For the longest time I had avoided playing any Facebook apps. After all, I'm not really a big Facebook fan in the first place (The site is unorganized and confusing if you ask me and I'm just not super social anyway).
Despite my efforts, I was apparently just putting off the inevitable. Everyone I know seemed to be playing SOMETHING on Facebook and they were constantly encouraging me to give it a try. And as a gamer, I found myself growing more and more curious what the fuss was all about. I decided to give it a whirl and test the waters. I wanted to see what was out there, why people liked it so much, and why the gaming industry was going insane over it!
Naturally, one of the games I started off with was
Farmville. I mean, over 70 million people are playing
Farmville, so there must be something to it, right?
I made an effort to limit the number of Facebook games I played so that I could still keep some sort of a life. Of course, that didn't last long. I started logging in multiple times per day and made sure that checking the status of my Facebook games was one of the first things I did in the morning and last things I did at night before bed. I even dished out some cash to purchase virtual currency for some games.
The more I played the more time these games were stealing from me. I would login and waste hours doing monotonous tasks such as feeding my fish or harvesting my crops. When I was only spending a few minutes per day playing, it wasn't so bad... but as your game expands to new levels you end up killing more and more time. Easy to see how people end up blowing HOURS in these games.
Making it all worse, what was I gaining from this whole experience? No, these weren't real fish I was feeding or real crops that I was harvesting, so there's no 'real world' benefit. And unfortunately, I wasn't even having fun playing these repetitive games any more. I finally came to terms with this and decided to stop wasting my time playing a game I don't even like. My test was complete!
It's really easy to become addicted to these games. All of your friends are constantly harassing you to play them through Facebook requests, they're easy games to pick up and play, they prey on your instincts to care for things like plants and pets (you're always thinking "oh, I had better water my crops!" and "I bet my virtual pet is hungry"), it allows you to compete with your friends and work on achievements, and they're attached to Facebook... and everyone is on Facebook.
Of course, this is all severely exaggerated. I was never one of those crazy people logging in at 4AM just to make sure my crops were still alive and I never dropped my offline life to make sure my virtual fish were healthy. But the point remains the same - these games are easy to get addicted to and many people continue to play them NOT because they are fun... simply because they are addicted. Sadly,
this takes the enjoyment out of gaming and turns it into a chore!Don't get me wrong, there are some really fun games out there and the social gaming trend is leading to some really great breakthroughs in the industry. I'm still exploring the realm of social gaming and will keep on enjoying what it has to offer. But I think I'll avoid the addictively un-fun games for a while. :)
Labels: facebook, farmville, Rant
I was recently encouraged to check out zOMG, an MMORPG attached to Gaia Online. I can honestly say, I've become pretty hooked.
