Pot Farm

Pot Farm is a game similar to Happy Farm and FarmVille, but with an emphasis on cannabis cultivation. On mobile, the game is free-to-play and requires an internet connection. The game starts with an empty plot of land, with the objective of turning it into a profitable cannabis farm. Players plant and harvest seeds, earning experience points and buds, which can be sold for coins. Crops need to be watered and cleared of cobwebs. they can also be bought with real currency through microtransactions. In the Facebook version, if crops are not balanced with guards and other protection-enhancing items, there is a risk of a character called Ranger Dick appearing and confiscating stash and crops. Additionally, the same version has a minigame-like feature called 'Gold Rush Mode', which has been compared to Bejeweled. == Development and release ==

Pot Farm was developed Brain Warp Studios, specifically by Josh Nilson and Galan Akin in 2010, and published on April 20, 2010. A representative from LDRLY spoke to Canadian media in 2019 about the game, saying that the team wanted to make tackle a different avenue with canabis-centered themes different and build community around it. Furthermore, they thought it was an untapped market and a great business opportunity. However, East Side Games were unable to promote the game on Facebook, and struggled to find marketing in other places because of the cannabis theme; they instead used viral marketing and guerrilla marketing. In May 2011, the developers produced 4:20 rally kits for fans attending cannabis-activism rallys. In 2011, East Side Games added a Facebook extension "Pot Farm Raiders", based on the Zynga Facebook app Mafia Wars, where the same principles apply as in Pot Farm but mafia gets replaced with stoners, and players can steal crops from other farms. This game had about 72,000 monthly active users in 2011. compared to 82.4 million for Farmville in 2010. The Android mobile app, developed by LDRLY, funded by a Kickstarter campaign, and released a spin-off video game Cheech & Chong: Bud Farm on April 20, 2020. The Facebook version of the game shut down in December 2019. == Reception and legacy==

By the end of 2010, Pot Farm was estimated to be earning its developers $148,000 a month. Most of the game's revenue comes from the subscription service offered to its players, and it had a Facebook user score of 4.8 out of 5 from around 107,000 reviews. Comparing the game to other popular farming sims, NBC News's Wendy Benedetti said that "this is not your grandmother's Farmville. Unless, of course, your grandmother was a hippie in the '60s... in which case, dude, this is totally her kind of Farmville" and concluded that "[the game] features some decent production values and a zany sense of humor (check out the sketchy wildlife) and that's enough to keep me coming back". Gita Jackson of Kotaku said that the game "has a lot of heart", calling it "Animal Crossing-esque". Fox News, however, reported that the game was controversial and quoted several concerned citizens; while one said that it should not be on Facebook because it is not for children, another noted that when she tried to see what it was from her children's accounts it would not load due to an age block enforced on anyone under 21. East Bay Express also pointed out that "the game doesn't actually depict anyone ever smoking the plant". The Facebook game operated in a "legal gray area" because of its content, but was also more geared towards medical cannabis (legal in California with some restrictions where Facebook is based, to have not banned the game): its highest-level build was a medical marijuana clinic. In 2020, GameSpot noted the game's place in the history of cannabis in video games: "As cannabis became less taboo and the smoke cleared from the hysteria sparked by the war on drugs, more developers devoted entire games to running cannabis enterprises [...] Pot Farm took off [as] American views of cannabis softened, most notably on the political level, state-by-state." HERB had written in 2016 that the game created "the largest cannabis community on earth", with 20 million unique players across its platforms and a 2011 figure of over 1 million users on Facebook. ==References==