It's time to talk about the wonderful joy that's been hitting Facebook for a while now... FarmVille!!
I admit it, even though I'm not reeeeaaally into it, I do take my time to take care of my farm every now and then.
The reason why I picked up this thing in the first place was because of my girlfriend. Since she's taking her thesis, which involves 2 straight weeks of field work every now and then, it's up to me to make sure that all her plants are in tip-top shape and all the trees are properly hugged.
The weird thing is the way that I actually got into it and how I play it.
One of things that you can do in this game is visit other people's farms and help them with "clean ups" (which usually involve cleaning dead leaves, getting rid of raccoons, etc) and fertilizing their crops so they get more XP when farming. This allowed me to take a glimpse at what other people are doing with their farms and it reminded me a lot of when I played The Sims (the original one): very pretty, very organized farms, representing what I suppose is their idea of how they would want their real farm to be like.
When I started taking care of my girlfriend's farm, one of the first thing that I worked on was a spreadsheet to compare ROI (return of investment) on each of the seeds/trees/animals/etc that you can use. And while the rest of the farm is as she pleases, the actual farmland is a big block of what I calculated to be the best investment.
Then I started using my farm... and, right now, it's a (as I was writing this, I remembered that my 2 hour seeds were planted 5 hours ago... yeah, they had all died by the time I logged in) 14x14 space of farmland where I only plant pumpkins or raspberries (I'm low level, k?). And I have no interest in decorating it with animals or trees... it's just not cost-efficient, as far as I know.
Ok, I admit that this kind of gameplay might come from my tendency to theorycraft in WoW and EVE, but I guess it's as valid of a style as anything else. Sure, I might not get the prettiest farm in town, but at least I'll be rich! *cue evil, maniacal laugh*
Overall, it's a fun game to pass the time with. And it goes to show how these simple mini-games can often take us in much faster than big games.
It's not without it's flaws, though. A few sessions into it and you get a little irritated at the constant attempts on the game creators to make you spend real life money in it to buy in-game cash to get better stuff. Doesn't really work on me, but I guess there are people out there who actually do it. I'm not one to talk though... not while I'm paying 13€/month to play WoW, anyways. :P
Here's to happy farming, loads of gold and a happy girlfriend returning home to her enriched farm! :D
I'll see you around! ;)
Kiauze
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