Say Goodbye to ‘FarmVille’ on Facebook, If You Haven’t Already
Reflecting on one of the first video games that felt like work
I was scrolling through SUPERJUMP, a Medium publication dedicated to video gaming, when I came across a story by Antony Terence announcing that Zynga was shutting down the original FarmVille game on Facebook at the end of this year.
I love a trip down internet memory lane, especially when it’s a lane I never went down. I remember Zynga’s FarmVille, but I never played. My main memory of the game was getting pinged on Facebook from “friends.”
I asked around the Medium office (and when I say “the office” I mean various Slack channels) to find out whether anyone had any better memories of FarmVille than I did. Maybe I didn’t ask in the right places, but everyone who answered me claimed to have never played FarmVille. I know that Stephanie Georgopulos, editor-in-chief of Human Parts, has a long and complicated history with casual gaming, but she was more into Township and Pixel People than FarmVille. OneZero senior staff writer Will Oremus admitted to playing some late-night Zynga poker back in the day (or maybe, possibly, some recent nights), but most people had the same memories of FarmVille that I did. My producer Rachel pointed me to a few of our co-workers who she was sure had played…
