GDC: 32m play Farmville each day

Zynga’s fearsomely popular social network game Farmville is now played by 32 million people each day, the game’s lead developer has revealed.

Speaking at GDC’s Social Games Summit, Farmville co-creator Amitt Mahajan went on to claim that the project moved from concept to launch in the space of five weeks. Upon release the game brought in 18,000 users, but by the end of four days its membership rocketed to 1 million.

Mahajan’s GDC lecture – as reported by Gamasutra – adds that the first million registered users poured in without any advertising measures; a telling comment on the viral power of social networks.

But in order for the game to survive, Farmville’s development team knew that its build had to be flexible enough to withstand Facebook’s ever-changing API rulebook, and indeed, was agile enough to adapt to fast trend cycles on the platform.