What was the old Facebook game with the farm?

One of the most popular games on Facebook in the late 2000s and early 2010s was FarmVille. FarmVille allowed players to create and manage their own virtual farm, planting crops, raising livestock, and expanding their farm as they progressed through the game. At its peak, FarmVille had over 80 million monthly active users on Facebook. Its simple yet addictive gameplay made it one of the defining games of the early social media era.

The History of FarmVille

FarmVille was created by Zynga, a game development company focused on social network gaming. Zynga was founded in 2007 and also created other popular Facebook games like Mafia Wars, Cafe World, and CityVille.

FarmVille launched on Facebook in June 2009 and quickly gained popularity. By August 2009, it already had over 10 million daily active users. Part of the appeal was that it was easy to play FarmVille for just a few minutes at a time on Facebook. Planting crops, harvesting them when they were ready, and expanding your farm was a satisfying gameplay loop that kept players coming back.

Other aspects that contributed to FarmVille’s success included:

• Social features like being able to visit friends’ farms and help with tasks on their farms.
• In-game decorations and fun themes around holidays and seasons.
• Progression by leveling up and unlocking new crops, trees, and farm buildings.
• Appealing graphics and animations that brought the farm world to life.

By early 2010, FarmVille had become one of the most popular games on Facebook with over 80 million monthly active users at its peak. However, that user base started to decline over the next few years as other games emerged.

Daily Usage of FarmVille

FarmVille was designed to be played in short, bite-sized gameplay sessions. Players could tend to their farm in as little as 5-10 minutes per day. A typical daily FarmVille routine may have included:

• Planting – Adding new crops or fruit trees to empty plots of land.
• Harvesting – Collecting crops and fruit that were ready to harvest.
• Quests – Completing quests for NPC characters to earn rewards.
• Customization – Decorating your farm with buildings, decorations, paths, etc.
• Helping friends – Lending a hand on friends’ farms by fertilizing crops, harvesting, etc.
• Sending gifts – Sending free gifts like animals, trees, or decorations to friends.

Since crops took a real-world time to grow before they could be harvested, players were incentivized to return frequently. Playing for just a few minutes each day allowed players to keep their farm thriving without requiring huge amounts of time.

Notable Elements of FarmVille Gameplay

Some of the most notable elements of FarmVille gameplay included:

• Crops – Planting and harvesting a wide variety of crops was a core part of the game. Crops had different grow times and coin values.
• Orchards – Players could harvest fruit from trees like cherries, apples, oranges, etc. Fruit trees took longer to fully grow.
• Animals – Animals like cows, chickens, sheep could be purchased and housed. They generated farm products like milk, eggs, and wool.
• Farmhands – Hiring farmhands allowed you to automate harvesting and caring for animals.
• Vehicles – Tractors, trucks, and other vehicles could be acquired to help speed up tasks.
• Crafting – Many items could be crafted using raw materials like wood, ore, and wool.
• Leveling Up – Gaining XP and leveling up unlocked new crops, trees, animals, buildings, and crafting recipes.
• Social Features – Being able to visit friends’ farms and lend a hand made the game more social and collaborative.
• Customization – Decorating your farm with roads, fences, buildings, and decorations allowed creativity.

These features combined into an engaging experience that offered variety, progression, and rewarding gameplay in small increments.

Major Changes Over Time

FarmVille saw many changes over its lifespan from 2009 to 2014. Some major changes included:

• Introduction of cooperative farming features like sharing baskets of goods in late 2009.
• The addition of FarmVille’s virtual currency, Farm Cash, in 2010. This allowed players to buy exclusive items.
• Changes to leveling system in 2010 – levels now went up to 100 and XP was earned differently.
• Launch of FarmVille 2 in 2012 with updated 3D graphics and new gameplay features.
• FarmVille 2 went mobile in 2013, expanding platforms beyond Facebook.
• Zynga began replacing Adobe Flash with HTML5 versions in 2013 due to changing browser support.
• Official launch of FarmVille 2: Country Escape for mobile devices in 2014.

As the game aged and the market changed, Zynga pushed out major updates, new versions, and expansions into mobile to keep FarmVille relevant. But eventually, players moved on to other games.

The Decline of FarmVille

While FarmVille was incredibly popular in 2009-2012, its user base eventually began declining for a few key reasons:

• Player fatigue – Many players simply got bored of the repetitive farming gameplay after a few years.
• More options – Hundreds of new games emerged, leaving players with more choices.
• Shift to mobile – Facebook gaming declined as mobile gaming boomed. FarmVille was slow to transition to mobile at first.
• Less social – As Facebook became less social over time, social games had less appeal.
• No longer fresh or unique – The novelty of farming social games wore off.

FarmVille peaked at over 80 million MAUs in March 2010 but was down to around 18 million MAUs by June 2014. Zynga began focusing more on mobile games, and eventually closed FarmVille in December 2020 after 11 years. But for a time, FarmVille was a gaming and social media juggernaut until changing markets and player tastes ultimately led to its decline. The rise and fall of FarmVille mirrored the life cycle of many early viral social media games.

Why FarmVille Was So Influential

Although FarmVille eventually declined and shut down, it holds an important place in gaming history for a few key reasons:

• It introduced casual social gaming to the masses and helped establish the viability of Facebook games.
• It showed how games could leverage a social network ecosystem to fuel rapid growth.
• It pioneered gameplay techniques like appointment mechanics and viral channels that are still used in many games today.
• It was many people’s first exposure to freemium games – free to play but monetized through virtual goods.
• It demonstrated how games could successfully maintain players’ engagement through frequent content updates.
• Its addictive nature raised discussions about implementing healthy gaming habits and parental controls.

The impact FarmVille had on the gaming industry and culture was massive. It expanded the gaming audience, showed the appeal of quick and casual gameplay on social platforms, and provided many lessons that continue to shape game design today.

Conclusion

FarmVille on Facebook gamified daily virtual farming in a way that attracted millions of users and defined an era of social network gaming. Its snack-sized gameplay and socially driven growth dominated the early 2010s. While changing industry trends inevitably led to its decline, FarmVille demonstrated how a simple game can go viral on social media and have an outsized cultural impact. Many current games still owe a debt to the engagement techniques and social mechanics that FarmVille proved successful. For those who played it during its prime, FarmVille will remain an iconic symbol of the intersection between social media and gaming.