FarmVille, other top Facebook games seeing diminishing user base

by Griffin McElroy on Jun 6th 2010 5:30PM

Due to Facebook's recent decision to limit the notifications proliferated by third-party applications -- Join my Mafia! Feed my Goldfish! Become a Vampire! Fight my Pirates, etc. -- the creators of games which appear on the social networking site are beginning to see their player bases decrease dramatically. Gamasutra reports that 12 of the top 25 Facebook games saw more than one million players leave in May, while the worldwide FarmVille community lost more than 7.7 million of its agricultural inhabitants.

It's unclear how these losses affect the pocketbooks of social game developers such as Zynga -- its entirely possible that these quitters weren't purchasing in-game content in the first place. However, it's definitely creating some negative consequences for our untended, expansive soybean fields.

Source

Tags: facebook, farmville, pc, social-games, zynga

Reader Comments (77)

Yeah the farmville wave passed through my network pretty fast, I did play it and enjoyed it but then I actually had to start putting effort in and decided I didn't care.

People with nothing better to do now spend less time wasting time of Facebook.

Good. Its about thes games started dying off.

Why? Did they effect you in some way? o.O

Did your sister/brother/girlfriend/mother take up too much time on the PC "playing a stupid game", that you could of "better" used to surf game blogs/forums?

I smell a distraught fanboy.

Cute, ask a simple question and now im a fanboy? get over yourself. M'kay?

its quite pungent, really

Your posts leave that general feeling, so it wasn't a hard hint to follow. Apologies if I'm wrong.

I'm sorry but Faenix is kinda right, occaisonally you get a lot notifications from these when everyone is playing them, but if they bother you that much you really are easily annoyed.

Your sheep are dying of boredom...

...in FARMVILLE!

Alas another fad dies, joining the ranks of Furby and Tamagotchi in popularity hell.

Tamagotchi's are still quite popular around here...

And where is "here" at?

probably the fourth grade

Hell, isn't that what he was referring to?

Next is Silly Bands: The Game!

Big surprise, and I'm sure 7/11 is now thrilled that their summer long Zynga slurpee cup deal just started. Let these repetitive games die out.

The ads are rediculous. Yoville? I didn't realize people with money actually played Yoville. thought it was for 6 year old girls.

Hey gansta! hey farm girl! munch down some mystery hot dogs and taquitos from 7/11 and you'll get free GUNS and AMMO for the family, and free manure!!. And diarrea in real life.

High Five Jesus, you owe me a new keyboard. :-p

yessss plz die

how the hell could you enjoy that harvest moon ripoff?

kinda funny considering farmville has a larger fanbase then Harvest Moon will ever have . . .

It doesnt matter who created the idea, its all about execution . . .

@ BigFat - In other words, it does matter who created the idea, because when it comes to execution no one has ever come close to Harvest Moon on SNES. Not this Farmville shite, and unfortunately no other Harvest Moon developer has topped the Pack-in-Video developed original Harvest Moon.

Wait, really?

I always though HM64 was considered best...

Huh.

@ Acosta - IMO, HM and HM64 are equals. I personally prefer playing the original, but neither 'tops' the other all around in my book.

Wow, believe it or not, but I went back recently and played HM, HM64 and HM: Back to Nature. I chose these because, from my memory, (except for HM which i had never yet played) these were the pinnacle. My verdict: (emphasis on MY here) Back to Nature was superior to the others. I found the variety of plants grown comparable on all systems, but the sound in the original is of horrid (the music grates) design, and HM64 suffers from relatively poor graphics. Dialogue is cheesy on all but it's the pretty graphics and interesting characters that makes Back to Nature stand out.

"This is boring. I think I'll quit and confound the creator."

I love the changes they made.

All i had to do was click hide for mafia wars, farmville, and that new shit treasure bullshit island, and i have not seen a message from those games since.

Facebook is now peaceful, and i can finally be in peace when i am using it for what it's meant for.

Looking up girls from your old schools and searching for hot pics.

..ya, cause being a pervy stalker is totally what facebook is used for. o_O

it was a joke . . .

And i have also used facebook for looking up old highschool friends/girls lol

That's what I use it for.

I call it whorepedia.

That's why they call it Stalkbook.

@jet

Hahahahahahahahahahhahahahaha!

I remember playing this when it first started.. It was okay then it become a hassal and then it would just stop and it just got crap. I'm glad to see it come crashing down

i doubt 7.7 mil really left a dent in the userbase

Makes sense. Always seemed as though these facebook games were less "oh man this is what I've been waiting for" and more "oh yeah, why not do it and kill some time". Without the spamming there's not really anything there to keep it on someone's radar.

this article put a really big smile on my face and i have only one thing to say about it: die farmville, die. :)

Me too. Then I did a little happy dance. And went back to playing Peggle.

People finally realized they were wasting their time on a very lame game?,Wow!.

Couldnt that be said for gaming in general? >_>

@Faenix I can say the same for you posting random bullshit nobody cares about on a blog. Your stupid.

Hopefully Facebook will follow and start to die off itself...

even if Facebook lost 10% of it's current users per year, it would still take 10 years for it to completely die.

Facebook is sadly here to stay.

as apposed to myspace, and twitter? facebook got weird when old people started using it, but it is still a legitimately good service. hell, i'm addicted to attention on the thing. it is not good, and i recognize this, but it is the primary way i even talk to anyone i know over this summer. and its great for chuckles, too. The ads are relatively intrusive, and even though people have privacy issues, most of them are willingly handing it over by installing anything and everything that looks cool, or is required to now "like" things not even on the website.

@Brian,

I like how instead of showing actually numbers detailing just how massive of a loss facebook would have to endure in order to die withing 1o years, you simply said 10 percent.

Using incredibly simple math to make yourself look smart on the internet? WIN!:p

(And I intend this with all due respect , I just cracked up at your use of math :p)

As soon as people realize they live lives interesting only to themselves and the animals that depend on them for food all this bullshiat will die out.

Facebook is actually still a good service in my book.

...I didn't mean to do that

@imi

i realize now how funny that sounds...

i should have just said 40million per year.

Its more likely that a good portion of the user base is college kids and with the semester over they're no longer wasting time between classes in the computer labs.

Its left to be seen if they'll pick it up again in the fall or not.

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FarmVille, other top Facebook games seeing diminishing user base

Reader Comments (77)

Posted: Jun 6th 2010 5:32PM MrAlex said

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