FarmVille, Friend or Foe?

A statement we all tell ourselves, "I'm just going to play this for a little bit to pass some time, then I'm done.", is as addictive as the game itself. Whether it be Farmville, Mafia Wars, We Rule, or any other form there-of, the same fact arises. Play once, and you may find yourself playing again. However, this may be a sign of a deeper problem then just playing a simple game. Think of why you are playing the game to begin with.

Chances are you are playing the game because you have nothing else that you can think of doing? We all find ourselves in a position where the temptation to rattle a few minutes away on a simulation "farm" seems like the best option while in class, or at home waiting for our microwave burritos to be finished. Sometimes playing these games comes down to being polite to a friend who begs for us to help them "corral cows who have escaped". The other circumstance is that you are just looking for something to do because we have nothing else to do.

While none like to admit it, most of us find ourselves in a state of fixation over the most minute details of these games after just one time playing it. Lets take Farmville as an example.

Farmville is a game based on raising crops and harvesting them using real time for their rate of growth. "Like a successful MMO, Farmville knows how to dangle rewards in front of you to keep you swinging from one carrot-on-a-stick to the next" (Game Informer Issue 205 Page 35). An MMO is an acronym for Massive Multiplayer Online, meaning you can coordinate with other people around the world while playing. The addiction comes from the psycological standpoint that we want to advance from where we currently are, we want bigger and better. Farmville successfully allows us to achieve this within 10 minutes of play, letting us level up quickly and see the enjoyable benefits of gaining levels.

This is where the addiction sets in. Once we see where our hard work leads us, we achieve a false sense of accomplishment and there-in lies the true problem. What really attracts most of us to these simple games is that we do not feel that we are accomplishing anything in our lives and hence use said game as an outlet to fill that void. So instead of working harder to achieve the tougher life achievements, we replace that with convenience and ease of simple games.

Which leads me to my final point. As a population, our focus on convenience is so consuming that we often miss the true pleasures that come with accomplishing tougher goals. We all need to come to a consensus that we are responsible for our own lack of motivation. All of us have the willpower, we just lack the motivation to use it.