Phi-Fic Chapter 300 Happy Farm
Chapter 300 Happy Farm
Five o'clock in the afternoon.
In the ICQ operations room, Jonathan Meyer stared at the screen, motionless for ten minutes.
The screen displayed Xingyu's data monitoring—not internal data, but publicly available download rankings, social media buzz, and forum discussion volume. Every metric was jumping, rising, and exploding at a speed he had never seen before.
"New user registrations..." The engineer next to me said in a dry voice, "In the past four hours, the number of new user registrations for Xingyu is estimated to be around 800,000."
"estimate?"
"We don't have accurate data," the engineer said, "but based on the incremental user IDs scraped from the public API, it's estimated to be around 200,000 per hour, and it's accelerating."
Meyer did not speak.
He recalled the day ICQ launched its new features two weeks prior. They had worked for two months, mobilized forty people, and spent millions of dollars to launch QQ Spaces, group chats, user levels, and skins. And the results? Daily active users increased by 18%, then dropped back down. The bugs drew criticism for three days. In a user vote, 82% of users continued using ICQ's messaging system.
Today, Star Language has only launched a small game.
A small, seemingly simple, 6x6 grid-based vegetable-growing game.
Four hours, 800,000 new users, and it's still accelerating.
"Mr. Ballmer is on the phone." Another engineer handed over the receiver.
Meyer took the receiver. There was a three-second silence on the other end.
"You saw it?" Ballmer's voice was somber.
"I saw it."
"I need an explanation."
Meyer opened his mouth, but didn't know what to say.
"That's a game," he said. "A social game, not a communication function."
"and then?"
"And then..." Meyer swallowed hard, "the users liked it."
There was silence on the other end of the phone.
"You know what I'm most afraid of?" Ballmer said. "It's not that I'm afraid of them coming up with features. It's that I'm afraid of them coming up with things we can't even imagine. We've thought of spatial abilities, we've thought of group chats, we've thought of levels. But this..." He paused, "...a farm system, planting vegetables, stealing vegetables. What is this?"
Meyer did not answer.
"Tell me," Ballmer's voice lowered, "that ICQ can be copied?"
Meyer opened his mouth again.
Can it be copied? Technically, of course it can. A 6x6 grid, a few seeds, a maturation time, a coin system—any programmer could create that.
but……
"You can copy," Meyer said, "but..."
"But what?"
"But the users are already on his end," Meyer said. "If we copy now, they'll just think we're jumping on the bandwagon again. And..." He paused, "they don't know what's next."
There was no sound on the other end of the phone.
"Mr. Ballmer?"
"Continue monitoring," Ballmer said, and then hung up.
Meyer put down the receiver and looked at the data on the screen. The number of new user registrations for Xingyu was still rising, already six times that of four hours ago.
He didn't know what the next one would be.
But he knew that Ling Yun must know.
Six o'clock in the afternoon.
The editorial office of The Wall Street Journal.
Michael Ross sat at his workstation, with three windows open on his computer screen: Xingyu's Happy Farm introduction page, a discussion thread on Reddit, and a trending page on the forum.
His coffee had gone cold, so he didn't drink it.
The editor-in-chief came out of his office with a freshly printed press release in his hand.
"Ross."
Ross looked up.
"Write an article about that new feature from Xingyu." The editor-in-chief placed the press release on his desk. "Publish the online version tonight, and the print version tomorrow morning as well. Focus on user growth and social media reach."
Ross looked at the press release, the title of which was hastily handwritten: "Star Language's new feature 'Happy Farm' sees a surge in users on its first day of launch."
He recalled the report he had written two weeks earlier about the new ICQ features. The title was "ICQ New Features Launch Day 1: User Growth and Technical Issues Coexist." At that time, he tried to use neutral language, avoid mentioning "plagiarism," and save face for Microsoft.
Now, the wind has shifted.
"How many words?" he asked.
"1500," the editor-in-chief said. "The focus should be on innovation, citing some user feedback. If possible, interview a few players."
"Should we mention it to ICQ?"
The editor-in-chief was silent for two seconds.
"Let me make a comparison," he said, "but not too much. Just say that ICQ also launched similar social features, but Xingyu has taken the lead again this time."
Ross nodded; he knew what this meant—they couldn't offend Microsoft, but they couldn't ignore the popularity of Star Language either. Balance, always balance.
He started typing.
The first paragraph states: "This morning, Xingyu quietly launched a new feature—Happy Farm, a mini-game that allows users to grow virtual crops in their personal spaces and steal each other's crops. As of press time, this feature has brought Xingyu over 1.5 million new users, setting a new single-day growth record for the platform."
The second paragraph states: "Unlike traditional instant messaging functions, Happy Farm has no communication attributes whatsoever. Its core gameplay is extremely simple: plant, harvest, and steal crops. But it is precisely this simplicity, combined with social interaction between friends, that has created a viral spread effect..."
He stopped and looked at the screen.
He recalled writing in that report two weeks ago: "ICQ's free strategy may change the market landscape." Now, that statement seems like a joke.
He continued typing.
7 PM.
An apartment in San Francisco.
A programmer named Kevin was working overtime. He stared at the code on his computer screen, but his mind was filled with thoughts of Farmville.
In the afternoon, a colleague got him to register for Xingyu (a Chinese online gaming platform) and plant a few tomato plants. He set an alarm for 7:20 when the tomatoes would ripen, and he needed to harvest them on time, otherwise they would be stolen.
The alarm hadn't gone off yet. He checked it every two minutes. The Tomato clock showed three minutes left, two minutes, one minute…
A notification pops up in the bottom right corner of the screen: "Your tomatoes are almost ripe. Do you want to harvest them early? (Harvesting early will reduce the yield by 50%)."
He hesitated for a second, then clicked "No".
He waited, fifty seconds, forty seconds, thirty seconds, twenty seconds, then refreshed the page. The tomato was still there, but several more avatars appeared next to it—his friends, "camping out" on his farm.
"Damn it," he cursed.
Ten seconds, five seconds, three seconds, one second, ripe.
He frantically tapped the harvest icon, the jingling of coins filling his account. But the quantity of the harvest was wrong—out of twelve tomatoes, he only received seven.
Upon checking the logs: Kevin stole 1, Emily stole 1, Alex stole 2, and Jessica stole 1.
"These beasts," he cursed with a laugh.
Then he went into his friends list and started browsing through them one by one. Emily's corn would be ripe in ten minutes, so he set an alarm. Alex's pumpkins had just been planted and would take four hours. Jessica's radishes would be ready in twenty minutes—perfect, he'd go cook some noodles first and then steal them later.
He placed his phone next to the computer; the screen was lit up, displaying Jessica's farm countdown.
Then I continued writing code, glancing at it every minute.