As a gamer, I'm constantly juggling statistics. My best time in Super Hexagon is 65.49 seconds. I had two bullets left in my magazine when I got the final kill in a match of Halo Reach.
But when I play FarmVille 2, I'm constantly keeping a different number in mind: the one attached to my bank account.
The original FarmVille, which Zynga released in 2009, doesn't have much in the way of gameplay. What it had in spades – and acquired more and more of as Zynga constantly updated and tweaked the software – were schemes that skillfully and relentlessly tapped the reward centers in players' brains. As a result, the newly released FarmVille 2 is even more brilliantly designed to function as a self-sustaining social system – and a perpetual-motion money-collecting machine.
Zynga needs FarmVille 2 to be a hit. The company's market value has plummeted since its initial IPO, and its top executives are leaving in droves. People are beginning to wonder if the social-game phenomenon was just a fad. If FarmVille 2 can manage to draw huge numbers of users and reap big profits, it could be the kick in the pants that Zynga so desperately needs.
Zynga calls FarmVille 2 a "next-generation social game." Witnessing the game's early-2000s graphics and minimal meaningful interaction between players, it's clear that "next-generation" isn't being used here in any previously employed sense of the phrase.
What I think Zynga means is that in FarmVille 2 almost every element in the game is carefully designed to either keep players addicted, encourage them to spend real-world money or get them to invite their Facebook friends to install the app, too. The game works tirelessly to either monetize its users or expand its player base, which then feeds the game more players who can be further monetized.
From a financial standpoint, it's awe-inspiring. As a videogame, it's troubling.
Any play session of FarmVille 2 will generate numerous moments when you'll run into some sort of limitation that keeps you from playing. Perhaps you've run out of water, or you don't have a milk bottle to feed your baby goat, or you need more wood planks to build that water trough.
There are a million things that can stop a player from gettin' their farm on in FarmVille 2, but these pesky obstacles can always be overcome by either spending money or trading with friends.
The game unceasingly begs you to share the wonderful news of your in-game accomplishments with your Facebook friends. Whenever you run out of animal feed or water for your crops, a giant dialogue box pops up and suggests that you ask for more from any of the hundreds of people on your friends list, even if they've never played a game on Facebook in their life.
But what if you don't have any friends playing FarmVille 2 and you don't want to spend cash? No worries! That "trade with friends" button turns into a gigantic "invite your friends to play FarmVille 2" button.
A big box pops up showing a list of all of your Facebook friends, and there's a very prominently displayed "select all" button that no decent human being should ever click.
FarmVille didn't capture its peak audience of 83 million monthly active users by appealing to a traditional audience. Zynga went after your aging aunt and the guy she went to high school with. They went after that lady from your office who always has 10 non-work-related tabs open on her computer.
In FarmVille 2, those people have far more incentive to try to drag all of their Facebook friends kicking and screaming into the game with them.
FarmVille 2 does even more to keep players addicted by adding more time-sensitive elements to the game. Cute farm animals now join the regular cast of rapidly growing crops and trees as money-generating tools in FarmVille 2. The animals get hungry every few minutes. Feeding them produce will cause them to spray eggs, milk and even pre-packaged fertilizer from their adorable little cartoon behinds.
Another new element is water, which is used to keep plants growing and slowly regenerates over time. Generally, running out of water means it's time to exit out of the game for at least 30 minutes. Otherwise you'll find yourself staring blankly at a fake farm on your computer screen, watching a timer go down so you can harvest a single droplet of fake water. That's just not healthy.
Or you could pay for some more water. Or, have you considered asking one of your Facebook friends?
FarmVille 2 isn't shy about reminding you that you could be ponying up real-world cash to get ahead.
Quests funnel your actions in specific directions by rewarding you for doing things like producing some number of blueberries or buying a sheep. You can skip the work and go straight to the reward by paying money. Remember when doing optional sidequests in a videogame was fun? Why would you pay money to skip them?
Then again, there's probably a good reason for just paying up.
Asking your entire Facebook social graph to give you free manure in a game they have zero interest in is not "being social." If you really need that bottle of milk for your goat so badly, it's probably worth it to just pay for it instead of spamming your friends' Facebook walls.
