OP/ED: Farmville Ghettos -- The New Reality in Farmville

Of course all this only applies if you happen to be the 1 in 50 gamers who makes use of the premium content. If you are one of the other 49 -- like me -- chances are really good that you only expanded your farm using the free (Coin) options, which means that your Lighthouse Cove farm? That is never getting any larger than it is today. But that does not mean you will not put it to use!

Most of the people I know who play have done the same thing I did -- used Lighthouse Cove to place the new farm animal breeding buildings that there is simply no space available to place on our other farms. The result of this? We have turned the beautiful beachfront property of Lighthouse Cove into a ghetto used for the breeding of farm animals!

You probably placed the 35 farm plots you are allowed to place so that you can begin growing and mastering the special crops available exclusively on the Maine seaside -- and no doubt you have started to master the animals and the unique trees found only there. But if you are like me, you came to do these things slowly.

When Lighthouse Cove first launched this past month and I paid it my first visit, when I realized what it was and what it represented, I admit that I ended up logging off, feeling slightly depressed. You see, up until the launch of the Cove, Farmville was a game that I was almost always happy to log into. I looked forward to my daily farming accomplishments, and crafting, and the possibility that I might unlock a new wine or tree mastery that day.

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ghetto (get-oh)

noun, plural ghet·tos, ghet·toes.

1. (n.) an impoverished, neglected, or otherwise disadvantaged rural area of a farming region, usually troubled by a disproportionately large amount of neglect caused by damage from Nor'Easters;

adjective

2. (adj.) suburban; of or relating to (rural) farming life

3. (adj.) poor; of or relating to the poor life

Origin:

1805-15; < Maine-iac, orig. the name of an island near Lighthouse Cove and Bar Harbor, Maine (pronounced BAH-haa-BAH) where farmers were forced to reside in the 18th century growing Chandler Blueberries; noun derivative of ghettare to throw < Vulgar Latin.

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If Farmville was not the highpoint of my day, playing the day's moves there certainly qualified as part of the good parts of the day, but that is no longer true, and I had difficulty putting my finger on just exactly why that is...

In the end I realized that, like a lot of gamers, I tried to create my virtual farm as a place, not simply stacking up the animals and placing the buildings wherever there was room -- I placed the buildings and animals, trees, and ponds, all of that, with an eye towards beauty and functionality. My farm looked like how I imagined a real farm would look with those resources and buildings.

I spent hours decorating it, went out of my way to complete missions that gave me extra abilities like being able to move items from my Home farm to my English one, gave me special and new animals to master, and allowed me to breed some amazing looking sheep.

There was a social contract -- unwritten it is true -- between Zynga and Facebook and me -- and as long as we all played along by the rules, I got to feel like I was a farmer, and these were my crops, and that star-spangled sheep was one I bred and named, and I knew every one of my neighbors, and life was good. But all that changed when they started rapidly launching expansions to the breeding system. That alone was not enough to sour it for me, but Lighthouse Cove was the final nail in the coffin so to speak. They took the gloves off and pushed the reality of this pay-for-play concept in our faces, and we could no longer ignore it or pretend it was not so, because they pushed it in our faces in a way that has no easy out.

I will not be returning to Lighthouse Cove any time soon, even if that means I will never master those special crops and trees, or have and master those unique animals, because it represents something that is contrary to the spirit of why I play that game. It perverts the whole esprit de corps that was Farmville for me and for my friends -- I am not alone in this, we talked about it and we all agree that boycotting Lighthouse Cove is for the best...

So how was your Farmiville today?