Daily Post by Nick

Until today, I had never even seen FarmVille in action. Sure, I had received all the Facebook notifications asking me to help my friends, but no part of me had any desire to do so. Then I read an article in TIME magazine called Zynga Harvests the Cyberfarmer, and decided to take a peek at this game so I could write about it. The article points out just how scammy and shady Zynga is (or at least was) with all kinds of outsourced offers that snag users into unknowingly shelling out cash.

I won’t criticize players of FarmVille, because I have friends who play it. I can see how the soothing guitar music would suck someone in (I have it playing in the background as I write this), but the game itself seems to just be a time-sucker and not even challenging. There are games out there that require strategy, problem-solving and cleverness. This does not appear to be one of those. As far as I can tell, it’s a simplistic game that depends on spreading the word to friends so that enough people will spend real money to buy farm money.

I understand that the SIMS-y/Second Life-y feel of FarmVille would be comforting to many people who enjoy the social aspect of the game. Hell, the game may even be a way to relieve some stress. According to the TIME article some people have gotten sucked into the darker aspects of the game

But because people who play free games on the Internet like the free part, Zynga needed a third income stream–product come-ons.

These offers are like ads, except that when you click on them, you’re agreeing to try and then buy a company’s service in exchange for game points. Sign up for a Netflix subscription, get two months free plus 100,000 points. Some players cancel as soon as they have the points. Other deals, like those that snagged Michelle, are shady. Michelle took a quiz that required her to enter her cell-phone number and a code. At some point during the exchange, there was supposed to be a notification that she was signing up for an SMS subscription at $9.99 a month. Michelle says she never saw it.

The article goes on to say that “for the moment, Zynga has removed all offers and says it’s going to vet each one before it appears”, but it still seems like the entire point of these games is to drain unsuspecting FauxFarmers out of real money. According to TIME:

There are two ways to move ahead in the game. One is to grind, as it’s known–plow, plant and harvest. Once you’ve grown, say, eggplant, you accumulate enough points to move up to a wider choice of crops. You invite friends to be your neighbors. You exchange gifts and help out, all of which let you accrue the capital you need to expand your farm, thus making it ever more remunerative.

But if you want to skip all that backbreaking plowing, er, clicking, or if you’ve run out of friends who faux-farm, you can buy farm cash and get what you want. These virtual goods are the products that social games are actually trying to hawk. People hand over real money for make-believe merchandise.

As you can see, I’m a friendless farmer, and that’s the way it will remain.