FarmVille: who knew boredom could be a cash crop?

Interesting that while the article mentions TechCrunch's crusade, it never mentions the problematic aspect, which are the scammy offers. The article only mentions buying virtual goods as a problem. I'd say scamming is worse.

I see FarmVille is an ultimate embarrassment for Flash as a "platform" for anything: an insanely powerful Core Duo 2 falls victim to Adobe's genius: the PC turns into a buzzing oven essentially displaying a nearly static image with some minimal 80-s style animations here and there.

I can literally hear when my wife launches it from anywhere in the house: those tiny little laptop fans just scream "farmville-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e". Oh, and then I can hear her: "where is the power cord?", in about 45 minutes.

Who knew that virtual agriculture could be so CPU intensive. :)

From the article: "In fact, FarmVille isn't really a game at all. It's an online hobby, and has far more in common with knitting or gardening than a first-person shooter."

It has this mostly in common with The Sims. Most people don't want to play games. (Make something people want.)

It's actually a pretty cute game, and addicting if you're into sim games. Micropayments for games are nothing new, though, and thankfully optional (although always tempting).

You can snap out of the addiction though, if you stop for a minute and count how many clicks are required every time you have to harvest - plow - plant a big sized field in a 20x20 (or more) farm. RSI, anyone?

Mafia War: 30 millona daily active users in Facebook. Jelous? I bet you are! They are anti-valley BS, and I respect that.