille users are over 10% of the users of Facebook.[5][6] Despite this, Farmville is still classed by Zynga as being in Beta testing stage, with "all of [their] players ... currently considered Testers." They state that, "Things will go wrong. Bugs will occur."[7] FarmVille started as a clone of the popular Farm Town on Facebook.[8] On February 4, 2010, Microsoft's MSN Games has also launched FarmVille on its website,[9][10] requiring a Facebook account but not a Windows Live ID in order to play the game. On June 7, 2010, at Apple's WWDC, the CEO of Zynga announced that they were porting FarmVille for the Flash-less iOS platform.[11] It was later released on 23 June 2010 for the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad.
Contents [hide]
1 Gameplay
1.1 Avatar
1.2 Market
1.3 Crops
1.4 Farm Expansion
1.5 Neighbors
1.6 Gifts
1.7 Ribbons
1.8 Collections
1.9 Co-op Farming
1.10 Market Stalls
1.11 Crafting Buildings
2 Controversy
3 See also
4 References
5 External links
[edit]Gameplay

[edit]Avatar


One player's customised farm.
Upon beginning a farm, the player first creates a customizable avatar.[12] There are six plots of land, two in the process of growing, and two (eggplant and strawberries) fully grown.
[edit]Market
The game is based around the "market," where seeds, trees, animals, buildings, decorations, vehicles, and more land can be purchased using "farm coins," the generic money of FarmVille, (Farm Coins are earned by selling crops) or "farm cash" (which the player earns at a rate of one dollar per experience level). A player can choose to buy FarmVille coins or cash from Zynga. The player plants seeds, which grow into crops, which can be harvested to earn farm coins. Animals and trees can be purchased and harvested for profit. The player earns experience points (XP) by purchasing items, and plowing, planting and harvesting. Earning XP increases the player's level, unlocking more items. Most items can be bought with farm coins, although some (e.g., certain decorations and buildings) must be purchased with farm cash.
[edit]Crops
Each plot of land costs 15 farm coins to plow. Seeds cost from 10 to 710 farm coins. Each crop sells for a set price that is greater than the price paid for the seed. The ratio of seed cost to coin yield for crops varies based on harvest time and initial seed cost. For example, raspberries, with a two hour growth time, cost 20 coins and yield 46 coins per plot, a ratio of 2.3:1 (excluding the plowing charges). Watermelons, with a four day growth time, cost 130 coins and yield 348 coins, a ratio of 2.68:1. Depending on the plant, growth time varies from two hours (raspberries, nachos (for April Fools day)) to four days (artichokes, watermelons, yellow melons). If a crop is not harvested within twice the growth time, it will wilt and must be plowed under, and planted again, unless the unwither feature is applied. For example, pumpkins will grow in 8 hours. If the pumpkins are not harvested within 16 hours of planting, they will begin to wither and die. The player will not be able to harvest them for farm coins or XP, unless the unwither feature is applied.[13]
[edit]Farm Expansion
As a player progresses, they can expand the farm (for a payment of farm cash or farm coins) to get more room for farming, animals, and decorations. If they wish to purchase the expansions with coins they must have a certain number of neighbors to do so. The largest possible farm is 26x26 and cost two million coins or 80 farmcash, but to buy it for coins, you must have at least 73 neighbors, or added 5 more from your previous level.
[edit]Neighbors
Like most Zynga games, FarmVille leverages the social networking aspect of Facebook. Along with their own farm, players can invite their friends to join and be neighbors. Acquiring neighbors has benefits in gameplay — not only can one earn money and experience (by visiting and helping on neighboring farms), but with eight or more neighbors, a player can expand their farm.
[edit]Gifts
Gifts (such as trees, animals, and decorations) can be sent to both confirmed neighbors and any other Facebook friends even if they do not use the application. The Gifts received from neighbors usually have relatively expensive buy prices in the market, so getting gifts from friends is one of the best ways to get relatively expensive items at zero cost. Many of the items available as gifts for friends are not available in the FarmVille market; this includes many themed decorations.
[edit]Ribbons
A variety of "ribbons" are available to players, representing the player's achievement of a series of set tasks. The player first obtains a yellow ribbon for completing a simple version of the task, then progresses through white, red, and blue ribbons by completing more of the same task. For example, the "Fenced In" Yellow ribbon requires that the player purchase and display on his farm 5 sections of fence. The white ribbon for the same task requires 50 sections of fence be set up, and the red and blue ribbons require more sections of fence, thus becoming more expensive to complete. There are presently 33 different tasks, for a total of 132 ribbons available to be earned. In addition to bragging rights, a player earning a ribbon gets a tangible reward for his efforts, which may include a quantity of farm coins, an experience bonus, the award of a special item, or other benefit. Each ribbon may be earned only once.
[edit]Collections
Players over level 10 may also attempt to complete "collections". There are currently seven such collections (Country Kisch, Gardening tools, Butterfly, Feathers, Buttons, Insects and Gemstone Collection), each consisting of six items of varying rarity. Collection items may be found by performing tasks such as plowing, harvesting trees, and tending to chickens, or may be received as a gift. Upon completing each collection, the player may turn the collection in for substantial farm coin and experience bonuses, as well as a large amount of fuel to run farm machinery. Each collection may be completed as many times as the player desires.
[edit]Co-op Farming
In April 2010, Zynga introduced the "Co-op Farming" feature to Farmville players who are at level 20 or higher. This sets out a number of tasks which cannot be completed by an individual player, but require the cooperation of his or her neighbors. Gold, Silver, and Bronze medals are awarded to teams that are successful in completing the task within stated time limits. Winning teams get bonuses of farm coins, XP, or unique items.
[edit]Market Stalls
On May 28, 2010 Zynga introduce a new feature, "Market Stalls" for their farmers (available from level 15). In this feature farmers will get "bushels" when they will harvest their crops. They have to place a "Market stall" in their farm to store the bushels. They can store up to 50 bushels in the market & 5 Market stalls in a farm. Farmers also can get bushels from their friend’s market & post. By using these bushels a farmer can get three types of bonus (+1 Mastery/ +1 XP / temporary license for a locked crop), when farmers harvest that particular crop. A farmer can get only one bonus at a time. All bonuses will expire after two hours. Farmers can get rewards if their neighbors use their market. They can claim one reward from the following rewards (400 coins/15 units of fuel/10 XP).
[edit]Crafting Buildings
Farmville introduce a new feature on 21st July named “Crafting Buildings”. Farmers of level 25 and above will be able to use this feature. Farmers will be able to turn their bushels into crafted goods with the new “Crafting Buildings” feature. Farmers have to pick their profession from the farmville pop-up. Farmers may only own one of each type of Building at a time. (There are three types of Crafting Buildings available in the market; The Winery, Bakery and Spa.). Each building features its own unique set of recipes farmers can use to create crafted goods. If farmers wish to make a thriving business, they will need to level their Building. The level of their Building determines the number of crafting spots they have available for use. Leveling their building will also unlock new recipes. Farmers can level their Building with Farm Cash or they can level with coins by unlocking the option. To unlock the coin option, they have to level a certain amount of recipes. Leveling a recipe is quite simple. Each time they make a recipe, it will count towards their level progress. Simply keep making goods of that recipe to level up. The higher level the recipe is, the better crafted the goods will be. There is no limit on how high they can level their recipes. Crafting Building can only be upgraded to 5 star. If they sell their crafted goods to their friends, the goods can be traded for rewards. Farmers are limited to 200 Crafted Goods in their inventory at a time. This limit applies only to their Crafted Goods. Bushel inventory does not count towards this capacity. If farmers use a crafted good, they can trade it for fuel. The higher the level of the crafted good they use, the more fuel they will get. Farmers can also purchase goods and bushels from their friends. If, for some reason, farmers wish to delete their Crafting Building, all progress on the level of the Building and recipes will be saved. However, they will lose all of the goods being sold in their store at the time. If they wish to purchase a new Crafting Building, it can be purchased from the Market for 100,000 coins, provided it is the same building they initially signed up for. If they wish to purchase the two Buildings they did not sign up for, they can be bought for 80 Farm Cash each.
[edit]Controversy

FarmVille had given its users virtual cash for various advertising offers: for instance, the player would get some virtual currency for signing up for Netflix. However, FarmVille has been accused of scamming its users through misleading offers, such as filling in bogus survey or IQ tests which in fact subscribe the users to an unwanted service which appears on their phone bill.[14][15] In a video posted November 9, 2009, Zynga CEO Mark Pincus says "I did every horrible thing in the book too, just to get revenues right away. I mean we gave our users poker chips if they downloaded this Zwinky toolbar which was like, I don't know, I downloaded it once and couldn't get rid of it," in regard to business practices.[16] Michael Arrington of TechCrunch accused Facebook of allowing Zynga's FarmVille to continue these practices because a great deal of the money it gets from such leads is reinvested in ads inside the Facebook network.[15] In response to this negative publicity, Zynga removed all virtual cash offers on 8 November 2009 only on those pages within the farmville.com domain, but at least as of July 12, 2010 farmville.com still offers its virtual cash. [17] Players accessing the game from within Facebook itself (as most FarmVille players do) can still see the offers as of April 2010.