Facebook stats glitch highlights need for independent stat reporting

Cafe World had been sitting comfortably at around 20 million monthly users for the entire month of July. So it was a bit of a surprise when Facebook's public statistics (as reported by AppData) showed the game's user base shooting up 75% over a period of three days, to a high of over 35 million monthly players at the end of the month. The change wasn't limited to Cafe World either -- dozens of games saw stratospheric increases in the same period.

Facebook eventually confirmed to Inside Social Games that the sudden increases were due to a bug in their reporting. But this temporary problem highlights the risk of trusting Facebook to report on the success of its own games without independent verification.

Facebook gaming stats aren't just a fun way to monitor the popularity of your favorite social games. For the companies that make the games, these stats provide an important public barometer of their success. As Gamezebo's Joel Brodie points out, "Game companies are trying to go public, sell out, and raise money based on these numbers. Many of the great financial minds on Wall Street and Sand Hill Road who are paid big bucks to analyze these numbers take them for face value."

But it's hard to rely on those numbers if they're going to be constantly buffeted by bugs and changes in methodology. Furthermore, it's a bit strange that we trust Facebook to self-report these important statistics when it's clearly in their self-interest to inflate the numbers. It's like letting NBC report how many people watched The Office last week, instead of trusting ratings agencies like Nielsen with that information."
Brodie suggests any "attempt by Facebook to change how game traffic is measured on their network without fixing the actual problem ... could grow into their very own private Antennagate." But that presumes we'd be able to notice and report on any such change. With Facebook in total control of the statistics, we're forced to take their statistics at face value. Absent some patently ridiculous trends (like those shown by this latest bug) Facebook could gently nudge their gaming numbers up and no one would be the wiser.

The solution, as I see it, is some sort of independent verification for these Facebook-reported numbers. I don't mean Facebook should open up their private database to some auditor. I simply mean some sort of third party company should estimate the popularity of individual Facebook games independently, either through surveys or through user tracking software. These estimates would theoretically be less precise than Facebook's own numbers (if Facebook is being truthful, that is) but they'd at least provide a point of comparison to establish trust in Facebook's publicly reported numbers.

There are plenty of companies well-positioned to take this important market role. Nielsen already conducts surveys on internet usage, and companies like Alexa already track usage of thousands of web users through their toolbar. It's time one of these companies stepped up and gave us the third-party statistics we need.

FarmVille: Wither's off while Zynga fixes slew of bugs

Throughout the day, FarmVille has been suffering from a number of annoying, or even game-breaking bugs. From the inability to travel between farms to not being able to open our Gift Boxes, you can say that FarmVille has seen better days.

While these issues (including other bugs that have simply made it impossible to play the game in some cases) may have been allowed to go on longer than most users would have liked, Zynga has now openly acknowledged the many issues on Facebook.

"FarmVille has been experiencing some technical difficulties that have been resulting in some users being unable to travel, open their gift boxes & play the game. We are working on resolving these issues as quickly as possible and we would like to thank you for your continued patience and understanding."

Unfortunately, the only thing we know for sure at this point is that wither has been turned off in the game, saving all of our crops from withering or bringing them back to life if they already had, no Unwither Ring needed. With all of the goals that are available in the game though, it will be interesting to see if their timers are increased to make up for the downtime we've all received. Personally, I won't hold my breath, but if we are so pleasantly surprised by the Big Z, we'll make sure to let you know.

Have you been experiencing any issues with FarmVille today? Have you lost Farm Cash or in-game progress as a result of them?

FarmVille Sheep Breeding Update: Prepare to be disappointed (again)

Over the weekend, we brought you the news of a series of bugs, or (at the very least) unannounced design changes in FarmVille's Sheep Breeding feature. Since Zynga turned off (and then turned back on) breeding with dotted, chameleon, and otherwise previously "illegal" sheep patterns, things have gone from bad to worse, with users reporting a very (emphasis on very) low amount of pattern inheritance from Rams, and an overwhelming amount of plain white sheep being bred regardless of the colors of the mother and father.

Up until today, Zynga had been relatively quiet on the matter, with Community Manager Lexilicious only briefly reminding users that pattern inheritance is never guaranteed. This afternoon, however, Lexi spoke out again, giving us a detailed statement on the current state of affairs with Sheep Breeding, the white sheep "bug," and the lack of patterns being passed down from Rams. You can find the most important bits of her statement behind the break, but I warn you - it's not pretty.


First and foremost, Zynga has gone on record as apologizing for the lack of in-game communication about the lowered rate of pattern inheritance. They are accepting the fact that users might feel "confused" and "frustrated," and are offering full refunds of the Farm Cash purchase price of any Ram or Ewe that you purchased under the assumption that the color/pattern inheritance rate was 100%. They are urging users to contact Zynga Customer Support, which will take care of the refund process. Of course, you won't get to keep the Ewe/Rams that you purchased, but you will receive your purchase price back in full.

That being said, the high inheritance rate (80-100% success) that many of us experienced since the beginning of the Sheep Breeding feature has now officially been labeled as a "bug," and has been lowered accordingly. Since Zynga didn't release the actual percentage of success for sheep, and since many users are having very, very low success after multiple attempts, it really throws that explanation into question, at least in my book. Could Zynga really have intended for the inheritance rate to be so low, knowing that it would annoy players, perhaps to the point of never purchasing Ewes and Rams, thus defeating the purpose?

The same can be said for the multitude of White Sheep that are being bred. Lexi again tries to confirm that this is a normal possibility as "white is a color," and it is possible to produce white sheep "when the feature is operating normally." She throws in a kicker to this however, that Zynga is aware of the white sheep issue with Chameleon Ewes and Rainbow Rams, and will be fixing those two animals "sometime this week."

All in all, there's not a whole lot of good news here. If you're a fan of the Rainbow Ram and the Chameleon Ewe, know that your White Sheep problem will be fixed shortly. However, for the issue of pattern inheritance, our progress has basically been squashed, unless you are lucky enough to receive an actual patterned Lamb with these much lower success rates. Isn't the entire point of Sheep Breeding to produce Lambs of different patterns, and not different colors? If all we wanted was a yellow sheep, we've seen those released in past Spring events. If we wanted a gray sheep, we'd just turn in our Shovels in the Storage Cellar for a Miner Sheep, which is gray.

No, the entire point, at least in my mind, definitely is the fun patterns that can be bred. But with these new changes, that Zynga is seemingly adamant about not changing back, the entire feature loses its allure, and for me, doesn't warrant any further purchases. It will be interesting to see how many users agree with me (apparently, a lot).

What do you think of these apparently final changes to Sheep Breeding? Do you think public outcry will be enough to make Zynga reverse all of their recent changes (sans unblocking the "hackers")? Or, did Sheep Breeding just become a rather useless feature?