Farmville (iPhone)

So, it wasn’t working very well last night. I spent hours staring at an unmoving progress bar on the loading screen, which looks generically, rubbishly cute at first, but which becomes creepier and creepier the longer the game takes to load.

Come play with us, Owen, play forever...

And then when I finally did get in, the game kept telling me I was out of sync with the server and reseting everything I’d done.

I saw this screen several hundred times last night. Or maybe about five. One of those.

I did finally manage to fertilise some crops for Peavy, though, so that was good.

I made the crops sparkle! No, idiots, not like vampires. Piss off.

I’m going to get up level seven and buy this damn animal – it’s a matter of pride now – then I’m going to delete the sorry fucking thing and never touch it again.

Possibly.

Depends how my cupcake crops are coming along.

Yes, cupcakes.

GET OUT OF THERE CUPCAKES, YOU’RE NOT EVEN CROPS.

Except, in the creepy world of Farmville, they are. It’s all so wrong. I feel like Pinhead is standing behind me smiling every time I play the bloody thing.

One more crop of strawberries and your soul is mine.

On the other hand, though, it’s just a cute little game where you have a little farm and can decorate with nice things and make it look nice. If you replace stamina and game-time management with real-time management and take away all the interesting interaction with villagers, it’s not really that far removed from Harvest Moon. And you don’t have to spam your friends if you don’t want to. Sure, it asks all the time, but you can keep saying no.

It’s probably not really evil, you know, just deeply fucking cynical. But then, most games are.