Farmville in the year 2010! Oil for everyone!

Now that my real anthropology essays are finished, I have time to post again on this blog. Not sure how “anthropological” my points will be today, but that’s okay

It’s 2010 now, and there are some big changes in Farmville. One of the most notable changes, for me anyway, is the fact that suddenly I have a s%$^load of gasoline! I’ve been playing this game for a while now, and I had already bought a seeder, tractor and harvester machines, but with the size of my farm, I didn’t used to be able to use them all at once, since I would run out of gas. But luckily for me, Santa saved the day! Thanks to all the presents I opened, I now have tons of gasoline at my disposal….I probably won’t run out for months. And now, you can give gasoline as a gift too! So I am still receiving almost as much as I’m using, and I still have dozens of tanks to spare.

From a money-making perspective, Zynga was quite smart to do this, since it *was* starting to get annoying doing all that planting one square at a time. So this makes players happy, which keeps them coming back….which makes advertisers happy, etc. etc. Everyone wins, and it was gasoline that saved the day!

Once again, Farmville is ignoring some kinda big issues. For example, where does this gasoline come from? Why don’t prices for it fluctuate? Why shouldn’t there be a bit more of a struggle for Farmville players? It’s easy now to basically ignore all the important factors in farming:

(weather = snow on banana trees looks pretty in Farmville, but as can be seen, it’s not really so wonderful – especially for certain tropical animals: http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/news/2010/01/100111_frozen_iguanas.shtml)

(environment = what kind of fertilizers ARE these anyway? Are they organic? why are we so eager to spray our crops, especially fruits and vegetables that are fully ripe!)

(animal care = why don’t the animals have to eat? why don’t they ever die? are these REAL animals, or are they stuffed?)

(UFO sightings? = do I really want an alien cow in my barn?)

Luckily, despite the ways that Farmville bends the rules (and reality) to meet its needs, some farmers are taking the game quite seriously. I got this IM from Paul the other day:

5:53 PM hey look at my farm I have a pine forest and a meadow, and I have intercropped coffee with corn for the prevenetion of soil exhaustion as well as food security

5:54 PM dont want to rely too much on export crops

Sure enough, I checked out his farm, and the pine forest is doing quite nicely. Here’s a picture:

And good thing I can rely on Paul if I need a sustainable food supply. Although hopefully I will have plenty of food with my plan too, which mostly involves bananas:

Pretty soon I’ll have a banana empire!

Anyway, that’s all for now, more coming soon! Leave some comments of things you’d like me to talk about, especially if you think I might be able to relate them to anthropology a bit more!

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Tags: anthropology of food, Christmas in Farmville, Facebook, farms, Farmville, gasoline, oil, strategies, utopia