作者：Andrea Phillips

几个月前，我开始玩《Farmville》，作为我游戏和游戏设计继续教育的一部分。惊讶不？我现在还在玩这款游戏。我甚至还掏钱购买道具。

体验一款游戏超过几个礼拜通常不是我的风格。《Treasure Madness》和《Packrat》？古代历史。Kongregate每隔20分钟弹出窗口提示我返回游戏，但我几乎不会体验同款游戏两次以上。《Clockwords》、《Chain Factor》和《Boomshine》都短暂吸引我的眼球，我有时依然会体验这些游戏，但它们显然没有像《Farmville》那般令我着迷。那么《Farmville》包含什么内容？什么促使游戏如此特别？答案是游戏融入所有休闲游戏的迷人元素。

farmville villa from heyokity.blogspot.com

1. 多种目标。从根本来说，《Farmville》是款轻松、简单的资源管理游戏。你拥有有限土地和资金，你可以决定如何使用它们，进而得到自己想要的东西。更重要的是，你可以决定自己想要什么东西。《Farmville》提供经验值和经验水平、成就及需靠赚取的丝带，还有系列供玩家收集的物品。你可以通过游戏体验在农场中创造美妙的8位图像，通过游戏获得所有农作物，或是根据心情改变目标。操作的内容越多，玩家越能够发现关键要素，然后在附近逗留。

2. 没有惩罚。你也许会在《Farmville》中惨遭失败，但你需要付出很多努力才能够做到这点。这里唯一的限制因素是时间——你需要在庄稼枯萎前进行收割。但你清楚这需要耗费多长时间，成熟到枯萎的时间约从2小时-4天不等，这取决于你所种植的作物。即便你忽视和丧失所有作物，你也不会失去所有资金。若你耗尽所有资金，你可以通过拜访邻居的农场挣得下个作物的本钱。我不了解你，但我玩游戏是为了放松。在我看来，这种低风险和低压力要优于在游戏中看系统倒计时以及让成群僵尸涌向我的感觉。我觉得自己并非什么特殊群体，没有什么与众不同的游戏嗜好。

3. 付出通常能够换得回报。在《Farmville》中，你通常是一分耕耘一分收获。这就是像是《魔兽争霸》中的固定工作，和现实生活的不确定性截然不同。在《Farmville》中，只要你持续尝试，你就会不断向前迈进。这是促使《魔兽世界》如此杰出的秘诀所在，也是我进行游戏设计的根本原则之一。

4. 耀眼的新内容。《Farmville》并非完整作品。Zynga开发者持续呈现新功能和新的虚拟道具，举办有时间限制的活动，持续完善界面。游戏每周都会出现变化，至少是从我万圣节开始体验游戏以来。这些内容很多供应量都有限——目前你可以种植忘忧草和购买麋鹿，但它们5天后会消失（游戏邦注：但会出现其他内容）。这促使玩家持续返回游戏；若游戏持续出现新内容，玩家就鲜少会感到乏味。

5. 合作，而非竞争。这里的唯一竞争对手由你自己设定。但《Farmville》的社交机制会鼓励你不仅自己体验游戏，同时邀请好友参与其中，进行更频繁地体验。有些物品只有好友赠送给你，你才能够获得，在有些情况下，你只有同好友的农场进行互动，你才能够收集完整物品。你在《Farmville》的好友越多，你的表现就越突出。游戏中的同伴压力非常微妙，但力量很强大。

6. 物有所值。《Farmville》允许玩家通过现金购买FV货币，不要和次要的黄金货币混淆。FV货币让玩家能够购得他们原本会通过存储金子进行兑换的物品；但依然存在某些动物、物品及其他奖励只能够通过FV货币获得。游戏巧妙向你呈现进行消费的益处，同时又不让人心生厌烦。他们将付费奖励呈现在你面前，但他们不会强迫你。他们的方法具有可行性。

7. 较低时间约束。这是关键所在。我可以早晨体验《Farmville》5分钟，隔几天后再体验10分钟，或者我可以花一整天时间种植2小时的覆盆子、拜访邻居的农场、重新整顿我的果园和羊群。若电话响了，或者我的孩子将Goldfish洗衣粉撒到地上，抑或是我想起自己得去做饭，我都可以直接离开，稍后再回来。我希望能够看到更多这种类型的游戏。

游戏邦注：原文发布于2010年1月24日，文章叙述以当时为背景。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转载，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

Deconstructing Farmville

By Andrea Phillips

I started playing Farmville a couple of months ago, as a part of my continuing education in games and game design. The surprise? I’m still playing it. And I even ponied up some of my own cash to keep Zynga running. (If you like a creative work, it behooves you to support the people who made it, right, kids?)

It’s not like me to play a game for more than a few weeks. Treasure Madness and Packrat? Ancient history. Kongregate keeps me coming back for twenty minutes a pop, but I hardly ever play the same game twice. Oh, sure, Clockwords, Chain Factor and Boomshine all kept me for a while, and I might still play from time to time, but it’s nothing like the dedication with which I play Farmville. So what is it about Farmville? What makes it so special? The answer is that it absolutely nails all of the things I like best in a casual game.

1. Multiple goals. For those of you who don’t already know, Farmville is at its heart a very light, easy resource management game. You have a limited amount of land and money, and it’s up to you to work out how to use them to get what you want. Better, it’s up to you to decide what you want. Farmville offers experience points and levels, achievements and ribbons to earn, and sets of objects to collect. You can play to make the coolest 8-bit image on your farm, play to master all crops, or change from one goal to another depending on your mood. The more things there are to do, the more likely it is any given player will find something that floats their boat and stick around.

2. No penalties. You might be able to lose Farmville, but you’d have to work really hard at it. The only limited factor is time — you need to harvest crops before they wither. But you know how long that takes, and the time between ripening and withering varies from 2 hours to 4 days, depending on what you planted. And even if you neglect and lose all your crops, you’re unlikely to have lost all your money. If you have managed to burn through it all, you can always visit neighboring farms to earn a little seed money for your next crop. I don’t know about you, but I play games to relax. For me, keeping the stakes and pressure low works way better than ticking clocks and hordes of zombies shambling toward me. And I don’t imagine I’m a special flower, unique in my gaming tastes.

3. Effort is always rewarded. In Farmville, you get out of it what you put into it. It’s just like the grind in Warcraft, an invigorating contrast to the uncertainties of real life. In Farmville, as long as you keep trying, you’ll keep moving up. This is the secret sauce that makes World of Warcraft the behemoth it is, and one of my foundation principles of game design.

4. Shiny new content. Farmville is very much not a finished product. Zynga’s developers are constantly unrolling new features and virtual items, holding limited-time events, and refining the interface. The game hasn’t been the same from one week to the next since at least Halloween, when I began playing. And a lot of this content has limited availability — you can plant forget-me-nots and buy moose right now, but they’ll be gone again in five days. (But something else will come along.) That keeps players coming back; there’s less chance to become bored if there’s always something fresh.

5. Collaboration, not competition. The only rivalries here are the ones you make yourself. But Farmville’s social mechanics encourage you to not only play yourself, but to get your friends to play, and to play more often. There are objects you can only receive if a friend has sent it to you, and collections you can only complete by interacting with a friend’s farm. The more friends you have in Farmville, the better you’ll do. Peer pressure to play is a subtle but powerful thing.

6. Value for money. Farmville lets you buy FV money with real dollars, not to be confused with the lesser gold currency. FV money lets you buy some things that you might otherwise have to save up scads of gold for; but there are also animals, objects and other incentives you can only get with FV money. The game is very cleverly designed to show you the advantages of paying Zynga for play without being a spammy pest about it. They put the incentives for paying in front of you, but they aren’t shoving your nose into it. Their method works.

7. Low time commitment. This is the kicker. I can play Farmville for ten minutes in the morning, for ten minutes every couple of days, or I can spend all day planting 2-hour raspberries, visiting my neighbors’ farms, and rearranging my orchards and flocks. And if the phone rings, or my kid spills Goldfish all over the floor, or I remember it’s time to make dinner, I can walk away and come back later. (See point 2, No penalties.) I wish more games were like that!（Source：deusexmachinatio）