Fessing Up to Facebook Games
Remember when murder was a capital crime … and wheat took months to grow? We can barely recall, either.
On Facebook, Mafia Wars and FarmVille—two extremely popular multiplayer social games—have drawn millions into virtual communities. Offing friends and conquering neighborhoods are now just a button push away. And growing perfect crops takes mere hours—with no pesky bugs, ill weather or blights.
Considering FarmVille's 72 million-players-and-growing status and Mafia War's 30 million followers, these applications offer a groupthink look into what might require an intervention in the less pixely world: addiction, time management and the thirst for control.
But isn't that too harsh? Aren't these games simply a fun diversion? The modern equivalent of Tetris? Plugged In associate editors Bob Hoose (who's been playing Mafia Wars for a few weeks now) and Meredith Whitmore (her assignment: FarmVille) tackle this debate in an interview with senior associate editor Adam Holz.
Adam Holz: Meredith, you've been playing FarmVille for a while now—on the clock, I might add! What's the deal with this game?
Meredith Whitmore: Ha! There's a complex answer to that simple question. I think the appeal of FarmVille is its simplicity, attractiveness and instant gratification. If you do all of your farming chores, for example, you get points and a little pop-up box that says "Good job!" You get a reward for virtually everything you do. As simple as that is—and you're looking at me funny—it can feel gratifying. I've heard many people say they feel a sense of accomplishment—because progress is measurable. And as you're building up your farm, you become dependent on friends to fertilize your land … and send you gifts. You, of course, should return those favors.
Holz: That sounds like my growing up years in Iowa—and I left for precisely those reasons. Seriously, though, the dependence on other players is the networking connection, right?
Whitmore: There is a sense of community, but you don't have to really know these people—so you get this false sense of having friends. Sometimes they're not your friends. I haven't spoken to some of the people I was playing with for 25 years. In some cases, I've never even met them.
Bob Hoose: Mafia Wars is very much the same. As you build up your gang, you don't necessarily have to know your fellow players. And we probably ought to clarify here, that these are role-playing games of a sort—only very simplified. In Mafia Wars, you don't actually watch little characters go around doing things. But you do take on a character name and give the game commands.
Holz: Like what? Plant wheat or a body?
Whitmore: I prefer wheat, personally.
Hoose: That's right. You push a button to perform a specific mob-like activity and the game reports whether you succeeded or failed. In Mafia Wars there are essentially two activities that you pursue: You perform hits, vandalism or robberies that earn you money and experience points. Or you build up your personal mafia of fellow Facebook members and go out to attack other mafias. Whoever has the biggest number of mafia members and the better-equipped gang, wins. The loser forfeits money and points.
Whitmore: And the games are never-ending, by the way. In FarmVille you keep building farm cash and experience points based on crops harvested. Forever!
Hoose: That's the whole purpose, really. To keep going and to keep pulling new players and members into the Facebook experience. Essentially, I joined Facebook in order to play Mafia Wars. To be honest, I'm more of a gamer than a social networking person. And I can't say that I'm very impressed. From a gamer's perspective, these games are pretty much like spitting in the wind.
Whitmore: Yes, but from a non-gamer's perspective it's the simplicity that's appealing. After working for the man or refereeing your kids all day, you can control your own paradise-like virtual world.
Hoose: But the objective of these games as I see it is to—purely and simply—bring more people in to Facebook!
Holz: So the games are just one big marketing tool?
Whitmore: And not just for Facebook, either. Zynga, the creator of both games, is always selling things. There are certain virtual materials that you can get for free, but then you have to pay to upgrade.
Holz: Pay real money?
Hoose: Uh-huh. In Mafia Wars, for example, you can earn upgrading reward points, but it's tough to earn them and it takes a long time. So, to get ahead fast, you have to slap down your credit card and buy points. Currently you get 43 reward points for $10. Think of it like those tickets you get at arcades. Games like Skee-Ball and Basket Fever spit them out when you do well, and you can use them at the end of the afternoon to snag a cool slinky or handful of bubble gum. But you never get as many as you want, do you? Or, should I say, your kids never get as many as they want! So arcades have machines sitting around that let you buy tickets so you can exchange them for the prizes.
Holz: What kind of income are these games generating?
Whitmore: Huge, huge amounts of income. At one point Zynga was raking in $500,000 a day from virtual merchandise while spending $50 million a year on Facebook ads.
Hoose: And I should add here that there's been trouble in the past with shady offers being shoved in front of players with the tantalizing reward of getting lots of game points for signing up for one thing or another. Time magazine reports that Zynga has now removed all of them and is reviewing them before reinserting them into the games. But even if no more actual scams leak through Zynga's filtering process, it's worth mentioning the downside of younger players in particular having to face hard-sell come-ons that ask them to surrender personal information.
Whitmore: A few days ago I ran across a quote on techcrunch.com from Zynga CEO Mark Pincus. He says, "I knew that I wanted to control my destiny, so I knew I needed revenues, right (expletive) now. … So I funded the company myself but I did every horrible thing in the book to just get revenues right away. I mean we gave our users poker chips if they downloaded this Zwinky toolbar which was like, I don't know, I downloaded it once and couldn't get rid of it. We did anything possible just to get revenues so that we could grow and be a real business."
Holz: Did you encounter any offers—upright or otherwise—as you were playing?
Whitmore: I didn't run headlong into them mainly because the only way it seems you can hit them is if you're rushing to get more experience points. You can join Netflix or sign up for AT&T or things like that. Once you've signed on with some of the companies, I've heard, they'll charge you monthly, and you might not even be aware of it. Something like this happened to a friend when his kids got caught up in all this.
Holz: Bob, your response to these games is that they're lightweight, but the fact that they are lightweight seems to be what Meredith says is attractive about them. So are most of the people playing these games not video game fans?
Hoose: I can't imagine that they are!
Holz: Is part of the hook, then, that they're so disposable you can pop them up for 20 minutes at lunch?
Hoose: It has to be. With Mafia Wars, there are essentially three different meters you work with. An energy meter, a stamina meter and a health meter. If you run out of points in one of those meters you can't play any longer.
Whitmore: (laughing) If you lose stamina do you have to crawl to your next hit?
Hoose: No, you just can't attack anybody until you recharge your meter. I'm assuming FarmVille is like this too. This is a time-based game. It's got this running clock, so after you run out of points on a certain meter you're on hold for three minutes till it recharges. What that actually does is demand that you only play the game in small chunks, which can be good …
Whitmore: But with FarmVille sometimes it can take one to three hours of "farming" to get somewhere. And I've noticed that some people have taken to playing this game off and on all day long during work hours. It's like crack for the fingertips.
Hoose: For certain personality types there can definitely be a kind of addiction at work when it comes to this kind of never-ending, on-again-off-again role-playing game. And then you combine that with the time-consuming appeal of the social community aspect, you've linked two potentially very addictive time consumers.
Holz: You've seen evidence of that, haven't you, Meredith? In your research and even in some of your own playing?
Whitmore: Yes. You have to either ignore it entirely or constantly keep up with it. Crops die and gifts pile up when you neglect them.
Hoose: In Mafia Wars, it's the property side of things. If you buy property, you earn money from those lots. But if you let them sit there for a day without claiming your money they shut down. So, in essence, the game demands that you come back at least once a day to play.
Whitmore: I informally surveyed a few people who play. And the average amount of time for FarmVille was between one and two hours a day.
Holz: Wow! So, if you're a parent who has a teen that's into this, it seems like time consumption might be your biggest concern. Is there more than that to worry about? (Beyond the hard-sell offers we've already talked about.) Maybe not on FarmVille, but on Mafia Wars?
Whitmore: Hey, cows can be pretty intimidating!
Hoose: The thing is, because there are no visuals, you at least don't have to worry about watching violent acts, seeing blood and gore, etc. But you are killing people or stealing things, to be sure.
Holz: What would you say to someone who finds themselves being sucked into this—or someone who has a teenager in the house who suddenly can't stop farming?
Whitmore: OK. I don't want to come down with a heavy-handed attitude. FarmVille can be fun and if you have a few minutes to waste, it's an innocuous way to turn your brain off for a bit. As with anything in moderation, it seems harmless enough. But when you're spending two hours or even an hour a day on inanities like this, those are hours you're never going to get back. The thought that kept coming to mind as I played was a verse in 1 Corinthians where Paul says, "Everything is permissible for me but not everything is beneficial. Everything is permissible for me but I will not be mastered by anything." That's the question you have to ask yourself: "Have I been mastered by this?" Sometimes the answer isn't easy.
Holz: Because nobody really wants to admit that they might be addicted to a cheesy farming sim?
Whitmore: Right.