Name: Farm Town (http://apps.facebook.com/farmtown/)
Description: Farm Town is a virtual farming community where you can grow and harvest different crops to earn money, make and visit friends, and send and receive gifts. (still in beta)
Monthly active users: 7,757,720 (Facebook, 5/30/09)
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What works:
Mandatory waiting times encourage long-term player retention
The crop with the shortest harvesting time (grapes) still takes four hours for completion, where other crops (like corn, or most trees) can take three days. This results in a user unable to accomplish much after spending more than, say, 15 minutes of play, but willing to return to the game every single day, or even several times a day. There’s a psychological motivation at work here: a player who has taken the time to plow a field, purchase crop seeds, then plant those crop seeds wants to see the fruition of that labor– even if that labor only took a few minutes to accomplish whereas that fruition will require a 2-day waiting period. In this way, Farm Town minimizes the risk of gaining users who play for an extended amount of time upon first signing up but then later fail to ever return.
Crops in Farm Town take between several hours and several days to reach harvest, driving users to continually return to the game. As well, many items (here, the sunflowers) are not accessible until a certain level of gameplay has been attained.
Items are locked until a player reaches a certain level
Much of a player’s advancement within the game depends on accumulation of activity points (which determine the player’s level), not currency; for example, you have to reach level 6 before you can purchase wheat crops, or level 15 before you can pay to upgrade to a larger farm. The desire to unlock new items by leveling up, then, continues to encourage a user’s gameplay (which, as explained above, tends to be more in terms of days than minutes or hours).
What could improve:
More limited awarding of currency within the game
Right now there isn’t a lot of motivation for a player to purchase extra currency, for two major reasons: 1) daily lotteries, the ability to sell the gifts that Farm Town friends send out, and harvest sales generate more than enough currency for a user to improve their game experience; and 2) even though certain items (buildings, larger farm spaces, ponds) cost an extremely large amount of currency that would take an extraordinary amount of gameplay to afford, users don’t even have the option of purchasing these until they level up, so the cost is irrelevant to new players.
High-end items aren't readily available to new players, which leaves them with little reason or need to purchase extra currency, resulting in higher percentages of free (vs. paying) users.
It’s never a bad idea to keep items affordable enough so that new players can get an enjoyable experience from the start, but by making everything overly affordable, or by making it too easy to earn large amounts of currency simply through gameplay, users have difficulty in seeing the value of making a direct payment or completing offers.
Use trophies to encourage users to spend more
Right now, there is no point to the trophies. You don’t get activity points or currency for getting a trophy, and out of 8, only 3 are spending-related. Make trophies that are spending specific that ultimately cost an exorbitant amount of currency (e.g. “Buy 5 greenhouses!”) and that come with an exclusive item (e.g., a peacock) that cannot be otherwise obtained in the game.
Sort friends order by levels and points
Users would be even further motivated to keep playing and to have an attractive or impressive farm (via owning the more expensive items in the store, like ponds and buildings, which realistically would require the user to purchase extra currency or earn it through offers) if they knew that the higher ranked they were in the game, the more likely they would be to show up in their friends’ “top eight neighbors” space (currently the order seems to be based simply on how recently the friend was added). More visibility leads to more visits, and more visits mean more chances to show off a farm’s wealth.
What to keep in mind:
Exclusivity sells
In the absence of a dual-currency system, you should still try to find ways to offer users certain items on an exclusive basis. Users love being able to stand out; exclusive items help achieve this, and as a result users are willing to spend a great deal in order to obtain them.
Keep your virtual currency worth more in terms of real currency
If you price your virtual goods too low or you make it too easy for a user to accrue currency within the game, you make it difficult for that currency to be worth purchasing. Find that balance so that your users can get enjoyment without having to spend real money (or without having to spend a lot), but don’t give away the whole game for free.
Think long-term retention
Always find ways to keep your players coming back. A game that is interesting and can attract or sign up thousands of users a day isn’t worth much if none of those users continue to stay active.
This game is torture, the endless plowing & seeding is too repeatitive.