It’s been seven days of my trip into Farmville, the insanely popular Facebook game by Zynga. Not only did I learn why someone may or may not like it, but I also learned how people can become incredibly addicted. This article covers my final two days and closes with my overall impressions.
Days 4 and 5 of my time in Farmville have been eye-opening. Not only did I continue to add friends and harvest veggies, but I started to see why people can get addicted. Mighty addicted.
While Day 1 was spent learning a bit about the game and setting up my farm, Days 2 & 3 were spent mostly growing crops and making friends.
Farmville is wildly popular. How popular? Popular enough to be the most widely-played video game on the planet. Eighty million people popular. Farmville is part MMO, part Animal Crossing, part Monopoly. At first glance it is incredibly simple, but I’ve been assured that it can become quite deep. I’ve seen countless friends playing it, their updates flooding my Wall on an hourly basis.
I held strong for the entire time. I played Zynga’s other huge game, Mafia Wars, extensively early on. It became too complicated (and boring) to continue for more than a few weeks. I admit that I come back to it once in a while to see how much money I’ve stockpiled, but it just isn’t the same. I think the static text and graphic game genre had a nice revival, but its time has come and gone again.
Farmville, I was assured, was different. Yes, I was told that there is some specific daily timing for events to occur. Yes, there are a considerable amount of “pay to play” aspects. But the visuals are improved, there is plenty of animation, and it is designed for those sick of Mafia Wars. I still held tough.
But then something hit me the other day: Why not? Why not give it a whirl? It should be easy to turn off if I get sick of it (which I’m sure I will). It should be a synch to quit. If I’m already on Facebook, and all of my friends are playing it, it may be worth me checking out to kill some time in between Olympic hockey games.
So I decided today to do just that: Give Farmville a try. But the caveat is that I need to play it for 7 days straight. One full week. If at the end of that week I haven’t become so bored that I want to gauge my eyes out then I’ll have perhaps discovered what draws so many people to this meta-game.
What will follow is a daily journal of my experience in the virtual farm world. Beginning cold, beginning now.
For every game that gets created, there are dozens that get put on the chopping block. Here are a few that didn’t quite make the cut.
We’re addicted to achievements. We can’t get enough of trophies. We love to rack up high gamerscores and show off our gaming highlights to anyone who is willing (or forced) to see them. Whether it’s through the XBox 360’s Live network, or via PSN or Steam, or even through the Wii’s tracking of game play time, we need to show off our accomplishments.
While there are already several game-related methods of tracking accomplishments, there are quite a few that can be found outside of the gaming world as well. In this article we’ll take a look at two of them: Foursquare and LoseIt!
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: “How do I get into games journalism?”
Now, we at SideQuesting don’t necessarily consider ourselves journalists; we’re more of the “active enthusiast” type. We play games as much as we can, but don’t make a living writing about them. We write for the fun of it, whenever we can, to whomever will read it. We have many friends on the video game journalism side of things who make a living (sometimes barely) from reporting and writing about the industry.
We’ve always wondered, as have many others, just how they got into the field professionally.
So, it was a great surprise to us that The Freelancers Podcast recently launched. The Freelancers — comprised of Xav de Matos and Kyle Horner — deal with answering just that question, giving hints and tips and reminiscing of both good and bad experiences in the industry. Each episode the duo are also joined by a special guest sharing their experiences, allowing the listeners to hear from several writers and their points of view on the topic.
We dissect the show on this week’s OPP: Other People’s Podcasts.
This past weekend I packed for my recent business trip to Japan and instinctively included my DS. Upon boarding the plane and plugging myself into the barely-comfortable seat (yay for coach!) I whipped out my Lite with a copy of Dragon Quest V and began to repeatedly press “A” for attack. I always choose an RPG for my longer flights, as they provide enough meat to help at least 7 of those 12 hours go by without a flinch. The hours melted away, thanks to the prerequisite grinding and slime-herding.
The gentleman next to me had a more unique situation. He had both a DS and a PSP and switched between several games on each. On the DS I watched him play what appeared to be a Japanese point-n-click novel (they’re all the rage) and what appeared to be a Hotel Dusk style of detective game in which there was a constant tapping taking place. On the PSP it was more puzzle-based endeavors.
As for me, I didn’t change the DQV cartridge out of its slot.
I noticed something similar on the train and subway. The Japanese all play games, but not so much on portable consoles. Most of the time they engaged in cell phone gaming (flip phones, not touch screen) and in a rare instance I saw a DS come out to play.
That got me to wondering about what everyone else plays on their plane trips, car rides, and so on. Are you an RPG person? Or are action/puzzle games more to your forte? And, do you play differently depending on your trip length?
Oftentimes we come across some pretty incredible things that don’t normally fit into the gaming category. This video by Alex Roman, titled “The Third & The Seventh”, is one of those things.
The movie itself has an incredible cinematic, emotional aspect to it, but what makes it noteworthy are three things:
1. The film was created by one person.
2. It was done in about a year.
3. It is all created in CGI.
Let me repeat that last one: IT WAS ALL CREATED IN CGI. That’s computer graphics, folks. The only thing that is *possibly* not CGI is the human. Everything else, from the millions of books on the shelves, to the leaves and grass, to the cracks and details in the architecture, was created on a computer. Using 3D Studio Max, After Effects, and some incredible talent, Roman created a film that says “We’re officially in the future, kids.”
Alex Roman, you’re officially the most talented Man of the Year — and it’s only January 9th!
Now, pick up your jaws and watch it again. Mind-effing-blowing.
It’s been a terrific first year here at SideQuesting dawt com. We’ve gone from a trio of goofy gaming enthusiasts to… a virtual herd of goofy gaming enthusiasts!
While the most important aspect of our site is our interaction with our community, readers, and gaming drug pushers we also dabble in the occasional article and news bite. This post will serve as your handy guide to our most popular posts of the year based on the amount of clicks and regularity of reads. Not interestingly, our older posts tend to bubble up to the top as they have been collecting the most views, but some newer posts are in there as well.
Shall we begin?
