Despite what you think, Farmville is a game!

Disclaimer: Because I blog about Farmville does not mean I love the game.  It doesn’t mean that I agree with any shady business practices.  It doesn’t mean that Farmville is synonymous with social gaming.  And it doesn’t mean that I think it’s an example of how social games should be done, or a GOOD game.  This is an evaluation of the current space.

There’s a sentiment out there that Farmville is not a game.  The most common reason thrown out for why Farmville isn’t a game, is that it isn’t a challenge and doesn’t require skill.  This needs to be refuted.

No matter what kind of game you play, there will be someone who considers it to require zero skill.  If you are a PvE MMO gamer, slaying countless NPCs hoping for a random drop, chances are there is a hardcore PvP player who thinks your playstyle takes no skill because it’s against an AI and not a real person.  If you’re a hardcore WoW PvP player then a Darkfall PvP player probably thinks that your game requires no skill because it’s not unforgiving like Darkfall.  If you play a WoW paladin, there’s a good chance that a warrior is going to tell you that you’re playing an “ez mode tank” because paladins take no skill to hold aggro on groups of mobs.  People who play chess do not deny that checkers is a game, it just requires less skill.  People think that every game since UO and SWG has crafting that actually requires no skill. People have been saying the casual gaming takes no skill for years.  Even the best Bejeweled Blitz players get scores of 9,000 interspersed with their 400,000’s.

In Mancala, the skill is in deciding which beads to move by counting and seeing how many it takes to get to the pools on each end.  There isn’t much mental prowess here, it’s simple counting.  In just about any old game, you can master the rules in a matter of seconds.  Tic-Tac-Toe is a game, and a four year old can play it and win.  Having skill isn’t defined by how hard that skill is to master.  Clicking on a button over and over again hoping for a random image to pop up is a game, and it takes very little skill aside from a click.  It’s still a game. Rolling a D20 to slay a monster isn’t skill either, and that’s essentially all Diku MMO combat.  How about WAR the card game?  Zero skill, all luck and chance.  Still a game.  Farmville actually does have an AI – it’s called the clock.  Just like a puzzle game, there is time to be considered.  Don’t come back in time, your crops will die.

In Farmville, there are skills required.  Let’s take a peek at some of them:

1. Decision making – Deciding which crop is the best to plant is a decision that requires evaluating the choices, evaluating how much time you have, looking at the coin payout vs. experience reward, and determining when you’ll be able to come back and play again (so your crops do not wither).
2. Saving – Earning Farm Cash is something that happens at random throughout playing, and they money is better spent on some items (like fuel and ranch hands) than others.
3. Patience – Waiting for the crops to grow
4. Timing – Determining when the best time to come back and play again for the most XP and coin reward
5. Aesthetics/Decorating – The majority of Farmville is actually a decorative experience, where players rearrange, buy, and decorate their virtual farm/dollhouse
6. Social skills – Inviting friends, sending gifts people will like, sending gifts that you want back (reciprocity), fertilizing neighbor’s fields
7. Hand-eye coordination – Similar to bouncing a ball back and forth on a wall (which is a game), clicking in the right place will cause certain actions to happen.  Throwing the ball in the exact same place on the wall with the exact same force will always make the ball bounce back to the same place.  This doesn’t make it any less of a game.
8. Research – Believe it or not, there are just as many min-maxing Farmville guides out there as there are for WoW.  There are indeed optimal paths to level up and earn the most coins.
9. Collecting – Earning rewards, gifts, limited-time decorations, storing them up, saving them for later.
10. Achieving – There are all sorts of rewards to achieve, from leveling up, to expanding the farm, to actual achievements for doing things like buying objects and building barns.

Sure, at first glance, you’re going to think these are all such tiny skills and mock the heck out of them.  How can this be a game when these skills are so easy for everyone?  Games are defined by having somecombination of rules, strategy, and chance.  Farmville hits all of these.  There is a strategy that will get you to maximum level the fastest, and the game allows you to make a choice on whether that is the path you want to take.  There are chances ALL OVER Farmville – these games actually succeed on chance.  There’s a chance a wandering animal will enter your farm, there is a chance your crops will give you a bonus, there is a chance you’ll randomly find a seed while harvesting to share with friends.  Mystery gifts are a huge mechanic that give players a random gift, and there is a chance it can be Farm Cash.  There is a distinct set of rules for playing Farmville, no one can deny that.  Plant -> wait -> harvest -> fertilize -> send gifts -> invite friends.

Games do not have to be multiplayer.  They do not have to be fun for everyone (I dislike poker, for example).  They do not have to be deep.  They do not have to tell a meaningful story.  They do not have to be difficult to play.  They do not have to be (and shouldn’t be) completely unpredictable.  Games do not have to be geared towards every human being.  Games do not have to cost money, nor do they have to be free.  They don’t have to be an immense challenge.  Games simply have to balance fun (for their target audience), a level of skill suited towards their target audience, both successes and failures (your crops die when you don’t come back), some element of random chance, and decisions.  I think it’s more than clear that Farmville is a game, even if it’s not the kind of game you want to play.  To sum it up, just because you don’t think it’s fun or you don’t find it challenging – does not mean it isn’t a game.

Tami Baribeau is the Associate Producer for Metaplace, Inc, currently working on Island Life.  She is also the Lead Editor of feminist gaming blog The Border House, and the National Facebook Games Examiner for Examiner.com.  She can be reached on Twitter or by email.

Tagged as: farmville, social games