FarmVille 2 on mobile: County Fair design

For Farmville 2 mobile, the goal was to create a roadmap of features to add sustained revenue and retention to the game and then design and execute on those features.

The first feature's purpose was to increase retention and became the "The Winner's Wagon." The player earns points for crafting goods and strives to fill a weekly bar for a prize. It was tuned to encourage weekly engagement and softly increase the player's engagement over the course of multiple weeks and sustain it at a healthy level.

The next step was to add a sustainable revenue increase to the game, but not at the expense of retention. The result here was a sustained >20% lift! Competivie players are a great place to earn revenue, but not everyone in the FarmVille universe is a competitor so we have to be sensitive to that. The County Fair is a league system with promotions and demotions that let's players who like competition go all out against each other by climbing leagues for better prizes and new farm powers. The sense of fair competition is crucial and thus cheaters are dealt with effectively. There are temporary boosts the Player can purchase and even upgrade for up to 10x the points. Those who use boosts end up playing against each other so it is not at the expense of other players. Matchmaking is also key to keep players feeling like they can always win and therefor to keep engaging and paying - you never want someone to feel like they are out of the competition and therefor give up.