If you frequent Facebook, I'm sure you've heard of Farmville.  Probably one of your friends has it and it posts a million messages in the news feed or maybe you are avid player.  Apparently a ton of people love playing this game.  So I decided to explore this "Mystery of the Interweb" and try to figure out why Farmville is so overwhelmingly popular.

Against my better judgement I signed up for Farmville by going directly to the farmville.com site instead of adding it through Facebook.  You still have to log in via Facebook connect, but that seems to work okay.  So the game starts out with you being a "farmer" having so much cash and a hunk of ground in which to plant various crops.  You click on the plot of ground, plow it and go to the market place to buy seeds to plant it.  When shopping for seeds to buy, some are blocked because you aren't a high enough level character and of the ones you can buy, it gives you the information about it.  This information includes, how much you can sell the crop for, how long it takes to grow and the cost.  So you pick one of the faster growing ones like strawberry's for instance and go plant that.

Okay so you've planted your seed and you hang out for awhile to watch it grow.  However, those strawberries you just planted, with a harvest time of 4 hours are barely moving.  As I wait around longer I realize that those strawberries will grow in 4 hours of ACTUAL TIME.  That's right.  That alone has to be the worst feature of the game, but apparently it keeps people coming back all the time to check on their crops.  Most games have "game time" meaning hours or even days can pass over the course of an hour or two of actual time.  To be honest, this is a killer for me.  I neither have the time nor the want to check Farmville every 3 or 4 hours to see if my crops are done.  Strike one.

You may say at this point, "But Nick, don't check back that often, just check back when you can.".  That sounds like reasonable and logical advice.  However, it doesn't quite work that way.  When I came back the next day, my strawberries I had planted had withered and died.  DEAD!  Needless to say, I was a little peeved at this most recent development.  Luckily I had planted other crops that had taken longer to grow and were still growing.  However, with some of my crops already dead because they "withered", I had to go ahead and call strike two.

At this point I'm already pretty annoyed with this game.  To further annoy me, Farmville bugs you incessantly wanting you to add "neighbors" and help friends with their farms.  Needless to say, I was NOT going to bother any of my friends with this monstrosity of a game, so I decided to help some people who already had farms with their farms.  To help another friend is easy enough, you put some fertilizer on their crops or feed their chickens or something lame along those lines.  However, more often than not, I noticed that my friends farm was full of dead crops.  Hmmm, apparently I'm not the only one annoyed with Farmville.  As if the game play wasn't bad enough, I then have to deal with annoying messages about my friends?  Sorry, strike three.

Sorry Farmville, you are out.  Perhaps you avid players of Farmville love it.  I have to say you have patience and stick-to-it-ness heretofore unbeknownst to modern society.  My hat is off to you sir or madam.  As for me, I think I'll stick to the big boy games.  However, I believe this "Mystery of the Interweb" will remain as such, perhaps one of its avid game players can explain it to me. 

(Note: Farmville and Facebook are trademarked and/or copyrighted by whoever they are owned by.  Futhermore, I am in no way affiliated or associated with either company.)