Farmville Gameplay

Macro Objective

 * What : have the biggest and most beautiful farm
 * How : the player needs to earn money and experience, through 1) activities 2) neighbours (FB friends) who will help him expand his farm
 * Path (macro-loop) :
 * Experience is necessary to unlock new items
 * These new items let the player earn more money, which let the player buy more items and gain exp
 * In parallel, growing the farm is necessary to progress

Abilities, Resources, Attributes

 * Abilities (actions) :
 * buy items/plow/plant/harvest/help friends &amp; send gift/add coins &amp; cash
 * Resources :
 * Items : seeds/trees/animals/buildings/decorations/farm upgrades/vehicles&amp;fuel
 * Attributes of the player :
 * Money :
 * The usual money involved is the coins.
 * There is also farmville cash that can be acquired through micro-paiement, and that can be used to buy specific items and fuel (therefore reducing the session duration)
 * Farm size
 * Achievements : mid term and long term goals that the player can complete to gain money, experience and items.

Low level objectives (loops)
The low level loops are the basic mechanisms that let the player achieve direct objectives.

For each one, we describe at least 1) the loop, 2) the objective/challenge/reward, 3) and we give exemples of the resources involved.

Main loop (seeds)



 * Objective/Challenge/Rewards : harvest a resource/meet the conditions to use the resource and not come back too late else the crop gets rotten/money and experience
 * Ex of resources : Strawberry, Eggplant, Wheat, Soybeans, Squash, Pumpkin, Artichokes , Rice, Raspberries, Cotton, BellPepper, ...


 * Strategy tips : the player will chose which crop to seed according to four parameters : Growth time (if he comes back too late to harvest, the crop is rotten), money spent, experience earned, money earned.

Complementary loop 1 (trees/animals)



 * Objective/Challenge/Rewards : harvest a resource/meet the conditions to use the resource and no failure condition, the challenge is only to arbitrate which treeor animal to chose/money and experience
 * Ex of resources :
 * Trees : Cherry, Apple, Orange, Plum, Peach, Lemon, Lime, Fig, Avocado, Apricot, ...
 * Animals : Cow, Chicken, Sheep, Pig, Rabbit, Duck, ...


 * Strategy tips : the player will chose which tree/animal according to four parameters : Growth time, money spent, experience earned, money earned. There is no failure condition here.

Complementary loop 2 (buildings/decorations)



 * Objective/Challenge/Rewards : buy a building or a decoration/meet the conditions to use the resource and no challenge, only choice of building/experience
 * Ex of resources : Green Hay Bale, Hedge, Bird House, Barrel, Crate, White Stool
 * Strategy tips : the player will chose which building according to two parameters : money spent, experience earned.

Mid-level objectives :
The mid-level loops are intermediate elements that give the player some mid term perspective. They are either mechanisms that ask the player to reach a certain level in an area of the game (see achievements below), or mechanisms that give a feeling of evolution (see vehicles and fuel, see farm size).

For each one, we describe at least 1) the loop, 2) the objective/challenge/reward, 3) and we give exemples of the resources involved.

Vehicles and fuel
Vehicles give a sense of evolution to the player in the sense that it takes some time to be able to acquire them and they reduce some of the micro-management for the player (plow/seed/harvest quicker), giving him the impression to move on to a next level.




 * Objective/Challenge/Rewards : acquire a vehicle and some fuel/meet the conditions to use the resource and no challenge, only choice of vehicle/less micro-management
 * Ex of resources : Tractor, Pink Tractor, Blue Harvester, Seeder
 * Strategy tips : the player will chose which vehicle according to two parameters : money spent, peceived advantage of reducing micro-management.

Farm size :
Increasing the farm size also gives the player a sense of evolution, providing him the opportunity to grow more things in his farm.


 * Loop : the player can either buy the new land with FarmVille cash or buy it with coins if he has enough friends.
 * Objective/Challenge/Rewards : increase the land/no specific challenge except having enough friends (or pay real money)/grow more things.

Achievements :
The system of achievements gives the player mid-term or long term goals by asking him to reach a certain level in an area of the game in exchange for exp/money/items, and therefore pushing him to experiment all aspects of the game.


 * Loop : the player needs to achieve a certain number of goals and these will trigger the achievement
 * Objective/Challenge/Rewards : obtain an achievement/reach the required level/money, experience and items
 * Ex of achievement :
 * there are different achievements in the game, each achievement having different levels of difficulty
 * Ex : local celebrity (befriend 25 neighbours for level 1, 50 neighbours for level 2), cream of the crop (Harvest 500 crops for level 1, 50k for level 2).

Learning curve
At the beginning of the game, there is a textual tutorial. The player needs to complete the action requested before to go to next task.

The player finishes the tutorial in 5 minutes. However, only the main loop (plowing/seeding/harvesting) and friend's invitation is shown.

Then once the player starts playing, some missions will pop up on regular basis to train him on the other aspects of the game (at least this is the way they do it in frontierville, I did not try by playing from scratch on farmville).

Pace of gaming
There are two aspects, the rythm of sessions and the lenght of sessions.

1) rythm : Because for each loop, each task takes a specific time before it's done (typically between 2 hours and five days), the player can adapt his pace to his own schedule and to the number of times a day he wants to play the game.

2) lenght : This said, a typical session is pretty straightforward and takes a few minutes - the player finishes the current loops and cashes the coins and uses the coins to start a few new loops.

Supporting Means :

 * AD :
 * Flash, 2D with a 3D isometric display,
 * bright colors and strong contrasts (simple and cartoonish, see for instance the cute animals),
 * minimal animations with very short loops (avatar and animals),
 * wide customization of avatars,
 * consistent interfaces related to the thematics.
 * Accessibility :
 * interactive elements have rollover effect but no idle specific rendering,
 * signs are displayed through cursor changes,
 * only actions that change the amount of money have a sound feedback,
 * 5 mn tutorial
 * Virality :
 * gifts : they can be sent to friends, they are either available at the store or unique in the game.
 * neighbour system (friends) : helping friends bring some money and exp, and friends are necessary to expand the farm