Farming games are China’s latest online craze, racking up tens of millions of users and disrupting workplace productivity. Now brands are looking to tap into the fad.
1 Happy Farm appears to have started as a community game on social network Kaixin001 around May 2008. However, Happy Farm didn’t fully take off until more recently, by which time variations - or exact replicas - of it had cropped up on Tencent’s QQ portal and social networks Renren.com and 51.com. Tencent launched its version, developed by app company Five Minutes, on QQ in September, driving the game’s popularity. Facebook has also launched a version.
Incarnations of the game include Sunshine Farm, Happy Farmer, Happy Fishpond and Happy Pig Farm. Tencent is looking to build upon Happy Farm’s success by announcing the launch of Happy Garden earlier this month.
According to reports, Tencent’s Happy Farm may have as many as 30 million registered players (Five Minutes keeps its figures under wraps) and allows two million new players to join the game daily.
2 Happy Farm players tend a plot of farmland, grow crops, irrigate their tracts and eventually harvest and sell their produce. Points are gained when players engage in an array of farming activities, or when they help on their neighbours’ farms. Good neighbours can help advance a player’s farm, but bad ones can steal their crops.
According to Ning Liu, principal analyst at BDA China, Happy Farm was initially more popular with the 25- to 30-year-old, white-collar urbanites on social networks, but tales of workers being fired for playing it have stymied that rush. The average player is now school-aged.
Taiwan issued a ban on all internet games in Government offices, after employees were found playing Happy Farm during work hours. Among other well-circulated stories about the game is the tale of one boyfriend whose alarm clock didn’t wake up his pregnant girlfriend to tend his farm while he was at work. The ensuing argument led to a break-up and, say reports, the abortion of the couple’s unborn child.
3 Brands are beginning to take notice. Among the earliest campaigns launched on a farming game was one from Lohas, a juice launched by COFCO in late 2008 that was positioned as a natural juice beverage and targeted white-collar workers in Beijing. JWT incorporated Lohas-branded seeds into farms on Kaixin001. These were planted, grew into fruit plants and were harvested to make Lohas juice. An option to send the bottled juice to players’ friends was also incorporated into the game.
After two months, more than 22 million active members were registered on the campaign. Lohas brand awareness among game players rocketed to 36 per cent from zero, with sales 50 per cent higher than the client’s target, according to Charlene Lee, head of the Lohas account at JWT Beijing.
4 However, in-game branding on these sites has been sparse. According to Steven Hu, CEO of InGameAd Interactive, engagement is difficult to achieve because there’s a limited capacity for brands to integrate their messages. “It is not easy for advertisers. There may be banner ads or billboards on the farm, but it is difficult to embed brands in the process of the game. The companies that created it are not professional game-design companies; there is little sustainability in their games.”
Liu is more optimistic about this sort of in-game marketing. “It is a kind of advertising at an early stage, though has a promising future,” he says. “Web games attract million of users in China. Brands have a huge opportunity to make an impression on end users, who are often 25 to 30 years old. This is the target audience for many FMCG products.”
5 Hu’s advice to brands looking to advertise successfully in the space is to be fun and make the campaign relevant to audiences in the context of the game. “For in-game advertising to be successful, it should be in the form of storytelling or part of the game’s multiple storylines. You can’t really leverage a brand off of straight advertising as the game has been created to be very light. It’s because of this that we haven’t seen lots of ads in this platform.”
What it means for…
Online media owners
- Happy Farm is China’s latest gaming trend. China’s social network space revolves around entertainment, with the games a site offers being a key part of its appeal. In an extremely fluid market, failing to keep up with the latest trends - or to anticipate the next ones - can affect share.
- Sites are largely dependent on app developers to produce these games. As a result, the process of making money out of them through tie-ups with brands can be complex - though not impossible.
Advertisers
- The games offer an avenue to reach millions of young users. Inserting a brand into the game can drive awareness, as shown by Lohas.
- Marketers should be mindful of how their brand fits into the game and not force their ads into an environment just because there are millions playing it. There are now plenty of genres of casual gaming
to choose from beside Happy Farm.
- Don’t expect the Happy Farm craze to last forever. Last year Parking Wars was the game everyone was talking about. Next year it might be something else entirely.
Got a view?
Email [email protected]
This article was originally published in 19 November 2009 issue of Media.
1 Happy Farm appears to have started as a community game on social network Kaixin001 around May 2008. However, Happy Farm didn’t fully take off until more recently, by which time variations - or exact replicas - of it had cropped up on Tencent’s QQ portal and social networks Renren.com and 51.com. Tencent launched its version, developed by app company Five Minutes, on QQ in September, driving the game’s popularity. Facebook has also launched a version.
Incarnations of the game include Sunshine Farm, Happy Farmer, Happy Fishpond and Happy Pig Farm. Tencent is looking to build upon Happy Farm’s success by announcing the launch of Happy Garden earlier this month.
According to reports, Tencent’s Happy Farm may have as many as 30 million registered players (Five Minutes keeps its figures under wraps) and allows two million new players to join the game daily.
2 Happy Farm players tend a plot of farmland, grow crops, irrigate their tracts and eventually harvest and sell their produce. Points are gained when players engage in an array of farming activities, or when they help on their neighbours’ farms. Good neighbours can help advance a player’s farm, but bad ones can steal their crops.
According to Ning Liu, principal analyst at BDA China, Happy Farm was initially more popular with the 25- to 30-year-old, white-collar urbanites on social networks, but tales of workers being fired for playing it have stymied that rush. The average player is now school-aged.
Taiwan issued a ban on all internet games in Government offices, after employees were found playing Happy Farm during work hours. Among other well-circulated stories about the game is the tale of one boyfriend whose alarm clock didn’t wake up his pregnant girlfriend to tend his farm while he was at work. The ensuing argument led to a break-up and, say reports, the abortion of the couple’s unborn child.
3 Brands are beginning to take notice. Among the earliest campaigns launched on a farming game was one from Lohas, a juice launched by COFCO in late 2008 that was positioned as a natural juice beverage and targeted white-collar workers in Beijing. JWT incorporated Lohas-branded seeds into farms on Kaixin001. These were planted, grew into fruit plants and were harvested to make Lohas juice. An option to send the bottled juice to players’ friends was also incorporated into the game.
After two months, more than 22 million active members were registered on the campaign. Lohas brand awareness among game players rocketed to 36 per cent from zero, with sales 50 per cent higher than the client’s target, according to Charlene Lee, head of the Lohas account at JWT Beijing.
4 However, in-game branding on these sites has been sparse. According to Steven Hu, CEO of InGameAd Interactive, engagement is difficult to achieve because there’s a limited capacity for brands to integrate their messages. “It is not easy for advertisers. There may be banner ads or billboards on the farm, but it is difficult to embed brands in the process of the game. The companies that created it are not professional game-design companies; there is little sustainability in their games.”
Liu is more optimistic about this sort of in-game marketing. “It is a kind of advertising at an early stage, though has a promising future,” he says. “Web games attract million of users in China. Brands have a huge opportunity to make an impression on end users, who are often 25 to 30 years old. This is the target audience for many FMCG products.”
5 Hu’s advice to brands looking to advertise successfully in the space is to be fun and make the campaign relevant to audiences in the context of the game. “For in-game advertising to be successful, it should be in the form of storytelling or part of the game’s multiple storylines. You can’t really leverage a brand off of straight advertising as the game has been created to be very light. It’s because of this that we haven’t seen lots of ads in this platform.”
What it means for…
Online media owners
- Happy Farm is China’s latest gaming trend. China’s social network space revolves around entertainment, with the games a site offers being a key part of its appeal. In an extremely fluid market, failing to keep up with the latest trends - or to anticipate the next ones - can affect share.
- Sites are largely dependent on app developers to produce these games. As a result, the process of making money out of them through tie-ups with brands can be complex - though not impossible.
Advertisers
- The games offer an avenue to reach millions of young users. Inserting a brand into the game can drive awareness, as shown by Lohas.
- Marketers should be mindful of how their brand fits into the game and not force their ads into an environment just because there are millions playing it. There are now plenty of genres of casual gaming
to choose from beside Happy Farm.
- Don’t expect the Happy Farm craze to last forever. Last year Parking Wars was the game everyone was talking about. Next year it might be something else entirely.
Got a view?
Email [email protected]
This article was originally published in 19 November 2009 issue of Media.
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