My Latest Addiction

FarmVille

I found the above picture at Designlenta.com

That's right I am hopelessly and pathetically addicted to the facebook application / game FarmVille. In fact, I even submitted a definition to urban dictionary for FarmVille Alarm which isn't up yet but should be in the next couple of days. (I will forgive anyone for stopping reading this post here)

The concept of the game is simple enough, and the strategy is not exactly complicated. You play as a farmer who constructs and nurtures his own farm including crops, trees, livestock, buildings, vehicles, and other decorations. There are two different resources that are relevant to daily play, those are experience points and cash (in coins). Your crops, trees and livestock all generate variable amounts of these payouts in a given number of hours. Nothing complicated here. It's this very simplicity, though, which inspired me to pursue one of the most monumental works of worthless nerdery in my recent past, and that is to document the possible payout potentials and opportunity costs so that I could make quality decisions about which strategies to employ.

As I said, the game play is exceedingly simple. This is in large part due to its lack of environmental / independent variables. In fact, they even tell you most of the critical information right up front. For example, if you want to plant strawberries FarmVille tells you that the seeds for one plot cost 10 coins and will sell for 35 coins once harvested in four hours. It will also generate one experience point (XP) upon planting. So anyone can approximate the profit margin on the fly. However, that wouldn't do you a ton of good because you actually want the profit margin per hour (which is still doable). Even then though, that's not going to help you out too much because each plot of land requires that the plot be plowed for a cost of 15 coins also yielding one XP. With this information we know how much profit is earned per hour compared to XP per hour. Unfortunately that doesn't really allow us to cross compare between categories like strawberries versus dairy ranching because it doesn't consider our last scarce resource which is physical space on our farm. These are the kinds of deeper level comparisons I was hoping to explore. That is to say, these are not difficult, but definitely more complicated than I wanted to retain in my short term memory. Thus, I started my FarmVille Spreadsheet.

I will present a select few of my more interesting findings here.

FarmVille Crops

Crop	Profit/Hr	XP/Hour	Profit/Hr/Area/XP
Strawberries	2.5	.500	.078
Wheat	0.9	.042	.019
Pumpkins	2.88	.250	.090
Rice	3.0	.167	.094
Raspberries	5.5	.500	.344
Aloe Vera	3.33	.333	.104
Blueberries	6.5	.500	.203
Grapes	7.08	.125	.148
Tomatoes	7.25	.250	.227
Carrots	6.25	.167	.195
Coffee	6.75	.125	.211

The first table shows the top earners as rated by profit/hr/area/xp. Two things stand out to me when I look through these data. First, I noticed that chronology of unlocking really doesn't have much bearing on crop quality based on this standard. That was very surprising to me as I would normally assume that the most recently unlocked crop is the one I'd like to focus on. Next, I was shocked that raspberries (which generate no XP when planted unlike all other plants) actually dominate this chart based on that unit of measure. Of course, this was nearly impossible for me to glean from the raw data because the hidden XP of plowing plots is very difficult to see until it's laid out in front of you.

A similar problem occurs in decoration costs when trying to decide which decorations will yield maximum XP at a minimum cost. Largely, XP is priced in decorations at 100 coins per XP (at least superficially), however when you consider the hidden costs of sale price and size a slightly different picture emerges. I'll allow you to examine those data at your leisure. However, these findings are less interesting because of two outstanding options. The absolute cheapest XP is that received for plowing plots. At a cost of 15 coins, one could plow his field, delete his plowed plots, and re-plow for maximum XP garnering at minimum cost. (Of course, helping neighbors is cheap and produces a relative ton of XP, but you may only do this occassionally and should be done whenever possible). The second cheapest XPs can be gleaned from uncolored Hay Bales which actually cost only 19 coins per XP. Another advantage of Hay Bales is that they can be purchased repeatedly without returning to the shop which is a nice feature although they must still be sold individually.

I would at this point like to point out a resource to those of us who also suffer from a FarmVille addiction. It is the site, FarmVille Villiage, and they have tons of tips tricks and analysis of the FarmVille game. However, I only found them after my entire spreadsheet was nearly complete, and I decided not to use any of their data. They do some of the same deeper looks at the numbers as I do, but I prefer my strategies and findings.

My last chart I would like to share concerns itself with currency costs of FarmVille decisions. You see, another question I have had throughout is how to compare currency ie. FarmVille Dollars (FV$) which can only be purchased for real money (USD) versus coins. Some items can only be purchased with FV$, so it's hard to compare their costs with other items. So through establishing a conversion rate I was able to translate FV$ into coins or USDs, whichever served my needs at that moment. I used the "Farmer's Best Buy" prices for coins and FV$ in USD to establish the conversion rate. Obviously, if we were not to buy such quantities at a time conversion rates to dollars would weaken causing USD costs to raise. Therefore, if anything I feel that my approximated USD costs are understated if anything.

FarmVille Currency Costs

Item	Cost Coin	Cost FV$	Cost USD
Acai Tree	7,943	27	$4.50
Lime Tree	750	2.55	$0.42
Cow	300	1.02	$0.17
Sheep	700	2.38	$0.40
Hay Bale	100	0.34	$0.06
Hammock	7,354	25	$4.17
Barrel Wagon	4,000	13.60	$2.27
Rest Tent	1000	3.40	$0.56
Red Barn	40,000	135.98	$22.66
Cottage	60,000	203.96	$33.99
Windmill	100,000	339.94	$56.64
Fuel Refill	882	3	$0.50

I think hope that these are a little interesting at least. I particularly like the fact that buying 5 refills of fuel is like buy a real gallon of gasoline that you can put in your car and drive 20 miles (unless you are a green freak then it's much farther, or unless you're a real farmer, and then it's much shorter). In fact, one of my goals, which I might pin down a little more with an actual longitudinal study, is to establish the actual Gross Domestic Product in USD for the entire FarmVille Population. That will be a bit of a chore as most of the community is inactive and I am definitely not a representative sample of the average active user. However, off my cuff I would say that I produce at least 80,000 coins of production per day. Let's call my personal GDP conservatively $45 or $16,425 per year which is ridiculous.

I hope that at least some of you have enjoyed this post, even if for nothing more than laughing at me. I'd like to especially thank Sydney and Erox for sowing the seeds of interest in this game through their early adoption and repeated attempts to evangelize me. Also, Kari for inviting me to play, and to Adam for helping me cruise through the early game with lots of bonuses and free gifts.

Download the Spreadsheet

Suck it Apple

I largely love apple, though own none of their products as I find them generally overpriced. However, my disdain for snooty, white-colored consumerism drives me to point out the following.

“I have worked in the usability field since 1983: my first projects were with text-only UIs on mainframe computers.

I then proceeded to mainly work on graphical user interfaces. For example my students and I did a lot of studies of early Macintosh software which was not always as great as people have idolized it to be.”

- THE Jakob Nielsen, taken from an interview on Webdesigner Depot

PS: This is not it Alex

Where were you?

Too soon? Not for me. However, no one I knew died.

Oops

Oops, I forgot the biggest reason I wanted to post tonight. I wanted to suggest that you all check out the following link: http://abduzeedo.com/30-funny-photomanipulations-animals-humandescent. These are too cool.

I guess these are all by a person who goes by HumanDescent check him out if you like him like I do. Awesome.

Beat Dan to It

I remember a fantastically cool post from Dan Jenkins a while back which featured an amazing graph from The Economist. This graph illustrates the US military expenditures compared to the rest of the world. Check it out in his post entitled “The Long Lost Ally”.

Well, I thought I'd beat him to this one. It's not so earth-shaping and politically charged as his was but more of a "Wow, this is twice as funny because it's on The Economist."

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I have a lot to talk about obviously, since I have been remarkably absent for so many months, but those will have to wait since I am getting tired. For now let me only recommend watching this remarkable interview with Mitch Albom about the film incentives here in Michigan.

Quickie Before Bed

Sticking with the loosely veiled innuendo suggested by the title of this post, I present to you the newest Trojan commercial for their new Ecstasy brand condom. I think it's marvelous.

Also, I have been meaning to share my overwhelmingly positive opinion for the new best value in fast food - the Grilled Chicken Burrito from Taco Bell. For 89¢ this avacado-ranch laden monster is tremendous, and has definitely edged out the 99¢ McChicken for the much sought-after title. As you all no doubt remember, the McChicken stole the title in a not so hotly contested battle when Arby's upped the price of their 5 for $5 roast beef/Arby's melt/etc. deal which had held the title for a while since it was relinquished by the failing Hot N Now who offered a bag of burgers for as much change as you happened to have in your pockets. Really though, you should try it, it's quite good.

Good night.

Movies, Secret Santas, and More

I came home yesterday to quite a surprise. I opened my mailbox to find it absolutely stuffed full of stuff. I was worried because there seemed to be a somewhat large package jammed in there, and I was concerned that the maillady had broken it. My first thought was that I recently subscribed to National Geographic magazine, so I thought maybe my first issue had arrived. When I grabbed it though I knew it wasn't that as it was hard, and well-packed into an envelope. The package was addressed to me from Best Buy. I was getting a little irritated as I walked down the stairs to my apartment door. I had had a rather horrible day and just never really got things going, so I was disappointed that Best Buy had messed up an order I had made to ship my Mother Darius Rucker's amazing album to her house. I didn't really want to deal with getting my money back from them that evening.

However, walking in the door, I was able to tear the package open. Inside I was surprised to find a copy of Quantum of Solace which I had by no means ordered. My absolute initial reaction was confusion, but I was immediately overwhelmed by laughter at the realization that someone had played a delicious trick on me. I'm not going to say who it was, but it could only be one person in the whole world, and I'll give you a hint… he likes Star Wars… and running…

Anyways, he had teased me twice previously about my last blog post where I listed the things that I was grudgingly giving up to save money. Quantum of Solace was among them. A few days after I wrote that he shared with me that he was in fact just sitting down to watch it with Joshe. He also called just the other to jab me about it again. Well, of course, he is the only one that could get enough gratification from the gag of sending me an anonymous treasure to justify the hassle of actually ordering it.

Well I would just like to say, I sure liked it, and I'll tell you what there wasn't a better day for me to get that pick me up either. I really needed it, so thank you anonymous. Mindy and I watched it immediately. It was good, no Casino Royale, but it was fun, and there were definitely some good signs that the series will continue at it's currently high quality. First of all, you can really see great emotional vulnerability smashed so contradictorily with inhuman brutality that made the previous film so wonderful. When Bond, loses his friend Mathis, holding him as he takes his last breaths, and then tosses him in the nearest dumpster directly following his passing. It really gives Bond some character, makes him crunchy and interesting, as opposed to the flat, cliche that he tended to be in the lean years. I think this focus on Bond's development (and some excellent story direction) allows the writers to continue to pursue less far-fetched super-villians who can keep the film feeling more real, and allow us as viewers to not be constantly reminded that we are in a theater watching a ridiculous work of fiction.

After that, Mindy and I watched Seven Pounds. I had not seen any reviews or heard any buzz since it had entered the theaters last year. However, I remember being very interested in the trailer. I think that Will Smith is a fantastically talented actor, and very underrated as a dramatic character. Anyways, I was enthralled from the opening scene. Unfortunately, Mindy and I balled our eyes out, but it was a wonderful movie and carries my full endorsement, easily four or five stars.

In similar news, I have just finished reading Watchmen. It was my first graphic novel, and I must say, I really enjoyed the experience. There are really some interesting mechanics involved in digesting a graphic novel, plus the plot was worthwhile if somehow less than earth-shattering. I was blown away with the unique ability to experience multiple (three in this case at times) distinct stories absolutely simultaneously which is completely impossible in other formats. A book can share multiple plot lines, but you are forced to experience them serially. Movies are more capable in this regard, as we can have one plot occurring graphically with another present in narration, however the dialogue is limited to one track and the graphical presentation may also only be digested one at a time (excluding split screens which don't really tend to work all that well). I was also pleasantly surprised by the prose sections which served as chapter breaks. For example, we find Rorschach's police and psych reports in between some of the chapters, an excerpt from one of the books mentioned in the comic in another, and a scholarly essay written by one of the characters published in a journal. This level of immersion was similar to the experience of reading the many histories of Middle Earth while experiencing the LoTR series.

So I really enjoyed it, and was happy that Joshe let me borrow his copy, after taking me to see the movie last time he was up. I think that my first foray into graphic novels was greatly lubricated by my having seen the movie. I think it definitely takes some different focus to understand what is going on in a comic than do other media. However, as I've said, overall I was very happy with it. The author is obviously psycho, and I kind of hope he is dead because I think there is a good chance that he was on the cusp of becoming a serial-killer. He clearly has some deeply seeded mommy issues which really shine through his work, although they were less prominent in the film adaptation. I have attached a picture as proof. You will have to take my word for it that these are mommy issues, but I think a less than subtle fear of women is clearly evidenced by the super-monster at the end (sketch and final product).

If not for anything else, Dr. Manhattan's chapter about time, and the way that it capitalizes on the strengths of the graphic novel experience is jaw-dropping and worth seeking out.

I'd lastly like to highlight two photoshops from Erox that are really really awesome.