Fundamentally, the philosophy behind the game is to build something popular and addictive (and try to hinder you progress eventually, and you pay by doing free advertisement for them or pay them), not necessary fun. Ironically, it goes against the old age philosophy of building a fun game and others shall follow.
A lot of observations is summarized from the article CityVille Explained Part 1 and Part 2 by Tadhg Kelly.
Source: About.com
It sucks, but it’s Popular/Addictive
According to a CNN Article: Why the no-fun 'FarmVille' is so popular. People don't like it, but they play it anyway. Yup, most of us agreed it’s a boring mindless clicking game, but it’s also very addictive. Most seasonal gamers will agree that the game lack depth and could easily point out a dozen of “cons” about the game. Since it’s so popular, a lot of people are motivated to try to through words of mouth or media advertisement. The real question is, how popular and addictive is it?
Popular through Advertisement, Viral Feeds & Cross-Marketing
A new game always have to problem of being new: no one knows about the game. Thus the game needs media exposure and advertisement; but even a big game developer studio usually allocates a bigger development budget than advertising budget. The folks at Zynga are rich and understand the exponential and cross-border effect of advertising really well, and they are rumoured to spends $50 million on advertising and was one of Facebook’s biggest customer.
Besides advertising, it focuses viral feeds, asking player to post their achievements to Facebook walls every now and then, so that they can “share” it with their friends. The “sharing” usually involved:
- Would you like to tell your friends what you have done?
- Would you like to ask your friends for help?
- Would you like to send a friend a gift?
- Would you like to grant a friend’s request for help?
The “sharing” opportunities happens frequently when:
- When you attain a level
- When you run out of energy
- When you build a building that needs employees
- When you leave the game open in a browser window for five minutes
- When a particular task needs friends to complete
Basically, they want you to generate one of these viral feeds:
- A Wall-publish
- A Cross-Wall Publish
- A Notification Request
- An Email
The game is also more than happy to bribe players for participating in its viral spread: cute lonely animals will show up on your farm periodically and as a player you face a dilemma in sentencing them to virtual abandonment and death unless you post on your Facebook wall that you need one of your friends to start playing Farmville and "adopt" the adorable little self-promoter.
Once they build a game and platform with millions of users through advertising and viral feeds, they levy on cross-marketing (using Application Banner): using FarmVille to promote FrontierVille, and using both to promote CityVille. This method is adopted by Applifier, which offer a way for smaller developers to band together and cross-promote to each other.
There are various reported cases of people got roped into playing Farmville when girlfriend/wife insisted they needed to help her out and play with her. Get the chicks and they will get the men for you.
The game is very successful in introducing win-win collaboration, where players are encourage to send gifts without cost, build franchise (more income and rental for both party) and help each other’s with collections of rewards (coins, xp, etc.). All these will results more posting of viral feeds in each other’s wall, and more exposure to their friends’ friends, and also to encourage each other to login more frequently.
Make it really Addictive (in a good and bad way)
The less obvious reason that millions of people are addicted to "FarmVille" is that there's a sense of social obligation to play. If you don't play "FarmVille," your "FarmVille" friends suffer. -- CNN
User “poink” commented, “The real reason so many people play Farmville is because games like this have a direct line to the pleasure center of your brain. It's like being a trained monkey. Every few seconds, press a button. Yay! Reward! Now the next one will be a few seconds later... Give everybody in America free WoW accounts and you'd see the exact same thing. Farmville is just a poor man's MMORPG”
The genius in how Farmville has succeed in getting so many people addicted comes down to how it handles commitments on a player's time: every time you play Farmville and plant a crop, you're making a commitment to come back during a 12 hour window or so to harvest your crop, or else you forfeit your investment. – Gamasutra
Using the above method, CityVille achieve a high 30% DAU (Daily Active Users) over MAU (Month Active Users), meaning a lot of players login everyday frequently. The industry average for game is about 10-20%. Open Loops: Starting something and the need to complete them.
The games provide tons of rewards, by dropping Pellets such as XP stars, Coins, Energy Bolts, Reputation Hearts, and Goods; so that you can click on them, collect them, animate with a nice sounds, and feel good about your increasing achievements. The game might occasionally reward an extra drop of one of these pellets as a part of a regular click action; it programmed “random” bonus which are certain to happen frequently to make you feel lucky.
Then we have levelling, which shall give you more precious points, and unlocking more levels, buildings, gifts and etc. (our collection is expanding, yeah!). There are tons of simple tasks, like Collect 10 flowers, and we get more rewards for completing these tasks, and open up more tasks.
Another “killer” method to make you come back every day: Daily Bonus! Shit! It gets better, and it even tells you what’s coming in along the week, and maybe there is a combo gift it you collect them five in a row?
Click Click! Lots of clicking with lots of things to do. Timers used in this dual fashion are incredibly effective. What they do is to deliberately set up a conflict whereby players have to wait to do everything they want (crops take 12 hours to harvest), but in the meantime can do some of the things that they want (replanting doesn’t take energy!).
Last but not least, what make these games successful are simplicity (not too much depth) and little or no strategy. As a seasonal gamer, I always wanted a game such more depth and involve more strategy, so that I can learn and take advantage of the strategy. Perhaps that’s the reason that serious game shall not appeal to casual gamer: because it’s harder to succeed and feel good. Casual games like these are not mean to challenge you, but to amuse you, reward you and make you feel good, and hook you with addictions to come back for more. Now it sounded like drugs.
"Force" you to work for them, or pay them
The rate at which you earn experience does gradually increase; provided that you have enough Farmville friends to allow expansion of your farm you'll start earning more XP a day due to that space. You can also trade coins for experience by buying buildings, but progress in the game is scaled to happen more and more slowly as you advance in it.
The game will eventually introduce some elements which make your life slightly difficult (slow progress, caps, etc.), and provide you with options to solve these difficulties: Either you could ask you friend to play (do advertisement for them), or you could pay them cash to buy your way through; and the cycle is never ending.
A Better Game?
I think most do agree that CityVille is a better game in terms of User Interface and Graphics as compared to FarmVille, and it also had more things to do. Underlying, it is still the same game mechanics: encourage “sharing” to promote viral feeds, more clicking, more waiting and coming back, pay money to make your game life better, etc.
It’s a “better” game than serious game in the sense that it’s simpler to play, with a lot to do and doesn’t penalise you for deploying the wrong strategy (and rewards you frequently). There are some shallow depths, where you plant trees around your buildings for some increased bonus; but don’t have specific rules like you must plant trees next to a water source for optimum performance kind of things. It’s "better" because it had elements which appeal to casual gamers, and it’s set of addictive features.
Less Effective in the Future
Facebook recently cut back on game developers' ability to post updates to users' walls, because people were angry that their newsfeeds were filling up with "FarmVille" spam. Facebook games immediately began bleeding users.
So viral feed might have reduced efficiency in the future (still fairly effective), but they can still leverage on advertisement and cross-marketing.
Conclusions
It’s all incentive-driven. One of the ironies around social games is that they aren’t particularly social. They don’t encourage deep social interaction because such interaction is useless to the developer. It’s all about making you pay, or help spreading the game.
Zynga has made a lot of noise about establishing its own destination site, but none of these games has ever taken off elsewhere, because people won't play them without the ads, the viral reminders and the sense of obligation.
What made *Ville successful again?
- Advertisement, Viral Feeds (get your friend to play, and remind them to play), Cross-Marketing
- Addictive: lots of clicking with plenty to do, lure you to come back everyday, lots of rewards/achievements and no penalty
- Make a simple game with little or no strategy involved (let player do whatever they like in their own ways), and of course cute graphics.
- It's played in short burst; good for many people who doesn't want to spend long straight hours playing.
Personally, I dislike the directions where this is going. A game is no longer what a game used to be; it had become an amusement and addiction. It no longer provokes thoughts and strategy (or skill). It makes you pester your friends, and the game is not designed to be fun or make the player happy and satisfied; it’s to lure them with goodies in the beginning, and make their life slightly miserable so that they will pay money (or do free advertisement) in order to gain short-term relief. It’s a well-crafted “scam” with bad intentions; but the monetary rewards and proven formula is just too tempting ($5.1 billion). SHIT!
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