User:QwerpQwertus/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 both the Apple iPhone and Android. The game allows members of Facebook to manage a virtual farm by plowing land, planting, growing and harvesting virtual crops, harvesting trees and bushes, and by raising livestock. FarmVille started as a clone of the popular Farm Town, which also on Facebook in June 2009, but has since grown to be the social network's most popular application, with over 62 million active users and over 24.6 million Facebook application fans as of September 2010. Ten percent of all Facebook users play it. Despite this, Farmville is still classed by Zynga as being in a "Beta Testing Stage", with "all of [their] players ... currently considered Testers."

On February 4, 2010, Microsoft's MSN Games also launched FarmVille on its website, 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. It was later released on June 23, 2010 for the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad.

Beginning
Upon opening the game for the first time, users create a customized avatar which can be changed, for free or otherwise, at any point. They are given a fixed amount of "farm coins" and "farm cash", the game's two types of money, to begin with.

Objective
The objective of the game is typically to earn farm coins from animals, trees, and crops and to collect farm cash over time.

Market
It can be used to purchase a wide variety of items for fun, to improve the appearance and functionality of a player's farm, or to save space. Some examples of items are fences, storage buildings, trees, and animals. In most cases, however, most money is spent on another generation of seeds in order to make more money. All of these items are available through a "market". When bought, the player loses a stated amount of farm cash or farm coins and sometimes gains XP from buying it. Some items, however, are free - usually only one of these may be taken.

Upon beginning a farm, the player first creates a customizable avatar which may be changed at any point. The player begins with an empty farm and a fixed starting amount of "farm coins", the primary currency in the game. Players also earn XP (experience points) for performing certain actions in the game such as plowing land or buying items. At certain XP benchmarks, the player's level rises. As the player obtains more items and progresses through levels, crops and animals become available to them via the "market" where items can be purchased using either farm coins or "farm cash". Farm cash is earned by leveling up, completing offers or microtransactions.

Crops
The main way a player earns farm coins is through harvesting of crops. The player does this by paying coins for plowing a unit of land & for planting crops, such as tomatoes on it. Finally harvesting them after a certain amount of time has elapsed. The amount of time it takes for it to mature and how much money it yields when harvested is dependent on the crop planted and is noted on its entry in the "market" dialog. They will wilt, or become worth nothing after one and one half times the time it takes to mature has elapsed. However, a player can use farm cash to purchase an "unwither" to rejuvinate the crops or can use a biplane with "instant grow" to cause crops to be immediately available for harvest. Although the biplane can be purchased with coins, this special feature is only available for farm cash. As a player levels up more, crops with a higher payoff and economy will become available.

Livestock and other plants
A player may also buy or receive from friends livestock and trees or bushes, such as cherry trees or chickens, which do not wither but instead become ready for harvest for preset amounts of money a set amount of time from their last harvest.

Social interaction
Like most Zynga games, FarmVille incorporates the social networking aspect of Facebook into many areas of gameplay. Players may invite their friends to be their neighbors, allowing them to perform five actions on each other's farms per day by "visiting" it. Neighbors may also send gifts and supplies to each other, complete specialized tasks together for rewards, and join "co-ops" - joint efforts to grow a certain amount of certain crops.

Gifts
Neighbors may also send gifts to each other in the form of mystery gifts with expensive, but random items, special deliveries with building supplies, or by choosing a particular item to send. They cost the sending user nothing.

Accused scamming
FarmVille had offered users "farm cash" for completing various advertising surveys or signing up for services: 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 or sending them advertisements through email. 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 criticism about business practices. 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. In response to this negative publicity, Zynga removed all virtual cash offers on 8 November 2009 only on those pages on the main farmville.com website, but at least since July 12, 2010, farmville.com has still offered its virtual cash. Players accessing the game from within Facebook also may see these offers.

More recently, Zynga has been accused of sharing information with advertisers and other internet tracking companies about their users, however, Zynga had denied these accusations.

Originality
FarmVille has also been criticized for being "almost an exact duplicate" of its previously released competitor Farm Town.

Advertisement
Farmville runs so-called in-game ad campaigns where users can visit another company's farm and/or buy or receive items with their logo and colors. For example, recently (as of October 7, 2010), users could get free McDonalds hot air balloons, McCafe products, and the ability to visit McDonalds' farm.

Addiction
On October 27, 2010, a mother in Jacksonville, Florida, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in the January death of her 3-month-old boy. The woman told investigators that she was playing Farmville and the baby would not stop crying. She told investigators that she shook her son, smoked a cigarette "to compose herself," and then shook him again. The child died from shaken baby syndrome.