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Comment by bduerst | Hacker News Reader

Farmville was a blatant ripoff of Happy Farm - it just happened to be the first clone to hit the U.S. market from China and be successful.

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Which was a ripoff of the classic mid-1990s SimFarm.

Not sure I would call SimFarm (SimAnt or SimIsle) classic. SimTower on the other hand.

SimFarm was a classic but rather I'd hesitate to call FarmHappy a SimFarm clone. SimFarm is perhaps the most complex Sim game, I had an easier time with even SimIsle. Gameplay wise there is almost no intersection.

What disappoints me about the current social gaming genre is how many games what would have otherwise been decent tycoons are ruined with slot machine mechanics.

I've been wondering what the big deal is since these games just reminded me of Tycoons anyways, but you have a point with the "slot machine mechanics" bit...though the Tycoons could get pretty slot machiney. I think a lot of the backlash is the fact that these are popular with casual or non-gamers, so they have an image problem with "real" gamers.

You're the first person I've "met" who got SimIsle. Maybe I need to give it another try...

As a kid I could not wrap my head around SimIsle, wonder if I still have that CD...

Not quite - they both just happen to be farm themed.

Happy Farm was legitimately a social game - even further than Farmville ended up being. In fact, almost two thirds of the Chinese population that played admitted they did so only so they could steal crops from their friends.

It's almost a case study into the Chinese culture unto itself.

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