What is it about Playfish Pet Society?

The 6th most played social media game on Facebook, Pet Society has 4.4 million daily users and has recently grown to 12 million monthly active users, which is more than World of Warcraft.
Kristian Segerstrale, CEO and co-founder of Playfish (formerly worked for Glu Mobile, a leading global publisher of mobile games) told gamesindustry.biz in an interview recently that Playfish, one of the largest and fastest growing social games companies in the world, is targeting platforms such as iPhone App Store, Facebook and MySpace and that he predicts that games consoles will be a niche product in the next few years.


The low down:
Impressively, players get to completely design their own pets anyway they like. Having played Pet Society for a while and met some of their creations you will sometimes wish they didn't. LOL!!
To start with, the players of this game also get a house with a garden and an increasing number of rooms. The players will need to keep their pet happy, clean and well-fed. To help them achieve this, from the start the pet will get a soap and a brush, basic clothes and some coins. For more food, clothes, house furniture and toys for the pet the player will inevitably need more coins. These coins can be earned through visiting other pets. These can be other facebook friends' pets or other pets they meet in the pet society village or the cafe. 
Coins can also be earned in the Daily Lottery, winning awards, in hurdle races at the stadium or simply by shaking trees in the street :) (I'm serious!)
Washing, brushing and petting and feeding other pets is also known to earn players pets coins. 
The more active the pet is in Pet Society, the more experience points it will gain. This will also help the pet earn coins and awards.


One recent welcome addition enables pets to go fishing in the Pet Society pond and fill their fish tank with varieties of fish and marine life.


For those impatient among us, or looking for that extra special piece of clothing, decoration, you can head to the cash shop or the bank and pay for some pet society cash. The good thing about this is that a part of the money they make on some products goes to WWF (World Wildlife Fund) to support its efforts to protect many endangered animals. Some of the rest of the cash, I imagine, could be going to help feed starving game developers too lol! 


The secret of it's success? Definitely has to lie in it's simplicity and appeal to users with different age groups who  simply like pets. It taps into people's basic nesting and nurturing needs. Also, I can imagine that the fact that Pet Society is availabile in so many different languages gives it a huge advantage in market penetration other games simply do not have.

Country Story On Facebook - Playfish foray into virtual farming social games

Playfish very sophisticated addition to the world  of virtual farming social games looks very sweet. The focus here is on taking you by the hand and walking you through the different stages and features of this interesting game.

The player is asked to fulfil various tasks involving their plot and their neighbours in order to achieve a combination of coins and green point (experience)


It takes a while, conquering a lot of quests, hoeing, planting and harvesting, watering neighbours' plots and collecting stones and wood, but eventually the player will get their first chicken who needs looking after and feeding and it will in turn lay them eggs regularly.

Zynga's FarmVille set to be most popular application ever on Facebook!!

Here are the top Ten Facebook Applications according to the UK Telegraph (based on daily use).

1. Famville, 13.4 million daily users

2. Farm Town, 6.0 million daily users

3. Mafia Wars, 5.8 million daily users

4. Facebook for iPhone, 5.7 million daily users

5. Facebook for BlackBerry, 5.2 million daily users

6. Pet Society, 4.4 million daily users

7. Texas HoldEm Poker, 3.8 million daily users

8. Restaurant City, 3.7 million daily users

9. Facebook Mobile, 2.7 million daily users

10. YoVille, 2.6 million daily users

SlashKey just introduced farmcash into Farm Town

Logged on to Farm Town this morning and saw this new dollar icon on top of my screen .... I seem to have been awarded 5 Farm-Cash dollars!!

Looks like Slash Key is getting on the bandwagon of farm cash Zynga introduced in FarmVille.

Not a great move methinks as it is one of the most criticised features of FarmVille.


Users in the forums on Facebook are savvy enough to understand that money to finance fixing bugs has to come from somewhere but they soon highlighted on the forums that they preferred to pay an annual membership fee and be able to use farm coin, gained through selling harvested crops or being hired to work on someone else's farm, rather than having to fork out real cash for all the new goodies on offer, especially in times of recession.  I tend to agree. I know it's sad but I personally would like to have a Tree house on my farm but would find it hard to justify spending money to buy 20$ farm cash to do so...


In any case, here are some of the tempting treats your farmcash can get you in the Farm Town store:

shiny new decorations

some topiary

  

and funky new buildings

Zynga's FarmVille On Facebook

I had been using Farm Town for a good couple of months before the whole noise about Zynga's FarmVille, allegedly a cartoonish ripoff version of Slashkey's Farm Town, finally got to me. Initially, I was adamant to sticking with Farm Town, having spent ages building my farm and establishing my online presence in it's virtual community. Still, my friends on Facebook were flocking to use it in the droves. The forums were buzzing with the controvesy of how way too similar those two applications are and which one was best. I could resist trying it myself no longer...

One month in and you could tell I've been putting in the hours :)

Here's what I think of FarmVille:

Great things about FarmVille: It's polished!

1. They got the core functionality of an online farming game right.
2. It's easy and fast to plough, plant and harvest and now that I have the use of a tractor, harvester and seeder work on the farm has become even more fun!
3. They seem to be more responsive to their user community constantly changing and adapting
4. Great graphics
5. The plants, trees, animals and buildings enjoy such rich vivid colours
6. The player's avatar has way more customisable (and flattering) facial and hair styles to choose from

Not so great things about FarmVille: It's not very sociable!

1. Connection problems left my session out of sync with their server and lost me coins, crops and animals
2. A lack of an 'undo' button saw me losing a tractor that I accidentally deleted very soon after I purchased it for 30,000 coins. Ouch!
3. For a social game it offers very little social interaction, the very thing former Farm Town users have come to expect: It has no chat functionality, there is no market square where you can meet and socialise with the online FarmVille community (for that you need to join the forums),
4. You can't hire or be hired to work on someone else's farm so no chance of earning extra money or experience and again no emphasis on growth through community.
5. While you can collect eggs from chickens, milk from cows, feathers from ducks the animals are mainly stationary, not roaming around like in Farm Town.
6. There are items in the store that you can only purchase with Farm Ville Cash, not coins. The only way to get FarmVille cash is by buying with real money.

In conclusion

Despite it's shortcomings I think FarmVille did very well for the relatively short period of time it's been around and it's constantly and rapidly evolving so watch this space.

Here's how you can get started using Farm Ville:

The toolkit is very simple. Use the multi tool curser to point and click on a plot to plough, plant and harvest. Later on you can buy the tractor, the harvester and the seeder (30,000 each) to help spare your poor wrist from clicking by ploughing, planting and harvesting en-mass. Use the market icon to buy seeds, animals, trees and buildings and use the gift link to collect your gifts.

The rest will become very clear very quickly.

A good strategy is to start planting strawberries, as many as you can and as often as possible. The variety of seeds available to you when you begin is such that strawberries are the most cost effective seeds. As you grow in experience and status in Farm Ville you will unlock more seeds, buildings, decorations etc...

Another good startegy to adopt is to expand your farm when possible, you need coins and friends to do that, failing that you can always buy FarmVille cash.

A useful formula:
Here's how to calculate the amount of coins you gain per hour from farming a certain type of crop on one plot in FarmVille:
Harvest revenue -(cost of seeds + cost of ploughing of one plot) /number of hours it takes for crop to mature


And here are the crops in order of their profitability:
FarmVille  /  Crop coins per hour
Tomatoes 7.25
Sunflowers  6.88
Coffee   6.75
Blueberries  6.50
Carrots   6.25
Raspberries  5.50
Peppers   3.21
Rice    3.00
Corn   2.99
Pumpkins  2.88
Pineapple  2.75
Squash   2.75
Potatoes   2.71
Strawberrie  2.50
Yellow Bell  2.25
Watermelon  2.11
Cotton   1.63
Soybeans  1.38
Artichokes  1.24
Eggplant   1.00
Wheat   0.90

SlashKey's Farm Town On Facebook

I love the Internet and I'm mad about gardening. When a friend on Facebook recommended I tried Farm Town, I had to give it a go. It didn't take long before I got completely hooked.

Here's the lowdown:

Farm Town is a web application that enables you to design, grow and maintain your farm and even send gifts to your friends. The beautiful thing about it is that it emphasises growth through community. People helping each other and making profit. What's even better, it's free!

Here's a quick way to get started:

If you have time on your hands start by planting and harvesting grapes. As you gain experience you'll unlock more and more seeds, but as a beginner these are the most cost effective seeds available to you. About those grapes: The seeds cost you 20 coins per plot, it will cost you 20 coins to plough a plot. The crop will be ready for harvest in 4 hrs and you have 4 more hrs to harvest (so, 8hrs in total). Don't leave it any longer or your crop will wilt and you will lose your coins and effort. This crop will earn you 56 coins (i.e. you'll be earning 4 coins/hr.)

The mechanics are simple:

You use the hoe icon to plough plots, the store icon to buy seeds to plant and the scythe icon to harvest them. Once you harvest them (always use the harvest and store option) - Having done that, you then need to collect your harvested crops from the shed and make your way to the market to sell them. You can sell them while harvesting but selling them in the market will make you more profit. Note the emphasis on community there.

In case you are confused at this stage just click the shed icon. There you will find all your harvested crops, in your case, the grapes, and a link to sell in the market.

Tips to climb the Farm Town social ladder:

You can make money by selling your crops or by working for others. A way to get hired is to go to the market. You gain coins for harvesting and you gain experience (also some coins) for ploughing. Helping neighbours earns you coins and experience and hiring others to harvest and plough for you will also gain you more coins (25%), so there is always an incentive in being involved in the Farm Town virtual community.

While you don't need any neighbours (Facebook friends using the application) to be hired to plough or harvest you do need at least 8 neighbours to hire others.

Useful formula:

Here's how to calculate the amount of coins you gain per hour from farming a certain type of crop on one plot:

Harvest revenue -(cost of seeds + cost of ploughing of one plot) /number of hours it takes for crop to mature

And here are the crops in order of profitability:

1. Raspberry

2. Grapes

3. Pineapple

4. Pepper

5. Blueberry

6. Carrot

7. Onions

8. Cabbage

9. Peas

10. Sunflower

11. Rice

12. Corn

13. Pumpkin

14. Coffee

15. Potato

16. Wheat

17. Watermelon

18. Cotton

19. Strawberry

20. Tomato