Running a farm - online

Feb 18, 2010, 13:14 GMT

Hamburg - It sounds harmless and quite idyllic: in the online game Farmville players plant strawberries and trees, milk cows and build farm buildings. Farmville is open to members of the social network Facebook and has developed in record time into a mass phenomenon.

Just under 75 million virtual farmers from all over the world make up Farmville's membership and that figure is rising. However, not everything is rosy in the world of Farmville and German data protectionists are warning against attempts by the game's owners to gather information on players. Some of Farmville's players have also reported unauthorised withdrawals from their bank accounts.

The American internet firm Zynga is behind Farmville and says it was amazed at the speed the game took off. It first went online in June 2009 and was expected to have five million users by year's end, according to company founder Marc Pincus in an interview.

Social network-based games such as Farmville are experiencing a boom at the moment. Zynga also offers a game called Fishville that allows you to build your own aquarium, Petville for pet lovers, Cafe World where you can practice your hosting skills and Mafia Wars where you can enter the crime underworld.

Zynga's competitor Playfish offers a similar palette of games such as Gangster City, Pet Society and Country Story. Last November computer game developer Electronic Arts (EA) took over Playfish, forking out 275 million dollars for the takeover plus an additional 25 million for other assets. EA has also committed to paying another 100 million if certain conditions are met by Playfish.

The virtual world of online gaming is a source of money in the real world. In Farmville, for example, players can earn experience points and online money for free through diligence that allows them to buy seeds and farm animals. To do that the farmer must regularly check his fields or else crops will die. But popular and sought-after game elements such as barns and houses can be gotten faster if you lodge real money into a Farmville account by credit card or using PayPal.

Although most players only pay small sums, it all tots up to a tidy sum for Zynga. According to its own figures Zynga has managed to attract over 230 million players. The New York Times estimates that translates into annual earnings of about 250 million dollars.

Russian internet investment group Digital Sky Technologies (DST) has interests in Facebook and recently bought 180 million dollars worth of Zynga. Malicious tongues said DST made the move as it was attracted to Zynga's Mafia Wars game.

The total market for virtual games is estimated to be a billion dollars in the US alone. Some experts say it could be as much as five billion by 2013 while right now in Asia the market is already about that figure.

Critics have raised concerns that not everything is conducted in an orderly fashion in the world of online gaming. There have been suggestions that Zynga's partners have engaged in dubious business practices. They offered Farmville users money in exchange for purchases of software and mobile phone ringtones.

One of Zynga's critics is the information technology blog TechCrunch. The blog's founder Michael Arrington thought Farmville's money-for-software deal was a subscription trap and created the term 'ScamVille' to describe it. Zynga called a halt to the practice but in the meantime a class action suit is working its way through the American courts.

Another aspect of concern is data protection. If you join Farmville you automatically allow Zynga access to your profile, photos and information about friends. 'The privacy policy is very unclear and Zynga reserves the right to gain access to just about everything,' says Henry Krasemann from an independent data protection body in Germany, the Landeszentrum fuer Datenschutz Schleswig- Holstein.

Zynga creates profiles on its users that is made up of information from several sources such as 'newspapers and internet sources such as blogs, instant message services, Zynga games and other users of Zynga,' as the company's webpage explains.

Together with information provided by the user's browser as to what sites he or she has visited, Zynga uses that data to create targeted advertisements. According to German law that is a grey area, possibly even improper, according to Krasemann. Zynga's policy of storing data on users permanently is also a cause of concern for German data protectionists.

Anna Tschochner, a 25-year-old from Munich, was a busy and hardworking farmer in the beginning. Many of her Facebook friends joined Farmville, thanks in part to her Facebook page which was littered with status and activity updates from Zynga, and Tschochner thought it was a pleasant way of passing the time.

Then Zynga withdrew money from her PayPal account on three occasions although she never gave the company permission to do so. Tschochner has now warned her Facebook friends. She received her money back but her enthusiasm for Farmville has withered on the vine.