The Zynga Abyss

An interesting snippet from the article:

At IndieCade in October 2011, Adam Saltsman, Canabalt's creator, discussed the notion of "time until death." All of us have a finite amount of time on earth, and any time we spend on a particular activity is time that we can't spend doing something else. This means that the time we spend gaming represents most of a game's cost of ownership, far more than any money that we spend. If that time is enjoyable (or rather, if its benefits outweigh its costs), then the game was worth our time.

I think this is an interesting perspective. Personally, I don't calculate opportunity costs except at an intuitive level, and as a result I'm probably getting it wrong.

Another interesting quote:

The games themselves aren't where the action happens; the strategy component is: when do you reach out into your social graph? When are you going to spam that list? How frequently are you gonna do that?

I'm thinking that these game mechanics can be very powerful - I'd love to see them employed in a non-farmville situation. I'm not a MMORPG gamer, but I'm guessing some of the social elements of MMORPG play are along these lines?