11/17/2009

It wasn’t long ago that Vicki Steffen was waking in the middle of the night to harvest her crops and spending much of her time away from work tending to her ever-growing farm.

Not the real farm the Cunningham resident lives on – the one she created online.
Steffen is one of literally millions of Facebook members who have used applications like “FarmVille,” “Farm Town” and “My Farm,” which allow participants to create virtual farms complete with crops, buildings, machinery and animals.

These seemingly simple applications are making headlines as more people spend time tending their virtual farms at the expense of relationships, work and school.

Farmaholics

Steffen, a mother and stepmother of six, was introduced to “Farm Town” by her kids and quickly found it a nice distraction from real-life farming.

“With ‘Farm Town’ you didn’t have to worry about weather or prices,” she said. “It was no-stress farming.”

Players joining “Farm Town” or “FarmVille” start out receiving a small plot of land on which to grow crops. They can harvest the crops and receive virtual money to buy more seeds. Crops that are not harvested in the allotted time wither and die, and the money spent on the seeds is lost.

Participants can save up to buy trees, animals, buildings, vehicles and, of course, more land. The applications also have a social element in that they allow participants to help their “neighbors” – other Facebook users – and earn more money in the process.

The whole thing can be addicting.

“Very addicting,” Steffen said, recalling her foray into early morning crop harvesting.

“Grapes are ready to harvest two hours after you plant them, so if you plant them at 10 p.m., you have to get up and harvest them at midnight or they’ll go to waste,” she explained.

Players’ extraordinary devotion to the online farming applications is well-documented through discussion forums where players’ posts sound much like addiction support group meetings.

“My name is Cjay and I’m a Farmaholic,” one person writes.

Another shares a homemade spreadsheet showing, among other things, which crops provide the greatest return.

And then there are Web sites like farmvillefreak.com, which bears the slogan “I can’t stop watching my crops!”

A post on that blog was made by “farmgoddess” and alerted users that the “FarmVille Fig Tree” was no longer available to purchase.

Steffen quit “Farm Town” “cold turkey” several months ago after realizing how much time she was spending at it.

“It was taking over a good share of my life,” she said. “If I was off of work, I could spend two hours easily.”

While Steffen, a nurse, logged on to “Farm Town” only during her non-working hours, not all employees are so willing to keep their game playing separate from work.

In fact, on a “FarmVille” discussion board, several users mentioned that Facebook and “FarmVille” had been specifically banned at their workplaces.

Local school districts have taken similar measures – blocking Facebook from school computers in order to keep students focused on their schoolwork.

But they can’t do anything about what students do once they leave the building, and it’s no secret that homework often comes behind harvesting crops.

Cash cow

What is now being called an obsession with virtual farming applications has been attributed to a variety of factors, including “a widespread yearning for the pastoral life,” cited in a recent New York Times article.

And in an August article in San Francisco Business Times, Mark Skaggs, a representative of “FarmVille” creator Zynga, said the games’ attraction might result from combining “the best elements of social gaming with people’s instinct to nurture.”

Steffen said she thinks the competitive spirit of the games is a big draw.

“It is fun to see how much you can get without actually spending real money,” she said. “Plus, there is a level of instant gratification. It is totally unrealistic, but it is fun.”

And the social aspect is fun, too, she said.

“It sounds really strange but I met a couple of people through ‘Farm Town’ that I’d talk to frequently,” she said. “There was a nurse in Canada and we’d talk about the differences in health care. There was also a person in Australia. It was just kind of fun.”

Despite what draws would-be virtual farmers, one thing is for sure: The game creators are making bank.

More than 62 million people have signed up to play “FarmVille” alone, with 22 million logging on at least once a day, according to Zynga. Another 19 million people play “Farm Town,” according to www.insidesocialgames.com.

With that many users, advertisers are lining up to pay game developers to promote their product on the site.

Zynga, for example, boasts an annual revenue of $200 million, according to an MSNBC article.

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