Facebook's nice and friendly Farmville

How innocent a Game can be?

Games might grant you freedom, because you can be whoever you want and basically do whatever you want in a game, but they can have repercussions on the real life if one does not learn to make the difference, seem to argue American psychologists. The same can be applied to games such FarmVille which offer you the opportunity of using real money to buy virtual goods that will make you happy for now, but later you will probably want more and more, once that you tried it


By ROXANA CIUPARIU (roxana.ciupariu@wavemagazine.net)
from Bucharest, ROMANIA


FarmVille reached the public in June this year (2009). Ever since it has became the most played game on Facebook, with more than 69 million fans and a growing popularity. The attraction is driven by the way the game is made, with the possibility of creating an avatar of yourself, and then harvesting a farm, with each plant and animal doing more or something different than in reality, with pink trees and pink cows which give pink milk, for example. Therefore, people, and children in particular, like it.

Graphics are simple but good, and it seems like a delightful game to play when you want to relax. Like any other game, if you need to keep your farm alive and advance to the next level, one has to respect some of the rules, otherwise the farm will "die" and you lose invested money. Surely, this cannot annoy a simple gamer, one that plays it for relaxing, but can annoy a person who becomes really addicted to the game, as Violeta Vasilescu, Economist and recent BA graduate from Romania, admitted. She said that "the game is so much fun, but then you tend to lose track of other things while playing and it becomes really addictive that you even get upset when losing money and you want to hurry up to play it".

Andra Mocanu, Geography student from Romania, confirmed there is the possibility of using real money and getting some FarmVille Coins with which one can buy certain items such as better tractors. You get one of these coins every time that you advance a level.

The Criticism

One of the big criticisms brought to FarmVille in particular and to Zynga, the producing company, is that it uses the advertisements to trick people into spending real money. Before 8th of November, clicking on certain advertisement and becoming a member of a certain website or buying something, anything that included payment, basically, would have brought a FarmVille user some FarmVille coins or cash. Due to the growing criticism this option was deleted, leaving only the possibility of obtaining money by payment with a credit card or by phone, the usual ways for an internet transaction, mainly.

The Zynga founder and CEO, Mr. Marc Pincus, addressed some of the criticism on his blog. One of the great problems was what to do with children playing the game, which become so addicted that they want to advance rapidly in the game and then want to buy coins with real money? As the Privacy Policy says, one can play only if he is an adult, a thing stated also by Mr. Pincus; below the age of 13 is not accepted and between 13 and 18 requires a parent's permission. Hence, if a child (below 18) plays, it should not be the game or the founders blamed, but the parents who "forget" to supervise children. As Tami Burke, high-school professor from U.K. considers, people can play it for fun, but they need to remember it's all only a game. "I can finish the game without the FarmVille coins, it just takes longer, but I don't care. I play every day and it relaxes me."

WAVE magazine has tried to get a comment on this issue from Zynga Company but by the time of publishing of this article they didn't answer to our questions.



The Repercussions

The question now arising is what are the effects of this game on people, children or not children? If one remembers, there used to be some time ago those little pet-games called Tamagotchi, which were really catchy and really lovely until the point when the animal you choose died. Some were so sad that they buried their Tamagotchi and then got into a serious depression. It affected them psychologically.

Games might grant you freedom, because you can be whoever you want and basically do whatever you want in a game, but they can have repercussions on the real life if one does not learn to make the difference, seem to argue American psychologists. The same can be applied to games such FarmVille which offer you the opportunity of using real money to buy virtual goods that will make you happy for now, but later you will probably want more and more, once that you tried it.

Another similar game is Real Life where you create an avatar and you can play for free... that is, if you can live homeless and agree to be a nobody; because for living and "impressing" your "friends" in this game, you need to invest money monthly as well as every time that you want to change something in your house or virtual life in general.

Hence, one should serious ask himself if we should start considering FarmVille as a threat, something as dangerous as other websites that ask you to spend money. The answers lay in the way each person can cope with his/her own addiction to games.


(Published: 18.12.2009.)