Farmville started off as a game that was quickly enticing to me - “I like food! I would like to design my own farm! Ooh, I want to build such a cool looking farm! And grow soybeans and chili and and and…” I pictured a story in my head, and that was my motivation through the slow grind of plow, plant, pick, plow, plant, pick.

But it quickly became apparent that creativity and individualism are not to be rewarded in Farmville. Soon enough, I devolved into planting strawberries or raspberries during the day, and pumpkins at night before bed. I sold all my decorations, trees, animals, etc — inefficiencies impeding progress. In optimizing my play, I had abandoned what motivated me to play the game in the first place.

Of course, my feeling of “fun” was also lost. Was it because I was just grinding versus building a creative farm? Or, as the Kosterian theory of fun goes, had my brain “figured out” Farmville and thus no longer found it interesting/stimulating/”fun”?

Farmville fails for me because the optimal strategy does not appear to change as you grind. I’m still planting low-level seeds because they simply provide more xp/$ per hour than anything else. Decorations, animals, and so on seem to provide no benefit. No thought or decisions have to go into their use. No drops, no loot, no special items. Grind grind and more grind in the same way I was 10 levels ago.