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eli

Other than you not liking it, how is it fundamentally different from any other game?

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I didn't claim that it was but let's assume I did for a minute.

1) no fine motor control involved

2) no complex puzzle solving

3) no storytelling

Those are just a few off the top of my head. I don't really play video games but it is pretty obvious that FarmVille is much different than games you'd play on your television.

And of course motivations differ, too. FarmVille makes more money by consuming your time and taking advantage of your impulses and desire for short-term rewards than most traditional games do.

Zynga isn't really a game company. They don't care about video games as an art form or even as an entertainment medium, they just care about behavior games and milking people out of money with as little effort as possible. It is like a casino that never pays out.

The games are designed to be addictive, not fun in the long term. You could argue the same about WoW but at least in that case there is a lot to do over a long period before you truly get into the addictive repetition phase. Something like farmville is pretty much that from the start.

The games are designed to be addictive, not fun in the long term.

Sorry, but I think you're pulling that out of your ass. All (good) games are addictive to some degree, precisely because they're fun, and I bet if you surveyed all the people who play Farmville, virtually all of them would say they enjoy it and are having fun.

Don't confuse "I don't enjoy it" with "No one enjoys it."

i wouldn't deny intravenous drug users enjoy their highs

I wouldn't agree with that, initial fun is important but over the longer term I think addictiveness can take over fun, to the point where the person feels obligated to continue playing the game to continue progressing even though each gaming session is in a sense almost dreaded.

I played farmville for about a month because some friends were, by the end of that I felt like I was wasting my time, the progression was for the sake of progression, the achievements were arbitrarily chosen to take more and more time and being better than your friends had a lot more to do with time invested then any form of strategy used. I had friends who admitted they were sick of the game and it frustrated them but continued playing just to finish off achievements.

Sure I'm not speaking for everyone but I do think it is a trend in Zynga games, they are build around user engagement and seek to maximise that for as long as possible.

These pop psychology articles prove you wrong. Gaming companies strive deliberately to make their games addicting. And by addicting I mean addicting, not fun.

http://www.cracked.com/article_18461_5-creepy-ways-video-gam... + http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3085/behavioral_game_d...

The techniques that I'll discuss in this article generally fall under the heading of behavioral psychology. Best known for the work done on animals in the field, behavioral psychology focuses on experiments and observable actions. One hallmark of behavioral research is that most of the major experimental discoveries are species-independent and can be found in anything from birds to fish to humans. What behavioral psychologists look for (and what will be our focus here) are general "rules" for learning and for how minds respond to their environment.

Seems awfully presumptuous to say that tens of millions of people aren't actually enjoying themselves and that you know better than they do what's "fun" for them. Would you call knitting merely addictive repetition? In a sense it is, but who cares: many people need and want things to enjoy and help them pass the time.

I would say that making a game addictive is the holy grail of gaming, no?

From the perspective of the people making money off the players? Yes.

When I'm actually playing a game myself, though, and recognizing that these two aren't necessarily mutually exclusive, I prefer fun over addictive.

I'd say the holy grail is to improve people's lives, potentially even make the world a better place.

Why the downvote? For me the games I enjoy achieve this. And for whatever job I take on, I actually hope for the same (not just in game development).

reminds me of jane mcgonigal's ted talk:

http://www.ted.com/talks/jane_mcgonigal_gaming_can_make_a_be...

Reflective games aren't a waste of a time (that allows you think and reflect on a situation thereby improving the way you learn things) but games that put you on an expert(or relax)-mode definitely are a waste of time--imho. I mean this is true when talking about games but probably in true in other situations e.g. you wouldn't like a Pilot who wants to reflect on a situation when plane and 400 passengers are in danger (taken from a Psychology book whose name I cannot recall) :)

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