The earliest farm SNG rage occurred in the People’s Republic of China in November 2008 with Happy Farm, which immediately swept the nation. The theme of farming is not created by anyone, but is already there in human societies.” 1 In fact, Happy Farm can serve as a good example for us to take a glimpse into global SNG cultures. You can create stories and make stories enticing, but you cannot create the theme itself. Five Minutes’ CEO Gao Shaofei attributes the success of the farming genre to the universality of farming itself: “In order to achieve a success like Happy Farm, you’ll need a very suitable marketing opportunity and a very good theme. Some farm SNG have an agricultural-industrial theme (eg, growing crops to feed cows to produce milk and cheese for sale) or an agricultural-commercial theme (such as the Qzone-produced trilogy of QQ Farm, QQ Ranch, and QQ Restaurant). In farm SNG, players usually grow crops and plants, raise animals, sell farm products to make money, expand and decorate their farms, and interact with their farm neighbors. Since the first farm SNG hit, Happy Farm (2008), developed by Shanghai-based company Five Minutes, farm SNG have developed into a global cult phenomenon, played by over 100 million people worldwide.įarm simulation dates back to early video games such as Harvest Moon (1996) and simFarm(1993). The explosive growth of SNG accompanied the development of several extremely popular game genres, such as farm simulation. Players extensively add or invite friends from their SNS network into the game play, enabling the game to spread fast and creating active communication (framed in game play) between SNS contacts. Some game tasks cannot be accomplished by the player without interacting with one’s “neighbors” (in-game friends who are from one’s SNS network) and the more “neighbors” one has, the more likely for one’s success in the game.
SNG are often casual, easy-to-pick-up, multiplayer experiences that allow interactions between players even when they are not online at the same time. SNG distinguish themselves from other types of online games in that they are embedded in SNS, where people usually connect to real-life friends and family members with real-life identities. Social network games (SNG or social games), the online games played through social network sites (SNS) or mobile devices, began to grow in 2008, after SNS such as Facebook opened up for developers to make video games in 2007.