Farmville took only 5 weeks to develop: every day 31 MILLION people play it
Launched in June 2009, FarmVille is undisputedly Facebook’s most popular game application, with more than 61 million active users and more than 24 million Facebook fans as of June 2010. That means 10% of the total number of Facebook users are Farmville users.
But how did such a wildly successful project get done in just a little over a month? Yes, that includes all design and development.
Lead developer Amitt Mahjan was quoted to have said in March 2010:
- Designers and developers need to start working side by side as early as possible. As quickly as designers come up with a feature, developers get started discussing how to code it. Advantage: those inevitable small design changes to the design that need to be agreed upon in order to make it easier to code are dealt with earliest. Example: Camera-sharp
- Don’t be afraid to use free, off the shelf compos, while acknowledging the possible risk of losing total control over the design. Always keep in mind that development needs to “glue” components together and presents an interface to the user.
- Sleep! Take a break! Hmm… I picture many Farmvillers crashing in their office after pulling an allnighter, with those in the next shift busy toting around cameras…
Certainly the Farmville team is kept on their toes by their army of permnent beta testers i.e. users, with it being released on more platforms. Who knows, it might even be embedded in game-centric digital cameras of the future, so if you’re reading digital camera reviews, a nascent feature could be integration with Farmville.
