Farm Town: Sisyphean with sides of dollhouse, art & capitalism
I have seventy-five million dollars, a farm, an arboretum, cows, horses, fields of crops, chickens, geese, roosters, pigs, goats, and a bull. That's a lot of bull! Pure bull! But I do have those things. They are my assets in Farm Town. My name is Ginny. I am a Farm Town-aholic!
No, I'm joking. The time that I spend playing Farm Town does not merit the label of addiction or obsession. I've seen Farm Town obsession and I am a mere dabbler, a dilettante whose Farm Town toes are only a bit damp in comparison to those who truly jump in and spend serious time on this game.
I did recognize the potential for addiction in the first months that I played the game. I've been playing Farm Town for over a year. I am at a measly level 53 while most of my Farm Town neighbors are at levels 91 to 135. One friend has acquired her sixth farm. She has over one trillion Farm Town dollars! One trillion! That represents a lot of clicking through the night into the wee hours of the morning! I wonder how many clicks she has clicked. She invited me to play Farm Town a year ago so that I would be her neighbor. Neighbors are needed so that farmers can do things that they can't do if they don't have enough neighbors.
I wonder how many clicks my trillion dollar friend has clicked? If someone plays Farm Town 365 days per year and spends an average of eight hours playing Farm Town per day and they click on something so that they click thirty times per minute, then they would have clicked their mouse 5,256,000 times in one year. That is quite possible that many people are clicking that many millions of times and more in a year on Farm Town. In the first months that I played it, a nerve in my arm became irritated and I had to cut back and stop doing the tasks that involved a lot of clicking. No plowing and harvesting for me!
The developers of Farm Town keep upping the ante of goals that Farm Town Farmers can achieve. In the beginning, a player could have one farm and go to Level 40. At Level 40 they were able to buy a Mansion if they had one million Farm Town dollars. Now the number of farms that a farmer can own is six; the highest level is 135 ; and a farmer can spend real money as well as Farm Town money to acquire land, farms, bigger mansions, swimming pools, rivers, lakes, beaches, swing sets, flags, harvesters, facilities to manufacture an ever increasing number of products to earn more Farm Town dollars, and special holiday and seasonal decorations at appropriate times of the year.
I keep meeting people on Farm Town who spend a great deal of their lives playing the game. I've been asking them why they play. Most of the Farm Town farmers I've met are women. Several are in their fifties and sixties. Some are grandmothers. However, the few Farm Town men I've met have taken obsession to new heights in their acquisitiveness for objects with which to fill up their farms. There is Farmer Dave for example whose farm used to crash the browsers of visitors. I'll include a grab shot of his farm to insert here.
There was a chiropractor I met on Farm Town who had a farm which had houses lining the sides when I first saw his farm. Later he turned his farm into an elaborate assemblage of trees, flowers, mailboxes, houses, crops, and Farm Town flotsam and jetsam that looked rather like a suburb that had been abandoned, swallowed up and taken over by a jungle run amok. I looked for his farm the other day and it is there but is now a big green square with nothing in it. I don't know what happened. But Farmer Dave's Farm is still there.
I've asked a few of my Farm Town neighbors why they play. I've asked myself the same question. I've enjoyed playing but sometimes it makes me uneasy when I start thinking of scheduling my life around when my Farm Town crops will ripen so that I won't be faced with coming home to see them "rot in the field" if I don't get them harvested in time. They aren't real! My Farm Town flowers may dry out and turn brown if no one waters them but they aren't real! Besides, they spring right back up like jack in the boxes when I "water" them with my virtual watering can. Why the concern? It's a game!
My Farm Town neighbors have given me different answers for why they play. One plays because it alleviates boredom. Another says she doesn't know why she loves to play so much but she thinks that women like to play because they can talk to each other while they play and women like to talk. All my current neighbors are women and they are located in Germany, Australia, England, and California as well as several who live near me in Pennsylvania. One person who had been a neighbor was a guy but he stopped playing Farm Town. I swear that it is more a woman's game than a man's.
I've noticed that women talk to each other far more than men do while playing. Except for men who are looking for hot chicks. They talk but they can be spotted pretty quickly. Do they know that they are talking with women who might be older than their grandmothers? Does that occur to them? Because there are a lot of older women who love to play Farm Town!
As a game there doesn't seem to be a definite goal except to amass more Farm Town dollars, Farm Town stuff, and gain "experience points". There isn't an end destination. Just more and more and more points, dollars, stuff. Maybe it is a game that celebrates the spirit of capitalism where, through working hard and through strategy one can accumulate assets but with no end goal in sight other than more, more, more. One never "wins". The levels are increased after you've achieved all that were available to you so that you have a new level to shoot for and then you get to that level and it is increased again. You are on the Farm Town ladder of success where there is never a time when someone says, "You win! You get the prize! You are the winner!" It is a Sisyphean game where you work at something endlessly, never getting to a final result. I keep playing the game even it feels Sisyphean.
The Sisyphean capitalistic workaholic aspect of it aside, there is also something about it that reminds me of little girls playing with a dollhouse. I had a dollhouse as a child. It was made of metal. The furniture and the little people were plastic. I remember it but I don't recall that I was into playing dollhouse as much as some girls were. Since then I have often thought of buying an antique dollhouse and furnishing it with antique dollhouse furniture. In fact I own some antique dollhouses and a whole bunch of those fifties metal dollhouses but I have never set them up as furnished dollhouses and played with them.
I have a theory that some of us like to play Farm Town as an adult version of playing dollhouse. We make our pretend farms to fit our own individual fantasies. Some of us like animals. Some like flowers. Some like trees. Some like to construct imitations of suburbia with swing sets, patios, and swimming pools.
Some are into raw money making farms with nothing placed in their squares but money making crops. Those farmers are unlikely to be playing the game because they liked to play dollhouse!
Some make patterns and pictures in their fields using objects, crops, trees, and flowers as though they were colors in a set of paints. They don't make farms at all but treat their allotted squares as canvases for artistic creations. They create portraits, landscapes and artworks through the clever placement of Farm Town stuff.
As for how I've approached playing the game, I've had the most fun in constructing a flower filled fantasy farm with lots of flowers, a little white house, some farm animals, and lots of trees. I like making either patterns or smily faces in the fields of crops. The Farm Town seventy-five million Farm Town dollars means a whole lot of nothing. I don't spend it. I don't feel driven to get to higher levels of the game. I would rather spend time figuring out how to make another goofy face in a field. I like my little fantasy farm. Playing Farm Town is reminiscent of playing dollhouse to me.
I'll never win at Farm Town but then I don't know how anyone who plays Farm Town knows when they've "won"!? My attitude is why not take it easy, make a funny face, and not work at it? But I don't think that is what the developers want us to do. They want us to work harder, play longer, visit their advertisers, and spend money. The thought of doing that is overwhelming. This is just a game! I am probably no fun at all! At least not to the developers of games who likely want us to take Farm Town very seriously indeed!
Ginny
No, I'm joking. The time that I spend playing Farm Town does not merit the label of addiction or obsession. I've seen Farm Town obsession and I am a mere dabbler, a dilettante whose Farm Town toes are only a bit damp in comparison to those who truly jump in and spend serious time on this game.
I did recognize the potential for addiction in the first months that I played the game. I've been playing Farm Town for over a year. I am at a measly level 53 while most of my Farm Town neighbors are at levels 91 to 135. One friend has acquired her sixth farm. She has over one trillion Farm Town dollars! One trillion! That represents a lot of clicking through the night into the wee hours of the morning! I wonder how many clicks she has clicked. She invited me to play Farm Town a year ago so that I would be her neighbor. Neighbors are needed so that farmers can do things that they can't do if they don't have enough neighbors.
I wonder how many clicks my trillion dollar friend has clicked? If someone plays Farm Town 365 days per year and spends an average of eight hours playing Farm Town per day and they click on something so that they click thirty times per minute, then they would have clicked their mouse 5,256,000 times in one year. That is quite possible that many people are clicking that many millions of times and more in a year on Farm Town. In the first months that I played it, a nerve in my arm became irritated and I had to cut back and stop doing the tasks that involved a lot of clicking. No plowing and harvesting for me!
The developers of Farm Town keep upping the ante of goals that Farm Town Farmers can achieve. In the beginning, a player could have one farm and go to Level 40. At Level 40 they were able to buy a Mansion if they had one million Farm Town dollars. Now the number of farms that a farmer can own is six; the highest level is 135 ; and a farmer can spend real money as well as Farm Town money to acquire land, farms, bigger mansions, swimming pools, rivers, lakes, beaches, swing sets, flags, harvesters, facilities to manufacture an ever increasing number of products to earn more Farm Town dollars, and special holiday and seasonal decorations at appropriate times of the year.
I keep meeting people on Farm Town who spend a great deal of their lives playing the game. I've been asking them why they play. Most of the Farm Town farmers I've met are women. Several are in their fifties and sixties. Some are grandmothers. However, the few Farm Town men I've met have taken obsession to new heights in their acquisitiveness for objects with which to fill up their farms. There is Farmer Dave for example whose farm used to crash the browsers of visitors. I'll include a grab shot of his farm to insert here.
 |
| Farmer Dave's Farm |
There was a chiropractor I met on Farm Town who had a farm which had houses lining the sides when I first saw his farm. Later he turned his farm into an elaborate assemblage of trees, flowers, mailboxes, houses, crops, and Farm Town flotsam and jetsam that looked rather like a suburb that had been abandoned, swallowed up and taken over by a jungle run amok. I looked for his farm the other day and it is there but is now a big green square with nothing in it. I don't know what happened. But Farmer Dave's Farm is still there.
 |
| Detail of Farmer Dave's Farm |
I've asked a few of my Farm Town neighbors why they play. I've asked myself the same question. I've enjoyed playing but sometimes it makes me uneasy when I start thinking of scheduling my life around when my Farm Town crops will ripen so that I won't be faced with coming home to see them "rot in the field" if I don't get them harvested in time. They aren't real! My Farm Town flowers may dry out and turn brown if no one waters them but they aren't real! Besides, they spring right back up like jack in the boxes when I "water" them with my virtual watering can. Why the concern? It's a game!
My Farm Town neighbors have given me different answers for why they play. One plays because it alleviates boredom. Another says she doesn't know why she loves to play so much but she thinks that women like to play because they can talk to each other while they play and women like to talk. All my current neighbors are women and they are located in Germany, Australia, England, and California as well as several who live near me in Pennsylvania. One person who had been a neighbor was a guy but he stopped playing Farm Town. I swear that it is more a woman's game than a man's.
I've noticed that women talk to each other far more than men do while playing. Except for men who are looking for hot chicks. They talk but they can be spotted pretty quickly. Do they know that they are talking with women who might be older than their grandmothers? Does that occur to them? Because there are a lot of older women who love to play Farm Town!
As a game there doesn't seem to be a definite goal except to amass more Farm Town dollars, Farm Town stuff, and gain "experience points". There isn't an end destination. Just more and more and more points, dollars, stuff. Maybe it is a game that celebrates the spirit of capitalism where, through working hard and through strategy one can accumulate assets but with no end goal in sight other than more, more, more. One never "wins". The levels are increased after you've achieved all that were available to you so that you have a new level to shoot for and then you get to that level and it is increased again. You are on the Farm Town ladder of success where there is never a time when someone says, "You win! You get the prize! You are the winner!" It is a Sisyphean game where you work at something endlessly, never getting to a final result. I keep playing the game even it feels Sisyphean.
The Sisyphean capitalistic workaholic aspect of it aside, there is also something about it that reminds me of little girls playing with a dollhouse. I had a dollhouse as a child. It was made of metal. The furniture and the little people were plastic. I remember it but I don't recall that I was into playing dollhouse as much as some girls were. Since then I have often thought of buying an antique dollhouse and furnishing it with antique dollhouse furniture. In fact I own some antique dollhouses and a whole bunch of those fifties metal dollhouses but I have never set them up as furnished dollhouses and played with them.
I have a theory that some of us like to play Farm Town as an adult version of playing dollhouse. We make our pretend farms to fit our own individual fantasies. Some of us like animals. Some like flowers. Some like trees. Some like to construct imitations of suburbia with swing sets, patios, and swimming pools.
Some are into raw money making farms with nothing placed in their squares but money making crops. Those farmers are unlikely to be playing the game because they liked to play dollhouse!
Some make patterns and pictures in their fields using objects, crops, trees, and flowers as though they were colors in a set of paints. They don't make farms at all but treat their allotted squares as canvases for artistic creations. They create portraits, landscapes and artworks through the clever placement of Farm Town stuff.
As for how I've approached playing the game, I've had the most fun in constructing a flower filled fantasy farm with lots of flowers, a little white house, some farm animals, and lots of trees. I like making either patterns or smily faces in the fields of crops. The Farm Town seventy-five million Farm Town dollars means a whole lot of nothing. I don't spend it. I don't feel driven to get to higher levels of the game. I would rather spend time figuring out how to make another goofy face in a field. I like my little fantasy farm. Playing Farm Town is reminiscent of playing dollhouse to me.
 |
| One of Ginny's Goofy Faced Fields |
I'll never win at Farm Town but then I don't know how anyone who plays Farm Town knows when they've "won"!? My attitude is why not take it easy, make a funny face, and not work at it? But I don't think that is what the developers want us to do. They want us to work harder, play longer, visit their advertisers, and spend money. The thought of doing that is overwhelming. This is just a game! I am probably no fun at all! At least not to the developers of games who likely want us to take Farm Town very seriously indeed!
 |
| Another of Ginny's Goofy Farm Town fields |
Ginny
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