Farmville: patient zero of the micro-transactions plague 

As a busy adult I'm grateful to Farmville and Mafia Wars for teaching me early enough how to use Facebook settings to mute stuff I didn't want to see in my notifications so that I could be creative in other areas. Thanks Zynga.

I was a barn buddy guy, and had a notebook to keep track of when I need to water my plants. Note - there weren’t many smartphones back then.

I remember waking up in the middle of the night to harvest my crops in the early days of Facebook. I was young, naive and stupid...I'm not that young or naive anymore.

I swear, I still get annoyed when thinking about Farmville. My Facebook friends used to pester me so much with requests that I left the site. Still haven't returned, and I don't think I ever will.

Those days waiting for my crops to harvest...

Think about it... FarmVille kept a critical mass of users coming back to Facebook in the early days when it had relatively low membership. The world as we know it could be a completely different place without it.

I genuinely, genuinely despise Farmville and the business model it introduced to the game industry

there was a time when Facebook was all about this n nothing more

Farmville was one of the best bonding experiences with my brother, I hacked the shit out of it back in the days when Facebook wasn't cloud based. Memorable times.

Circa 2010. I remember going to my friends house as a teen and her mother spent a lot of time on FarmVille. Her house was absolutely wrecked. Carpet of mold on the bottom of the fridge. Dog shit on the floor. Don’t let gaming let you forget about your personal responsibilities. Take a break and clean a room.

The girl that I was courting wanted me to help me with her farm on Facebook. In the end, we never got together and chose someone else.

For me, it was the Sim City app. It started out as quick progress and amazing builds, but very soon things slowed down and making materials and structures worked on a timed system, which of course, could be sped up with minor purchases. I never spent a dime, but it was still highly addicting and ruled my daily schedule. Looking back...it was a total waste of time.

The days where you pay one price for a complete game aren't gone. Sadly many games ship with micro transactions but there are still the few who strive to make perfect complete polished games for a single fee

I played Farmville for a short time right around the hype in 2009. I immediately stopped playing as soon as I realized I would either have to pay or focus a crazy amount of time on upkeep to keep playing.

Im reminded of my clash of clans addiction, and I'm thankful that my parents never purchased anything from Play Store

I never put money on Farmville because at the time, that could not be done by me, in my country And yes! You could be creative with Farmville, you can be creative with anything, like you can learn from anything if you put the effort, I think is rather narrow minded to think that you need something overly complicated, realistic or expensive to express your creativity, being from what by USA standars was a poor country, I can attest that creativity is something that almost everybody has but not all have the option to show

Only effect Farmville ever had on me was turning off game requests on Facebook completely.

You know what else is frustrating? When an ad is slipped into the media you are consuming.

This is so weird how I've been binging your videos and I started playing FV2 on Monday (for school assignment) and now this shows up....

One day we will look back on this time like we look at people giving opium to kids in Victorian times

I still have a few Facebook friends that were only added because they needed so many Farmville friends to unlock an item. I've never met these people, but I'm too lazy to unfriend them. 😅

Great to see your business branching out. Recurring sounds like a useful utility

I was with you until the part about Farmville clones and almost all the clips were from non-micro transaction farm RPGs that came from the popularity of Stardew Valley which itself was inspired by Harvest Moon series (1996+) Farmville didn't come anywhere near these games.

i discovered facebook through farmville. my cousin was living in canada and had facebook and showed me the game. facebook was not popular at the time in my country so I was a 5th grade kid befriending strangers on facebook to get some perks in the game. when my friends started getting into facebook and farmville, my farm was already huge. i remember i was so proud of that hahah

Zynga employs one of the worst user-experiences in all of app ecosystem. From in-app micro transactions to unavoidable mid roll ads after every single move on word with friends. No wonder their company has been losing users for the past few years

It makes me happy & sad. I miss Farmville so much. I really enjoyed playing it. My sister & I would set alarms, to wake up in the middle of the night, to plow the fields & collect the harvests & so on. It was the most fun we ever had!

Farmville was sure one of the reasons I left Facebook, never to return.

Farmville was the reason why I created a facebook account. Back then, facebook was still boring and we used Friendster instead.

These days i see "pay" as a curse word since you bought the game at full price and devs made problems just so you can swipe your credit card

2:30 I love when people who don't play video games try and understand why we play video games its funny, playing Farmville while in 7th grade helped me discover more of my passion for farming, I later went to college and studied agriculture I have been professionally working with plants for almost 10 years now. I'm not going to say because of farmvile I studied/ wanted to study what I did, but It sure helped me navigate. but to those who don't enjoy VG's, its all just mindless clicking 😂🤣😂

My mom told me about farmvillie. It sound really cool. She was on level 100 something, and joined 2010. She grew crops and now the progress is gone..

Wow Mark Pincus sounds like the real life Kaiba. "SCREW THE RULES! I HAVE MONEY!"

I never played Farmville and pretty much ignored Facebook the last 10 years. I don't do all those micro-transactions and freemium games. I have plenty of other games I can play.

This and Mafia Wars were my addiction.

I’m such a sucker for microtransactions. I have had to delete and stop downloading games that have them. These feel so targeted towards people with adhd and impulse control issues like me. I realized I had a problem when I discovered I’d spent over $100 on a stupid app. It was such a sick feeling and I deleted it immediately. I hate these games. I hate them so much.

I had my first facebook account created for me when I was a kid primarily because of wanting to play Farmville and Café World. Those were the laid-back days when facebook for me was just a gaming platform. Lol!

I remember when I was little, I usually Just Search Up "Farmville Mod Free APK" because I'm too broke to shell out money to the game

I have positive memory's of the friends I made while playing. But I don't miss it. The urgency to get on and harvest crops cosntantly as I always went for the crop that was most profitable often took the most work. Terrible lol

There was a point in time where you couldn’t turn a corner without somebody mentioning FarmVille, they were promoted in 7-11’s and pharmacies and on merchandise everywhere on top of the constant Facebook notifications from friends asking me to stroke their carrots or whatever. I’m glad it died.

It was everyone’s mom who always played FarmVille and sent awkward requests

Hearing about farmville from my friends was what caused me to join Facebook.

I remember micro transactions in online games in the late 90s early 2000s

What? I myself played Farmville and so do did at least 10 other people I knew and none of us ever spent real money in the game. That's something I don't remember in the original game...maybe that's why we really enjoyed it.

Weren't Oblivion and TF2 using micro-transactions before Farmville, making the video title incorrect?

One of the first on making a business creating digital cocaine 🤗

Mobile games are more addicted than pc games.

I remember the only reason I used to go on facebook was to play minigames

So this guy didn't want to take the time to improve his skills and just invented "pay to win"?? Pay to win only works as long as you have more money than the other guy so if you don't have money you don't win anyway even if you have the skills. The only one who is winning is the game company so I guess he is still correct.

I remember that I was under age to sign to facebook, but I wanted to make an account so that I could play farmville every day after school. I mostly remember the game fondly. I still remember how exited I was for seasonal events like valentines day or saint patricks day

I spent so much time on FarmVille that the game ended up very slow. Too much items for flash to handle.

The reason he created zynga was bc he was getting crushed by online players and wanted to pay to beat them was the nail in the coffin

Dopamine system not serotonin

I used to play the game when it was still free to play and not play to win

I do play another version, cityville on my anonymous fb account. Fill half of the map with big bens & viola, unlimited energy! Stop playing when city got too big & my old pc take long time to load the game.

I saw the Dragon Soul app icon scroll across the screen and was sad. I liked Dragon Soul.

Blueberries were the most profitable no doubt, I quit when someone topped the leaderboard with a credit card

Just got a candy crash ad before the video.

Ahhh the nostalgia.I created a Facebook account just to play farm ville , then moved to clash of clans , and warframe and finally Dota2 and thats when i stopped right there at my 20. im so thankful to my parents that I never spent more than 5$ on Games . The gaming Addiction is real and i've been through it playing games like Dota for more than 10hrs/day wasting 1000's of hours of life on basically Nothing.The quick rush of dopamine when we win or that fake feeling when we are better than our friends at this game is Worth literally Nothing compared to the Time and attention that we put in it. It cost me around 5 years to realise this and the time that i've burned will never come back. I chose to never play games anymore but that sucks right so i played a few recent hits like among us just for fun a couple of times recently and thats it. The thing is games are fun and we need to keep it at that level and *be wary of what consumes the most amount of time in our game of Life* since it cant be bought back.

always appreciate your content can you do a video about clubhouse i can't wait to know your opinion about it

It was interesting till level 100 and that too when we had a single farm!

That's some creative title.

Clash of Clans and Clash Royale was crazy man.. That's OUR version of Farmville....

Good video

I want to play Farmville now

Whyyy do all of this guys videos feel like they end abruptly with the story incomplete somehow.

Didnt play Farmville, but the hours I invested on Playfish games like Restaurant City or Pet Society were a lot

5:12 I thought I saw Littlewood, this game is a single purchase game.

next time think twice before beating someone mercilessly in a game, he might end up becoming a founder of new Zynga and then we will all suffer the consequences :)

I broke my first phone playing LDOE

My husband still plays FV through zynga.

i remember playing Mafia Wars and Rock Legends, never actually spend any money on them but boy it was the shit back then during middle school days for many of us who never knew league of legends or too poor to afford good online games that need to be downloaded (yeah back then my internet had a set limit of 2 GB per month)

I play FarmVille 2 it’s pretty similar doesn’t have the same magic but it’s a good sequel

Can you do summoners war? Bcs they have a lot of issues and dramas for years, and the recent drama abt new units they have tho

I spent at least $200 on that game then it just became ridiculous trying to keep up

Played frontiersville

I was not aware of the lootboxes until League of Legends, now the evolution are gachapon in games such as Genshin Impact, and the addictive tactics have only worsened.

How you gonna show Littlewood when talking about microtransaction farming games lol

A plague indeed it is.

I never played FarmVille, i was playing CityVille. I was subscribed to a lot of sites that gave offers to have reward (i remember Wookz)

This is why I don't play video games anymore

Let's thank Farmville and CSGO for respectively proving micro transaction and lootboxes work to every other game publisher.

my aunt spend money on this game... i myself play Restaurant city

what about cityville

farmville was great it’s downfall was the massive amount of quests

Ah Farmville, the original gatcha game.

Imagine making a video essay about how Farmville kicked off aggressive monetization in video games, even going as far as dubbing it a "plague", and then ending the video by segueing sneakily into a paid advertisement in a way that makes it sound like part of the discussion. I get the need to do this kind of thing, youtube's creator compensation is inconsistent and pitiful, but its a funny kind of irony.

i can't believe how much stupid people are in the world to throw away money in videogame aesthetics....

You see this is what happens Smurfing created pay to win

I ran out of credit for my phone can you please tell the high tables that I won't be in for work today I'm sick thanks heaps

i saw farm ville is still working. why are you saying its stopped working?

R.I.P. flash

Slide ily

Farmville made me quit Facebook because it was constantly trying to sell me.digital coins for real cash.

Good video, but this is only half the story zynga may have popularized micro transactions in the west but they actually originated in Asian markets like Japan and China, some as far back as 1998

Rest in mud Famville

It’s a steroid version of Tamagotchi.. only that this one, was more addicting than Crystal Meth (for some people)..

Travian Or gacha model from japan

*laughs in Team Fortress 2*

7:42 DOPAMINE, NOT Serotonin!

The original game was stress theraphy and very nice but now farmville game is not exciting...