I first started playing Facebook applications in MindJolt. It’s a Facebook application showcasing arcade games. When Super Pets came around, my profile quickly showed we have just added a cute little pet our kids fondly called Baby Radin. When Baby Radin became big and we bought eveything it needed: food, home interior stuff, new wallpaper, etc. our short attention span focused on Gardenhood and HappyFarm. A few days into these applications and we were out of there.

Then FarmTown came. My husband and I added it to our profile out of profile-holic addition of gazillion apps and tried it out for a couple of hours. This was around the end of May or something. We did not realize that Facebook just recently launched this application and surprised at the stats it was claiming to have: As of May 20, 2009, there are about 6,471,540 users of the game FarmTown in Facebook.

Wow!

Today, if you chance upon the application page, it is 8,696,902 monthly active users.

Another Wow!

What is Slashkey’s secret?

The maker  of this Facebook application Slashkey,  had thought of different innovative ways to essentially let the user become addicted. This social networking game has a few tricks that lets the player come back for more:

• it is easy. The game interface is easy to navigate. There are no unnecessary buttons to click.
• you earn your points or coins really quick. There are a lot of ways to earn points: log in everyday and you get points, visit your neighbors’ farm and you can tend their farm and earn, plow and plant and you can sell your harvest in the Marketplace, get hired harvesting someone’s farm and earn your salary by working.
• the simplicity of the interactivity is not intimidating at all: chatting, adding people to the buddy list, messaging, giving gifts without having to spend for it, moving  your trees, animals and farm buildings.
• leveling up highly depends on the decision making ability of the farmer.
• there is a time limit to the crops that you plant–I remember when I was first starting up, planted some grapes and didn’t want to waste points, I got up as 4 am just to “harvest”.

Nice Farm, Eh? The avatar in the middle is my husband’s, he sports blue dyed hair and green contacts. Ha!

Here’s our animals gathering around the scarecrow. Allfacebook.com says that the scarecrow is used to scare crows away. So far, I have not seen any crows and we are at level 21.

Here’s the screenshot of the Marketplace. Some tips on trying to get a job or get hired to be a harvester:

• A lot of people comment that they get annoyed by begging. Begging can be construed as typing the same thing all the time. Dialouge like, “Hire me, pls.” typed 20 times can be annoying. Just a tip, be creative. Making people notice your comments can lead to a higher hiring rate.
• Try to make people laugh. Creative sayings as: “I need a job to fund my blue hair dye”or “I can do trees, the green way, like a real life monkey” or “I am a legal worker” can get you hired faster than the generic hire me please.
• Try to place your avatar in a central but visible location. Sometimes, when a farm owner comes to pick a random harvester, they would rarely pan around the marketplace. The center with a specific object like the fruit crate or the tent is your best bet to get hired. Although, some people who hires harvesters tries to play it up by going to the farthest reach and asking people to look for them. Try to be conscious of the whole interface, to get the best possible chance for work.
• Keep it wholesome. The Marketplace is more of a selling station and work related area. Try to be sensitive to people’s presence and politeness always wins. If you want to create a little controversy, it can be done in moderation. There can be a chance to be ignored at the game. Question: Do you think my husband’s comment on asking to be hired wholesome? “I am an eyecandy in the field!” At any rate, this always gets him two things, most every lady in the room would roll their eyes and say how vain he is and automatically get him hired in a big farm somewhere. Ha!
• Refresh the marketplace. Click on the refresh button every 5 minutes you don’t get hired. Refreshing the page makes your avatar land on a different server with different sets of players. We try not to linger in one server if we are not getting anything.
• When we get hired, we try to encourage the farm owner to visit our farm. This way she/he will be occupied gawking at our crops and trees and forget to hire someone else as competition for harvesting.

Common courtesies in FarmTown:

I’ve noticed that even if this is an online social networking game, real life courtesies still exists. Politeness such as thanking someone for being willing to work your fields or giving you a job, complimenting their effort in the game, making small talk but not to the point where it gets too personal are a must. The reason why people like this game is its:

• Simplicity
• Anonimity
• Challenge

So there it is, a breakdown on what I have been up to in the past few days with a sprinkling of a few nights. But sad to say that my dear husband had taken over my farm and has grander plans than what I thought. As I always opened my conversation in the marketplace goes:

“Hire me, I and my family and animals are all homeless”

Which is not a lie either, our avatar needs a farmhouse, which now cost around 300,000 points. The market value varies daily. If you have a few minutes of your day to spare, play with us, hire us and we’ll hire you. It might all be like a game, but when you start dreaming about it, it is an addicting game.