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Farmville, Social Gaming, and Addiction

Posted by Soulskill on from the tragedy-of-the-common-interest dept.

MarkN writes "Facebook has been trumpeting the fact that Farmville, the most popular game on its site, has more users than Twitter, with 69 million playing over a month and 26 million playing each day. Combined with Facebook's announcement that they have hit 350 million users, that means one out of every five people on Facebook is playing Farmville. Gamasutra has a post taking a critical analysis of Farmville, its deceptively slow level grind, how a number of gameplay features end up as simply decorative since they aren't balanced with the benefits of raising crops, and discussing why Farmville succeeds so well in virally spreading itself and addicting people."

6 of 251 comments (clear)

  1. Remember the privacy policy? by girlintraining · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Hey, 1 in 5 people use this application. Remember that once the application has more than a million users, it can access not only your personal information, but everyone's personal information you can access. So, in short, the creators of Farmville have access to most, if not all, of the Facebook database. Moo, moo.

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    #fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
    1. Re:Remember the privacy policy? by Dr_Ken · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Kind of begs the question "who is farming and for what?"

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      "If you want to know what happens to you when you die, go look at some dead stuff."
  2. Re:Critical analysis of a browser game? by TheKidWho · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Except, most "nerds" wouldn't be caught dead playing this game.

  3. Harvest Moon! by OrangeTide · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If only FarmVille approached even a fraction of the things you can do in the Harvest Moon series.
    I think saying it's a glorified version is being too nice.

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    “Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
  4. Noob gamers by T+Murphy · · Score: 4, Insightful

    A lot of gamers have played Runescape, Diablo 2 or similar and experienced enough "why am I wasting my time", "but it's so addicting" to learn to resist starting a new addicting game. A lot of Farmville players likely haven't experienced this, so they have no built up immunity and will waste their time without a second thought.

    While you could argue any game is a waste of time, Farmville's grind only earns you the opportunity to continue grinding- no end goal, no endgame sandbox. At least when you have a goal in sight you can tell when it isn't getting any closer.

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    My webcomic
  5. Re:Levels! by Relic+of+the+Future · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Nah, dude; women play other MMOPGs, and have been for a long time. They just pretend to be men so that guys who post off-topic sexist remarks to /. (and the guys who mod those guys up) will stop harassing them.

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    Those who fail to understand communication protocols, are doomed to repeat them over port 80.