FarmVille: anything but worth your virtual currency

Virtual Goods
Since my last blog post explaining virtual goods and my prior judgments on them, I held a trial run to experience them for myself. I chose to redeem my Zynga game card with FarmVille because it seems to be the most popular online game among my Facebook friends. After my trial run, I am now confident about all of my prior judgments on virtual currency and online gaming. I now associate the words confusing, slow, commercial, wasteful and frustrating with FarmVille.

Judging virtual goods by their cover

Virtual Goods

What are they? Why would you want a “virtual” good? Wouldn’t you want a tangible good? These were the questions popping up in my head as my social media professor announced we’d have to write a blog post about virtual goods.

Definition

Virtual goods enhance consumers’ online gaming experience. For example: Virtual goods may be used to purchase a tractor on FarmVille. Zynga, a leading social network game development company, owns many popular online games like FarmVille and CityVille. All Zynga games must be played through a social networking service (SNS) like Facebook. Redeemed for gaming currency on an SNS, gift cards may be purchased in various stores including Walmart. In addition to gift cards, Facebook and some of its games accept direct payments online.