FarmVille 2 on Facebook: Co-op design

Even though I designed many many successful mechanics and features on FarmVille 2 for Facebook my personal favorite was Co-ops because it was a pure retention feature with an increase of >30% (without losing revenue). This feature shows the power of social in that you can indeed dramatically increase retention on a 3 year old game that is already at the top of the charts in metrics.

FarmVille 2 was full of social features already, but mostly in the "presence" category of social. Lacking was the togetherness, coordination, and commitment to other players.

Co-ops gave players a way to group together, new ways to help each other, a weekly boss to conquer, and a strong incentive to keep playing together week to week.

After joining a co-op, the player can ask for any base ingredient when crafting: and there are >100. Since Farm2 has no inventory limit, there is no shortage of asymmetrical surplus of items which makes the help system work effortlessly. When another player helps they run onto the asking player's farm and hang out by the co-op building which is truly delightful. This is also the building where you provide help to your co-op, see your co-op level, logo, etc.

With this new social tool Players work together to complete orders to hit their weekly goal. The reward for winning is an exclusive currency that is used to upgrade your farm item by item and has enough content for years: e.g. combining plots into a field, combining wells into a water tower, building feed troughs, etc.

The co-ops goal gets slightly harder week to week if they keep winning, but also goes down if they lose. There is a lot of secret tuning magic in here that keeps co-ops playing and winning at a healthy rate.

Lastly, there is a progression map that the co-op works to complete to earn bonus rewards along way such as trophies with new farm powers.