Even now, I know that software that I wrote is helping to make literally millions of people happy every day. That feels a hell of a lot better than helping a big cable company with video DRM, that's for sure.

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.

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."

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.

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.

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

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

"Okay, we need the new chewy coco grove coconut tree special item out by next Monday. So that means everyone's coming in on saturday."

Surprisingly accurate portrayal of actual meetings here though.

Wovon man nicht sprechen kann...

I present on game development to local user groups in New Zealand and I always get a good response when citing "It's fun to write games - wouldn't you much rather be writing a class called SuperLaserWeapon than MembershipIdentityProvider" :-)

If you like doing bare-metal high performance coding it's one of your best chances to test your skills though, unless you're doing lolgames.

If it were just a male/female thing, you'd expect games like SimCity and Civilization to not get geek cred, since their appeal straddles gender lines.

The reason seems more to be that it's not blazing fast OpenGL 3D supernaturalistic advanced strategy/fps type of game.

People have an easier time taking themselves seriously when guns and demons are involved.

Cf. comic books, authors, goth teenagers