Posts Tagged ‘strategy’

Harvesting in FarmVille

Having recently come into a lot of free time that was neatly distributed into small nuggets that I couldn’t put towards anything meaningful, I’ve taken to playing some of the more popular games on Facebook. In particular, I became a fan of both of Zynga’s most popular offerings, “Mafia Wars” and “FarmVille”. (Yes, for those of you keeping track, this makes me a Mafia Farmer.)

I’ll admit that I was initially leery. The concept of flash games in a social network was a little bit awkward to me. I wasn’t going to find deep, meaningful gameplay. There would be no grand stories told in the methods of Halo or Final Fantasy, and further, it was all but guaranteed micro transactions – something that I feel can be implemented very badly in games – would be in.

To say that my concerns about the gameplay and storytelling were fully valid goes without saying. To say that I enjoyed it immensely nonetheless is something I was not expecting, however. There was plenty to enjoy about these games: very appropriate, beautiful art assets, quickly picked up gameplay, and compelling leveling up rewards all kept me interested and coming back for more.

The big thing that interested me in this however was the Facebook integration. Zynga and its fellow Facebook game developers have found quite the interesting strategy. One I hope will be developed and implemented in computer games and consoles. The strategy is this: social networks such as Facebook encourage people to interact with one another. There is a definite desire to linger after you’ve posted a comment on your friend’s wall to see if they’ll reply to it. Even further, sometimes, you want to talk to someone, but have nothing to really talk about.

This is where Facebook’s games shine. During that short amount of time that you’re sitting around and anticipating a reply, you can pop right into FarmVille, check on your crops, and still be present within Facebook’s network for when your friend replies to you. Further, these games advertise your achievements to your friends and attach a bonus that people can take advantage of within the game.

There’s also some interesting cooperative aspects. In Mafia Wars, your strength is measured not only in the guns and cars you own and the body armor you wear, but also in the size of your Mafia…which is populated by your friends who also play the game. You can assign positions for their characters, and they’ll occasionally pop in to help you, whether they’re online or not. You can periodically send them gifts that cost you absolutely nothing, or ask them for help when a rival Mafia is targeting you.

All of this makes for very compelling social gameplay. It encourages you to give, encourages you to advertise the game to your friends, serves as a fun, consistently recurring icebreaker, and offers a compelling enough experience that it tempts you to come back even when you’re not waiting for that next comment. I’m very interested in following this strategy: will we see the next iteration of game development for computers and consoles taking advantage of this concept?