Farmville: 58 Million Players

More than 58 million people now play FarmVille, Zynga’s “farming simulator”.  When many people are asked what they believe the most popular game today is, they answer with suggestions such as Halo 3, Call of Duty 4 or Wii Fit. All of these suggestions would be false however. FarmVille now has more active users than any video game in history has ever sold. Almost 1% of the world’s population is now playing FarmVille regularly. The closest game to FarmVille is Wii Sports, with 45.7 million sales.

For every one farm in the United States, there are more than 20 farms in FarmVille. More people play FarmVille than watch Oprah. There are more than 500,000 tractors in use, and more than 80 million harvests take place on a daily basis. Through the purchase of extra coins, more than $321,000 has been raised for charity. FarmVille’s revenue comes primarily from offering in-game objects (such as special crops) for real-world currency.

Mark Skaggs, Vice President of Zynga, believes FarmVille is so popular because of its farming theme. “Everyone knows what farming is. They ‘get’ farming, whether it’s because they read about farming at school or have actually lived on a farm,” Skaggs says. As crops take only a matter of hours (as opposed to weeks, or even months) to ripen, players find that the game is more entertainment than work. Players are encouraged to return to the game regularly, as their unharvested crops will eventually wither and die, promoting more activity.

Where the game will go from here is anyone’s guess, but one would have to assume the sky is the limit.