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.<p>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.<p>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."<p>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).<p>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.