No More Happy Farmers in Taiwan: Redux

One of Happy Farm's marketing slogans: "Our Game = Five Minutes Joy"

First post on Happy Farmers in Taiwan here.

Some statistics came out in an article from the AFP, reporting the actual number of Happy Farmers who are Taiwanese. Interestingly enough, they report that:

Taiwanese Internet users reportedly constitute about 80 percent of the 3.7 million members of "Happy Farm".

That is simply amazing marketing for whoever headed the Happy Farm division for Asia/Taiwan/the whole world. I'm sure he/she is going to get a nice bonus at the end of this year. I am not surprised that this application-internet-game-type sector is quickly growing, since I've heard from a few of my friends that they have paid upwards of $30 on the game Happy Farm. Officially there is at least one person in Taiwan who has spent at least $80 on this game, and plans to sue Facebook for "deceiving" him to pay money for the game.

Having played a decent assortment of games before, paid and non-paid, it would seem like the profit margins for these types of games should be relatively high. It's quite remarkable for a game like Happy Farm to be able to generate $30-80 from one customer (with the possibility of more over time).

The future for these games and Facebook in Taiwan look bright, despite continued opposition from a few in Taiwan's government:

In related developments, Vice Minister of Education Lin Tsung-ming (林聰明) said the ministry did not recommend that youths play a popular Facebook game called Happy Farm because “stealing” vegetables is unethical.

Wu said the ministry would suggest that the developer of the game modify it by having players “rent” rather than “steal” vegetables from other players.

Since when has doing something "unethical" become such a driving force for voicing public opposition towards that thing? I wonder if there is something more to this story than just simply not wanting workers to waste their time on this at work.

No More Happy Farmers in Taiwan

Screenshot of the homepage of the "Happy Farm" application
on Facebook. "The Happiest Farm on Facebook"

If you're Taiwanese and you're on Facebook, it's likely you either play or have seen "Happy Farm," "Farmville," "Restaurant City," or some other similar variant of these game applications featured on Facebook, especially in your 'news feed'. I guess it finally took a toll on the work efficiency in Taiwan, as the games have now been banned at work (for those that are civil servants).

It's quite a phenomenon, seeing the entire country (pretty much) play that game. It had become so popular in Taiwan, that there are Facebook groups devoted to having "free" friends to add to their Facebook account so that they can obtain more items in the games. Groups such as these, "♥ RESTAURANT CITY ♥ "ADD ME"" and "台灣美版餐廳Restaurant City討論區" are mostly filled with players from Taiwan, and as you see in the second one, a group specific to Taiwan.

In my view, a large percentage of Taiwanese have flocked to Facebook for these specific applications, as they provide a lot more entertainment and things to do (while at work?) than previous social networking sites that Taiwanese were used to before, such as Wretch (無名). Less than a year ago, a lot of my friends in Taiwan (locals) had never heard of Facebook, and now, I think I am connected with 70-80% of those friends that I've met in the past via Facebook. Facebook looks like it has got a solid ground to start from in Taiwan, barring any more punishment from above for using Facebook.