Phi-Fic Chapter 299 Happy Farm
Chapter 299 Happy Farm
10:45 a.m.
The atmosphere in the monitoring room of Xingchen Technology's office building began to change.
David stared at the curve on the screen, the line for new user registrations, which had been almost invisible before, was now beginning to rise slightly. Not a sharp rise, but a slow, steady one—like the beginning of a rising tide.
"New user registrations are up 7% from usual," he said, "and they're still rising."
"Where did it come from?" Lingyun asked.
"It's mainly friend invitation links." David pulled up a chart. "In the past fifteen minutes, the number of friend invitations sent has increased by 340%, and the click-through rate of invitation links is twice as high as usual."
Eric leaned closer to look at the data. "So fast?"
"The first user has started inviting friends," Catherine said. "It's just before 11 a.m., and college students have just finished class. They're in their dorms, computer labs, libraries, opening their phones, discovering this new thing, and then starting to invite people."
Ling Yun stared at the screen without saying a word.
The curve for new user registrations is still slowly rising. 7%, 8%, 9%...
He knew this was just the beginning.
The real explosion will come when the first crops ripen.
It was exactly 1 p.m.
Stanford University, student dining hall.
Alex carried his tray to a seat, where his roommate was already sitting. They both spoke at the same time:
"Did you harvest your radishes?"
"How are your tomatoes?"
Then they all laughed.
"I planted pumpkins." Alex opened his phone, tapped on his farm, and said, "They'll be ready in four hours, two more hours."
"I planted corn." My roommate also opened her phone. "Eight hours, I won't be able to get it until tonight."
A girl at the next table leaned over and asked, "Are you guys playing that too?"
Her name is Emily, and she is Alex's classmate.
"You too?" Alex asked.
"My roommate asked me to," Emily said. "She planted tomatoes, and I planted radishes. Her tomatoes ripen at night, and she asked me to watch them for her because she has class in the afternoon."
"You can even collect them for others?"
"Sure, you can go to your friend's farm and see when the crops are ready. If they're not online, you can harvest them for them, but a portion of your coins will be deducted as a 'helping fee'," Emily read the feature description. "After harvesting, you can steal some, but not too much; each crop has a protected quantity..."
"Steal?" Alex's eyes lit up.
"Look," Emily said, clicking into her roommate's farm. On the 6x6 grid, the tomatoes had one hour and forty minutes left to ripen. Next to each tomato was a small lock icon, with a number below the lock—3/5.
"What is this?"
"That means each tomato can be stolen a maximum of five times, one at a time. Once it's locked, it can't be stolen anymore," Emily explained. "I tried it, and you get 5 gold coins for stealing one tomato."
Alex quickly did the math. He had over thirty people on his friend list. If each person planted a six-by-six plant, and if everyone's ripening time was staggered...
"I'm not going to class this afternoon," he joked.
My roommate didn't laugh; he was staring intently at his phone, his gaze as focused as if he were looking at a math problem.
"What time did my corn ripen?" he muttered to himself.
It was exactly 2 PM.
Across the United States, the first radishes have ripened.
Users who planted radishes two hours ago are now harvesting. Coins are jingling into their accounts, experience bars are rising, new land is unlocking, and new seeds are being unlocked. Then they check their friends' lists and find that some crops on their friends' farms are already ripe and waiting to be "helped."
On the server monitoring screen, the curve for new user registrations suddenly became steeper.
It didn't rise slowly; it jumped—from +12% to +23%, then +31%, +38%...
"What's going on?" David leaned closer to the screen.
"Friend invitations." Eric pulled up the data. "In the past ten minutes, the number of friend invitations sent has increased by 1200%. Each newly registered user invites an average of 3.7 friends. The invitation conversion rate... is 47%."
"47%?" Catherine repeated the number. "The normal conversion rate for invitations to social products is 5% to 10%."
"Because this isn't an invitation," Lingyun said, "it's recruiting people to steal vegetables together."
3 PM.
On the Reddit tech section, a new post was featured on the front page with the title "Help, I can't stop."
The original poster wrote:
"When I opened Xingyu this morning, I found a new app called Happy Farm. I casually planted a few radishes and then went to class. During class, I kept thinking about whether the radishes were ripe and whether someone would steal them. When I rushed back to my dorm after class, I found that three of my radishes had been stolen. I was furious. I quickly planted new crops and then started browsing my friends' list, stealing other people's crops. I've already stolen more than thirty, and my coins have increased by more than two hundred. I'm still stealing. I'm skipping my afternoon class."
There are already more than 300 replies below.
First comment: "Me too. I just stole some corn from my roommate. He'll definitely yell at me when he gets back from get out of class."
Article 2: "This stuff is poisonous. I just set my alarm for two hours later, afraid I'd miss the harvest time."
Article 3: "I created a group called 'Vegetable Stealing Mutual Aid Association,' come join us to steal vegetables together."
Article 4: "My boss just walked past me and saw me stealing vegetables from his farm. He asked me what it was, and I said it was product research. He's now registered and added me as a friend. Should I steal my boss's vegetables?"
Article 5: "Upstairs, steal it, you must steal it. Remember to take a screenshot and post it on your WeChat Moments after you're done."
Four o'clock in the afternoon.
The keyword "Happy Farm" has become a trending topic, with more than 200 new tweets being posted every minute.
alex_stanford: Happy Farm taught me what time management is. I calculated everyone's maturity time and made a table. My roommate said I was crazy. But I have three times as many coins as them.
jessica_berkeley: I just stole my ex-boyfriend's vegetables, and it felt even better than when we broke up.
emily_paloalto: My mom just added me as a friend on Xingyu. She asked me how to play Farmville, and I said I just plant vegetables. She asked if she could steal my vegetables. I hesitated for three seconds and said yes. Now I regret it.
chris_nyu: There are four of us in the dorm. Three of us are playing Happy Farm. The one who isn't playing hasn't registered for Xingyu yet, but he has now registered.
tech_crunch_editor: I was writing this article this morning, and now I'm stealing my colleague's radish. This article won't be published today.