1. We are ahead of the curve for creating a FB game app to promote a brand. Hasn’t been done so far that I’ve seen. I even asked the FB guy who was the Tues. keynote and he couldn’t think of any. This fact makes me very excited and a bit nervous.

2. We need to plan for server load. We cannot predict how much traffic will hit the server, and we need to come up with a plan should it blow up.

3. We’ve come up with another game title idea and JK has about 30 paper-based game titles that his dad created that already create revenue. We could be busy for a while.

4. I need reliable Flash developers who know what they are doing. Not to say that Mike isn’t doing a great job, but I need more help.

5. My client should exploit the hell out of the fact that this is pretty innovative for them to have a FB game app. They need to be ready to advertise.

6. Social game companies totally copy off of each other and they don’t seem to care.

7. The gaming industry has been dragging their feet. At the first GDC I attended back in 2007, I felt like a total outsider. When I told people I met that I work with Flash, they looked at me like I was nuts. Now all of these social games are Flash-based. I actually attended a session on what game developers (for traditional platforms) can learn from Flash portal games today. Really?? These games have been around FOREVER!

8. I feel very confident that the 3 social game ideas we have can be built and used for social media. Two of them would be geared toward males (more mature content), while the third would be directed more toward females.

9. EA acquired Playfish. In 2007 I hung out with those guys from Playfish because they were doing Flash. They were really small… cool people… doing portal games. EA acquiring them is a huge deal.

10. Facebook dominating social media is not going away anytime soon – until someone comes out with something better. Myspace just isn’t in the big mix. I’m not even sure where hi5 fits in.

I’ll be back to my user reviews of Cafe World, Mafia Wars, and the newest one I am playing, Social City. I will also have an update on Farmville.

I CANNOT wait for our game to launch!!!!

PS – Dear Facebook – please bring back Newsfeeds just for games. It makes things a lot more tolerable to have all of the Farmville feeds in one place, all of the Cafe World feeds in another, etc.

I began playing Farmville to get a feel for a gathering-based game. When I realized that this and other games use the Free to Play, Play for a Fee approach, I decided that my goal would be to play Farmville and note how successful I could be without spending any real money. I am happy to report (and much to Zynga’s dismay I’m sure) that I am now a level 45 farmer and have not spent a single cent of real cash!

I really like Farmville’s interface and art style. The icons are simple and easy to understand. The art style is fun and the vector art is very well done. I also liked the music at first (I now keep it muted since I am on Farmville daily). Interesting side-note: my friend who just started playing Farmville a few weeks ago recently stated the following as her status update: “Farmville music makes me happy!”

My motivation to play this game was when I saw that one of my friends who I played World of Warcraft with was already at Level 51 when I started. I saw her farm and was impressed. She had a lot of work and time in. I referred to her farm and other high-level farms to learn how to make my own farm.

Farmville Farmer Jen – Levels 1 through 20
There were very little instructions provided at first, and if it wasn’t for the fact that I forced myself to play this game and also liked the graphics, I would have bailed pretty quick. I couldn’t figure out how to plant more than 6 crops (what they start you off with). I had seen that all of my other FB friends who play had many farm plots. I finally figured it out by accident when I clicked my plow tool randomly on the grass and it planted a plot.  I began to figure things out soon enough though and eventually started to build my farm.  I learned from watching my friend’s farm and from her status updates to plant 1 type of crop repeatedly so that I could master the crop. My motivation to become a master of a crop was to see what happened or what I gained when I did so. I earned a sign to place on my farm if I chose and take up space. Thanks Farmville!

I also learned quickly that I couldn’t let my crops sit around once they were ready for harvesting. I had to start noting the time that I planted and how long a crop took to grow so that my efforts wouldn’t be wasted.

Farmville Farmer Jen – Levels 21 through 30 – Super Motivation

At Thanksgiving Farmville introduced the holiday tree and the ability to send presents back and forth. The holiday tree was a container that held 100 presents. On Dec 24, the presents unlock and are able to be opened to see what they hold. On Dec. 24 I had 100 presents. I also got my significant other to play to help me get more presents. He and I became present-crazy. It was literally just like Christmas as each present was an unknown. During this time I also learned the importance of my Farmville friends posting updates to the Newsfeed so that I could gain items. The one thing I found most annoying was suddenly a new motivation for me.

Farmville Farmer Jen – Levels 31 through 40 – Super, Super Motivation Until the Fuel Ran Out
I continued to play into 2010. None of my friends believed me when I said I was playing for research.  My holiday tree still worked, gifts were being sent, and I was leveling. I was also in a self-imposed competition with a few friends to level past them. I was a super farmer – and then I ran out of all my free fuel.

In order to quickly plant crops, harvest crops, plow harvested land it is best to use the farm machines so that all of these processes can be done at 4 plots at a time. Fuel is required to use machines which Farmville will happily sell for real money. I had gotten so spoiled with all of the free fuel I had received that I started to become disenchanted with the game. My farm had grown considerably and it just took too long to harvest daily.

Farmville Farmer Jen – Levels 41 through 45 – On the downslide
Suddenly Zynga began pumping out the Farmville updates.  I believe their business model for 2010 is to pump out as many Farmville updates as possible while making sure that the game stays stable.  There were collections, harvesting from chicken coops, gear to commemorate the upcoming SuperBowl … it had just become manageable when I left for vacation on January 30 for an 8 day cruise – with no internet. It was at this point that my game play peaked.

After I returned, I was overwhelmed by new items, new updates, friend’s gifts and I began to lose enjoyment for playing. All of the things that had motivated me originally had now become overwhelming. Farmville had become a job.

An interesting side-note occurred when more and more friends started completing collections. I realized that I could start collecting free fuel again each time I had completed a collection. My motivation returned – slightly – as completing collections was not an easy task. One day a friend started sending me links to completed collections that their other FB Farmville friends had made. Suddenly my collections were becoming completed and my fuel had increased. I’m not sure if Zynga knows that this technique to helping out each other complete collections faster exists. It’s probably a bug, but it helps us all in the meantime.

Today….
I’ve really lost my desire to continue playing. I like checking in on my awards to see how much further I need until my next ribbon, and I like working on my collections. Mostly though, the game has lost it’s luster with me. It feels like a job. I’ve taken on the lazy approach to getting a better harvester to harvest 9 crops at a time. I’ll talk more about this in the Mafia Wars blog.

Next week’s Social Games Summit at GDC may or may not rekindle my desire to continue playing. Zynga is one of the speakers and it will be interesting to hear their side.

“These games are capturing tens of millions of mainstream users, people who do not consider themselves gamers–exactly the audience that was the growth path for the casual games market, which is facing challenges such as lack of innovation and decreasing price points.” :GDC2010

D10 Interactive Facebook Game
We have been working since December 2009 on a Facebook-based game application for one of our clients. The game will be launched from my client’s FB page, and it is intended to create further awareness around their brand and products. It has been an interesting experience planning, designing, developing, and implementing. We are about to launch this game for testing within another week or so.

To prepare to work on the game, I needed to do some research first -  in the form of playing Facebook games. So I started by searching for “most popular Facebook game” and came across the following link at www.insidesocialgames.com. Farmville by Zynga was the #1 game that week, so that was the game I hesitantly started with.

I Don’t Want to Join Your Mob!
Why was I hesitant? Up until this point I had used Facebook since the summer of 2008 for social purposes. I had just migrated from MySpace after noticing that many of  my MS friends were moving to FB. I didn’t like FB at first. I missed being able to customize my page and to create blogs. FB grew on me after a while though. FB apps were growing and eventually my FB Newsfeed became inundated with my friends’ game status updates. Soon I was hit with numerous requests – “Join My Mob”, “Be My Neighbor”, “Here’s a Free Gift”. These notices were really annoying to me. I was on Facebook to know  what my out-of-state friends were doing. I wanted to see friends’  and family members’ photos. I wanted to check out what my old classmates from high school look like now. I didn’t want to join anybody’s mob!!

Finally I had given in at one point as I felt bad that I kept ignoring my friends’ relentless requests. I tried Mafia Wars as that was the game all of my friends were playing around Jan. 2009. It didn’t look like a game. I didn’t like the interface. I couldn’t figure out what to do, so I uninstalled the app. A few months later, I started getting Farmville requests, and in a few more months, Cafe World requests. I ignored all of them because of my first negative experience with Mafia Wars and from being annoyed about the constant stream of game updates in my Newsfeed.

“Make Us a Facebook Game”
My client then approached me in late Fall of 2009 to discuss taking one of our old games that we built for a promotion 3 years ago and utilizing it for Facebook. The games we built were Flash-based mini games that were meant to be played for short periods of time. Since these games were simple and already built in Flash, it seemed like a doable project.

In the meantime, I had finally found a game I liked on Facebook – Bejeweled Blitz. I had never played Bejeweled up to this point and was enticed to play after one of my friends (with whom up to this point I had enjoyed a friendly competition playing Brain Age) started posting his high scores to the FB Newsfeed. I had finally discovered my motivation factor – competition.

I began researching types of game apps on FB and found that they fall into 1 of 2 categories – farming/gathering and time/point-based. Farming games (such as Farmville, Mafia Wars, and Cafe World) involve collecting items to build and maintain an environment. Time-based games involve playing the game for a short amount of time to achieve a certain score. I have more research on these types of games, but I will leave it at this for now.

Next…playing Farmville…