Zynga's FarmVille - It Ain't Fun No More, No More!

Zynga’s FarmVille

It Ain’t Fun No More! No More!

15 March 2014

Copyright © 2014 – Mark’s What the Bleep! & 470Media

Four years or so ago, Zynga Games debuted one of the best games of all time, FarmVille.

Four years later, FarmVille ain’t much fun anymore.  If a game isn’t fun, players will quit, it won’t make money, and eventually, it will go the way of other Zynga games, gone.

Dear Zynga,

Here is what you can do to improve your game.  An improved game will attract more players, and more revenue.

• Speed Up the Farmer Avatar – Molasses in sub zero Nebraska weather moves out of the bottle faster than that farmer moves. 

Mark’s What the Bleep! ran an experiment on a number of different computers, that have adequate memory (we’ll talk about that later), and different operating systems, from WindowsXP to Vista to Windows 7.

On a 36 X 36 farm which has a total of 1,282 plots, it takes the mister slower than molasses farmer avatar 37 minutes to harvest, another 37 minutes to plow, and another 37 minutes to plant.  A total of one hour, fifty-four minutes (1 Hr 54 Min).  That’s just one farm!

Yes, Zynga, you might think having this slower than molasses avatar farmer will get players to spend money to upgrade and buy plows, needing fuel, requiring $$$$$.  Nope, players will just abandon FarmVille and find another game to play, like Farm Town, their avatar moves at light speed.

• Memory Requirements – Let’s now talk memory.  FarmVille needs to go on a serious memory diet. 

When Farmville is loaded, it can easily hog up to a Gig of your computer’s RAM.  Let’s face it, if you have 2GB or less of RAM on your computer, you might as well not even play this game.

Farmville likes to push green and organic things.

Anything sitting resident in your computer’s RAM increases the amount of energy your computer requires.  Farmville’s huge memory use means your computer requires more energy.  That’s not very green is it?

• Number of Farms – The folks at Zynga seem to roll out another farm every 10 to 12 weeks.  There is at least 15 of these now, which is overfarmkill!  With the slower than molasses avatar, and memory requirement, there is no way for anyone to play all 15 farms.

FarmVille has a history of abandoning farms, like Holiday Acres, as an example, and turning off the points so they cannot be earned anymore.

With 15+ farms, players obviously chose to play on their favorites.  Instead of developing new farms, focus on what you have Zynga, and improve them.  On the farms you have abandoned, turn the points back on, and while you are at it, lower the costs of expansions on those farms!

• Screen Clutter – Along the lines of cleaning up the game, the screen needs to have its clutter removed, period.  Players can see the icons on each side, if we want to know what they are, we can click on them and find out.

• Farm Clutter – More cleaning up.  Newer farm developments have objects plopped in various and annoying places on the farm that require parts to remove them, with a prize of course that for the most part is just junk.

If you should hover over that object an annoying pop up appears that more often that not doesn’t go away.

Along the lines of cleaning up clutter, it would be very easy to make these objects “click to view”, or better yet, allow players to just remove them.

Zynga would like to say that this somehow affects the game play, well, I will say it does affect the game play, especially if your hands are physically challenged.

·         Internet Connection – Farmville requires to be constantly hooked up to life support, a/k/a the net.  If your net connection or computer hiccups, you get that darn “Whoa Farmer”.

Let’s go back to the 1,252 plots you just clicked to plant, and that “Whoa Farmer” pops up after Mr. Slower Than Molasses Farmer Avatar has only planted 13 of them.  You’d probably be quite annoyed, right?

A lot of people are annoyed, annoyed players go elsewhere like Farm Town that do not need to be constantly hooked up to life support, so as you are planting away the game auto saves, so if you have an internet or computer hiccup, no worries.

·         Bushel Report – One of the latest annoying game features, the Bushel Report is like almost everything else, in need of going back to the drawing board.

Zynga’s attempt to level the playing field is makes it impossible to get anywhere with crafting, which you must do to at least get some fuel for any combines or other farm vehicles you have.

On a small farm with only a hundred or so plots, the odds of you getting any bushels to craft with, are not too good.

The only way to get any bushels is to buy things with Farm Cash that enhances the bushel harvest count.  Farm Cash requires real money, not a very worthwhile investment considering this game’s many problems, and the fact that Zynga shuts down games, like YoVille.

We’ll discuss Farm Cash a little more after our next item.

·         Pop Up’s – We can sum this up in one line.  FarmVille has more pop ups than a porn site.

Or so we’re told!

Put FarmVille on a pop up diet.  Your players will be glad you did.

·         Farm Cash – The folks at Zynga in a way to haul in more money on this broken game rolled out an option to pay $10 bucks a month to have the ability to change some of your coins into Farm Cash.

Another fail.  If Zynga wants to make some money here, let players exchange a certain number of coins per week or month to Farm Cash.  Above and beyond that, charge a reasonable amount like $5.00 per month.  That amounts to $60 bucks a year, verses $120.  Zynga might be able to attract some, who like the writer, are on a budget.  Granted Zynga has to do a lot more before this writer would be willing to sink any money into this game.

·         Farm Expansions – Expansions for coins should be available for all sizes.  Simple as that.  When you have almost $70 million coins and no ability to invest them in expansions, those coins are pretty, worthless.

FarmVille is, or I should say, was, a great game. 

It could be great again, with a little work.

Disclosure Notice – Neither the author of this article or 470Media holds an investment position in Zynga Games, or intends to take up a position in this security.

“Zynga’s Farmville – It Ain’t Fun Anymore” is copyrighted © 2014 by Mark’s What the Bleep! & 470Media

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