Who hasnt played Farmville? Well if you are above 40 and a female and have used the internet for over a decade you are more likely than not an ex Farmville player. You belong to a community thats not exclusive by any means. An article on NY Times reports that there were 32 million Farmville users daily at its peak!! Farmville has apparently been shut down as of end of last year, 2020. So an icon sleeps.
Those days of waking up at dawn to harvest your crops or collect from your animals may seem far off now, but facebook was farmville and vice versa for sometime in 2010-11 for many users. Users competed to have the best looking farms, with buildings, fences, accessories, exotic and commin vegetables, fruits, all kinds of domestic animals, beautiful barns, etc. It was an addiction, at once fun and dangerous. Dishes were burnt, kids school pick ups missed, babies were forgotten as people endeavured to harvest their farms on time. If one didnt have enough coins/gold (I forget), every vegetable had to picked by hand and planted individually. It was madness, fun, friends became enemies and enemies friends. FB friends got irritated as you desperately tried to add them or request them to send u whatever was urgently need for your farm. As if they had nothing bettter to do!
The collective gaming, needed for optimum farming, was mass multimedia role playing at its peak, where one was a farmer, even if it was looked down by MMRPG afficianados. The graphics were excellent, gaming was easy so could be played by all. All one needed to play farmville was a good mouse to do hours of point and clicking!!! And some sense of basic minimum strategising. So while kids played with PS and Nintendos, Moms played Farmville on facebook on desktops or laptops, and equity prevailed at many homes!
So as the iconic game shuts down, here's raising a tosat to it! Long live farmville, addictive, enthralling fun, and opium for the middle aged.
#Farmville #originalfarmville
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/31/technology/farmville-zynga-facebook.html