

How FarmVille Designs for Engagement - phil_KartMe
http://www.philmichaelson.com/user-generated-content/8-design-tactics-farmville/

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phil_KartMe
If HackerNew wanted to become more like FarmVille (not that it should), the
system could:

* give you karma just for stopping by each day

* give you karma for upvoting other's posts

* give you profiles you could customize by trading in karma

* show you what your friends were upvoting and their Karma

* show you how close you were to attaining moderator status

* allow you to give one virtual gift per day to your favorite contributors

* have your karma decline if you don't stop by in a week

~~~
ryanjmo
Ha, the sad part is if they did this, I would likely use HN even more.

~~~
dmix
It would be more appropriate for Digg.

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Brendan_Scully
Yes, but this method could also be applied to building better slot machines.
The game itself requires very little skill or creative engagement on the part
of the player. Farmville is evil game design; it takes advantage of human
cognitive hooks and limitations for the purpose of profit.

Video games should expand upon what we are capable of. Reward structures and
timed events are fine to a degree, but Zynga goes too far. This kind of
manipulation needs to be addressed, especially as games become more and more
thoroughly integrated with our society.

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ThomPete
The problem with this kind of advice although interesting is that is takes
something hugely popular and present it as the reason why farmville is
working.

I am not so sure it's that simple. The real challenge imho is to show how to
get critical mass. Not to talk about how you optimize once you have it.

Does anyone know exactly the reason why farmville became popular, cause
somehow I think it's not about those 8 principles?

~~~
phil_KartMe
I didn't mean to imply this article was about how FarmVille started or grew.

This history of FarmVille implies it was better game mechanics than Farm Town,
and Zynga's installed base, that lead to FarmVille's success:
<http://www.allfacebook.com/2010/01/farmville-history/>.

I'd also hypothesize that Zynga grew because they:

* Had a working revenue model, so they could pay for advertising without burning cash. And being able to advertise in the place where someone plays is helpful for conversions.

* Built on a growing platform (i.e., Facebook)

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Tawheed
This was an awesome article. Can anyone point to more articles like this? I'm
looking for ways make my web-app (a social discussion forum) more engaging.

~~~
phil_KartMe
Thanks!

I've been collecting some links to presentations and posts on designing for
engagement. See the list here: <http://www.kartme.com/phil/web-design>

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jaytee_clone
This one is also good:

[http://www.gamesbrief.com/2009/09/six-secrets-of-
farmvilles-...](http://www.gamesbrief.com/2009/09/six-secrets-of-farmvilles-
success-and-33-million-people-agree/)

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jrockway
I don't use Facebook or Farmville, but it sounds like the strategy is to just
give you little scraps of gameplay at well-spaced intervals so that you are
never fully satisfied. That makes you keep coming back for more.

(HN and SO are similar in this way. You randomly get karma points, which mean
people like you, and so you keep checking your threads page to see how much
karma you've gotten since you've last looked. Same goes for replies. If there
was no karma or no threads page, I bet HN wouldn't have any users.)

~~~
phil_KartMe
one smart aspect of FarmVille is that you can gain points without other people
giving you Karma. In fact, you get points for helping others.

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cadr
I've never played FarmVille, but one of the things I loved about Kingdom of
Loathing (other than the general awesomeness) was that I could only do so much
at a time - I didn't feel like I had to commit to it if I just had a few
minutes. And the fact that each day you got more adventures, it really
encouraged me to keep coming back.

Oddly, it was at the point where I had more adventures in a day than I had
time to use (and therefore started loosing them) was the point that I started
to loose interest.

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phil_KartMe
If anyone has other thoughts on lessons to learn from FarmVille, let me know!

~~~
someone_here
I've had a chat with someone who used to work for Zynga, and he said it was a
great place to work. He said they knew full well the psychology of what they
were doing, and were quite proud of how well they do.

~~~
NEPatriot
I wonder if they hired psychologists for this?

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zach
Who needs psychologists when you have game designers? Psychological literature
doesn't have the level of interest or experience in the practical applications
that expert game designers have.

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Brendan_Scully
And these games are just getting started. As they grow, these tricks will get
worse. This is a MUCH bigger problem than people realize. If you could have
prevented the introduction of Opium to China, would you have?

[http://www.vizworld.com/2010/02/jesse-schells-
dice-2010-pres...](http://www.vizworld.com/2010/02/jesse-schells-
dice-2010-presentation-games-psychology/)

~~~
zach
Having worked at Blizzard until recently, I think my response to this
rhetorical question is predictable.

But help me understand a little better. I don't see designing more compelling
gameplay as being a markedly different goal than more compelling musicianship,
more compelling novel-writing or more compelling filmmaking. What's your
perspective?

~~~
Aetius
I was talking about this just yesterday with a game developer friend. I was
trying to explain to him how I viewed your former employer as being _too_
successful.

I said Blizzard was Too Successful in that WoW achieves profitability to the
detriment of fiendish players, many of whom waste untold hours of what would
otherwise be productive time. He, being an almost pure libertarian, disagreed
with all too familiar logic: "it's not _my_ fault they get addicted", etc.

I then asked him if he would sell drugs, and he responded that he already had.
So, regardless of perspective, it is pretty easy to see where these arguments
lead; that is, down the slippery slope and out to the extremes as one tries to
justify their position.

~~~
zach
These arguments tend to go down two roads -- one that I disagree with and one
that I actually agree with.

The Too Successful argument is really a difficult one to draw out moral
content from. There have existed people who lose themselves in games (among
other things) to the detriment of their "real life" from way back. Forgive me
for dredging this up:

[http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=YswmAAAAIBAJ&sjid=K...](http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=YswmAAAAIBAJ&sjid=KAIGAAAAIBAJ&pg=6894,3927015&hl=en)

So that's the question that has to be answered -- if there have been 500
billion hours of WoW played (just my random guess) in the last five years and
500 million hours of Rubik's Cube played in the 80's, is Ernö Rubik also
equivalent to a drug dealer, just in smaller proportions? Finally, maybe WoW
is keeping guys from even less productive internet addictions, like, say,
editing TV Tropes.

So I think I need to understand the moral line drawn in the too-successful
argument. Because otherwise I just see WoW as the current bête noire analogous
to any other popular diversion, like video arcades were 20 or 30 years ago. Is
there a substantive difference, or is it merely quantitative?

Now the argument that does resound with me, as well as most game designers I
know, is that designers are making gameplay that basically abuses the player
without enhancing their experience of the game.

Some people have pointed at the simplicity of the gameplay in WoW (i.e.
questing is too easy) and said that it's abusive to make simple gameplay
compelling. I personally find this bizarre. Abusive gameplay is an area where
I hold Valve, Blizzard, PopCap and others fairly blameless. That's not
entirely surprising for one reason: their customers pay for the game. A fine
player experience is what they hope will create more customers.

With many social gaming experiences, players have come to expect abuse, which
is a crying shame. That they will be tantalized, guilted, used to spam their
friends, inconvenienced and annoyed. Is any of that core to the game itself?
No, the proof being that in most cases if you pay, it goes away. It's beyond
just breaching the editorial wall -- the lame way that marketing is integrated
into gameplay is what makes pro game designers howl with disgust.

P.S. Anyone interested in investing in a startup that breaks social gaming out
of these shackles, please email.

