Virtual and Reality

It is 2012 and we are living in a time where virtual games are more popular than ever and our food production is taking a turn for the emphasis on sustainability. You may ask yourself what do video games and food production possibly have to do with one another? This paper is going to address, compare and contrast current day food production as exemplified in Farm Together Now with FarmVille, a “real- time farm simulation game”.

FarmVille

Zynga launched FarmVille in 2009 as an application available to play through Facebook. The objective is to create your own avatar, gain neighbors (AKA “friends” on Facebook), and plant, grow and harvest virtual crops, trees and livestock. Having friends or neighbors in your network is how you can easily increase your money earned (Farm Coins), experience and gifts. Being a beginner in FarmVille, you are quick to learn that with every move you make you are able to quickly improve as a “farmer”. You get consistent acknowledgements of your rising level of expertise, and are able to share with your friends (via Facebook) of your success.
I want to focus on the perspective of Zynga for a moment. Zynga is the biggest developer of games played on Facebook. In December of 2011 they began to sell shares in their stock publicly. Their goal is to make a profit off of individual use of their games. The games created by Zynga completely rely on social media (Facebook) and the interaction that occurs on that social media platform. Because of their reliance on Facebook, the company itself seems like a fickle operation and buying stock in them seems even more unsteady. According to a video on ABC News, anything a FarmVille player buys Facebook gets 30% and 70% goes to Zynga. You must log into Facebook before you can even begin playing FarmVille. By doing this Zynga is appealing to a much larger audience than just “video gamers”.
I personally think that games like this are trendy and they become popular because of the amount of people that play the games. As Mark Newheiser said in his article FarmVille, Social Gaming, and Addiction, “people are playing FarmVille because people are playing FarmVille”. Because a game is popular through Facebook, the largest social media site in the world, they break down the walls that “FarmVille is a video game”. I think most people don’t view FarmVille as a video game because you can log onto Facebook, which you will be doing anywise, and you can play FarmVille for just five or ten minutes at a time. A quick few moves leave the player feeling like they have accomplished something. FarmVille quickly became the new Solitaire, Minesweeper or even Sudoku. FarmVille is enticing to a player because you gradually earn experience and the more FarmVille “friends” you have the larger you can expand your farm. In turn, earning more points every day from the amount of space you are taking care of.
You don’t have to pay for FarmVille to start playing it and you don’t have to pay monthly. FarmVille’s business schematic is different; it sucks you in and temps you to pay real money for in-game perks later on in the game. By paying real money you can buy crops and things that would otherwise take time to earn the amount of Farm Cash to purchase them. You essentially have the option to pay real dollars to substitute for in-game time. “The limiting resources of FarmVille are money and space, both of which can be purchased if you're willing to donate to the developer.”
Every time you do basically anything in FarmVille an icon pops up asking you if you would like to share whatever it is you just did. This is the most effective way for them to advertise for the game. You can post your accomplishments on your Facebook wall and you can invite friends to come enjoy playing FarmVille with you. You get small rewards for even clicking on a post a friend has about FarmVille. There is a cycle within FarmVille that is all about sharing your accomplishments and receiving rewards for viewing other peoples’ accomplishments.
The motto of FarmVille is “everything grows your way”. The game appears to be successful because it never really leaves the player satisfied with an ending point. Unlike real world farming, the harvesting of crops doesn’t seem like enough in the virtual game. You are enticed to continue to plant more, buy more and grow more. FarmVille is set up to draw you back to the game at certain times throughout the day to take care of your crops. Mark Newheiser points our that “you plant crops and harvest them on a real-world schedule, crops come due in hours or days and you have a limited amount of time to harvest them before they rot.” FarmVille succeeds in “addicting” the player because the game sets up the player to form commitments. It is important to take note that when you plant a crop you are making a commitment to come back and harvest that crop, or else you lose your investment. The player does have control over the time window in which they want to come back to the game to harvest their planted crops. This time window to harvest your crops before they rot can range anywhere between two hours to four days. “FarmVille fulfills the classic elements of addictive behavior: it rewards you for playing it by letting you have the sense of advancing in the game, particularly early on, it punishes you for going too long without playing, and it rewards you for coming back at predictable habit-forming intervals.” (Newheiser)
It is interesting to think about FarmVille in comparison with Roger Caillois book excerpt we read in class and I actually came across an essay that relates the two. Caillois speaks about games as a break from responsibility and routine. FarmVille’s entire premise is based upon responsibility and routine. But it is also a game. In FarmVille the harvesting of your crops must happen within a certain time period or they will wither and die. The game does rely on real time.
       In Mark Newheiser’s article about social gaming and addiction he compares his observations with the criteria that Roger Caillois exemplifies to define a game in his book “Man, Play and Games”. Newheiser points out that “Farmville fails to satisfy each and every one. Caillois stated that games must be free from obligation, separate from ‘real life,’ uncertain in outcome, an unproductive activity, governed by rules, and make-believe.
In comparison:
(1) Farmville is defined by obligation, routine, and responsibility;
(2) Farmville encroaches and depends upon real life, and is never entirely separate from it;
(3) Farmville is always certain in outcome, and involves neither chance nor skill;
(4) Farmville is a productive activity, in that it adds to the social capital upon which Facebook and Zynga depend for their wealth;
(5) Farmville is governed not by rules, but by habits, and simple cause-and-effect;
(6) Farmville is not make-believe, in that it requires neither immersion nor suspension of disbelief.”
In response to his points, you most certainly can plan out the planting of your crops. You can arrange them to where they will all be ready to harvest at the same time, you can “get smart” about it so your life isn’t revolving around the game. You can choose when to plant and take a break from planting and harvesting without being punished. You can play FarmVille and not ever pay a penny; by paying for things simply makes tasks of farming quicker and easier on you, the farmer.
If you have your own farm and spend time on your crops and animals then it becomes meaningful to you, it is a project and when something comes out of it (a harvest) you take pride in what is created, even if it is virtual. When you earn profit or rewards in FarmVille you can spend the profits on decorations, animals, buildings and even larger plots of land. It is interesting that aside from buying plants you spend your Farm Cash on items to aesthetically make your farm look better. Those items don’t help out your farm in any way they just make it prettier. You have the ability to customize your farm the way you want it and compare your farm with your friends. “Building a farm is the ultimate end-goal, and all the money you acquire is spent on decorations or the ability to arrange your farm for purely aesthetic purposes”(Newheiser). The player keeps coming back for more because your farm could always be better.  In a game when the player has the option to customize their playing field this could only make it that much more addicting. The player has then put time into designing and arranging their space the way they want it.
An interesting aspect of FarmVille is that the more you play the more rewards you earn that allow you to play FarmVille less or quicker. You can trade coins for experience and gain harvesting machines to manage multiple crops, and barns to manage multiple animals. You are kept intrigued because there are new items available for purchase constantly. “FarmVille virally spreads itself throughout your social network as innocently as it can, and subtly convinces players that it's more worthwhile to pay actual money than spend all their time farming to get ahead, and tempts them with decorations you can't achieve any other way”(Newheiser). A player can completely sidestep the harvesting process by spending real money to purchase in-game items. This brings up an extremely important point, as Liszkieqicz put it “Even people who play FarmVille want to avoid playing FarmVille”. Some people just want the final product; they want the earnings even if they haven’t technically “earned” them.

Farm Together Now

In the book Farm Together Now a group of people travel around to about 20 different farms in the United States. These farms all have different initiatives or reason for their way of farming, but they all are breaking ground in this day and time. The people addressed in the book are combating the problems of their area in different and unique ways, from farmers engaged in sustainable food production to activists addressing public policy to educators and community organizing efforts. They span a wide list of agendas some for profit and some not, but all with the goal to improve farming practices whether that is large or small scale. Some classify their practice under “food justice”, ”sustainable agriculture”, and “local-foods movement”- Sharing “their philosophies through education and demonstration. For some through direct action or policy battles, and for others, their physical work and very local distribution is quite enough.”(Farm Together Now, 11)
“Producing real ingredients takes a special kind of farming, and the farming that dominated the landscape by the 1960s-- and which has for the most part grown worse with each passing decade-- has raped the land, tortured animals, exploited workers, and disregarded the needs of consumers, all while producing inferior food.” (Mark Bittman, Farm Together Now) New farmers have recognized that these old practices simply cannot be the way of our lifestyle anymore. People have taken initiative to start their own farms, to benefit themselves, their families and their communities. These pioneers are the hope for our food future. They are part of a food movement that is occurring, where self-sufficient communities are encouraged, acknowledged and praised for their work. The people are the push from corporate, industrialized farming to sustainable food production. The goals of focus expressed in Farm Together Now are clear, “we need to grow a strong local food system to lessen our reliance on fossil fuels for production, processing, and transport. We need to alter our reliance on water for production, processing and transport. “(Farm Together Now, 182)
Health and nutrition are slowly becoming more of an interest and care for many people these days. The greatest single thing that all people have in common is food. Food can and does directly affect a person’s body, health and general well being.  It is not secret that the mass production of crops and animals puts a toll on human health. We eat these foods that have been enhanced with growth hormones and sprayed with pesticides and those unnatural additives can add to changes in our bodies. They can be the sole reason for the cause of sickness, disease and even cancer in some cases. Chemicals are not the only way.
In Farm Together Now the people highlighted are doing something for a good cause, producing quality foods, feeding their communities, raising their own incomes and creating a social impact. Farmers are becoming more dedicated to producing quality crops and meats that are naturally healthy and naturally grown. This takes more time and attention than the otherwise mass-produced foods. The farms that are explored in this book are “cultivating fish, livestock, dairy, hay, vegetables, bees, seeds, and medicinal herbs”. This is bigger than just the food we eat; this is a push in social and environmental justice and political change. (Martha Bayne)

The Farms

       Among the many different reasons these very different farms are together in this little book, I want to focus on some specific farms and the practices they put forth. “Alongside the explosion of interest in organic food, the tradition of buying food from local and regional farms, and eating within the season that they are grown, has reemerged in the debates about where our food comes from and who produces it.” (Farm Together Now, 13)
       First is the Knopik Family Farm. The Knopik Family Farm sits in rural Nebraska, the third generation owner protested a big factory farm that was set to move into the area with mass production capabilities. This big time factory farm would have disrupted the local economy, and practiced environmentally toxic approaches to food production. He reformed his own farm at this time and now lives practicing sustainable, fair ways of raising animals. The animals are raised on true farms, not in buildings; they are never given any artificial growth stimulants or antibiotics. They care for the animals as if they were their own children, practicing a healthy and happy way of life from birth to death. Jim Knopik’s philosophy is shared in his community by so many farmers and consumers alike that he started the Nebraska Food Cooperative, “which helps sustainable producers directly market their food online.” (Farm Together Now, 13)
Years ago using chemicals in farming was just what was popular, people didn’t know it was bad for them. They saw fewer weeds, higher production value, and better looking crops. The Knopik Family Farm was a part of this movement in the 1960’s. With production of animals there was a wave of raising them in confinement operations, where you could raise more at a time in a smaller amount of space. But, as Jim Knopik found out on his own, this led to animals being sick more often, he would have to constantly vaccinate the animals to just keep them healthy.
It wasn’t until a big hog company tried to move into the Nebraska area near the Knopik’s farm that they realized the way they wanted their own products to be raised. This big hog company wanted to raise half a million hogs in a tiny area that would only leave a mess of an environmental impact in their community. The community and a couple of the local farmers got together to stand up to this company, shooing them from their area. This was when Jim Knopik and all the other farmers involved in his area decided they had to be different than these large, careless, mass producing corporations. About four or five farms got together and now make up North Star Neighbors, a group of farmers that don’t feed their animals antibiotics or GMO’s (Genetically Modified Organisms). They set standards to be different than the big industry and to care about what both they and their consumers would be consuming.
These farms then formed what they call the Nebraska Food Cooperative, where the farms work together bringing all of their products to one co-op where they have set up a simple distribution system (both for producers and consumers).
The second farm from the book I want to highlight is Angelic Organics Learning Center; they are a nonprofit education and outreach partner of Angelic Organics Farm. Angelic Organics Farm is “one of the largest community supported agriculture (CSA) farms in the country.” They practice a different approach to bring farm fresh food to those who live in the city. Their goal is to “see expansion in urban areas, working with more youth and more adults, broadening the work [they] are doing with those communities.” (Farm Together Now, 68) People from Chicago and the surrounding suburbs can buy “shares” in the farm, and then they get a box of food produced from the farm once a week. (Farm Together Now, 63)
The Learning Center has three main initiatives. “The Urban Initiative” provides support and leadership to interested everyday citizens. This is open to those who are trying to improve their local food systems and interested in learning more. “The Farmer Trading Initiative” offers training to new farmers. The training is done on their own farm. Last, “The On-Farm Initiative” which offers food production workshops to educational programs.
The farm and the Learning Center are open to people of all backgrounds. They take pride in their diversity of class, gender, age, economic levels and cultural backgrounds. They talk about people of all types finding commonality by working together. Everyone has to eat after all. The people behind the farm realize that they are mainly training people to become entrepreneurs. I find this extremely important because they are essentially working to get people “in the door” teach them the beginner basics and set them free to carry their knowledge onward.
I think it is important to touch on what the people who run the farm express as the main obstacles for starting a small, sustainable farm. First is land access, their farm location is surrounded by urban cities, so they have a concern of where to gain land to farm on. This is a big issue for people that live in the city but want to practice growing food locally. More people live in cities per capita, therefore with this new food movement, more people in cities would have a desire for locally grown food. This most certainly is not something you would run into as an obstacle in FarmVille. The land is endless in the virtual game; it is up to you how much you want to expand and how much land you want to take care of.
The second obstacle is financing a farm. Some people may have resources but some may just want to provide for themselves and their community, thinking this would be the cheapest way to have food, by growing it themselves. This Learning Center helps motivate people to get creative about ways to finance a farm, if that is their goal.
Third, is market development. There is an economic stability that a farm must find between selling at farmers’ markets, CSA’s (Community Supported Agriculture) or selling to restaurants. It is necessary for the Learning Center to cover all the topics they can and providing first hand experience on how to work the market is essential knowledge.
Last is lack of access to training and education. This is where the Learning Center really tries to help offer the resources they can. They help educate of the business planning and numbers side of farming. They most certainly are not afraid to tell their volunteers and farmers in training that this is hard work. If you don’t farm properly you could lose everything you put into it.
        The last farm I want to focus on from Farm Together Now is the Sandhill Community Farm. There is a difference between an urban community farm and a commune farm and this is the latter of the two. A small group of people live on this farm and “grow food for their own consumption, as well as for sale in markets an as processed “value added” products such as jams, salsas, and their own line of sorghum goods.”(Farm Together Now, 38) This is a rural area nestled in a deciduous forest in Missouri. They grow 80 percent of their own food, heavily practicing a sustainable living lifestyle. “There is a strong sense of community- quality of life and pride.” This farm is a commune; some hold jobs outside of the farm but jobs that they enjoy doing. The money made from those who hold jobs go to keeping the farm going, money is shared. They aren’t afraid to say that they are “kind of Marxist” (Farm Together Now, 39). There is a common pool between the residents; everyone does something to contribute to the better being of their tight knit community.
The authors of Farm Together Now ask what bodies of ecology and food production through the Sandhill Community Farm subscribe to and I found their response extremely interesting. They responded saying they don’t have a specific methodology, they are simply growing soil. “We are trying to increase fertility and productivity in all our soils, in the gardens, in the fields. We bring in insects, create microclimates that are favorable, maintain the natural habitats. Organic, biodynamic, permaculture, holistic field-management practices- all of that fits in.” (Farm Together Now, 39) Farming starts with the soil, and it is essential to have healthy soil to produce productive crops. Highlighting a group that focuses on the root of growing is a smart start. The Sandhill Community Farm tries to use the resources they have and not rely on outside resources. This farm is the most sustainable farm highlighted in the book.

Topics of Discussion

Farming and FarmVille are both games. As we had discussed in one of our first classes, games exist in real time and virtual space. Life is a game. Putting forth effort towards something in hopes to achieve an outcome, like farming, is a game. Although these both constitute the definition of a game, the difference in FarmVille and farming today as talked about in Farm Together Now is the sole point of reality vs virtual reality. In the analization to follow I will compare, contrast and further discuss specific points of both these “games” in terms of real vs virtual.

Labor

Your farm in FarmVille is made up of squares, the visual layout seems like a grandbaby of The Sims. You click on a square to plow the land, click again to plant seeds and later, after the crop grow (determined by the amount of time it tells you it needs) you click again to harvest that crop…then start all over. The work is done by a click of the player’s mouse.
Actual farming involves physical labor; mechanization made the physical aspects of farming much easier but also made farming extremely unsustainable. The farmers explored in the book Farm Together Now are attempting to marry in the best way possible the ease technology brings to farming with contemporary practices to “produce good food while treating the environment, animals, workers and consumers with respect.”(Farm Together Now, 9)
In both the virtual and reality of farming you are working towards something. But the physical aspect of labor just doesn’t compare. The ease of farming in FarmVille presents itself that farming is such an easy task, whereas anyone who has every tried to grow anything knows that just isn’t true.

Community

In FarmVille you actually help others and work together. There is a role in community addressed. You are encouraged to have neighbors, work together and in turn gain more points and rewards, but it is not a requirement. Different from many games today, FarmVille is a collaborative game not about killing. You don’t really win or lose but you can have crops that harvest properly or wither away (which you have complete control over).
There is a cycle within FarmVille to encourage more people to play. Someone asks you to play because they want more neighbors, then you play and you want more neighbors so you ask friends and family to play, they want more neighbors so they ask their friends to join and so on. When you log onto Facebook and you are a player of FarmVille you are reminded instantly to take care of your crops or view your gifts, tying you instantly back into the game. Even if you have forgotten about FarmVille, Facebook will remind you, remember that they are making a profit too.
Many of the farms in the book Farm Together Now largely focus on the aspect of community as well. People must eat, so people are growing their own food to eat and by joining with other people in the community you can produce more, form friendships and a network. Like FarmVille the more people that are encouraged to farm the more they will reach out to other people to join the loop.

Markets

Mark Bittman addresses his belief in the forward of Farm Together Now that over time more and more of us average Americans will become farmers. “There’ll be fewer industrial jobs; we see this already. Food will inevitable rise in price, not only because it’s more expensive to produce good food than mass-produced foodstuff, but also because resources are going to become scarcer and this, combined with declining land costs, will make it more attractive for young people to stay on family farms or start their own.” An important point he makes is that even those who remain non-farmers will slowly over time “be dealing more directly with the people who grow or raise our food.”
There is the mass produced food market where you can buy absolutely anything and everything you need from grocery stores. Then, as this book is focusing on, there are local markets. Farmers growing crops that are in their current season, selling these at local farmers markets. Farmers are joining with each other, forming co-ops and trading.
FarmVille has an extremely skewed view of a marketplace. In FarmVille it is assumed that there is always a buyer and any crop can be sold at any time. The instant you harvest your crop is the instant you make money. You can then take that money to the “Market” and purchase anything, there are no limitations except for the amount of  Farm Cash you have.

Rewards

In farming the rewards are a successful crop, a successful harvest and then being able to sell those in a market/co-op/ or trading situation. Supply and demand exists and that is what runs businesses in this day and time. If a farm is raising crops and animals for a large supply then demand comes into play and the farmer will focus on what the buyer wants, and how they can make their money and a profit to keep producing. Having a sustainable, clean, healthy farm that works is a reward in itself and many people in this book make sure that that is known to the viewer.
FarmVille is based around a point system. You earn points by harvesting your crops and tending to your animals. Boths farms are a cycle but the cycle of FarmVille is a tight and narrow one. You grow crops, harvest, make “money”, buy more crops, harvest, make “money” etc. You can even spend real money on these fake crops.

Time

Farming in real life and farming virtually in FarmVille do both have time in common. Crops take time to grow. A long time!  A farmer has to put a lot of care into his/her crops for them to grow and be successful. People often compare farming to having children. It takes love and dedication if you care about your product.
FarmVille has the ability to give access to instant gratification for the player. If you follow the rules that are layed out for you then you will succeed. This is not always the case in real farming. A farmer could think that everything is going properly but the crop just not produce. It is nature. In FarmVille time is cut short, something that would typically take a year to grow and harvest on a real farm could take just 2 hours in the game.

Animals/Crops and Environment

“We have come to see this always obvious but often overlooked fact: There is a fundamental process in producing fundamentally good ingredients- those raised, to use a clichéd but appropriate phrase, in harmony with nature.” (Mark Bittman, Farm Together Now, 8) Animals and crops use the land. There is a dirty side of farming, growth hormones and mass production that has a hefty negative impact on the environment. There is a better side of farming, sustainable, anti-hormone and anti-pesticide animals and crops. There are free range farms and FarmVille only portrays those.  The animals in FarmVille, whether they be based on real animals or fantasy animals are always happy, they are always smiling.

Geography and Weather

Real world farming is dependent upon the farmers, geographic location, population, soil and climate. The land is broad and diverse, different areas can succeed in different areas of the food system. Virtual farming in FarmVille is dependent upon nothing but the player. On your virtual farm you can grow crops simulating real crops next to fantasy crops and mythological creatures.
The book addresses technology and the flip-flopping of whether referring to helping farming is really all that helpful. From the numerous farms the group traveled to they received conflicting views about technology and farming. “We need to take seriously the task of looking at energy-efficient technologies available at this historically unique moment that can facilitate year-round food production in different climates.” (Farm Together Now, 183)

I came across a website, “FarmVille” vs Real Farms, in my research that compared players of FarmVille with real life farmers broken down into numbers. The comparison was made in September of 2010, 15 months after FarmVille was released to the public. At this time, according to this study, 500 million acres of farmland in FarmVille had been farmed, comparing this to the 930 million acres of farmland in the United States. Gender was compared, they estimated that 60% of FarmVille players are women, while only 13% of women are farmers in real life. A shocking number, according to this site was that there are 6.8 billion people in the world and 60 million people in the world play FarmVille. (I would have to assume that majority of that number are residents of the United States, although it is not stated in this comparison) There are 310 million people in the United States and two million people are farmers. Also according to this study, the average time that players spend on FarmVille per week is 70 minutes, and multiplied by 60 million users is 70 million hours! Of course I have to pose the obvious question, “what if all the people out there playing FarmVille spent that time they have spent on the virtual game planting and growing a garden of their own?” That would be an interesting study, to estimate the crop production that could come from that amount of time.

My Opinion

FarmVille is based off real life farming, The idea of having your own farm to grow and take care of in a virtual world is centered around real practices. You must plow, plant and harvest in both FarmVille and real world farming. Farm Together Now is steering away from commercial mass production and focusing on small self-sustaining farms. The farms in FarmVille encourage and I personally think support and mimic the farms that are explored in the book. In addressing the Caillois article we read in class, FarmVille is classified under the category of mimicry. It is a simulation of real life farming, classified as an action of play. “Mimicry exhibits all the characteristics of play: liberty, convention, suspension of reality, and delimitation of space and time.” (Caillois, 22) If a person plays FarmVille and has no knowledge of real farms then it is a great exercise to think about the reality of food production. Someone somewhere plowed, planted and harvested the food that the FarmVille players eat in the real world. The makers of Farm Together Now “hope to depict a sense of place, people, and action to challenge and inspire you” (the reader).
Could virtual simulatory gaming cause people to think of real world practices that those games are simulated from? “What is it going to take for the people who are doing the work of growing food and the people who are eating it to find some unity of vision?” What drives a person to act? Their attention is brought to something they may have never heard of or noticed before. That something may disturb that person then cause them to strive to change it. That single person recruits other people to join them to set out to make a difference and change what is happening at least personally for a small area. This ties in a new aspect of community. Then they hope that what they are doing will catch on and spread and others will being taking notice and action through their same initiatives. All it takes to make a change is one person starting a domino effect.


Bibliography

Borchardt, Deborah. Michael Kors and Zynga Go Public. ABC News Videos. 15 Dec. 2011. Web. 12 Feb. 2012. <http://abcnews.go.com/Business/video/michael-kors-zynga-public-15164978>.

Caillois, Roger. Man, Play and Games. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press. 2001. Print.

Lowensohn, Josh. (2010, Aug.27). Virtual Farm Games Absorb Real Money, Real Lives. CNET News. Retrieved from http://news.cnet.com/8301-27076_3-20014817-248.html

Newheiser, Mark. (2009, Dec. 4). FarmVille, Social Gaming, and Addiction. Gamasutra: The Art & Business of Making Games. Retrieved from http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/MarkNewheiser/20091204/3733/Farmville_Social_Gaming_and_Addiction.php

Shenoy, Shobhana. (2010, July 1). Farming- Real vs Virtual. A Parenting View of the World. Retrieved from http://www.ponderingparent.com/2010/07/farming-real-vs-virtual.html

Snow, Shane. (2010, Sept. 10). “FarmVille” vs. Real Farms [Infographic]. Mashable Social Media. Retrieved from http://mashable.com/2010/09/10/farmville-vs-real-farms-infographic/