FarmVille foster life skill and business mind?

my bakery store in Bakery Story game.
virtual Farm in FarmVille.

FarmVille foster life skill and business mind?

Today I saw a famous game theory called Practice or Pre-exercise Theory when I searched the related data of videogame on Google. This theory was suggested by Germany psychologist Karl Groos. It suggests that game is not a simple entertaining and sportful activity without any meaningful purpose. It defines that game is a prepared exercise for the future real life. For example, girls play house is the preparing for the housekeep work of future family life. And boys play war games is the exercise for the real fighting in future battlefield. Though this theory was not aimed at video games, video games are a subfield of game. Therefore I think this theory could also be applied on the analysis of video games.

This theory reminds me of the very popular Simulation games such as FarmVille and The Sims in recent years. This kind of video game usually simulates the real social scene and real human activity. For instance, planting and harvesting vegetables in FarmVille, running a café in The Sims and so on. Although the shooting games can also be said as simulation of real human social activity, fighting and killing in war after all are the life of a few people. However running a café is a social life that most people can experience.

In the game FarmVille, players can buy seeds from shop, sow seeds on the farm, watering vegetables, debug and then harvest vegetables when the vegetables are ripe. These games which simulate the real planting process teach some life knowledge to players and foster their life skills. Though completing these processes only need click mouse and press keyboard, these actions are not real physical work, and many real difficulties and problems may happen in the reality which cannot be experienced in the game, players at least grasp some basic knowledge of farming. They will know where to undertake if they own a real farm in the future days. They have some experience in the game before so they will know that watering and debugging regularly are necessary for avoiding death of vegetables. Moreover, in the game, planting and harvesting have a time requirement, for example, to harvest potato need wait 20 hours after sow the seed. If players do not harvest the grown vegetable after a long time then the potato will go bad, and the cost that used on purchasing the seed will be lost as well. This condition force players have to go back to the game to harvest in the required time. This process fosters the sense of responsibility of players. In real life, we usually plant in spring and harvest in autumn. During these months we need to look after those vegetables if we want to receive a good harvesting. We cannot just leave the vegetable there. We must watering and debugging them frequently, and finally harvesting them after a few months’ growing.

After I bought IPAD I downloaded a game series called Story. In the game, I open one bakery café, one nightclub and one cloth shop. These games are mainly about purchasing raw material, making product and selling these products to earn money. The profits I gain can hire staff, expand and decorate storefront, purchase more stocks, or visit another virtual store in the game and buy the products I like. To be honest, I really learn how to running a business in the game. I am exercising by attempting to make the business profitable and to attract more customers. I am learning to make a judgment of whether purchasing a particular raw material based on its cost, that is, I need to calculate the rate of return on investment and to test if this purchasing is valued. One difficulty I met in the game is that I am always struggling at making decisions on how to use the earnings, such as to purchase more products or to decorate the store for attracting more customers? Furthermore, every day I need to check storage regularly just in case my store will run out of stock. Sometimes I go to other players’ store to have a look in purpose to learn their operating manner. Although I do not have business operating experience in reality and never learn business knowledge before, this simulated business indeed allows me to experience the real business-man feeling!

I think these SLG games foster more or less the life skill and business mind of their players. And it provides some pre-exercise and builds a few foundations to the players’ real life in the future.

Jiwei Li