I have to admit that the casual games on Facebook fascinate me. Â However, their “abuse” of social networking keeps me away from many of them. Â Every time a friend of mine updates me with some event in a game, or invites me to play, I hide all statuses from that game. Â In a similar fashion, anyone on my Twitter follow list who enables the twitter features in most games that offer them will be unfollowed.
To date, my foray into Facebook games has been two fold. Â On one hand you have games like Scrabble and other board games where you challenge people and play, or go looking for open games and play. Â On the other hand you have things like Farmville and Mafia Wars (the Zynga games) where in order to succeed you have to spam and invite your friends and join groups of people you don’t care about just to be able to progress. Â It is that latter group of games that turns me off.
So, what about you? Â Do you play Facebook games? Â If so, which ones? Â If so, what draws you to them?
My wife plays them incessantly. Farmtown, Farmville, Cafe World, Fish tank something… there are more of them than I can count or even care to. I tried playing one once, quickly grew bored with it and stopped. I’ve never played Mafia Wars or anything with a farm in it and currently have 0 applications linked to my profile. I do find them interesting in that they are a unique take on the MMOG idea, but have no interest in playing them.