At the time of its prime, millions upon millions flock the farming game developed by Zynga, FarmVille. In the game, players actively perform tasks relevant to growing their own farms, alongside other farms owned and managed by other real-world players.

Social games where new at the time, and seemingly gained popularity just as fast as how the social network site Facebook have grown. These ported games have social features in them - not only that you get to socialize as you play, achievements in the game are instantly posted and bragged over your personal page. A nifty feature that seemed to have you “connected” with your friends the whole time. Among their line-up is the humble farming game, FarmVille.

As the game pioneered the standards of a social network virtual farming game, its popularity exploded online with millions of interested participants to play the game. With this staggering numbers of online traffic, gave way to the development of more social games, any even further - re-skinned versions of them to follow the hype. To date, countless farming games have been published, with some of the prior ones still active for us to enjoy in Facebook.

In the virtual game, players are given the opportunity to create/personalize their own avatar in the game. In the game there are 6 plots of land, 4 of which are designated for growing crops, and 2 with passively grown plants. Like in real life farming, the market is at its epicenter – honing items to be purchased like seeds, trees, livestock, facilities, decors, and a whole lot more using earned in-game credits.

As with any farm game of today’s standards, time management is the key to progress in the game. It has very well pioneered the standards (of time) needed to grow specific crops, or perform a build in the farm. Features like planting various kinds of crops, turn harvested crops into products to sell for money, buy livestock and raise them, decorate your land with fancy stuff and building structures to enhance your capacity or farming efficiency - all raised the standards of today’s list of farm games in general.

Browser games were also new at the time, which lead to having them gaining even more popularity to casual gamers. The ease of access to these games invited a whole new league of interested players to try this “instant” entertainment for free. Additionally, you may refer the game to your network of friends and earn not only bonuses in the game, but new neighbor farms in the game as well.

Perhaps one of the key contributions of FarmVille to the lot of farming games that followed it is its social integration. Pretty much every single farming game today endows the similar capability to visit the farms (of other players) within their network of friends. Help actions include various activities to provide assistance like harvesting crops for them, or chores like watering, and cleaning out stuff therein.

Overall, FarmVille’s success fueled the lot of other farming games to date. Some of which have innovated the activities held therein, some polished their assets for a plus, and others that merely enhanced their details, content, and social features. Nonetheless, they are all thanks to the standards set by pioneers of the genre, and are quite becoming more fun and more enjoyable every single time.