Revisiting Farmville... and Introducing Farm Town

In one of the posts in July, wrote about the potential of Farmville in teaching and learning.

Have started becoming more intensive in playing in the past couple of days... think the climax should be over by then... the desire to check the crops for harvesting, etc. Well, it's really time consuming... So, it's really a battle between the "urge (want)" and "need"... See the 'addiction' symptom in the description?


A few that I could draw from my personal experience:

• Despite the fact that the crops will only harvest the next day, still very tempting to visit the farm every hour, would hop in to check if any trees or animals are ready! {Despite the fact that I have more urgent matters to attend to...}
• Though it makes no difference to move the objects around, but there's joy to change the layout as and when. For a moment, the trees are packed, while in another moment, move the pond to the middle of the field. Yes, this is very time consuming and time wasting.
• Finding means to earn more coins - through farm visiting (yes, yes... it really takes time to visit my neighbour's farm)
• As and when (when the system permits), click to give free gifts to other farmers, hoping them will give in return
• Ah! Something that others might not do... U see, I've 2 farms (yes, under 2 accounts!) - that allows SHELOH and HELOH to give each other presents... and as a result, more time spent in generating more coins. Oh yes, whenever one of them receives an award, the other quickly gets to the HOME page to get the bonus!

Ha... so, aren't these some obvious symptoms of addiction?

Well, so much for Farmville. Definitely, it come with some simple mathematics, which means it's still quite worth exploring.

There's another similar game in Facebook - that's also the craze amongst may of the Facebook Friends (oh yes, some actually have accounts for both farms! (er... like me! hahaha)).

• The obvious difference is, Farm Town is much more complex... as it no longer just involve the key focus - attending to one's farm... It adds other dimensions like, working in other farms to earn money! It also allows the farmer to keep the goods in store before selling. This would help to add value to the goods!
• Well, Farm Town extends what Farmville does (with regards to values) - Responsibility. It's no longer to ensure no crops were wasted because of late harvesting; Farm Town also requires the farmer to regularly water the plants!
• The system also allows the avartars to chat! (online chat, I mean). Of course, the level of interaction amongst users is much higher! This leads to potential collaboration! One drawback that I see (so far)... we could not limit the "people" around (there are lots of other strangers hanging around in the market place or the inn!).
• One thing that puts me off is... the response - slower than Farmville (is it because of its complexity?). It also takes relatively longer time to load the game, when compared to Farmville. Oh yes, the look and feel also less appealing, compared to the Farmville.

Well, well... it's not just farming... the current craze also extends to "Restaurant" business as well as "Livelihood" in the city!

Oh! When will this craze be over!?