It's more a toy than a game, like The Sims. You can't lose, and you can't win. You just play with it. So if you're into that kind of thing, I recommend it.

It's less than The Sims. It's Harvest Moon lite.
No random events that have a significant impact on your farm, like hurricanes or earthquakes. No animal breeding. No town segment. Tamagotchi as a farm, except without even a death condition.

Agreed its a Toy.

It's not much of a game, their are no real significant decisions, only repetition and addiction.

Having said that I still play it to kill a few minutes here and their while compiling.

The way I see it, 60 million accounts speak volumes about the casual gaming epidemic.

My concern, however, is the quality of those players, rather than the quantity. I find it disturbing that most of my Facebook friends are related to the games industry (designers, producers, journalists, etc) and they all seem very captivated by this Fisher-Price version of Sim Farm. Well, except for Will Wright - I never got any Farmville updates from him.

"casual gaming epidemic"?
Given it's the only major change in mainstream gaming since 3d graphics it gets way more hate than it deserves.
It's not like anyone's suffering from it either - for me just now playing pointless minigames is more fun than going through another rendition of Doom.

Doom (and its reiterations) being another of those epidemics I was talking about, if older.

I like casual games a lot and few games got me addicted (Bejeweled, tower defense games), but the success of this game, is something I don't quite understand.
I do not recommend this game but can see why it might attract such a large group of people. When I ask friends why they play it, they usually answer the same, it's because of its cute look and they can see what other friends do. In this sense the game is more like a viral that spreads among the network. Initially it only consumes 1-2 minutes to play with. A few weeks later my friends spend up to 30 minutes a day to seed, harvest, feed or whatever they must do to gain experience points and money. Maybe it's the management aspect of farming and the variety of animals and crop.

I played this for a short while, but it quickly got boring. The levelling up and money making part is good fun, but having to click each individual plot of land whenever you want to harvest, plow or plant makes the game become repetitive very quickly. There's really not much to do on your farm either, apart from decorating it. Not much fun at all really!

I went to a family wedding a few weeks ago and met a bunch of ageing family friends that I hadn't seen since I was a kid. Within the next week they all added me to Facebook and now my news feed is swamped with Farmville updates from 40+ year old women who's kids have left to go to university.

As has been alluded to, anyone who has played any Harvest Moon will likely have the same reaction I had.

"Hey, this makes me want to play Harvest Moon. And use Facebook less."

the idea of nerds raging at people who play games, but play the WRONG ones is hilarious. it's not like most casual gamers hate you and want to stop Incredibly Detailed and Long RPG III from being published. they don't care.

I don't think anyone here is condemning the development and playing of these casual games. I think a general feeling towards these gamers (a feeling I share) is just that it's a shame that so many people 'enjoy' this game, when I remain convinced that if they simply took the initiative to find a 'better' (loose term) game along the same lines, they would find it more rewarding. And plus, I DO know plenty of casual gamers that resent us hardcore gamers and our scene, so it does work both ways.

really? most casual gamers I know are housewives who don't care what people do with their free time or are also HARDCORE!!!!! gamers. If you know some maybe it's because you're an obnoxious gamer who talks about "scrubs". The fact that you put the world enjoy in quotes is telling. As if people can't enjoy something that you don't. They like it, you don't, deal with it and grow up. All casual games are going to do is make the idea of video games more mainstream.

I play it regularly.

How can you say FarmVille isn't hardcore? Take the pigs, for example. Snout Rush, jab trotter, Curly Tail, FADC into Ultra takes precise timing and most non-tournament players can't even pull it off in training mode! ;-)

I used to play in the beginning, but then I got tired quickly.

I reckon if we all ganged up, we could make these stupid people realise how they're ruining games for everyone.

Maybe we could start a boycott group or get a petition together and send it to all these obviously totally wrong people who don't realise the trouble and devastation they're causing.

They're holding back games from achieving their true potential. We need to do this thing now before it gets any worse.

Bob, I am so totally with you on that.

Let me just go get my boycott hat and paint a sign saying 'Leave our games alone!!'and I will be right with you.

is a boycott hat like a pith helmet or a panama hat?

Nothing so romantic I'm afraid.

It's more a tatty beany with a helicopter thing on top.

Speak for yourself, mine has its own condo in the Alps and is currently directing a short art film starring the likes of Kanye West and the Olsen Twins.

Are we talking about your farm, your hat, or your boycott?

I've never seen the lure in this game, as someone else said it seems like a stripped down version of harvest moon.

My wife is constantly playing this game. This and 4 of it's knock offs. How did this fulfill a need?

I used to love it, until I kept getting the dreaded "endless loop" error. Planted tomatoes in the morning, couldn't get on all day because I kept getting an "endless loop" error, then when I finally could get on again, in the very late evening, my tomatoes were withered. That kept happening, making me lose all my (in-game) savings.

Wrote a letter to Zygna, and they pretty much told me to piss off, that the game is still in beta so it's sure to have some hickups and that I shouldn't whine or bitch about it.

My thoughts about that, are that if it's in beta, they should be glad to get reports like that, and actually fix them, instead of proudly claiming they've added new useless decorations instead.

That ruined all the fun for me. I stopped playing the game, as it became frustrating at that point.

Without commenting directly on the quality of the game since I've never played it, I wonder how much of that 60 mil user base has to do with the sheer number of people on Facebook and how quickly these time killing games spread. Usually when I see a new Mafia Wars- or Farmville-like game pop up I block the status updates right away because it's only a matter of time before it spreads like wildfire. I'm not saying these games are bad or that casual gamers have terrible taste, we have to realize everyone has their own taste especially when it comes to non-mainstream gamers. Maybe it's more a testament to how viable a platform Facebook is to promote and host your game. And trust me, casual and hardcore are not mutually exclusive. While a lot of these games arent very technical, casual gamers sink as much time and dedication to these games as traditional "hardcore" gamers do. The community aspect that you get for free and in high quality from Facebook helps these games substantially I think, whether it's leaderboards or through collaboration. All in all, just respect each other tastes and don't hate on these developers for being successful because you happen to not like their games.

Its very repetitive but I cannot stop playing! I'm only on level 21 so I got to keep moving.

#1 It is as much a toy as 90% of the games released today. Winning and losing doesn't make a video game a "game" rather than a toy.

Lugh,
I'm not sure I follow the reason behind your harsh reply. I am AGREEing with your sentiment that people should enjoy what they enjoy and that's that. The only things I was disagreeing with were A) whether or not it goes both ways and B) whether or not people here were ranting against the developers of said casual games.
As for myself, I suggest you don't assume my gaming habits and behavior until you've played with me.

the game itself is a big mess of poor design choices.
instead of fixing what is wrong with the game (monotonous clicking, mainly), more things are tacked on, which only seem to complicate things.

i stopped playing after i expanded my farm, bought a vehicle, and got annoyed with the idiocy of it all.

even my girlfriend has stopped playing it regularly due to some of these reasons, and she loves casual games.

Haven't really bothered with it yet, as logging onto Facebook is such a pain. Don't see what the big deal is though. Casual games and casual gamers aren't harming the industry even a millionth of the fraction that super-blockbuster-FPSs and bro gamers are.

I can see the appeal in the idea, though. It's approachable, adorable, and social, right? I mean, I can't say if it's good or not, but... Comparing it to Harvest Moon just doesn't feel right at all. I'm a gigantic simpering HM fanboy, but Harvest Moon takes investment out the ass. It's repetitive (which I don't mind at all!), involved, and doesn't allow for brief sessions or social experiences whatsoever.

And I'll still restate a previous position; if casual game devs are purposefully making subpar products to take advantage of--holy crap I'm posting at a public university terminal and looked over-- the guy next to me is playing Farmville as we speak. This is nuts.

I play Mafia Wars. It's something to do at work. It's designed to add users, not to be balanced or fun. Which is why I now run a grease monkey script that plays it for me. So - really - Mafia Wars is now 'playing' just like the Progress Quest game that's been running on my computer.

Wow. Just wow. It will never cease to amaze me how frightened gamers are of casual games.

Seriously, if the film industry has room for everything from romantic comedies to American Beauty why shouldn't the game industry be just as flexible?

And to all the people who keep comparing it to Harvest Moon...no.

Harvest Moon isn't social, Farmville is.

Harvest Moon doesn't encourage playing in short bursts...Farmville does.

Someone else said that if they'd just take the time to invest in 'better' games they'd have more fun (paraphrased). But you don't get it. It's not about being better or worse. It's about the fact that none of those 'better' games do the things that Farmville does.

I'd be like arguing that someone should play Madden instead of Wii Sports. No. They do very different things and appeal to different audiences. One is not inherently better than the other.

Agh! I didn't expect these attitudes here for some reason. IGN sure, but Indiegames.com? I just expected better (and due credit to the many of you who aren't being unreasonable).

How many of those have multiple accounts? The women that I work with each have a minimum of 3.

Thats a good comparison to Romantic comedies. Makes me feel better about it.
It just looks so much like harvest moon that Id rather just play that (I loved harvest moon though).

There's a certian built-in addictiveness to the game that has been becoming more popular with these free-browser based games. IGG's games like Freesky have the same mechanic of having world-based time controls, causing you to "have to" check up on it often, even put it in to your routine to accomplish anything.

I haven't played it for a while but this simple mechanic seems to overcome its flaws several people have posted.

@Matt L - robf and probably a few others were being sarcastic, don't overreact by thinking they were serious

I wasn't being sarcastic, I was being completely serious.

COMPLETELY SERIOUS.

I too was being completely serious.

I just wasn't talking about casual games or casual gamers. Sorry for any confusion.

:mwah: