Two currencies, and neither of them buys a better harvest.
Coins come out of the ground. The premium currency buys Kaleb’s time and a hat. There are no loot boxes, no card packs and no randomised paid rewards anywhere in this design, and the reason is a straightforward risk calculation rather than a moral position.
The two currencies.
A deliberately dull screen. No valuation, no chart going up, and no way to buy the number.
0bushels
Coins. Earned only, spent only, and worth nothing outside the game. The meter is progress towards the next building rather than anything that could be mistaken for a balance.
The grain drier, at 22,000 Coins, plus whatever Alan adds to it.
How it fills
- HarvestThe overwhelming majority of it
- Trading wellStorage and forward contracts, at the margin
- Scheme income, through CharlieAbout 30 per cent of a well-played farm
- Parish goalsSmall, shared, and capped
- AchievementsOne-off, and modest
What it buys
- Seed, inputs and fuelEvery season, unavoidably
- Buildings, through Alan2,400 to 186,000 Coins
- Land, when it comes upRarely, and expensively
- Storage4 Coins a tonne a month
- DecorationEntirely optional, and quite popular
This is a design document published as a website. There is no game, no build, no publisher and no release date. Every cost, headcount and duration on these pages is an estimate with its working shown, produced by an unsolicited third party with no licence, no endorsement and no relationship with anybody named on it. No money is involved in this build in any direction.
Every source, and every sink.
| Source or sink | Currency | Notes | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Harvest | Source — the largest by a distance | Coins | Roughly sixty per cent of lifetime Coin income for a competent player |
| Trading | Source, and occasionally a sink | Coins | Storage costs money and sometimes returns none of it |
| Livestock yield | Source — steady, unglamorous | Coins | Wool, milk and stock sales. The income that does not depend on the weather |
| Scheme income, via Charlie | Source — the reliable one | Coins | About thirty per cent of a well-played farm, mirroring the real figure |
| Parish goals | Source — small and shared | Coins | Capped, so that a large parish is not simply a better parish |
| Achievements | Source — one-off | Coins | Modest. A badge is a record rather than a payday |
| Seed, inputs, fuel | Sink — every season | Coins | The cashflow lesson, which is the point of charging up front |
| Buildings | Sink — the largest | Coins | Nine of them, plus Alan’s overrun |
| Land | Sink — rare and expensive | Coins | Comes up occasionally, costs about four seasons of income |
| Decoration | Sink — optional | Coins or premium | Gates, benches, a repainted trailer. Pure cosmetics |
| Kaleb’s time-skips | Sink — the main premium sink | Premium | Capped at six a day, and it buys the clock only |
| Cosmetics | Sink — the other premium sink | Premium | Stated item, stated price, visible before payment |
What money buys, and what it emphatically does not.
On sale
- Kaleb’s time-skips, at a stated rate, capped at six a day
- Cosmetics — gates, paint, trailers, a hat for the dog — at stated prices
- A one-off starter pack, stated contents, visible before purchase
- Nothing else. That is the complete list
Not on sale, at any price
- Loot boxes, mystery crates, card packs or any randomised paid reward
- Anything that changes a yield, a price, a failure rate or an outcome
- Protection against Cocking It Up, at any tier or any price
- A second build slot
- Relief cover, which is free and stays free
- Energy, lives, stamina or any other mechanic that sells the right to keep playing
- Coins. They cannot be bought at all
Why there are no loot boxes, stated as a risk calculation.
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The regulatory position is not settled, and the direction of travel is one-way.
The Gambling Commission’s position is that a loot box falls outside the Gambling Act 2005 where the contents cannot be cashed out, and successive governments have preferred industry undertakings to legislation. Several European jurisdictions have taken a different view, and the UK position has been under review for years.
A design that depends on that position holding is a design with a regulatory time bomb in it. The revenue would arrive first and the reversal would arrive later, on somebody else’s watch, attached to a farm’s name.
Nobody has ever had to unwind a decision not to sell loot boxes.
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The Children’s Code makes it substantially worse for this specific audience.
The ICO’s Age Appropriate Design Code restricts nudge techniques and requires high privacy by default for any service likely to be accessed by children. A randomised paid reward is the canonical nudge technique, and a farming game attached to a family television programme is the canonical service likely to be accessed by children.
The maximum penalty is seventeen and a half million pounds or four per cent of global annual turnover, whichever is higher. Set against the incremental revenue from a mystery crate, that is not a close calculation.
Seventeen and a half million pounds against the incremental revenue from a mystery crate.
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The reputational exposure is asymmetric and specific.
This is a brand built on a farmer complaining about being ripped off by people bigger than him. A newspaper story about that farm’s game selling randomised rewards to children writes itself, and no amount of revenue buys it back.
The estate has an unusual asset — an audience acquired at close to zero cost through a television programme and a set of social accounts. Loot boxes trade a durable asset for a monetisable one, at a bad rate.
The audience was acquired for nothing. It can be lost for very little.
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And the alternative is not obviously worse.
Cosmetics and time-acceleration at stated prices are a proven model at simulation-tier retention. They produce lower revenue per paying user and a substantially higher proportion of paying users, and they are dramatically less likely to end up in a select committee.
The honest version of this argument is that it costs money. It does. The estimate in the staged plan assumes a materially lower ARPDAU than a loot-box economy would produce, and it still works.
It costs money. It is still the right decision.
The one number that has to be right.
The ratio of Coins earned per hour of attention to Coins required for the next building. Get it wrong in one direction and the game is a treadmill; get it wrong in the other and there is nothing to aspire to and the buildings arrive too fast to matter.
The design target is that a competent player reaches the farm shop — the eighth-level building, at fourteen and a half thousand Coins — in about six weeks of ordinary play, and the pub in about two years. Everything else is tuned around those two points.
That target assumes no purchases at all. A player who spends money reaches the same points at the same rate, because money buys Kaleb’s time rather than Coins, and Kaleb’s time compresses the calendar rather than the economy.
The economy, questioned.
No. Coins come only from harvest, trade, livestock, scheme income, parish goals and achievements. There is no conversion from the premium currency in either direction.
Time, through Kaleb, capped at six skips a day; and cosmetics, at stated prices, visible before purchase. That is the complete list.
Because the regulatory position is unsettled, the Children’s Code makes nudge techniques a specific exposure, the maximum penalty is £17.5m or four per cent of global turnover, and this brand cannot survive the newspaper story. The revenue does not cover any of that.
No. Nothing in this design sells you the right to keep playing, and nothing stops you playing for as long as you like.
And progression, which is tuned the same way.
XP per action, level unlocks, no forced tutorial and no penalty for going away.
