Baking mischief and delight into your products will make people love them

• 0
• 30
  SHARES

One boozy night in 2010, two developers and an illustrator were sitting in a bar discussing how utterly annoying they found the game FarmVille. As you probably remember, FarmVille was that horribly addictive social network game that let you grow crops and raise livestock, polluting your Facebook newsfeed with endless notifications about how to tend to your farm.

After a few more drinks, the group decided to figure out a way to mess with the game. They sketched up an app which let you post updates identical to those of Farmville’s, but instead, the messages were much more… savage. From giving your neighbors cows Mad Cow Disease to putting a meth lab or a slaughterhouse in the middle of your friend’s farm, the app, which they called Farmvillain, was designed to let you have fun at your friends’ expense – you know, the best kind of fun.

Feeling accomplished, the group sent their creation to a few close friends for a laugh. Within a few months, the game, created as a complete joke, had gone viral, with millions of people playing it worldwide. Undoubtedly, there were many people who absolutely loathed Farmvillain, but there were also millions of people who loved it. After two years, the friends ended up selling their game for quite a decent sum, forever shocked at how a stupid idea turned into something so many people loved.