Councilman Booted For His Farmville Obsession

Bulgarian Dimitar Kerin won't have to decide if he should tend his crops or pay attention to Plovdiv City Council business anymore. The committee voted him off 20-19, saying that he obviously "needs more time for his virtual farm." From the article: "Kerin was not alone in his obsession among council members. Council chairman Ilko Iliev had previously warned several of them that the new wireless network and laptops provided to all 51 council members were not to be used for playing games on social media sites during budget meetings. Kerin was singled out for continuing to manage his farm and milk his cows despite Iliev's warnings. "

Comments

Too nerdy.

[RightSaidFred99]

Seriously, what is it about this Farmville crap that turns otherwise normal people into ridiculous, obsessed nerdy dweebs? I've played WoW quite a bit, I'm really quite a nerd myself but this game looks boring as shit and it seems to drag "normal" people into it like WoW draws in nerds.

Re:Too nerdy.

[Anonymous Coward]

These people are probably not gamers. So they probably never jumped on Harvest Moon back in the day.

So they get on Facebook to build a social network and there they are introduced to the wonderful world of virtual life simulators like Farmville and they crack out.

I personally go for Tetris. It is a total time killer and if I have to turn it off I do not have to worry about "saving my progress" or none of that jazz.

Re:Too nerdy.

[Anonymous Coward]

Or people get obsessed over things that interest them. So some people like to code in their spare time, where others enjoy walking. Still others enjoy sports and farmville

Re:Too nerdy.

[Lunix Nutcase]

That's funny because there were plenty of nerds in the CS department at my school, including professors, who liked sports, collected figurines (usually Warhammer shit) and liked guns. Just because you find certain things banal and other things interesting doesn't mean that every "nerd" is going to agree.

Re:Too nerdy.

[Enderandrew]

Here I'm checking Slashdot at work.

I won't play hypocrite and blast others for what they do with their time. Everyone has their things they enjoy.

The problem with something like Farmville is that a standard web page still appears somewhat like work. I can also content that keeping up on technology news goes along with my job. Farmville is CLEARLY not work.

Farmville and games like it also need users to log back in and play the game at specific time intervals. My mother claimed she was massively bogged down with work, but the biggest time sink in her day was managing Farmville. The most prominent item on her desk was her schedule for what times she had to check on various crops.

When you design games to conflict with people's schedule, and necessitate playing at specific times, you leave the domain of what I consider a casual game, and enter into the realm of chore and obsession.

Re:Too nerdy.

[Shakrai]

That's the difference between normal people and nerds. Normal people get obsessed over things too. But it's banal, uninteresting shit they get obsessed over. Sports, soap operas, miniature figurines, gun collections, etc. Nerds get obsessed over things that are actually interesting because they requires some thought. Normal people can't relate to it, so they label it and shun it as weird, geeky, nerdy, etc.

Is there any way you could have said that and come off as more of a snob? Or are gun collections or sports somehow less worthy of being obsessed over than a virtual farm?

Re:Too nerdy.

[bennomatic]

And they level the playing field.

Wow. It's like the Internet. I wonder if there was a period where basically anyone who could scrape together enough money to buy a gun could start their own business. Were the Wells Fargo money courriers the Web 2.0 bubble of their time?

Re:Too nerdy.

[OnlyJedi]

Sports, soap operas, miniature figurines, gun collections.

One of these things is not like the others,
One of these things just doesn't belong,
Can you tell which thing is not like the others
By the time I finish my song?

One of these things is loved by otaku
One of them used for Warhammer games
Collect 'em, paint 'em, spend thousands of dollars
It'll clinch your geekdom-hood fame.

Did you guess which thing was not like the others?
Did you guess which thing just doesn't belong?
If you guessed this one is not like the others,
Then you're absolutely...right!

(goes back to bask in his Warhammer, D&D, and anime figure collection)

Re:Too nerdy.

[Lunix Nutcase]

Except his generalization has been more the exception for all the nerds I've ever met.

Nerds tend to go for things with more depth/complexity then the average bear and it's true

I've never seen such a thing on average being true. Almost all the nerds I've come across are into just as much banal shit as the next person. Sure there might be a few areas that they like that tend to be more complex, but it's outweighed by the other shit.

Good litmus test

[RLiegh]

If you can't put down the zynga long enough to take care of your real-world job, maybe you don't need one. Normally I don't relish social darwinism, but in this case it's hard to not see the appropriateness of it.

51 council members???

[kehren77]

Holy crap! I've been in meetings with 20 people that take forever and are drawn out simply because too many people need to hear their own voice. I don't blame this guy for zoning out. 51 isn't a council, that's a legislature.

False sense of accomplishment.

[maillemaker]

I believe these sort of games provide a sense of accomplishment that many people find addictive, in spite of the fact that in reality they have accomplished nothing. It FEELS like you have accomplished something, and you feel compelled to continue on to accomplish even more.

You could say this is a hallmark of a great game. It compels the player to play more.