PLJ11.

FISHVILLE. Not at all to be confused with Farmville it's sister game, it is another virtual reality play place. It is an addictive game where you raise cute baby fish, feed them as they grow, and decorate your fish tanks with friends! It was created by a company called Zynga and is meant to be played through a facebook application. It was just recently launched in November 2009 and has already been ranked among the top applications to be added. It currently has 22,915,276 monthly active users. The fish range from a Mini Dart Goby to a Hawaiian Hogfish and each cost different amounts in coins according to growth rate and speed. Coins. You can earn coins by selling your fish when they grew or by exchanging with real money. Level and Experience Bar. This displays the current experience points that you have and how much more you need to level up. You gain experience when buying and selling fishes.

Fish Life Stages:
Eggs – You gain a small amount of xp when you first buy eggs. Eggs are the very first things you buy when raising your fish. You can not sell eggs as they merely take 1 second to hatch a baby fish.

Baby – When your eggs first hatch, baby fish will spawn and you will need to immediately feed them before they die.

Junior – This stage, fish will become larger and has a couple levels (4) with each taking the same time as it took to get to Junior. Each level in the junior stage increases displayed size, coins earned on selling, experience (xp) earned upon selling, and how long a fish can go without food.

Adult – From last junior level to this stage is same interval as before. Additionally, time that fish can go without food gets increased by a day. Ie. Sardines can go hours without food.

Feeding

Fish need to be fed at least twice while in the baby stage and at least once every level beyond. Once a fish hits level fourth, each level takes a day, regardless of initial growth rate. Time from full to starving is twice the growth rate. As the fish gets hungry, it will get a yellow food icon, red food icon, then the red food icon will blink, and finally the fish will die if not fed. Dead fish can be removed with +1 to your experience. At this time, dead fish cannot be revived.

Educational?

While similar to the responsibility of a tamogatchi, I think that this game can serve as an educational tool in economics and responsibility. While I think that these can be a stretch is is definitely entertaining.

Hidden Agenda

According to a blog by Michael Arrington from TechCrunch, "Facebook put their newest social game, FishVille, on ice for advertising violations. In response, Zynga said they’d pull down all advertising offers until further notice."TechCrunch also reports that FishVille’s ads were deceptive because they don’t clearly explain that to “complete” the offer (and get virtual coins in the game), users need to subscribe to a $10-$20 monthly mobile service; the ads also don’t ask users to opt-in to supplying their personal information.