Social gold: the design of Farmville and other social games(slideshare.net)
slideshare.net
Social gold: the design of Farmville and other social games
http://www.slideshare.net/amittmahajan/social-gold-the-design-of-farmville-and-other-social-games-web2expo-2010
If the Zynga games were stand-alone, their reach would be a tiny fraction of what they are. And it's not something that is tacked on as an afterthought - it's right there in the mechanic from the start.
Last year game designer Brian Meidell wrote an article about Farmville that covers similar ground, from a different perspective: http://meidell.dk/archives/2010/11/25/what-i-learned-from-fa...