Carrots And Sticks: Ellie Gibson On Farmville

Considering RPS' wandering remit, I'm surprised that we haven't actually written anything about Farmville. Especially as Jim's good lady is a player. Let's hand over to Eurogamer's Ellie Gibson, whose Farmville diaries sees her grow from someone who really can't see the point to someone who self-describes themselves as a drug-pusher. As she concludes: "Here's the thing: whether they're right or wrong, you can't ignore 85 million people." She has a point. Go read and... well, I'm sure you'll have things to say about Farmville, but try and keep them polite. The 85 million a month is the interesting number, innit? 350 million people log onto Facebook a month, according to Facebook's COO. So just under 1 in 4 people Facebook people actively play Farmville. My gut-level cynicism makes me raises an eyebrow at that. Only on a personal anecdotal level, far, far less than 1-in-4 people are playing Farmville on my friends list. I'd love to see region-by-region breakdown on their numbers.