We Rule is a farmville knockoff that recently made its debute on the iPhone. I respect this kind of game for its virtues of a time waster but I don't find it enjoyable as a core gamer. Its extremely casual and unlike Farmville it automatically sends you a push message when a crop has finished growing. 

The game designer in me wants to break down the game into excel cheets and learn from it. And since I have yet to find any sites dedicated to powergaming We Rule though the most basic of Google searches, I've created my own.

Farms

In terms of how I, the power gamer, will play the game, I need to only plant corn. In this way I make the most money in the shortest amount of time while also leveling as little as possible. I don't think leveling is as important as large amounts of cash in this game because once you've got loads of cash you can quickly level and buy all the little decorations you may want for your kingdom.

I feel that We Rule is missing a Travian / Mafia Wars mechanic of stealing, looting, pillaging your friends. Its done great for Happy Farm here in China and last year I got hooked on Mafia Wars because of this mechanic. Travian of course is my favorite example of this type of game, because of the sheer size of the world. Obviously these are core gamer mechanics are not always found in the casual market, especially at launch which We Rule still is in.

One of the key problems with this game mechanic is the better you are doing in the game the more your friends, family, and potentially your boss know that you are wasting time doing something frivolous. This turned out to be a problem for me when I first started because my boss, and my boss' boss had a discussion if it was important for me to play the game or not. As a game designer this isn't a far off question for two managers to ask themselves of an employee, but since I was in the middle of the conversation I knew that no matter what it would be best to duck out. Of course I continued playing with my boss' boss all afternoon without my boss knowing until he himself logs on later tonight. 

All this begs the question, why am I playing the game? Obviously doing something social with one of the founders of my company is a good thing to do, but Is this game fun? I think the reason I kept playing was to beat my boss after he paid money for a boost in the game. He paid 5 USD for a flask of Mojo which gave him hours of time playing essentially for free. I on the other hand I had to pay attention to the game to catch up to him(wasting time at work Shame on Me). In the end I caught up to him nearly 8 hours later.  But once I beat him thoroughly I think I will put the game down because it is nothing more than a time waster. 

I guess the only thing to do now is try out Farmville and see what the difference are between the Facebook game and this iPhone knockoff of it. 

Would I make a game like this? Of course but I would speed up the time, add competition, limit it to a handful of players and call it a real time strategy. Because that is what a core gamer wants. I'd also ship it on the iPad and have a web interface for Facebook to increase my audience to all the internet viewers outside of the Great Firewall of China.