Death to Farmville

I believe you all know my stance of flash games by now...  They are meant to be enjoyed at short spurts to pass the time between one task to another or a quick release from reality.  But once it becomes an empire where it requires your undying allegiance to it to just continue and maintain your virtual world, that's when it becomes more of an obsession and even worse, an epidemic to the masses.  And now, Zynga's Farmville finally pushed me to the point where the only acceptable place for it is the scenic underworld of the corner of Hellfire and Brimstone.  This I present to everyone is another installment of my Death To series; Death To Farmville...

(Special thanks to Jack Brimstone for the kick-ass illustration.)

Now, this isn't an attack on Zynga itself, I'm a big fan of some of their products.  I played Zynga Poker and Mafia Wars once upon a time prior to Facebook being nothing more than a social hub of flash games as well as some of their mobile fares with their "With Friends" line of games.  Which you can find me and start up a game with my twitter @BootLeGsampler, but that is just a testament to what they have done.  But none of which compare to what they have done with the onslaught of idiocracy that is Farmville.  So what's wrong with Farmville, what isn't wrong with it is the shorter answer.  But I'll try my damnedest to explain why I'm laying down the law and sentencing Death To Farmville.


If you don't already know I'm totally anti-gaming on Facebook, it's meant for networking and socializing, plain and simple.  Banter and contacts, that's what I see it as.  And from the last time I check watching The Social Network, they did not mention crap about games.  I was tolerable about the games and all.  I tried it, sure I was suckered in, but I blame the wifie on that.  It was just a thing I did to help with the wifie  But I was soon to notice that it was just a tedious load of crap that sucked more of my time that needed to be wasted.  It started innocently as plant some potatoes, pick some apples from some trees, and maybe milk a cow or two.  That's it, not much more to it.  Maybe, and just MAYBE, you would help a friend or two with their farm.  But then, like all things Zynga, it got friggin' ridiculous.


I was a fan of Mafia Wars too, and I weened myself out of it when they started introducing different missions and locations for quests and all.  It loss a lock of it's luster and became weak in my opinion and flooded with a bunch of bots and cheaters trying to rack up a bunch of points for what, nothing more than notoriety from Zynga at best.  Fast forward the couple of years since and all of the popularity of people on Facebook just for the fact of playing a game, it's overbearing and stupid.  Now Farmville just introduced it's third world of playing, it has quests among quests of doing, and it's ridiculously stupid on how much time it takes to maintain all of the stuff it presents to you.  Seriously, it's an old, blue haired ladies version of WoW, and I've already did a Death To about that earlier.  It is too damn much work and maintence to keep up with all the crap.  I knew of people that spend so much time and effort in the game that it became practically a second job for them with all the man-hours they did.  And let's not forget the factor that some resources you have to pay to complete.  You might not have enough of one thing and needing to buy it from them, thus feeding into the monopoly of flash games that is Zynga. Okay, so this post did become somewhat of an attack on Zynga, but not fully, I'm still focusing on the precedence of it being that Farmville will suck you of your time, money, and eventually your soul.

(Thank to The Oatmeal for providing such kick-ass content, really, you should be here more than you're on Farmville people.)

But I digress, I mean if you really don't have anything else to do, and you don't have any means of communicating with anyone in the world, and all the time in the world to do nothing but click on a mouse and burn though your paypal, sure, go for it.  But keep in mind, there are better addictions, like gambling, drinking, or interacting with a healthy relationship with actual people. But if you plan on going on with this abysmal existence, I suggest you pick up this...

BootLeG sampler.. signing out...