11 mil Facebook users sign up to virtual farming

[Tim]

http://mashable.com/2009/08/27/farmville-facebook/

The rise of social gaming is happening more quietly than one might think given the statistics. Today we’re hearing about another potential milestone: Facebook (facebook) application FarmVille claims to be the fastest growing social game in history, reaching an impressive 11 million daily users in a little over two months.

To put than in perspective, World of Warcraft is the largest massively multiplayer game that dominates MMO marketshare with at last report 11.5 million active subscribers. Its publisher Blizzard hasn’t revealed any new population statistics since the end of last year, but assures the press that its figures are still growing. It took WoW four years to reach that many subscribers after its launch in late 2004.

Compare that to FarmVille, which only launched June 19 of this year. If its daily active stats are accurate, that would mean FarmVille is close to rivaling industry-leading World of Warcraft’s player numbers in only a little more than two months. Perhaps it has already eclipsed the elephant in the social gaming room if you look at its monthly stats, which boast 30 million active users.

farmville-pay

Of course, it’s a little bit like comparing apples and oranges. WoW is an incredibly deep and detailed role-playing game often requiring exorbitant amounts of time to master and keep up with. FarmVille is a far more casual, pick-up-and-play for a few minutes type of virtual farm sim embedded in your Facebook page. It stands to reason that if you’re a Facebook user who plays the game, and you tend to check your Facebook account every day, you’ll probably spend at least a few minutes checking up on your virtual farm as well.

That’s exactly what the game’s developer, Zynga, is betting on. The largest social gaming company in the market to date, Zynga claims 27 million daily users across all its game titles on a multitude of social networks including Facebook, Myspace (MySpace), Bebo, Hi5 (Hi5), and more, as well as on the iPhone.

FarmVille and many of its other titles make money through virtual goods sales, where players spend real dollars to buy virtual currency or items in the game. Virtual item sales are already an enormous market opportunity, with an estimated $2 billion in sales last year. And that number is expected to grow.

Do you play FarmVille or other social games on Facebook or other social sites? Do you think these kinds of casual games and the virtual goods sales business model will continue to grow on social networks? Let us know in the comments.

Looks like a potential big market for Bushtarion?

 

[Ezekiel]

My girlfriend plays that ****ing game all the time. I asked her why the **** she does and she said "at least my game has graphics, not like your bush ****".

She'll be out of A&E sometime tomorrow I think.

 

[WackyJacky]

Rofl i started playing it 2 days ago. Very fun

 

[Davis]

i play too

 

[marvin]

My girlfriend plays that ****ing game all the time. I asked her why the **** she does and she said "at least my game has graphics, not like your bush ****".

She'll be out of A&E sometime tomorrow I think.

ROFL

I know alot of people that play this Farmville, yet would think Bushtarion is "weird".

Weirdos.

 

[f0xx]

I keep getting invitations from LDA and Angela to games like those, I think they play some **** called MafiaWars though.

 

[Alcibiades]

yeah i hate getting those stupid messages, i've kicked people from my friends list for that, and banned messages like that from others. very very annoying.

 

[Garrett]

games are dumb.


but seriously, i've heard that echo'd many many times before 'which game are you playing? the one with or without graphics?'

Bush can have and can get more users than it currently has, but without graphics it's always going to be a smaller niche for mainly a certain school age group that rotates.

Which is why the base is smaller. No visibility. Sure you will have long standing players, but half the time that's all that's left. Bush needs to just get visible, but not expect the moon.

 

[WackyJacky]

Mafia Wars sucks. I played that for a few days then quit.

The problem with bush is it's not simple. Farmville is just pointless click and voila! You put in 30 mins a day and don't have to calculate anything. Whereas bush you put in 10 hours a day and spend time actually using your brain. Most people don't like using their brain, tis why calculators were invented

 

[philipd12]

lol I play it

 

[Madmeater]

Farmville is just pointless click and voila! You put in 30 mins a day and don't have to calculate anything

I dont agree with you there, i frequent the farmville forums and it is very similar to bush in terms of it's levels of playerbase.

It has it's noobs, like bush, people who just plant the prettiest flower in their nicely arranged farm with it's buildings and wasted space.

And there's people like me, who make spreadsheets and rotations to achieve maximum profit on their full land.

it's just that farmville is initially more attractive and easier to pick up, while bush is harder to start and even harder to master.

If there was a simplified version of bush, for facebook, poeple may be interested enough to check the full version out?

 

[Dafydd]

Maybe if Bush was made Facebook compatible

 

[Dark_Angel]

Remarkable so many people have shown an interest.

 

[atsanjose]

Farmville is just pointless click and voila! You put in 30 mins a day and don't have to calculate anything

And there's people like me, who make spreadsheets and rotations to achieve maximum profit on their full land.

it's just that farmville is initially more attractive and easier to pick up, while bush is harder to start and even harder to master.

dude...

 

[WackyJacky]

:winner:

 

[Gooner]

Farmville is ****...I get daily requests from people saying 'be my neighbour'
'ive found a lost black sheep that noone wants cuz i love white supremecy...will you take it off my hands'

IT MAKES ME MADDDDDDDDDDD!!!