I've got a few posts saved up that I've written while trying to decide what to do with this blog. It's gone through a few different hosts (ultimately back to Blogspot), a few different titles/URLs, and dozens of different templates. I think I'm finally happy enough with it to start posting for reals, so I'll be posting some of that backlog. So that explains why I may sometimes, like here, be commenting on articles from months ago.
Quite a few blogs have linked to this piece. There are a few critics, and a lot of people who just seem to like the idea of criticizing Farmville.
There are many things to criticize about these games, but I don't think that Liszkiewicz's criticisms happen to be valid ones, so I feel the need to rebut most of his points individually. Specifically, I'll just focus on his assertion that Farmville is not a game. Now, I haven't read Caillois, though I really should. But I will go ahead and take his definition of game at face value rather than debate the definition itself - and I still think that if Farmville doesn't count as a game by this definition, many other things commonly referred to as games don't count either.
Disclaimer: I play Farmville. As well as several other Facebook games.* So yes, maybe I'm a little defensive about the whole thing, but who am I kidding? I know these are a waste of time, just like a lot of what I do on the web. However, if I'm defensive, it is only because the essay is clearly written by someone who has never played Farmville (nor likely any Facebook game) and whose main purpose seems to be justifying his annoyance at family members who want him to play.
From Liszkiewicz: Caillois stated that games must be free from obligation, separate from ‘real life,’ uncertain in outcome, an unproductive activity, governed by rules, and make-believe.[12] In comparison:
(1) Farmville is defined by obligation, routine, and responsibility;
(2) Farmville encroaches and depends upon real life, and is never entirely separate from it;
(3) Farmville is always certain in outcome, and involves neither chance nor skill;
(4) Farmville is a productive activity, in that it adds to the social capital upon which Facebook and Zynga depend for their wealth;
(5) Farmville is governed not by rules, but by habits, and simple cause-and-effect;
(6) Farmville is not make-believe, in that it requires neither immersion nor suspension of disbelief.
(1) Farmville is defined by obligation, routine, and responsibility; Only as much as any game is bound by an obligation to play the game. If you allow your friends or family to bully you into playing chess, that's no different from letting them bully you into a Facebook application. Yes, you can have social obligations within the game, to send gifts or fertilize crops - but all of those are optional and I personally don't know any of my 30 FV neighbors who would get honestly upset if I did not do them. Zynga has now introduced co-ops, where you work together to meet crop goals, but these are totally optional and if you don't want the extra level of commitment you never have to do one. And yes, to do well in the game you have to check your farm regularly, over a long period of time - but there are many other video games based on this premise (Animal Crossing comes to mind). And let's not forget World of Warcraft and other MMORPGs, where commitment to regularly do "raids" or other multiplayer events is central and really does take over some people's lives.
(2) Farmville encroaches and depends upon real life, and is never entirely separate from it; Again, no more than many other games. Yes, I interact with my real friends and family when playing FV. As I do when I play Monopoly or tag. Other than that, it is quite separate from real life - if a crop dies in FV, nothing happens to me in the rest of my life. If I buy a cow, it does not impact the rest of my non-Facebook life in any way. I may sometimes interrupt another activity to check the game at a certain time to ensure that a crop gets harvested or something along those lines, but again, no different from many online games in that respect. And completely optional.
(3) Farmville is always certain in outcome, and involves neither chance nor skill; This one is the closest to validity. (I will note that it is also not present in every definition of games in the literature, but we're sticking with Caillois here.) However, anyone who has actually played the game knows that there is an element of chance, albeit a small one. For example, there are certain items that you can only get from other players. Some of these (in FV, often animals) must be posted to the FB wall by other players, and you must be fast enough to be one of the first to get them. I know it took me months to snag an elusive black sheep! Others, such as building materials for a barn, must be gifted from your neighbors. Not only that, but these are randomly distributed - you may need five different items, and if the neighbor who has one of them is out of town you will just have to wait or hope that someone else has it. These are both minor parts of gameplay, but there is some chance involved.
(4) Farmville is a productive activity, in that it adds to the social capital upon which Facebook and Zynga depend for their wealth; This is just ridiculous. If this counts as a "productive activity" then every game that adds to Hasbro or Mattel's bottom line certainly falls short as well.
(5) Farmville is governed not by rules, but by habits, and simple cause-and-effect; I think that this is only true for Farmville if it is true for nearly every video game. In a traditional board game, it's possible to break the rules, and you may be punished by other players for it. In a video game, the computer is there to ensure that rules physically cannot be broken. You could say that this reduces a rule to a simple cause-and-effect, but that doesn't make it less of a rule. Whether the rule is "If a player touches a goomba, he loses one life" or "If a player fails to harvest the crops within the allotted time limit, he loses the crop" doesn't matter - they are rules, and you must follow them. You have no option not to. That said, just like any video game there are "hacks" for Farmville that will let you mess with the code to bend/break the rules. Is this cheating? Well, for it to be cheating there must be rules.
(6) Farmville is not make-believe, in that it requires neither immersion nor suspension of disbelief. Well then, I guess I'll be going to buy my green shamrock sheep and pink cow that gives strawberry milk at the state fair this summer. Not to mention that every single aspect of farming is simplified and stripped down to one or two actions - if this isn't make-believe, then neither is any game set in World War II.
One last bit of the essay that I'd like to rebut: Even Zynga’s designers seem well aware that their game is repetitive and shallow. As you advance through Farmville, you begin earning rewards that allow you to play Farmville less. Harvesting machines let you click four squares at once, and barns and coops let you manage groups of animals simultaneously, saving you hundreds of tedious mouse-clicks. In other words, the more you play Farmville the less you have to play Farmville.
Again, this is clearly not true if you have actually bothered to play the game. As you progress, your farm gets larger, necessitating more time spent harvesting more crops, trees, and animals. Harvesters and other shortcuts like coops, barns, farmhands, etc actually allow you to continue to spend about the same amount of time playing each day at level 40 as you did at level 5, while reaping more benefits. Zynga knows that although Farmville is enjoyable, most of its audience is made up of casual gamers who do not want to spend several hours a day on any game, including this one, and so helps you keep your time in the game to a reasonable level. In addition, Zynga knows that the actual act of clicking on things is not the fun part. Meeting your self-set goals (mastering a crop, getting a ribbon for an achievement or a medal for a co-op, completing a building or getting a rare animal, etc) is the fun part. Clicking is just what you have to do to get there.
I had some issues with other bits and pieces of the article, but these were the main ones. I acknowledge that Farmville is possibly on the outer edge of "gameness," and perhaps at some point I'll write my own critique of it. But this critique really just smacked of someone looking for reasons to feel superior to their friends.
* I mostly play games made by Zynga - why? Because I've tried many others, including ones that Zynga has ripped off (such as Farm Town and Pet Society), and every time, I wind up preferring the Zynga games or Zynga versions of the games. So I just think that Zynga is quite good at making this particular type of game.
P.S. In the couple of months since writing this post, I have actually stopped playing Farmville and all of my other Facebook games. Not for any particular reason - I just got burnt out on them and stopped altogether. I haven't deleted any of them, though, and will likely pick them up again sometime when I'm sufficiently bored. To my knowledge, none of my friends or family has abandoned me or badmouthed me because I haven't replied to their requests or accepted their gifts. So much for obligation!
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