Hello!
Game of the Week #13 is the sequel to the big beast of social games: FarmVille 2.
It was released by Zynga six weeks ago, and has jumped straight to the top of the game charts on Facebook: 9m people played it yesterday, and 58.4m people played it in the last month.
How does it work?
The core objectives are the same as the original – build and manage a productive and attractive farm – but Zynga has introduced several gameplay changes in Farmville 2.
1. Faster actions: rather than having to click to perform every single action, you can drag your mouse to perform the same action multiple times – e.g. watering multiple plants
2. More energy: is less restrictive, so you can perform more actions per visit to the game
3. Your farm is an ecosystem: the crops and animals are connected, so that e.g. you can process tomatoes to create animal feed
4. More social gameplay – e.g. you can hire friends as farm workers to perform tasks for you
Players of the first FarmVille game will also notice that the graphics have been upgraded: there’s a cartoon-style 3D design, with plenty of animations, that moves the game up a level in visual terms – see below.
How does it make money?
You can spend money on Farm Bucks, an in-game currency that enables you to perform actions faster and purchase items sooner.
Why is it particularly interesting?
In FarmVille 2, Zynga has doubled-down on the same social mechanics that made the original FarmVille game such a big success. Despite the gameplay changes, it really feels like they are going back to the classic tactics for encouraging virality and monetisation.
That means repeated prompts to invite friends, frequent and near-automated sharing of achievements on your Facebook feed, and continual roadblocks to progress that can only be solved quickly by spending real cash.
This is important for the company and for the industry. Zynga pays close attention to metrics. So the use of these long-standing techniques in a flagship game like FarmVille 2 suggests that they still work well for social games on Facebook. You can expect to see a rise in game-related invites and posts if FarmVille 2 continues to perform well.
Give it a shot to try out the new gameplay mechanics, and follow this advice if you want to avoid spamming your friends!
Cheers all,
Todd
P.S. To get previous GOTWs, to suggest future ones, or to add or remove names from the mailing list, just send me a mail.