I have a little farm, and I noticed some similarities to the animals and people, and to my work inside the walls of the farm placing items like water trays or nesting areas as well as controlling the population, that a neat simcity-like game could possibly be made, except instead of simulating a mayor running a city of humans, it would simulate a farmer (the player) running a "city" of animals.

hmm? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SimFarm

SimFarm?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SimFarm

I played that game a ton growing up...

I think there is potential, if the game is done in a comic style such as Theme Hospital (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theme_Hospital) or Evil Genius (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evil_Genius_(video_game)). Its important to note that the entertainment value of the game will be largely dependent on the specific twists on the city builder idea - for example a popularity ratting with your animals (Orwell's Animal Farm comes to mid). Lastly, you should probably ask your intended audience... Go find some children...

Is a non-violent game more childish than a violent one? I suppose the rating system would suggest that, making violence something that young people aspire to obtain. I have not tried SimFarm, so I can't really comment on it. I did play some SimAnt a long time ago, and I think it was a pretty insightful, impressive game.

I think scaling is a neat topic in video games, for example a game like the Sims vs. a game like SimCity, where in one it is zoomed in and more attention is given to the individuals, while in the other it is zoomed out and the individuals are more abstract. A farm-like game could be done in this manner, perhaps even acting as a virtual pet, possibly even with a play in real time option as a desktop window/browser plugin, with an option to have one animal from a variety of nice animated 3d model animals (or whatever...it could be done in text mode too), along with the ability to scale that accurate pet-like representation of one animal to an industrial-farm sized operation. Note that the scale would be more sims than simcity....I also played SimLife, someone should make updates of all those old Sim games to use more new science and the power of new computers and algorithms. (Someone e-mail EA/Blizzard about that plz, I think they own all the old games?) ... also for people who prefer M-rated games, the animals could reproduce accurately and be killable by the player or hired simulated human farm hands in a variety of M-rated ways.