FarmVille is the most #1 fan-ned game application inside the Facebook social network. The growth of it is stunning as are the amount of players. on 11/08 it had 7 million visitors a day, on 18/08 it had 9 million visitors a day and on 24/08 it had 10 million visitors a day. More than 1 million Facebook users are being a member of the fan community around the game and

In this game, players build a farm, grow crops and build all kinds of nice buildings. One of the aspects is "experience levels". For a lot of activities players gain experience. On each experience level new game objects are available e.g. a new building a user can place on their farm. Level 37 is the ultimate game content level since on that level all content is available. Level 70 is the highest level known to be reached.

Since + 10 million players a day are spending some (or a lot) of their free time building their farms and leveling up (for months), some more serious than others, I wondered how far someone would get by just spending money on it. ( let's say a Bill Gates kind of person). Of course it would rather be pointless to achieve level 70 like this, then again, it gives a feeling on how relative it is.

I found out that a rich guy could actually get to level 70 in 1.6 days using $2480 and up to level 37 using $600. In the steps below I use the € sign for the in-game money and the $ sign for real money.

1. start a new game
2. spend $2480 in the game shop to buy € 4.370.000 (game money)
3. plow 1 land, plant a a soya and delete the land (you gain 3 XP and it costs you € 30)
4. repeat step 2 145667 times (approx. 1.6 day fulltime)
5. you now have 437.000 XP points which is the required amount to be on level 70 with an empty farm

For level 37: (the one which is the actual end, all game content unlocked, you can now grow asparagus…), you only need $600 and 10 hours.

So… playing this game out of competition is pointless, since a player will spend months trying to achieve level 37 or even level 70 while in that same amount of time he would have been able to earn a lot more than those $600 (niet lullen maar poetsen).

conclusion: playing the game with the enjoyment of having a nice farm is better than a quick road to level 70 :) If you however want to enjoy a 1.000.000 villa and immediate access to all game content to create the perfect Farm at once without spending months of work, you need to spend $600. This will still leave some challenges because the game also uses the concept of "achievements" which they name "medals". I will post about these another time.

• For some interesting links to FarmVille and some overview tables of the game content see http://fv.leau.net/
• The actual within-Facebook game can be found here: http://apps.facebook.com/onthefarm/index.php
• And if you want to become my "farmVille neighbor" click here to add me as a friend and then add me as neighbor … I will send you a nice goat in return :)